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.

            The International Track Association was a dream of Mike O’Hara to capitalize on the great track and field stars of the 1960s and 1970s and bring sensational running, jumping and throwing performances to the world on a regular basis. 

            O’Hara figured he would win over American audiences with athletes such as Jim Ryun, Kip Keino, Bob Seagren, Steve Smith, Bob Beamon, Steve Prefontaine, and Frank Shorter and last, but not least, yours truly in the shot-put.  Some of the athletes were medalists from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and the 1972 games in Munich. That list would include thrower Randy Matson, my arch-rival, who won gold in Mexico City in 1968 and silver at Tokyo in 1964. 

            So there we all were in May, 1975 clinging to our dreams in dusty El Paso, Texas, in a high school stadium that was not very conducive to dreams of athletic and monetary glory. But track and field competitors are used to that,  performing in out-of-the-way places and back-waters before a crowd of five. O’Hara was out to change that and so were we.  

            There were about 60 athletes in the ITA and they owned about 60 Olympic medals between them.  Some, like Matson, had won several medals. Those who hadn’t, like me, were just a chin hair away.  Matson was a throwing demi-god who helped me rear my ugly face into the ITA program book. When I threw against him, I had the great fear of losing, so always did my utmost.  

            O’Hara never signed Shorter and Prefontaine, which is too bad. If Prefontaine had been with us, he might not have gone to that party and gotten killed by a hit-and-run driver on the way home, a case that has never been solved, incidentally.  Shorter, a great runner, would have added more star status to the events.  But in the 1970s they had their own businesses going and the ITA was not on their agenda.

            The ITA was not only O’Hara’s dream. The ITA became my dream, too, and the dream of a lot of other athletes who had labored in obscurity and poverty because they loved their sport and the competition and energy it brought to their lives. 

            It was a costly love because you have to pay the price to get to the top — practice, dedication, sweat, tears. Loneliness and isolation. When I started throwing in high school, I would walk over to the athletic field after school to practice.  I would throw, jog over, pick it up the shot and throw it back, jog over, pick it up, throw it back. Back and forth for hours; just me, no coaches, no friends, no family.

            The sun would go down and I would be throwing in the twilight hours, trying to loft the shot into orbit in my own galaxy, creating those small shock waves that displace something at the other end of the universe. When it got too dark to see I would walk home. It became my temple out there under the sky, my religion. I became a true believer in the Church of All Throws and it paid off in El Paso in 1975.  

            O’Hara had been a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic men’s volleyball team and had a master’s degree in business. He was the guy who developed big sporting events such as the Virginia Slims tennis tournament and would sell them. He had connections and could get things done. He was brilliant and could really give you a snow job. He was really good at that. I know from personal experience. 

            O’Hara started the ITA in 1973 and recruited me. He called me when he was passing through town. I was working as a teacher at the St. Charles Training School for Boys in St. Charles, affectionately known as “Charlie Town.” It was a reform school for delinquents. It was perfect for me. I could relate to the kids. 

            I was competing in the amateur indoor circuit at that time, so I was still in good shape and was competing against throwers like Komar, the Polish powerhouse who won gold at Munich.

            Becoming a professional athlete sounded pretty good at the time. But even though I was one of the founding members of the ITA and became a seasoned pro, by 1975 I was barely eking out a living. We got paid a per diem of about $25 or $35 when we competed and then got bonus money for performing well. Setting a record netted you $500. Taking first in the meet earned you $500, too. Second place earned you $250, third was $100 and fourth was $50. 

            On a weekend, if you only took fourth place, you could earn a $150 or so, which, for runners, jumpers and throwers who dwelled in obscurity, was decent money and would fuel their continued participation and gave them hope. I was doing radio promotions for the ITA and would get $50 per day for those. I got the radio gigs because I could had a good rap and could pile on the baloney. Fifty bucks for radio blather was good money then.

            Being an ITA pro certainly was better than being an Olympic amateur. At that time, U.S. Olympic athletes only got $2 per diem.  We got the money once a month, so it accumulated and you had a little slush fund so you could go out on a date. I remember when they raised it to $3 per day in the 1980s. Wow!  I don’t know what it is today. Maybe it’s $4 per day even.  

            The U.S. Olympic Committee should have been embarrassed, but it was run mostly by arrogant people of means, who thought that $2 a day was plenty for the athletic riff-raff from the world’s richest nation.  I know that sounds unfair, but I think it’s accurate. We were volunteers for glory. That is still the case for most Olympians.         

            The shot-put was never a glamour sport, never had the electricity that, say, the 100 meter dash or the pole vault or the 440 relays had.  The perception of throwers at the time made them out to be squat, Neanderthal-like people who grunted a lot and could carry a cow on their backs if they had to. One of those rat pack sports writers for the Los Angeles Times coined us “dancing elephants.”  He was one of those weasley guys who liked to put athletes down, unless he’s sucking up to them. 

            The image changed when I came along. Sports reporters made a big deal about my Speedo swim briefs that I wore for meets and about the fact that I smoked, talked like a maniac, and was irreverently funny.  Some of them thought I added some color and life to an athletic endeavor that was pretty drab and wrote some pretty good articles about me.  But, there was the Sports Illustrated writer who called me a “cigarette-puffing whackadoo” in a story about the 1972 Olympic trials. There’s a real stroke of genius writing for you. I believe the correct spelling is “wackadoo.”

            After El Paso in 1975, nobody ever called me a wackadoo again. At least not in print.