Chuck redux

Buying Converse, Nike takes big step into retro shoe market

As a boy, I always assumed that Chuck Taylor was like Betty Crocker or Uncle Ben or that other shoe icon, Buster Brown. "Hi, I'm Buster Brown, I live in a shoe. Here's my dog, Tige, he lives in there, too." Chuck Taylor, of course, lived in the Converse All Star basketball shoe. For all practical purposes, the All Star -- or "Chucks," as we also knew them -- was the only sneaker in the world. If you were caught in any other brand, you were a total twerp.

Chucks were simplicity itself -- canvas, with a rubber sole, and a big red star at the ankle bone. Chucks came in exactly two colors: black and white. I cannot speak altogether with authority about this analogy, but I'm fairly confident that when I got my first pair of white All Stars, I felt the way a girl does when she gets her first bra. Lord, but they were glorious sneakers for a boy to wear.

In fact, the Chuck Taylor All Stars dominated its market more than any other sports brand, so much the rage that they didn't even have to bother with a little thing called advertising. All Converse did was hire old basketball players to go take orders from sporting good stores, which waited breathlessly until they could sign the order pad to buy more Chucks. For promotion, the old salesmen would give freebie All Stars to coaches who put on clinics.

The most famous of the All Star salesman was Hot Rod Hundley, now the announcer for the Utah Jazz, who's about to go into the Basketball Hall of Fame. One time, I was with Hot Rod, when a nondescript old man puffing on a pipe came over, and Hot Rod said, "Frank, meet Chuck Taylor." Chuck Taylor! Chuck Taylor was a real person? You might as well have introduced me to Elsie The Cow.

Chuck Taylor, it turned out, had been a pro basketball player, back when pro basketball was the equivalent of a six-day bicycle race or a roller derby. He could, I was told, put on a mean clinic. Somehow, Chuck had become the most famous name in basketball, even if most people, like me, didn't know he really existed.

Alas, come the 1970s, Adidas roared in from Europe with its sophisticated sneakers made of a lot more than canvas and rubber. Then came Nike and Reebok. Coaches, who'd been happy to get a free pair of All Stars for themselves, were suddenly getting six figures to shod their players in another brand. Nike, in particular, started paying star players millions of dollars -- tens of millions -- to brand their sneakers. Michael Jordan was playing in Air Jordans, making commercials in Air Jordans. Chuck Taylor was no longer with us, even if nobody ever knew who he had been, anyhow. Soon enough, Converse was bankrupt. No sports product ever fell so far, so fast, so completely.

Then, last week, Nike bought Converse. Nike knows only too well that the All Star had been making something of a comeback. Retro sports clothing is big. Replicas of old uniforms are selling. You want a St. Louis Browns hat? A Brooklyn Dodgers shirt? Hickey-Freeman carries a line of Bobby Jones sportswear -- he was the champion back when golfers wore plus-fours and neckties.

So much about sports is reminiscing. The thing about Chuck Taylor All Stars is that it's the same old precious product that Chuck and Hot Rod . . . and you, too, once wore. With All Stars, though, you don't buy a piece of sports history. Lace 'em up, and you buy a piece of your own history. What else never changes, but . . . sneakers?

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.

 

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