Making Waves

Last call is long gone. Darkness has turned to dawn. Only now, when his opponents' legs are beginning to wobble in the South Florida humidity, is Edgerrin James hitting his stride. Dreadlocks flying, ribbed undershirt soaked with sweat, the Indianapolis Colts' irrepressible running back sends a purple bowling ball spinning toward its target, and the conversations of a dozen onlookers come to a halt. There's a gasp as James picks up a difficult split and closes out another pair of suckers, adding a few more Benjamins to the growing wad of cash in his baggy nylon shorts.

A menacing mass of muscle and hustle, James has no intention of leaving Don Carter's Kendall Lanes while there's still money to be won. The two guys who run the alley are getting antsy, having allowed James and his party to stay long past closing time, and now James is working them, too, taking their night's wages on lane 1 while cleaning out Tennessee Titans cornerback Samari Rolle and two other marks on lane 2. Barely pausing between rolls, James, wearing Reebok sneakers and placing only his ring and middle fingers in the ball holes, rolls a 212 on the first lane and 246 on the other. It hardly seems fair, and it isn't: James has been bowling for all of a month.

Missy Elliott's Get Ur Freak On blares over the sound system as James flashes his Fort Knox smile and goes double-or-nothing on both bets. "This just ain't natural" complains one of his friends, Fred Hawthorne, shaking his head. "This is, what, his 25th game of the night, maybe his 30th? Any man should be tired—real tired—but EJ has a different chemistry. It's like this with everything: pool, Sega Dreamcast, shooting hoops, whatever. He might start off slow, but the longer he goes and the more pressure he's under, the better he gets."

To a hustler like James, these games are a godsend, for in his day job there's no one left for him to dupe. Since bursting onto the scene as the NFL's Offensive Rookie of the Year in 1999, James has made football look so easy that his achievements are taken for granted. At 22 he has already won a pair of NFL rushing crowns with a total of 3,262 yards in his first two seasons—only Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson had more at that point in his career (chart, page 76)—while also establishing himself as one of the league's best receivers out of the backfield. Perhaps he's the one getting hustled: Last season, during which he ran for 1,709 yards, caught 63 passes for 594 yards and scored 18 touchdowns, James didn't get a single MVP vote and was left off the Associated Press All-Pro team.

Barring serious injury, he seems poised to make a run at some of the game's most cherished records. Or is he? "I'll be 26 when my contract is up [a $49 million package that ends after the 2004 season], and I may not ever do another deal because I don't think my attention span is that long," James says. "If I'm not interested anymore, I'll gladly walk away. Then, let the chilling begin. I'm curious to see what it feels like to have a year-round off-season."

In the meantime, from January to July, James is primarily engaged in the pursuit of pleasure. Criticized last week by Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and coach Jim Mora for skipping voluntary workouts, James scoffed, saying, "It's crazy how everybody's making a big deal out of nothing. I've been working out on my own—hell, I'm 213 pounds [three pounds below his playing weight last year], with one percent body fat—and I know what's right for me. I only went to college for 2� years, but I think I know the meaning of the word voluntary. My attitude is, I give them whatever they want during the season, but the off-season belongs to me."

In other words, on the spur of the moment James might get on a plane and fly somewhere. Or he might go to the Miami Marina, board his 38-foot Sea Ray (he named it Stressss Freeee) and head out to sea. Or he might just spend hours bent over the pool table in the living room of his downtown Miami apartment, figuring out ways to take your money.

For James, the bets aren't so much a means to add to his fortune as they are lubricants for his competitive nature. As a warmup to his bowling marathon, James spent the afternoon challenging several friends and a trio of Reebok representatives, in town for a video shoot, in various forms of competition. After vainly attempting to launch a paper airplane from his 29th-floor balcony into Biscayne Bay, James the pool shark required only two runs to beat James Burgess, a friend and former University of Miami teammate, in a game of eight ball. That set up a rematch with Big Pete, one of the Reebok guys, whose modest cash supply was running out. "Yo, kid, you be killin' me," Big Pete said disgustedly, as James kissed the 8 ball into a far corner pocket to finish him off.

While many big-time athletes claim a larger purpose (spreading the gospel, saving the neighborhood and the like) and aren't always sincere, the seemingly self-absorbed James at least is true to his ambitions—or lack thereof. "I just want to devote myself to having as much fun as I possibly can," he says. At the same time, he speaks ill of no one and keeps his nose out of other people's affairs. His reasoning: "My mom always said, 'When you're in a bathroom, you don't look to your right or left; you look straight down.' Instead of trying to get in everybody's business, I'm going to make sure I don't p- - - on myself."

James spent the Memorial Day weekend with numerous friends at a series of parties and concerts in Miami billed collectively as Urban Fashion Week, but he also made it a prelude to his Going on the Wagon campaign. He had a few beers and a couple of mixed drinks but said he would then shut down the alcohol until after the 2001 season. His half brother Ed (Doc) German, a recent graduate of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, says James "is always going to be in control" and offers this example from the previous off-season: Invited to a friend's prewedding party at a Tampa club, James brought a crew from his hometown of Immokalee, a farming community near the Everglades. "These guys got involved in a disturbance at the club," German says, "and EJ put 'em right in the limo and sent 'em back to Immokalee. Now people back there know that when you go somewhere with EJ, you don't act like that."