Leslie
11-29-2007, 08:23 PM
Pearl's Unfaded Luster
For One Night in Ohio, Earl Monroe Held Court Over Wide-Eyed Kids
By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2007; C01
It was chilly outside and the trees were barren. But when the news came, it raced around the neighborhood like blown leaves. Earl "The Pearl" Monroe and his Baltimore Bullets were coming to Columbus, Ohio (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Columbus+%28Ohio%29?tid=informline), to the Fairgrounds Coliseum. We didn't have an NBA (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/National+Basketball+Association?tid=informline) team in Columbus, but the Cincinnati Royals (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Sacramento+Kings?tid=informline) (now the Sacramento Kings) would schedule exhibition games at the fairgrounds.
From playground to front porch stoop, we 12- and 13-year-olds were delirious, slapping fives and giddily counting paper-route savings to scrounge up the price of admission. We were off to see the Pearl.
I listened to Bullets games on a transistor radio, a faraway announcer's voice sailing into my bedroom. I wondered how the Pearl got to be so good; if he used white shoe polish on the bottom edges of his white sneakers as I often did. (I knew he wore white hightops from the basketball magazines I hoarded.) He was something new, vivid and soulful.
Now and then -- an agonizingly rare occasion in those pre-cable days of the late '60s -- Monroe's Bullets would appear on TV. A guard, he played with a sly quickness. He was Houdini on the court, hiding the ball behind his back, revealing it at the last moment. But he also had the coolness of a white-gloved butler circling the dinner table.
On Saturday, the Washington Wizards (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Washington+Wizards?tid=informline) -- formerly the Baltimore Bullets -- will retire the Pearl's No. 10 jersey. He played fewer seasons with the Bullets than he did with the New York Knicks (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/New+York+Knicks?tid=informline), who retired his jersey there years ago. But it was the Bullets who introduced him to the world, both as an athlete and as a cultural icon.
Monroe eschewed the traditional mechanics of the game to serve up something new. His signature spin move seemed as potent as Yardbird's horn, as lovely as a line of Langston's verse. He ran with his arms splayed; his knees were known to be fragile. A darkly hued figure in Bullet orange, he erupted in arias both rare and beautiful. Filmmakers -- Woody Allen (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Woody+Allen?tid=informline), Spike Lee (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Spike+Lee?tid=informline) -- would come to rhapsodize about him. In that klieg-lighted world of 1960s and early 1970s celebrity, the Pearl seemed something culled from music, fashion and black pride.
He was part of a defining era that saw athletes -- Walt "Clyde" Frazier of the New York Knicks, Joe "Willie" Namath of the New York Jets (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/New+York+Jets?tid=informline), John "Frenchy" Fuqua of the Pittsburgh Steelers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pittsburgh+Steelers?tid=informline) among them -- flow from the sports pages into our wider cultural consciousness. Gay Talese and James Baldwin found freedom in their expressions. GQ magazine (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/GQ+Magazine?tid=informline) understood their vibe. There was the Pearl in fedora and long, belted coat. There he was in Essence magazine (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Essence+Communications+Inc.?tid=informline) dressed in tennis whites and holding a racket. The sports figure had arrived as hipster, stopped by fashion photographers.
The Pearl didn't follow the trend in the game toward huge leaps and slam dunks. Let Julius "Dr. J" Erving or Connie "The Hawk" Hawkins handle such missions. He operated beneath the basket and preferred the finger roll, the ball floating up like a feather. Sometimes coming down the court -- fast as he could, which wasn't very fast -- he slowed like someone waiting to cross the street. Then -- poof -- he vanished down the lane.
Only a precious few had seen him play at Winston-Salem College, now known as Winston-Salem State University, part of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the nation's oldest black athletic conference.
Those in the know pronounce it C Eye Double-A. And in the mid-'60s, in the CIAA, the Pearl was all the rage. News spread about him on the grapevine the way Southern women spread news about some gospel quartet seen in Alabama (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Alabama?tid=informline) or North Carolina (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/North+Carolina?tid=informline) that had dropped them to their knees. Ebony magazine would have spreads about the yearly CIAA basketball tournament. Three- and four-page spreads, as much about the fashion extravagance of the weekend as about the basketball.
Monroe had scored plenty as a high school player at John Bartram High in Philadelphia (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Philadelphia?tid=informline). But the major college recruiters didn't chase after him. Maybe it was the times. Maybe it was the myopia of big-time college coaches, who were reluctant to field majority-black teams. Monroe's coach at Winston-Salem (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Winston-Salem?tid=informline) was Clarence "Big House" Gaines, who let Monroe become the Pearl. Monroe played in the South as the civil rights movement hummed beyond the campus dorms. Black college ball wasn't always on the nation's radar then, but a lot of first-generation college students would carry his exploits in their memory for years to come. The Pearl's legend grew. Some took to calling him "Jesus."
My boyhood hoops mate, Steve Flannigan, got himself down to North Carolina, to the C Eye Double-A, and into a basketball uniform for St. Augustine's College. On visits back home to Columbus, he'd regale us with stories about the Pearl that were still floating across the gyms and playgrounds long after Monroe had departed, such as how in one game the Pearl launched a jumper deep in the corner as time expired only to fade into the locker room before the ball sailed through the net.
In Spike Lee's film "He Got Game," there's a haunting scene on a boardwalk. Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Denzel+Washington?tid=informline)) is a convict suddenly freed on a furlough to persuade his son to play basketball for a certain college. His son (NBA star Ray Allen (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Ray+Allen?tid=informline)) is named Jesus Shuttlesworth. On the boardwalk stroll, Jake explains to Jesus that he named him after Earl Monroe (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Earl+Monroe?tid=informline). "They called him Jesus," Jake said, "because he was the truth."
As soon as Jake mentions Monroe's name, the movie goes to a flashback of Monroe as a Bullet, warming up, then spinning in his orange jersey in some small hazy gym and vanishing downcourt. Then a quick flash back to the boardwalk, son and father still strolling: "I'm talking about him when he was with the Bullets," the father says, Afro bobbing against the sunshine. "But the Knicks, they put shackles on him. They locked him up in a straitjacket or something." And then the movie goes back again to Monroe, pirouetting in the air, spinning as if on ice skates, the Aaron Copland (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Aaron+Copland?tid=informline) soundtrack hovering, too. It is as lovely a montage of an athlete as anyone might ever see.
Jack Marin, a teammate from the Bullets years, recalls that often there were no more than 5,000 or 6,000 people at their games. He laments that the crowds were not larger, if only to see Monroe's unique gifts. "Earl was very subtle but also deft," he says. "He did small sleights of hand. It took a trained eye to watch him and what he was able to do. He'd perform one of his magic tricks and move on to the next."
His Bullet career (1967-1971) was short, and it seemed alarming indeed when he was traded to the Knicks. It hurt to watch him pull back his game a little -- that straitjacket -- but there were still enough moments of pure magical joy, the blind pass to Bill Bradley (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Bill+Bradley?tid=informline), the between-the-legs pass on a fast break to Mike Riordan, that left the kids in Columbus whooping.
The times seemed suited for Frazier and Monroe. Warren Beatty's movie "Bonnie and Clyde" ushered in a new fashion wave of fedoras and double-breasted suits. Disco was a sensation, but so were tie clips and long tweed coats and the Pointer Sisters singing "Yes We Can Can" and the Pearl spinning. Even Andy Warhol (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Andy+Warhol?tid=informline) was known to get himself over to Madison Square Garden (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Madison+Square+Garden?tid=informline) to see the Pearl and Clyde.
One of the first hardback books I ever bought was 1974's "Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball & Cool," by Walt Frazier and Ira Berkow. The photographs were dazzling. I'd lend the book to friends, but they couldn't keep it overnight. Still, one got the feeling that the Pearl didn't need to write a book to advertise his coolness.
But back to that 1960s night in Columbus:
The popular state fair took place in the summer, but in the fall the rides were gone, the skies darkened early and hoops were on everyone's mind. With four of my friends -- Flannigan, Olen Miller, Aaron Lockett and Ron Prater -- I happily angled up to the front door of the coliseum that evening. "It was a special night," remembers Miller, now a salesman in Tampa (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Tampa?tid=informline). "We barely got in because we had just enough money. Some people in the crowd wanted to see Oscar Robertson [of the Royals]. But we wanted to see the Pearl."
Once inside we began scoping out unclaimed seats as close to the players' bench as possible. Now and then during warm-ups, Monroe would glance away from the court as we yelled his name, but he refocused his attention quickly to the business at hand. As the game started, we elbowed one another every time he touched the ball. "We were rising and falling on his passes," says Miller. "This guy wasn't capable of making a simple pass."
Each of us knew that if we tried the same thing in basketball practice at school that we'd have to run those dreaded suicide drills up and down the court. Basketball coaches in the '60s could be autocratic. They taught fundamentals and expected things to be done by the book. This way, not that way. "The Pearl did everything wrong, according to the rules," says Miller.
Immediately after the game we rushed down a hallway to the Bullets locker room. We stood back from the door, waiting to see the Pearl. But when he emerged we couldn't get close enough. "Pearl. Pearl. Hey, Pearl." His head bobbed as he was whisked away. I remember we mimicked his moves walking home through the chill of the desolate fairgrounds. We debated the overcoat the Pearl had on, wondering if it was lamb or cashmere. We decided lamb, maybe because lamb sounded more exotic to us. I doubt we actually knew one from the other.
How we hold on to our heroes.
Just three months ago, I was sitting at Reagan National (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Ronald+Reagan+Washington+National+Airport?tid=info rmline), waiting to board a flight. A gaggle of passengers got off another plane and began walking in my direction. I knew it was him even before he got within 10 feet of me.
"Pearl!" I blurted, louder than I meant to.
He turned toward my voice and we locked eyes in that nanosecond that a celebrity gives you. "Hey now," he said, his head nodding. The whole exchange lasted only seconds. I smiled to myself. And the Pearl kept moving.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802608.html
Nice seeing my Dad's Alma Mater WSSU mentioned in here as well as Coach 'Big House" Gaines - who was family by marriage.
For One Night in Ohio, Earl Monroe Held Court Over Wide-Eyed Kids
By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2007; C01
It was chilly outside and the trees were barren. But when the news came, it raced around the neighborhood like blown leaves. Earl "The Pearl" Monroe and his Baltimore Bullets were coming to Columbus, Ohio (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Columbus+%28Ohio%29?tid=informline), to the Fairgrounds Coliseum. We didn't have an NBA (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/National+Basketball+Association?tid=informline) team in Columbus, but the Cincinnati Royals (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Sacramento+Kings?tid=informline) (now the Sacramento Kings) would schedule exhibition games at the fairgrounds.
From playground to front porch stoop, we 12- and 13-year-olds were delirious, slapping fives and giddily counting paper-route savings to scrounge up the price of admission. We were off to see the Pearl.
I listened to Bullets games on a transistor radio, a faraway announcer's voice sailing into my bedroom. I wondered how the Pearl got to be so good; if he used white shoe polish on the bottom edges of his white sneakers as I often did. (I knew he wore white hightops from the basketball magazines I hoarded.) He was something new, vivid and soulful.
Now and then -- an agonizingly rare occasion in those pre-cable days of the late '60s -- Monroe's Bullets would appear on TV. A guard, he played with a sly quickness. He was Houdini on the court, hiding the ball behind his back, revealing it at the last moment. But he also had the coolness of a white-gloved butler circling the dinner table.
On Saturday, the Washington Wizards (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Washington+Wizards?tid=informline) -- formerly the Baltimore Bullets -- will retire the Pearl's No. 10 jersey. He played fewer seasons with the Bullets than he did with the New York Knicks (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/New+York+Knicks?tid=informline), who retired his jersey there years ago. But it was the Bullets who introduced him to the world, both as an athlete and as a cultural icon.
Monroe eschewed the traditional mechanics of the game to serve up something new. His signature spin move seemed as potent as Yardbird's horn, as lovely as a line of Langston's verse. He ran with his arms splayed; his knees were known to be fragile. A darkly hued figure in Bullet orange, he erupted in arias both rare and beautiful. Filmmakers -- Woody Allen (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Woody+Allen?tid=informline), Spike Lee (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Spike+Lee?tid=informline) -- would come to rhapsodize about him. In that klieg-lighted world of 1960s and early 1970s celebrity, the Pearl seemed something culled from music, fashion and black pride.
He was part of a defining era that saw athletes -- Walt "Clyde" Frazier of the New York Knicks, Joe "Willie" Namath of the New York Jets (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/New+York+Jets?tid=informline), John "Frenchy" Fuqua of the Pittsburgh Steelers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pittsburgh+Steelers?tid=informline) among them -- flow from the sports pages into our wider cultural consciousness. Gay Talese and James Baldwin found freedom in their expressions. GQ magazine (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/GQ+Magazine?tid=informline) understood their vibe. There was the Pearl in fedora and long, belted coat. There he was in Essence magazine (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Essence+Communications+Inc.?tid=informline) dressed in tennis whites and holding a racket. The sports figure had arrived as hipster, stopped by fashion photographers.
The Pearl didn't follow the trend in the game toward huge leaps and slam dunks. Let Julius "Dr. J" Erving or Connie "The Hawk" Hawkins handle such missions. He operated beneath the basket and preferred the finger roll, the ball floating up like a feather. Sometimes coming down the court -- fast as he could, which wasn't very fast -- he slowed like someone waiting to cross the street. Then -- poof -- he vanished down the lane.
Only a precious few had seen him play at Winston-Salem College, now known as Winston-Salem State University, part of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the nation's oldest black athletic conference.
Those in the know pronounce it C Eye Double-A. And in the mid-'60s, in the CIAA, the Pearl was all the rage. News spread about him on the grapevine the way Southern women spread news about some gospel quartet seen in Alabama (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Alabama?tid=informline) or North Carolina (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/North+Carolina?tid=informline) that had dropped them to their knees. Ebony magazine would have spreads about the yearly CIAA basketball tournament. Three- and four-page spreads, as much about the fashion extravagance of the weekend as about the basketball.
Monroe had scored plenty as a high school player at John Bartram High in Philadelphia (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Philadelphia?tid=informline). But the major college recruiters didn't chase after him. Maybe it was the times. Maybe it was the myopia of big-time college coaches, who were reluctant to field majority-black teams. Monroe's coach at Winston-Salem (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Winston-Salem?tid=informline) was Clarence "Big House" Gaines, who let Monroe become the Pearl. Monroe played in the South as the civil rights movement hummed beyond the campus dorms. Black college ball wasn't always on the nation's radar then, but a lot of first-generation college students would carry his exploits in their memory for years to come. The Pearl's legend grew. Some took to calling him "Jesus."
My boyhood hoops mate, Steve Flannigan, got himself down to North Carolina, to the C Eye Double-A, and into a basketball uniform for St. Augustine's College. On visits back home to Columbus, he'd regale us with stories about the Pearl that were still floating across the gyms and playgrounds long after Monroe had departed, such as how in one game the Pearl launched a jumper deep in the corner as time expired only to fade into the locker room before the ball sailed through the net.
In Spike Lee's film "He Got Game," there's a haunting scene on a boardwalk. Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Denzel+Washington?tid=informline)) is a convict suddenly freed on a furlough to persuade his son to play basketball for a certain college. His son (NBA star Ray Allen (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Ray+Allen?tid=informline)) is named Jesus Shuttlesworth. On the boardwalk stroll, Jake explains to Jesus that he named him after Earl Monroe (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Earl+Monroe?tid=informline). "They called him Jesus," Jake said, "because he was the truth."
As soon as Jake mentions Monroe's name, the movie goes to a flashback of Monroe as a Bullet, warming up, then spinning in his orange jersey in some small hazy gym and vanishing downcourt. Then a quick flash back to the boardwalk, son and father still strolling: "I'm talking about him when he was with the Bullets," the father says, Afro bobbing against the sunshine. "But the Knicks, they put shackles on him. They locked him up in a straitjacket or something." And then the movie goes back again to Monroe, pirouetting in the air, spinning as if on ice skates, the Aaron Copland (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Aaron+Copland?tid=informline) soundtrack hovering, too. It is as lovely a montage of an athlete as anyone might ever see.
Jack Marin, a teammate from the Bullets years, recalls that often there were no more than 5,000 or 6,000 people at their games. He laments that the crowds were not larger, if only to see Monroe's unique gifts. "Earl was very subtle but also deft," he says. "He did small sleights of hand. It took a trained eye to watch him and what he was able to do. He'd perform one of his magic tricks and move on to the next."
His Bullet career (1967-1971) was short, and it seemed alarming indeed when he was traded to the Knicks. It hurt to watch him pull back his game a little -- that straitjacket -- but there were still enough moments of pure magical joy, the blind pass to Bill Bradley (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Bill+Bradley?tid=informline), the between-the-legs pass on a fast break to Mike Riordan, that left the kids in Columbus whooping.
The times seemed suited for Frazier and Monroe. Warren Beatty's movie "Bonnie and Clyde" ushered in a new fashion wave of fedoras and double-breasted suits. Disco was a sensation, but so were tie clips and long tweed coats and the Pointer Sisters singing "Yes We Can Can" and the Pearl spinning. Even Andy Warhol (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Andy+Warhol?tid=informline) was known to get himself over to Madison Square Garden (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Madison+Square+Garden?tid=informline) to see the Pearl and Clyde.
One of the first hardback books I ever bought was 1974's "Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball & Cool," by Walt Frazier and Ira Berkow. The photographs were dazzling. I'd lend the book to friends, but they couldn't keep it overnight. Still, one got the feeling that the Pearl didn't need to write a book to advertise his coolness.
But back to that 1960s night in Columbus:
The popular state fair took place in the summer, but in the fall the rides were gone, the skies darkened early and hoops were on everyone's mind. With four of my friends -- Flannigan, Olen Miller, Aaron Lockett and Ron Prater -- I happily angled up to the front door of the coliseum that evening. "It was a special night," remembers Miller, now a salesman in Tampa (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Tampa?tid=informline). "We barely got in because we had just enough money. Some people in the crowd wanted to see Oscar Robertson [of the Royals]. But we wanted to see the Pearl."
Once inside we began scoping out unclaimed seats as close to the players' bench as possible. Now and then during warm-ups, Monroe would glance away from the court as we yelled his name, but he refocused his attention quickly to the business at hand. As the game started, we elbowed one another every time he touched the ball. "We were rising and falling on his passes," says Miller. "This guy wasn't capable of making a simple pass."
Each of us knew that if we tried the same thing in basketball practice at school that we'd have to run those dreaded suicide drills up and down the court. Basketball coaches in the '60s could be autocratic. They taught fundamentals and expected things to be done by the book. This way, not that way. "The Pearl did everything wrong, according to the rules," says Miller.
Immediately after the game we rushed down a hallway to the Bullets locker room. We stood back from the door, waiting to see the Pearl. But when he emerged we couldn't get close enough. "Pearl. Pearl. Hey, Pearl." His head bobbed as he was whisked away. I remember we mimicked his moves walking home through the chill of the desolate fairgrounds. We debated the overcoat the Pearl had on, wondering if it was lamb or cashmere. We decided lamb, maybe because lamb sounded more exotic to us. I doubt we actually knew one from the other.
How we hold on to our heroes.
Just three months ago, I was sitting at Reagan National (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Ronald+Reagan+Washington+National+Airport?tid=info rmline), waiting to board a flight. A gaggle of passengers got off another plane and began walking in my direction. I knew it was him even before he got within 10 feet of me.
"Pearl!" I blurted, louder than I meant to.
He turned toward my voice and we locked eyes in that nanosecond that a celebrity gives you. "Hey now," he said, his head nodding. The whole exchange lasted only seconds. I smiled to myself. And the Pearl kept moving.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802608.html
Nice seeing my Dad's Alma Mater WSSU mentioned in here as well as Coach 'Big House" Gaines - who was family by marriage.