Keeping Up With Grape Juice

What Greg wanted and ordered was eight hamburgers, three hot dogs, two cartons of french fries, a chocolate milk shake and an orange soda for a chaser. "Greg, you can't eat that. You're putting me on."

"No, man, I ain't. I told you I'm hungry. That ain't so much. One day last spring I went to one of them track meets. Like it was a state championship or something. I forget. Anyway I done real good and the coach he told me eat anything I wanted. Man, I ate nine fish and two cheeseburgers."

All of which may do old Greg an unintentional injustice, presenting him as a pathological pop-off or as just another arrogant, adolescent superjock. That is not at all how he came on for anyone. In Washington, despite being a winner, which is always hard for other competitors to take, despite being a talking winner, which can be twice as hard, Greg seemed the most popular kid there. For one thing, though he carried on continually about all manner of things, he never tried to be funny by cutting up anyone else. Also he got across the feeling that he really liked and respected everyone, caring enough even about complete strangers to want to do something for them, to make them laugh, to entertain and relax them. This is how I remembered old Greg.

This fall, after it became apparent that Grape Juice Johnson, the 1971 Heisman Trophy winner, the dancing halfback who was to lead Wisconsin from the football slums, was in fact old Greg of the magic chest, he seemed worth seeing again.

His varsity debut against Oklahoma was, to put it charitably, undistinguished. In the first half he carried the ball only four times from scrimmage and the results were negative. He returned three kickoffs for medium yardage, one of which he fumbled early in the third quarter on the Wisconsin goal line. John Coatta, the head coach, removed him from the game and allowed him to play only briefly thereafter.

After the game Greg drank his Coke. "Definitely, I was nervous," Greg said a bit despondently. "I thought, Juice [which is how he speaks of himself now when he remembers to, which is a point for the life-imitates-art side], these is college boys. They are going to be trying to eat you up. It'll be the same the first time in the pros, all them Big Bubbas looking at you.

"Man, have I got it figured correctly? I am not going to be on even one of those little bitty All-America teams if I don't carry that ball more than four times a game?"

"But maybe you can get a new name. Four Carry Johnson. That Grape Juice one is bad."

"And I am correct that this is not the way you win no Heisman Trophy and that nobody is going to be throwing them $100,000 checks at old Four Carry Johnson?"

"That is correct, but you are getting tight. You got three years to go. So you had a bad game. Forget it."