The Oldfield Spin

            “The Exorcist” became a companion on a post-Christmas drive to El Paso for a holiday season track and field meet in 1974,  a companion that was at once comforting and a little creepy. It was a scary trip, but not because of the book. A winter ice storm — a white devil of a storm — forced us to crawl nearly all of the way from Illinois to Lubbock, Texas.   

            I had left behind my girlfriend, my job and life in the stunted river town of Elgin, Illinois, to follow my first love, the shot-put. It was still the holiday season, a time of dreams and renewal of dreams and that’s what I was chasing — dreams of athletic glory, fame and fortune.  

            Holiday meets were always off-Broadway type events to prepare for the indoor season. I had competed in the University of Chicago Track Club’s holiday meet, an event that attracted athletes from all over the U.S. — high school kids, college students and post-college athletes. It was an event that had gained national status under Ted Hayden, the club’s legendary track coach. 

            But the University of Texas-El Paso was a very happening place in track and field at the time, too. The school held an open meet in January and anybody with a desire to compete and some credentials could join in the fun. UTEL’s team name was the Sun Devils, by the way, another odd element in what remains my favorite holiday story.

            I had been a member of the U. of C. track club since 1964 and was one of its stalwarts, leading me to the Olympics and a job as a professional thrower for the International Track Association, which drafted me in 1973.

            I was in my prime, ranked 7^th in the world, had been to the Munich Olympics and was trying to live life as large as possible. My plan was to head south to El Paso for warmer weather, compete in the meet, and then stay there and train for the pro circuit. I was big and needed a big state, so I was going to become a Texan.

            In a sense, El Paso became our Stonehenge. All the sporting warriors, chiefs and lords would meet and talk things over. We’d train, critique, then have beers,  talk philosophy.  I drove there with Rick Bilder, a thrower from Illinois who was a UTEP coach working on his master‘s degree.

            So El Paso seemed like a good fit. The university’s track program had a lot of international people, very unusual for a Texas school at that time. There was a hammer thrower from Australia, runners from Africa. Besides, I had to get the hell out of Elgin, a river town that had seen better days.  I had to go to Stonehenge, where the modern descendants of ancient stone throwers were going to assemble. 

            I jumped in Bilder’s Ford sedan that January and we set out, with a couple of his buddies, and drove right into the teeth of that ice storm. Sometimes we were doing 10 miles an hour, driving on the shoulder where there was better traction. It was a white-knuckle, death-grip ride for nearly 40 hours.

            I brought a copy of the novel “The Exorcist” for reading material. The film had just come out and was playing to stunned audiences. People were fainting, screaming, fighting to get tickets, then praying and going to get exorcisms. It was like the opening ceremony at the Olympics.

            There we were, stuck in Bilder’s sedan, swerving, skidding, and crawling along on a skating rink. Cars and trucks were in the ditches, snow plows couldn’t keep the highways clear, people were stranded. We couldn’t get any radio stations, so I started reading the book aloud. I had taken drama courses in high school and college, so I had a flair for the dramatic.     We had ice, sleet and snow all the way to Lubbock. It was as if the continental U.S. was in the grip of a white devil. The book was creepy, but the weather conditions were so unnerving that reading it actually relieved the tension of the ride.    

            We finally got to El Paso and as tired as we were, we went to a McDonald’s and then right to a theater across the street and watched the film. Sitting in that warm theater, the movie wasn’t nearly as frightening as the drive down with Father Marin and the Beelzebub sitting on my shoulder.

            We settled in and started training every afternoon until dark. Then we would go to the local cafeteria and have competitive eating.  Forced feedings, lifting weights, and working out at Sun Devil Stadium. That was our routine.  

            Then, a few days before the meet, I had my right heel down in a throw and my foot caught. I tore the lateral meniscus in my right leg, my power leg. It popped a little at the time, but I didn’t know I had hurt myself. But I found out very quickly that I had, and that was a turning point in my career. The ITA took care of me and I had surgery on it in California that June.  

            After that, I made career changes. I made vows. I quit smoking. I put the grail of the shot-put above all else. But the real turning point was that the injury made me decide to become a rotational thrower, using my left leg as the dominant one. After the surgery, I would stand on my left leg and do one-legged throws against a fence for practice.     

            So, I’ll always remember the El Paso holiday trip from hell and “The Exorcist,” the film in which the possessed girl’s head rotated 360 degrees. Coincidence? I think not. Exorcism wasn’t for me, though. I wanted my devils. They kept me together.  I also found out that El Paso had a really nice airport. I never drove there again.

            Fred DeBernardi lived in El Paso in 1975 and I had stayed at his place the night before the International Track Association meet of May 10, 1975, the meet that would put me in the history books.

            He was a thrower, too, about my size, 6-5, blonde hair, blue eyes, another surfer-type. He resembled a big, well-muscled sprinter and had been the NCAA champion in shotput and discus, one of only five people to ever do that. He played football at the University of Texas-El Paso and was drafted as a pro in 1972. He ended up with the Kansas City Chiefs for a year.  After that, he joined the ITA.

            We became throwing and training partners. He was fast and we would run against each other. We ran sprints because it helped your footwork and leg strength for throwing. We were friends and competitors and became good sprinters. He was good and once forced me to run a 4.3 second 40-yard dash to beat him. That’s quick for big humans.  I called him De-Bo, as in turbo.

            We were fast, unless we were smoking pot. Well, it was the 70s and we would sometimes light up doobies before training sessions. Everybody was lighting up back then. Even the future President Clinton, who didn’t inhale. I’m sure President Bush the Second lit up, too, and inhaled, though he wouldn’t admit to it.          

            DeBernardi and I would toke up and it would slow things down to about 33 -1/3 rpm.  The really good stuff would slow you down to about 16-1/6, super slow mo. Your voice would change. You’d sound like you were speaking Gaelic with a lisp. You would get tunnel vision. You’d look at the sky a lot and see how blue it was. Birds looked like they were flying three miles an hour. 

            Your anxieties, fears and inhibitions would fall away, or at least seem very, very small. You wouldn’t worry about how far you could throw or about fouling. It was a helpful thing to do, actually, because you would be able to detect tiny flaws in your technique. You would become detached from the outcome of the throw and then you wouldn’t hold back and the shot just seemed to float up and out, like Sputnik. 

            Then once you worked through the high, the world came into focus and back to normal speed with an extra sharp, cool alertness and you remembered the little flaws you had to work on. We never smoked pot before meets, however. Absolutely verboten. You didn’t want to slow down on meet day.            

            It was an afternoon meet and I was scheduled to throw about 2 p.m., so I had a lot of time to think about it and work up my mojo. I went back to Fred’s apartment, made the bed, packed, and tried to control the adrenalin pulsing through me. We went out to a buffet place to eat real food,  along with Paul Gibson, the hurdler. Gibson was one of those guys who ironed his jeans to sharp creases, a very neat kind of guy. I thought jeans were the antithesis of ironing. So did most people. Gibson apparently didn’t get the memo.

            We filled up at the buffet and headed to the stadium. My thoughts were rushing. I remembered reading about other great athletes who always claimed to know that they were going to set a record or win the meet. That’s how I felt. I was going to go over the top in a contest with the mighty.

            Then I saw the stadium and said, “This is it?” It looked like an end-of-the-road place, sort of desolate and scruffy. There was no grass, just dirt and weeds, which were well-manicured, however.  It didn’t seem quite like the appropriate stage for a professional sporting event that would be broadcast to a national audience. On the other hand,  the Bowie High School Stadium was deluxe compared to some of the other places we had ITA meets.

            We parked, walked into the stadium and onto the field. There was no locker room to change, which was typical. We basically lived in our sweats.  Things were ready to go and we were among the first up.   There were nearly 10,000 people there, so it was noisy and there was a sense of expectation in the air.

            I looked over at the broadcasters’ table. They had on their trademark ABC mustard-colored sport coats. That’s being kind. Those coats were more the color of baby poo. I had one of those sport coats from my time as an ABC commentator at the  1976 Olympics and Olympic Trials and finally gave it to the Hall of Fame at Middle Tennessee State University. That was after I wore it for Halloween. Didn’t need a mask with it. 

            There was one ABC crew with a shoulder-carried camera. Just one. There were no flags, no marching bands, no banners, no fanfare whatsoever. The next year they had cheerleaders recruited from a local strip club to spice things up, but this meet was like a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich without the bacon, lettuce and tomato. No mayo, either.

             I didn’t need any fanfare. I was ready to set the world record that day and was hell-bent for throwing. I was ready for the “Performance of the Decade” as it was later dubbed by a sportswriters group.