Monday, Jan. 04, 1971
The Athlete As Peacock
IN the long and fanciful lore of U.S. sports, the popular image of the star athlete has always resembled that of a Jack Armstrong modeled in granite--a little dense, perhaps, but still a selfless wonder who would do anything for "Pop." the kindly old coach. The hero was humble, would blush when bussed by a cheerleader, and was forever uttering inspiring words like "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." For him, a big night on the town was a twin bill at the Bijou and an extra-thick malted milk. He was the All-America boy. from his crew cut and three-button blue suit right down to his sweat socks and brown loafers.
Anyone foolish enough to talk that way about today's athletes would be sued for defamation of character. The outspoken, power-conscious modern player no more accepts the daguerreotype than Muhammad Ali relates to Uncle Tom. In college and professional sports there are boycotts, strikes and lawsuits by players challenging the established order. Nothing is deader than the old locker-room adage that there is no "I" in T. . .E. . .A. . .M, or that coach equates with king. The free safety is now a freethinker. The inarticulate tackle of old now has his own TV talk show. The rangy country boy with the deadly hook shot has a lawyer, a business manager and a pressagent to handle his manifold interests. Nothing symbolizes the swinging new athlete better than his dress--both on the field and off it.
Freedom of Expression. The New York Jets' Joe Namath was once instantly recognizable with his fancy white cleats, long hair and Fu Manchu mustache. But now Joe is being upstaged by a whole host of players with twinkle-toe shoes and pageboy locks. Defensive End Tommy Hart, who started a run on white cleats among the San Francisco 49ers, says gleefully: "We're psychedelic, man!" The Chicago Cubs' Joe Pepitone, who favors lavender suede sashes and see-through paisley shirts off duty, gets his kicks on the field by wearing a fluffy hairpiece. In the National Basketball Association, beards, goatees and blossoming Afros are as common as jump shots. The Buffalo Braves' Emmette Bryant has different colored sets of headbands--one for home, the other for away games.
Coaches may shudder at some of the lifestyles, but most take it in stride --though Cornerback Earsell Mackbee claims that he was cut from the Minnesota Vikings this season for showing up one day in a red lace jumpsuit, a fake fur maxi vest and a slouch hat. "Freedom to express your own personality makes for a winning team," says the 49ers' Ken Willard. "It's the swinging feeling around the clubhouse. A feeling that they're them and I'm me." His teammate Gene Washington, who grooves on $350 Oscar de la Renta suits, deplores the "archaic regimen" of traditional football-club rules. "Room checks at 11 p.m. on a Friday night before a Sunday game is Cub Scout stuff. I think professional players are above that. They will separate themselves from the team if they don't take care of themselves. They will be judged by their own fellows."
In individual sports, athletes answer only to themselves these days. Jockey Eddie Belmonte, who rode 212 winners and earned $235,000 in 1969, favors a wardrobe of rich brocades befitting a courtier at Versailles. Returning from a suspension last year, he fondly recalls how he walked into the jockeys' room. "I wore a bright orange suit. The pants had bell-bottoms and the jacket was a Nehru with no sleeves so you could see the yellow shirt I was wearing. I had a beard, and I thought I looked real good. When the other jocks saw me, they called me the Puerto Rican hippie. They say, 'You're too much.' "
Peacock that he is. Elegant Eddie is but one of dozens of flashy strutters in every corner of the sport aviary. At last count. Wide Receiver Dick Gordon of the Chicago Bears had 27 pairs of "creative" shoes ("They really express what's inside a guy"), ten suede suits, 35 pairs of pants, 50 shirts, 20 sweaters, eight multicolored caps, seven leather coats and two fur topcoats. The only problem, he says, is "that I'm a little short on underwear."
Walt Frazier of the New York Knickerbockers basketball team has a different problem: convincing people that he was wearing those broad-brimmed gangster hats and wide-lapel pin-stripe suits long before the movie Bonnie and Clyde came out. Chief ball hawk for the champion Knicks, Frazier says: "I dress kind of conservatively when we lose and I splash on the colors when we win." Since the Knicks are again runaway leaders, he is usually somewhere over the rainbow. He squires his girl friend around the discotheque circuit in his "Clydemobile," a white-and-canary Cadillac Eldorado that is a far cry from the Ford Pinto he pushes in TV commercials. His Knick salary plus endorsements, speaking engagements, interests in an athletes' managing firm and a hair-styling salon will earn him more than $100,000 this year. He needs it to support his weakness for maxicoats. Among his favorites: a pair of leather numbers with mink collars ($450 each), a black elephant skin ($950) and a sealskin ($2,000).
Even hockey players are breaking out of the brushcut mold. Upon joining the Boston Bruins three seasons ago, Derek ("Turk") Sanderson announced: "The square hockey world could use a change, and I'm the guy to change it." He grew a mustache, let his hair grow into a shaggy mop, spent $9,000 on a far-out wardrobe, and began mouthing off. N.H.L. President Clarence Campbell, he said, was a "stuffed shirt" for not letting him wear white skates. Famed old Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings was "the dirtiest player in the league." Named Rookie of the Year, Sanderson naturally hurried into print with his autobiography. In I've Got To Be Me, he offered his philosophy: "I like a swinging chick who grooves on life. One who's kind of warm, wet and wild." In his bachelor digs he installed a bar, mood lighting, a wall-to-wall white fur rug, and a circular bed beneath a mirrored ceiling.
Money in the Press. Sanderson's value to the Bruins, both as a player and a character, will earn him at least $50,000 in salary and bonuses this year; another $60,000 will come in from endorsements and other outside interests. Though Sanderson, of course, is a genuine star, showmanship pays even more handsome dividends for Ken ("Hawk") Harrelson, the Cleveland Indians outfielder. "I'm a .242 lifetime hitter," he says. "Have you ever seen a .242 hitter who makes $100,000? To me, money is not so much getting base hits. Money is getting my name in the paper."
In 1968 he earned his clippings legitimately, batting .275 and clouting 35 home runs for the Boston Red Sox to become the American League's Player of the Year. Traded to Cleveland in 1969, he continued to command coverage --even though his average dropped to .221. As always, he traded on a "hot dog image" that centers around a beaklike nose and a shaggy head "that looks," he says, "like something that caught fire and was put out with a baseball bat." And wherever he went, he made a splash by wearing the gaudiest getups this side of the circus.
Harrelson, who has spent as much as $10,000 on clothes in one six-month period, turned out for a White House dinner in a lavender dinner jacket, lavender bell bottoms, lavender sunglasses, lavender cuff links and lavender shoes. He calls his suits, many of them $500 brocade silk creations of his own design, "mind benders." He has 250 pairs of slacks and buys his sweaters by the dozen. His digs in suburban Boston (he also has residences in Cleveland and Miami) are straight out of Playboy: red velvet walls, a $7,500 bar with a fountain, stereo all around, psychedelic lighting, and the inevitable round bed with tigerskin covers.
It all sounds very Hollywood--at least the rich, gaudy Hollywood of yesterday. But then, why not? In this increasingly complex world, the spectacle of sport, carried instantly by TV to millions of enthralled fans, is one of the few remaining simple pleasures of life. And its personalities--the Namaths, the Muhammad Alis and their fellows--take on the stature of yesteryear's movie stars. Indeed, in an era of such Hollywood anti-heroes as Peter Fonda, it is the athlete who comes on strong. "I am the greatest" was not, after all, a cry from the MGM lot. It came from ringside.
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