A Guide To All-star Indigestion

In the grand old tradition of American capitalism, a man once trained for a career in high finance by attending Yale, Princeton and the Harvard Business School. Today he preps with the Kansas City Chiefs. As a result, aging professional athletes who once faded away into low-income oblivion now plow their loot into real estate, blue chips, employment agencies, cleaning plants and—the hottest new commodity of them all—fried chicken.

What is it about a batter-dipped thigh that lures them? Well, primarily, the chance to get rich.

Serious students of big money figure that this new sports star-cum-executive has been created by an era of elephantine bonuses and soaring salaries, which in turn was created by a sports-crazy populace. Then, too, more and more professional athletes are college educated—a new breed of thinking muscle, men with one eye on the ball and the other on their stock portfolios. Actually, if I may be candid and not unkind, today's big-leaguer need not be a cerebral heavyweight to hit the upper tax brackets. All he needs is scoring clout—and, ultimately, the high-priced services of a cunning and devoted financial adviser. The star racks up the points. His money coach lines up the promising financial plays.

Then one day coach tells star that fried chicken is a glamour investment. Buy a hot plate. Frame a dozen huge action-color portraits to grace the walls. Wrap the premises in neon, vinyl, a few hundred feet of Formica and stainless steel. Throw in a couple of chickens. Voil�! Our hero is in business.

Understand now, the athlete-restaurateur is not a sudden, entirely new, phenomenon. There were pioneers in the game. Jack Dempsey has been feeding provincial Broadway strollers for decades. It seems like forever. Manero's is an established name in steaks, and Tony, the 1936 National Open golf champ, still plays the host at his Greenwich, Conn. outpost for carnivores. For years the late Lefty O'Doul welcomed oldtime ballplayers and tourists to his San Francisco bar at 333 Geary Street—a location he admired because it was the closest available to his lifetime batting average of .349.

Possibly the booming appetite for gastronomic venture dates back to that historic day when some advertising wizard decided children would devour bits of soggy wheat if they were sold as the "Breakfast of Champions." The same impressionable prepubescent has now grown up, and the theory is that he absolutely will not be able to resist a stuffed shrimp, fat-fried in the name of Broadway Joe Namath.

Thus, equipped with a little bit of fame and a lot of example, athletes are rushing into the feed business. They are dealing in all sorts of more or less edible exotica, from catfish to escargots, to root-beer slush and burritos (which are Mexican hot dogs and therefore may or may not be small burros as one might imagine). Across the map, sports-world heroes are tied up in bars, pizza parlors, posh private clubs, superburger stands and carry-out kitchens. Where expertise is lacking, confidence rules. As New York Jet Gerry Philbin enthuses, "Listen, I know all about restaurants. I've been eating in them all my life."

Of course, few members of this growing lineup of athlete-restaurateurs actually get back into the kitchen to pit the avocados or stuff those shrimp—although former Defensive Back Brady Keys insists that he personally dipped and breaded and experimented with spices while seeking the exact formula for his All-Pro Chicken. (All-Pro Chicken, now there is a sturdy name. Can't you just see those drumsticks bulging with tasty muscles?) And San Francisco Warrior Jerry Lucas claims, "I did everything from cooking to writing the manuals" for his Beef 'N' Shakes empire.

Some athletes merely lend their names for a price. For a weekly fee, pro golfer Frank Beard blesses Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's old Colonel Sanders himself tattooed on Beard's golf bag. Visibility and contact—what politicians call pressing the flesh—is a must. Redskin Defensive End Bill Briggs pulled off his shoulder pads and got into a gold ruffled shirt and tux to greet guests at The Bridge, a rococo supper club he was involved with in Washington. Ben Davidson, the mustachioed Oakland Raider, shows up regularly at his Big Ben's Handle Bar in Hayward, Calif. Don Drysdale can be seen champing on a big slab of beef in his Dugout. And Maury Wills often plunks the banjo in the five-piece band at his informal Pittsburgh bo�te, The Stolen Base.

Enterprising athletes cater to soul as well as body. For $10 Chicago Black Hawk boosters get both dinner and a ticket to the hockey game from Stan Mikita's plush suburban inn. Ex-pro wrestler Stan Mayslack runs charter buses to the University of Minnesota football games from his Minneapolis bistro. The Washington Redskins' Marlin McKeever runs the Trojan Barrel near USC and sponsors boozy round trips to Tijuana for the bullfights. Old-fashioned melodrama, German oompah bands, even rock music, are traditional with the Red Ram chain, a sentimental favorite in ex- Packer Jerry Kramer's bulging investment portfolio. And at the Pearl Street Warehouse in Dallas there is pool and billiards and dancing, as well as food, plus the thrilling prospect that Joey Heatherton, Co-Owner Lance Rentzel's wife, might stop by to frug.