Losers

Description

“It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.” —Floyd Patterson
 
Twenty-two notable writers—including Bob Sullivan, Abby Ellin, Mike Pesca, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Louisa Hall, and Gay Talese—examine the untold stories of the losers, and in doing so reveal something raw and significant about what it means to be human

The locker rooms of winning teams are crowded with coaches, family, and fans. Reporters flock to the athletes, brimming with victory and celebration, to ask, How does it feel? In contrast, the locker rooms of the losing teams are quiet and awkward, and reporters tend to leave quickly, reluctant to linger too long around loss.

But, as sports journalists Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas argue, losing is not a phenomenon to be overlooked, and in Losers, they have called upon novelists, reporters, and athletes to consider what it means to lose. From the Olympic gymnast who was forced to surrender her spot to another teammate, to the legacy of Bill Buckner’s tenth-inning error in the 1986 World Series, to LeBron James’s losing record in the NBA Finals, these essays range from humorous to somber, but all are united by their focus on defeat. Interweaving fourteen completely new and unpublished pieces alongside beloved classics of the genre, Losers turns the art of sports writing on its head and proves that there is inspiration to be found in stories of risk, resilience, and getting up after you’ve been knocked down.”Packed with insight; each essay brings a new and different perspective to the idea of losing. . . . Losers is a sports book, but it is also more than that. These essays offer a way to engage with the human condition; there’s a real empathy inspired by these pieces, whether we’re talking about Olympic gymnasts or heavyweight boxers or aging bullfighters. . . . This time, history is written by the losers.”—The Main Edge
 
“If sports do in fact show us the best of the human spirit, that revelation lies not in championships and victory but in the cold morning of defeat. This book chronicles how human beings respond to failure, how they rise and try again, because that’s what living is. It is essential reading — and the self-examination it prompts is essential, too.”—Wright Thompson, author of The Cost of These Dreams
 
“Without the threat of loss, there is no meaning in sport. This new and thrillingly varied collection is as essential as the turf beneath your cleats.”—Ben McGrath, staff writer for The New Yorker

“Pilon and Thomas explore the significance losing and defeat has on the lives of athletes and fans in this thoughtful anthology. . . . A stirring tribute to losing, one of life’s greatest teachers.” —Publishers Weekly

“A few of the bylines [in Losers] are well known, especially Gay Talese and Arthur Conan Doyle. Refreshingly, though, most of the contributors are less well known to general readers, and their subjects range from obscure to famous. . . . As a collection, the book holds together well even for non–sports fans. . . . In the introduction, the editors write, ‘this book is for the losers—which is to say, for all of us.’ They deliver.” —KirkusMary Pilon is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Monopolists and The Kevin Show. She regularly contributes to The New Yorker, Esquire, Fast Company, MSNBC, Vice, and Politico, Pilon has also worked as a staff reporter at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Louisa Thomas is the author of Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams and Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family — A Test of Will and Faith in World War I, and the coauthor of Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football. A staff writer at The New Yorker and a former writer and editor for Grantland, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Vogue, and other places.

Both Mary and Louisa have been laid off from sports reporting gigs and lost a variety of sporting events throughout their careers.

The Sporting House

Charles Bock

Swee’Pea was his nickname, given to him on the playground courts of New York because of his uniquely oval-shaped head, its eerie resemblance to the baby from Popeye cartoons. But in Vegas I never heard him called anything but Lloyd. We said it with force, with a bit of awe. To us, he was Lloyd.

I first saw him in the summer of 1986. This was before he got busted at a Vegas crack house, before he got kicked off a college basketball team that he hadn’t yet joined, before everything started going to shit and he still was one of the most exciting high school players to come along in years. Summer tournaments were just starting to be a cottage industry, and the Las Vegas Invitational brought in summer-league all-star teams from all over the country, during the stretch of the recruiting season when college coaches were allowed to watch high schoolers play. Games ran from 10:00 a.m. until nearly midnight.

For the most part, the days were desultory, filled with undistinguished action: a backdrop of pounding dribbles, referee whistles, squeaking sneakers, a scoreboard buzzer going a bit too long. The bleachers would be half-filled, some players from the previous game guzzling Gatorade and changing into clean, oversized tees, a cluster of parents at once watching the action and checking to see if any college scouts were watching (and often, during lulls, comparing the merits of various hotel buffets).

But when the New York Gauchos-and especially Lloyd Daniels-played, the bleachers were packed. In fact, bystanders stood in groups in the corners of the court, leaned against the brick walls. At first glance, the Gauchos seemed a ragtag bunch, wearing tight green uniforms the color of well-used pool tables. However, for me, who rapped along to “8 Million Stories” by Kurtis Blow and Run DMC and had all but memorized Rick Telander’s chronicle of New York City street ball, Heaven Is a Playground, the team’s grimy, lackluster attitude only added to my anticipation. Just what had come to us from the mean streets of New York?

I was among the fans checking the names on my folded Xerox of a roster, trying to figure out which dude had been labeled “Magic Johnson with a jump shot,” the street-raised hooping genius whose troubles-four different high schools in three states without graduating-had been chronicled in the New York tabloids, the one who’d once defiantly told a reporter, “I ain’t allergic to school. I just don’t want to go.” Word had spread that UNLV was eager to sign Lloyd-and during one of his last high school games, he’d been photographed wearing Nikes in Rebels red and gray. Though the NCAA forbade brands from sending players sneakers, it was safe to assume UNLV had gotten them into his hands. Jerry Tarkanian-the Rebels’ head coach and ruler of the city-had even come down from his throne and was in the gym to watch the game, which didn’t happen just because he was interested in watching a high school summer league.

Among the tallest players on the floor, at about six feet eight, Lloyd was lanky. He wore a tee underneath his jersey; short shorts accentuated his angular legs. These days, LeBron James and Kevin Durant have conditioned us to accept huge players in the backcourt, handling the ball, taking charge of the team. At the time, though, basketball pretty much stuck to traditional positions. Lloyd, like Magic Johnson had before him, was the exception pointing into the future. Bringing the ball up court, he’d assume a distinct posture: his forehead tilting downward, chin tucked, eyes concentrating on whatever was happening directly in front of him, his elbow extended like a chicken wing, protecting the ball. His body would be slightly hunched; his head would bob as he moved, nodding along to some internal song. Then he would break the rhythm: a laser pass through an opening nobody else could see; a quick stutter that froze his defender just long enough. He’d cut to the post, take the pass, and in one motion spin and bank in a short shot. He’d push ahead on a break and flip a pass backward without looking, setting up a teammate for a dunk. You could hear the beat of a collective gasp before the crowd erupted into applause.

In the quarter finals, the Gauchos played against a loaded California team whose roster included Chris Mills (who’d go on to spend a decade in the NBA) and Sean Higgins (who’d star on Michigan’s only National Championship team). Lloyd was an example of the difference between a prodigy and a genius. There wasn’t even a question about who the best player on the floor was. The Gauchos won the game and went on to win the tournament title.

One of my older brothers, Yale, spent that game sitting and talking with the coaching staff from the University of California, Irvine, where he was going into his sophomore year, making his way into coaching by working as the team’s student manager. I sat in the row behind him.

I was seventeen, getting ready for my last year of high school. Maybe five foot nine, a buck twenty, one of the five scrawniest kids at Clark High. But I was certain that when puberty kicked in, I’d be playing college ball. Nobody could tell me differently. In lieu of any kind of dating or social life, my days and nights were spent working on my game, preparing myself for destiny: dribbling figure eights and helicopters inside my garage, running sand hills out in the desert, doing calf raises while rewatching college basketball games I’d taped during the season. How crazed was I? Crazed enough that I’d memorized the order of sportscasts on the three local news channels so I could switch around and watch each of their UNLV game highlights, just in case one channel showed a dunk the others had missed.

My parents, because they possessed working eyes, had serious reservations about this chosen path of mine. However, I was in all other affairs unmotivated, sullen, and snotty, and the last thing they wanted was yet another fight with their poor lost child. Thus, when I was old enough to drive, my folks bought me a membership at the Sporting House in exchange for my coming downtown each evening to help them close up the family pawnshop. I soon became a fixture at the Sporting House, my dented, ’70s-model Mercury Cougar-nicknamed “the Pissmobile” for its color and demeanor-pulling into the lot amid so many Beemers, Mercedes SELs, and shiny fiberglass Vettes.

The Sporting House was exactly the kind of athletic club you’d expect in our fair, twenty-four-hour city. It was tucked away on an industrial boulevard called Industrial Road, about a three-point shot away from the Las Vegas Strip, and was open around the clock. If that wasn’t Vegas-y enough, the place was owned by a snarling middle-aged restaurateur with a pompadour, a permanent tan, and rumors of Mob connections. To get to the Nautilus machines, free weights, stationary bikes, locker rooms, and the private area out back with nude tanning, you first had to pass the sunken, hardwood basketball court, the club’s de facto centerpiece-once in a while, you might spot Jerry Lewis or Bill Cosby at the restaurant after a workout, looking down through the huge glass window onto the action. Workday lunchtimes were filled with doctors and lawyer types, who yelled through an hour of full-court. Action picked back up after five, when people started getting off work, and if your squad lost, you’d wait an hour for another run. When the courts weren’t crowded, though, I was likely taking jumpers from around the horn, pull-ups from the lane, staring into the wall of mirrors while trying extravagant dribbling combos that almost looked like dance routines. I had a blind faith that this was enough to ensure my future, that I could make it on effort alone.

I’d read that Michael Jordan had asked the University of North Carolina’s trainer for baggy shorts because he liked the way they looked, and so I went to Miller’s Outpost and bought a few pairs of long surfer shorts to play in. It didn’t take long before the House regulars noticed my odd attire and started calling me Maui. That was my nickname-both because of the weird surfer shorts, for sure, and probably also because of the way I played: crazy dribbles, ridiculous no-look passes that rarely connected with their intended target, pulling up for jimmies from behind the pro three-point line like I was high. Or, maybe, because my dreams of becoming legit were obviously implausible. Maui.

As I write, greater Las Vegas has more than two million residents. Ninety-five percent of them will bend over backward to tell you how much the city has changed since the old days (which most of them werenÕt even here for), how normal its suburbs and exurbs are now. In the Ô80s, though, even before the hotels had started re-creating landmarks from around the world, the inhabitants knew how the rest of the country thought of Sin City: Sinatra eating poached eggs off the chest of some hooker. People were self-conscious about this, of course. In our fabricated wonderland, we longed for something of our own. But, unlike todayÕs inhabitants, I think we also embraced that outlaw image. Hey, my cousin poached those eggs.

Jerry Tarkanian and the UNLV basketball program gave us something successful that was ours and something that-like our city, like our way of life-operated on the fringes of rule and law. Or, rather, it had its own rules and laws. Tark came to Vegas in 1973 after a stint at Long Beach State, where he’d become infamous for his willingness to take a chance on players whom-because of grades, personality, or legal standing-other coaches wouldn’t touch. Vegas was the city of third-chancers and renegades and black sheep, so it made sense that Tark, with his hangdog personality and his bandit ways, would coach our team. His nickname was Tark the Shark because of the way he famously chewed on a soaked towel on the bench, and, I think, because he was shrewd and daring, a cardsharp, ready to take you for everything you had. His teams played fast and aggressive, the way a team from Vegas should, and within a few years of his arrival the Rebels made it to the Final Four. The newly built Thomas & Mack Center was quickly christened the Shark Tank. When the lights went out for pregame introductions, the student band would start playing the theme to Jaws, and a projected shark would circle the rim of the arena. It was all beautiful. Tark had constructed a powerhouse who was guaranteed to make it to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament and be in the running for the list of the top high school players in the West. Except the NCAA was after him, big-time. Tarkanian had been at war with the powers that be since his time at Long Beach, when he’d quipped about their hypocritical practices, using different versions of the line “The NCAA is so mad at UCLA for their rule violations, they’ll probably suspend Pepperdine for another two years.” The NCAA, in return, suspended Tarkanian in 1977-the year of UNLV’s first Final Four appearance-charging him with thirty-eight recruiting violations, suspending UNLV’s basketball program from postseason activities for three years, and ordering the university to fire Tark. He countered with an injunction blocking the ruling. By the time Lloyd came to town, Tarkanian’s lawsuit was on its way to the Supreme Court. Until that got decided, Tark was allowed to coach.

Common sense suggests that the Sporting House-like a number of Vegas businesses-had an unwritten agreement with the basketball program: We will do whatever favors we can to take care of our guys and keep UNLV winning. I say this because players, former players, alumni, recruits, and even the coach’s grown kids wandered in and out of there all the time. When a Rebel joined your pickup game, it was something of a badge of honor. You ran harder, threw crisper passes, tried to impress with your skills. And on weekend afternoons, the bulk of UNLV’s team held court, playing in high-flying shootouts that set the breakaway rims popping. We gawkers-and sometimes UNLV’s coaching staff-would sit on benches, fill the restaurant, which had a view of the court, and line the walkway.

Looking back, I can’t help but realize that most of the UNLV players were young black men, and most of the gawkers-

most of the club members-were older and white. There were exceptions, but as a rule, the place, like the city’s power structure, was dominated by whites.

Vegas has a strong history of segregation. Paul Revere Williams, the architect who originally laid out the development that grew into the nearby suburb of Henderson-a thousand bungalows intended for workers on Hoover Dam-hadn’t been allowed to live in the housing development, the development he designed, because he was black. Sammy Davis Jr., visiting Vegas as a teenage performer, had been forced to sit in the balcony of the El Portal, a segregated movie theater that also happened to be the only movie theater downtown. Nat King Cole had been physically prevented from walking through the front door of the Tropicana’s casino. Indeed, until the ’60s, blacks weren’t allowed to gamble at any casino or stay in any hotel on the Strip, and instead were directed to the Moulin Rouge, a hotel and casino on what was known as the Westside, a predominantly black neighborhood. Supposedly, Sinatra had a hand in these discriminatory policies being rescinded, but the larger reason things changed involved revenue, not any kind of moral clarity by casino-owning mobsters. In the ’70s, North Las Vegas was something like Harlem in the ’30s, in the sense that most of the black population lived in a specific neighborhood where street names were just letters and numbers. The black hotel and casino workers would venture downtown and onto the Strip to their jobs. Well into the ’80s, it was rare to see a black person on the front page of the liberal Sun or the conservative Review-Journal-and if a black person made it there, it was usually for playing ball or committing a crime.

There’s no doubt that Vegas had more than its share of racial prejudices. I grew up hearing my parents called every anti-Semitic name in English. I also heard racist sentiments emanate from the other side of the pawnshop counter. My dad referred to untold belligerent cowboys as “shit kickers,” and my mom let off steam after heated arguments by using the Yiddish epithet for black people, Schvartz.

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