The Vita's Still Dolce, But...

Alone, Derek Sanderson plays basketball on the floor of Boston Garden. Around him the gray deserted seats rise up to the maze of metal rafters. Sanderson dribbles out to center court, stands there for a moment in his banker's pinstriped suit and vest, his blue silk shirt and navy tie, and then drives toward the hoop. At the foul line he begins to slide on slippery-soled black-calfskin boots. He slides gracefully to the net and shoots.

In the bowels of the cavernous Garden, surrounded by stacks of folding chairs, idle forklifts and concrete pillars, stands an Interstate Lines bus, its motor idling, filling the air with fumes. Sitting inside, members of the Boston Braves of the American Hockey League are impatient to begin their 2�-hour ride to New Haven, Conn., where they will play the New Haven Nighthawks at 7:30 this November night. The bus was scheduled to leave for New Haven at 3:30 p.m. Three players were almost late. Like marines assaulting a beach, they had to run down a long ramp, weave between the pillars and leap over chairs to reach the bus on time, thus escaping a $25 fine from their coach, Matt Ravlich. It is now 3:45 p.m. and Ravlich, a 35-year-old hockey veteran who looks even tougher than the sound of his name, sits in the front seat eating French fries from a paper cup with his fingers. Before the ride has even begun, Ravlich looks wearied. "That guy will drive ya crazy!" he says. He licks his fingers. "Who's gonna listen to him all the way to New Haven?" Behind him, his players cry out, "Not me, Matty!"

Sitting across from Ravlich is Nate Greenberg, the Braves' public relations man. Nate squirms in his seat, looks at his watch, stands up—a tall, soft man in a chocolate blazer, chocolate shirt and chocolate tie filled with large white polka dots. He hunches over a bit and peers down the aisle through the rear window of the bus. "If he doesn't show," he says, "none of us better go to New Haven. I promised them the Turk. They put it in the paper, on radio, television, everything. Geesus, they'll tear us to pieces."

Finally, the Turk appears, sipping from a can of Tab and carrying three hockey sticks over one shoulder. He stores the sticks in the belly of the bus and then gets on amid hoots of derision from his teammates. He grins, raises his arms like a messiah and sits down behind Ravlich. Someone shouts, "You're overdressed, Turk. This ain't no Hart Schaffner & Marx league. It's Levi's all the way." The bus moves forward, toward New Haven and the Nighthawks.

In 1972 Derek Sanderson, the Turk, signed a $2.3-million contract to play for the Philadelphia Blazers of the World Hockey Association. He was considered a very hot property in the new league's fight for recognition, and not merely because he had been a skilled center for the Boston Bruins. He was a firebrand who aroused the fans and, off the ice, a character who made lively newspaper copy—just the kind of athlete to fill an arena. But Sanderson bombed in Philly. Last winter he settled his contract for $500,000. Teamless, he returned to the Bruins, with whom he had begun his career as Rookie of the Year. He was used sparingly and, after injuring his back on the first day of training, he had yet to play a game this fall when he was sent down to the Braves, the Bruins' AHL farm team. There he became one of the highest paid minor league athletes in the history of sport, for his $100,000 Bruin salary was in full force.

A few hours before the Braves left for New Haven, Armand (Bep) Guidolin, the Bruin coach, sat behind his desk in the team's locker room and said of Sanderson, "There's nothing wrong with his back. We sent him down to get in shape. When he came to us from Philadelphia he was in terrible shape. Last year it was a battle trying to get him in condition. Then, after he got hurt this year, he did nothing to get back in condition. I'm tired of it. I don't even want to talk about him. He gets all this publicity and he hasn't played hockey in two years!" Guidolin fell silent. He is a thick-necked, curly-haired man who could easily pass for Frank Sinatra's bodyguard. In 1942, at the age of 16, he was the youngest player ever to come into the NHL. As a minor league coach he had a reputation for being a stickler for conditioning and discipline, which was why on Feb. 5, 1973 he was picked to replace Tom Johnson as the Bruin coach. Johnson, an easygoing, pipe-smoking man, was said to have been too soft on the increasingly careless Bruins, who were then stumbling along in third place in the East Division of the NHL. Guidolin guided the Bruins to five straight victories and 20 wins in their last 26 games and a second place finish.

"Listen, sending Sanderson down was a disciplinary measure, too," added Guidolin. "He's gotta prove to me he can do what he's told. And he's gotta show me he can still play hockey. I mean every game, not just one game out of three or four. I can tell you this for sure. He didn't run at anyone all last year! All he ever did was play up to the other teams' potential. He never played any harder than he had to. Why do you think we were able to waive him out of the league before sending him down? Why didn't L.A. try to grab him? Or Vancouver? Now everybody's telling me he's in a great frame of mind. Derek wants to play hockey again, they say. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen anything on the ice. I'm tired of hearing Derek Sanderson's gonna do this, Derek Sanderson's gonna do that. I'm tired of hearing all the things he's gonna do and never does. I don't want to hear anything from him anymore. He's always trying to con you. It's a habit by now. A habit."

Guidolin stood up to leave. With the thumb and forefinger of each hand he pinched his shirt collar and tugged it up around his neck, a gesture out of Guys and Dolls. "To get back to the Bruins," he said, "he's got to get in shape, prove he can do what he's told, and that he can still play hockey. When I first saw him at 18 I thought he couldn't miss. Now, when he wants to be, he's one of the three best centers in hockey. But he's got to make up his mind whether he wants to drive his Rolls-Royce or be a great hockey player. A lot of people got Rolls-Royces and nobody knows their name. Without hockey nobody would know Derek Sanderson's name."

Riding toward New Haven on the bus, Derek talks, to no one in particular and to everyone. To Johnny Carlton, the Braves' dapper business manager; to his young teammates behind him; to Nate Greenberg, contented now, shelling pistachio nuts across the aisle; and most of all to Ravlich, a former Bruin. Ravlich, slouched in the seat in front of Derek, is trying to sleep. Each time he is about to doze off Derek taps him on the shoulder, saying, "Ain't that right, Matty Joe?"

He has always talked. When he first came up to the Bruins he looked around, saw Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, and decided that the only way his name would be mentioned in the same breath with theirs was to be outrageously outspoken. "I worked hard at shocking people," he says, "and now I'm the highest paid 25-goal player in history." For a while with the Bruins, his fabricated flamboyance grew in pace with his solid talent. But then the former kept on growing while the latter stopped, began to wither. Still, he talks outrageously—"I went $68,000 in debt my first year in the NHL"—but no longer with passionate intensity. He speaks in a toneless voice and with a blank, small-featured gaze. He talks out of habit now, without conviction, like a record winding down. The tenor of his remarks has shifted noticeably, too, from braggadocio to self-depreciation. "Everyone thinks I'm a real flake, now, and maybe they're right. My mind is a little screwed up."