With that as a nut — in addition to all this vicious background — I feel the first stirrings of a real appetite for this story. Somebody is going to pay for putting me thru this kind of shit. I have come here to help to save the suffering. You know God works in a mysterious way. She will tell you what you wish to know regarding health, marriage, love, divorce, courtship, speculations and business transactions of all kinds.
She removes evil influences and bad luck of all kinds. She never fails to reunite the separated, cause speedy and happy marriages. She lifts you out of sorrow and darkness and starts you on the way to success, and happiness.
She will give sound and important advice on all affairs of life, whatever they may be. You will find her superior to any other reader you have consulted in the past. A place to bring your friends and feel no embarrassment. Ah yes, Mother Roberts. What does it all mean? Have I finally turned pro? Can this really be the end? Down and out in Houston with —. Yes, because what I was really leading up to is this extremely central question.
Are you prejudiced? Your ad said you could answer my questions and lift me out of sorrow and darkness. Mother Roberts hung up on me at that point. Christ only knows what she thought was about to come down on her when dusk fell on Houston. It was not until Monday afternoon that I actually spoke with Mother Roberts on the telephone, but the idea of going over to Galveston and dealing with the whole Super Scene story from some rotten motel on the edge of the seal-wall had been wandering around in my head almost from the first hour after I checked into my coveted press-room at the Hyatt Regency.
And in dull retrospect now, I wish I had done that. Almost anything would have been better than that useless week I spent in Houston waiting for the Big Game. The only place in town where I felt at home was a sort of sporadically violent strip joint called the Blue Fox, far out in the country on South Main. Nobody I talked to in Houston had ever heard of it, and the only two sportswriters who went out there with me got involved in a wild riot that ended up with all of us getting maced by undercover vice-squad cops who just happened to be in the middle of the action when it erupted.
Maybe next time. I remember telling that story one night in the press lounge at the Hyatt Regency, just babbling it off the top of my head out of sheer boredom. He shrugged uncontrollably and looked down at his Old Crow and water. I glanced at my watch and turned to leave. He nodded glumly as I moved away in the crowd … and although I saw him three or four times a day for the rest of that week, he never spoke to me again.
There is a definite element of hysteria about drugs of any kind in pro football today, and a casual remark — even a meaningless remark — across the table in a friendly hometown bar can lead, very quickly, to a seat in the witness chair in front of a congressional committee. Ah … drugs; that word again. These tests would be administered by professional urinalysists — paid by the federal government, out of tax-monies — and if any one of these evil bastards passed urine that turned red or green, or blue, or whatever , they would be … ah … well … the Staggers Committee is still mulling on the question of penalties.
Maybe studying is a better word. Or pondering. The rumor on Capitol Hill is that Rep. What all this means to Harley Staggers is hard to say. You know what I mean. Ah, Jesus … another bad tangent. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall signing a contract that said I would never do this kind of thing again; one of the conditions of my turning pro was a clause about swearing off gibberish.
The Allman sound, and rain. And now, almost exactly a year later, my main memory of Super Bowl VIII in Houston is rain and grey mist outside another hotel window, with the same strung-out sound of the Allman Brothers booming out of the same portable speakers that I had, last year, in Los Angeles.
There was not much else worth remembering from either game — or at least not much that needs writing about, and the clock on the wall reminds me, once again, that a final deadline looms and there is hungry space to fill out there in San Francisco. They would go out, each morning, to the Miami and Minnesota team hotels, and dutifully conduct the daily interviews … and about two hours later this mass of useless gibberish would appear, word for word, in the early editions of either the Post or the Chronicle.
You could see the front door of the hotel from the balcony of the press lounge, and whenever the newsboy came in with his stack of fresh papers, the national writers would make the long yard walk across to the newsstand and cough up 15 cents each for their copies. The place was so deep, all week, in fresh newsprint, that it was sometimes hard to push the door open.
Forty yards away, on comfortable couches surrounding the free bar, the national gents would spend about two hours each day scanning the local sports sections — along with a never-ending mass of almost psychotically detailed information churned out by the NFL publicity office — on the dim chance of finding something worth writing about that day.
There never was, of course. But nobody seemed really disturbed about it. The only thing most of the sportswriters in Houston seemed to care about was having something to write about … anything at all, boss: a peg, an angle, a quote, even a goddamn rumor. I remember being shocked at the sloth and moral degeneracy of the Nixon press corps during the presidential campaign — but they were like a pack of wolverines on speed compared to the relatively elite sportswriters who showed up in Houston to cover the Super Bowl.
On the other hand, there really was no story. Whatever was happening in Houston that week had little or nothing to do with the hundreds of stories that were sent out on the news-wires each day.
Most of the stories, in fact, were unabashed rewrites of the dozens of official NFL press releases churned out each day by the League publicity office. I had made the same six-mile drive the night before in just under five minutes … but that was under very different circumstances; Rice Stadium is on South Main Street, along the same route that led from the Hyatt Regency to the Dolphin headquarters at the Marriott, and also to the Blue Fox.
There was not much to do on the bus except drink, smoke and maintain a keen ear on the babble of conversations behind me for any talk that might signal the presence of some late-blooming Viking fan with money to waste.
It is hard to stay calm and casual in a crowd of potential bettors when you feel absolutely certain of winning any bet you can make. At that point, anybody with even a hint of partisan enthusiasm in his voice becomes a possible mark — a doomed and ignorant creature to be lured, as carefully as possible, into some disastrous last-minute wager that could cost him every dollar he owns. One-on-one betting is a lot more interesting than dealing with bookies, because it involves strong elements of personality and psychic leverage.
Situations like these are not common. This news caused instant action in gambling circles. Even the rumor of an injury to Warfield was worth one point and even two, with some bookies I was never able to locate … and if Shula had announced on Saturday that Paul was definitely not going to play, the spread would probably have dropped to four, or even three.
None of the people I met in that violent, water-logged town were inclined to introduce me to a reliable bookmaker — and the people I called on both coasts, several hours before the game on Sunday morning, seemed unnaturally nervous when I asked them to use their own credit to guarantee my bets with their local bookies. Looking back on it now, after talking with some of these people and cursing them savagely, I see that the problem had something to do with my frenzied speech-pattern that morning.
I was still in the grip of whatever fiery syndrome had caused me to deliver that sermon off the balcony a few hours earlier — and the hint of mad tremor in my voice, despite my attempts to disguise it, was apparently communicated very clearly to all those I spoke with on the long-distance telephone. How long, O lord, how long?
This is the second year in a row that I have gone to the Super Bowl and been absolutely certain — at least 48 hours before game-time — of the outcome. It is also the second year in a row that I have failed to capitalize, financially, on this certainty.
Last year, betting mainly with wealthy cocaine addicts, I switched all my bets from Washington to Miami on Friday night — and in the resulting confusion my net winnings were almost entirely canceled by widespread rancor and personal bitterness. THIS YEAR, IN order to side-step that problem, I waited until the last moment to make my bets — despite the fact that I knew the Vikings were doomed after watching them perform for the press at their star-crossed practice field on Monday afternoon before the game.
It was clear, even then, that they were spooked and very uncertain about what they were getting into — but it was not until I drove about 20 miles around the beltway to the other side of town for a look at the Dolphins that I knew, for sure, how to bet.
And they were absolutely right. At the Super Bowl I had the benefit of my usual game-day aids: powerful binoculars, a tiny portable radio for the blizzard of audio-details that nobody ever thinks to mention on TV, and a seat on the good left arm of my friend, Mr.
This is a very fast and active style of betting, because you have to make a decision about every 25 seconds. The only thing more intense is betting yes or no on the next shot in something like a pro basketball game between the Celtics and the Knicks, where you might get five or six shots every 24 seconds … or maybe only one, but in any case the betting is almost as exhausting as being out there on the floor. When I finally fled Houston it was a cold Tuesday afternoon with big lakes of standing water on the road to the airport.
Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. Which it was, for the Raiders, when they got stomped out of the playoffs by Miami, back in December. LoCasale was not in the office when I called.
Neither was Al Davis. But I had a friendly talk with whichever one of their secretaries was handling the phone that day, and she assured me that one of them would be back very soon and would certainly return my call. I thanked her and left an Operator Number, so that the call would be on my tab.
The answering service operator said that Mr. Davis and Mr. LoCasale had both gone home for the day, but if I wanted to leave my number she would get the message to both of them tomorrow, and either one of them — or maybe both — would call me as soon as possible.
Well … it is probably a sad commentary on my journalistic sense and also my personal naivete to admit, at this point, that I honestly believed that either LoCasale or Davis would soon return my call s. It was not really much of a shock, by this time.
I had already checked with the NFL security office in New York and been assured that whatever foul information LoCasale felt he had on me had not come down from the League. It seemed like a reasonable premise until I tried it out on two NFL players.
Jesus christ, I thought, this story was supposed to be a vacation from politics — but dealing with these pigs is worse than dealing with Ziegler. Walsh, in the meantime, was pursuing the Davis-LoCasale connection from so many angles and via so many surrogates that we finally got through — by using a sort of Trojan Horse approach on Al Davis. Me worry? Swift listened for a while, then looked up at whoever was talking to him and said:.
A lot of important contracts are coming up for renewal, and you can bet that the guys will be asking for more than management is willing to pay. Jesus, can you imagine what would happen if one of those stadium cops showed up in the press box at half-time with a hundred test tubes and told all the writers to piss in the damn things or turn in their credentials for the rest of the season?
Mandatory urine-tests for all congressmen and senators at the end of each session, for instance. Who could predict what kind of screaming hell might erupt if Rep. After Inskeep told the ex-president that his fraud claims have repeatedly been proven false, the reporter a.
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