November 1973
Briar Patch
RETURN OF THE OLD PUCKER
THE ASTRODOME HAS REALLY OUTDONE itself. They had the help, though, of Hollywood press agentry and one of the bigger mouths in professional sports, so the Dome can't take all the credit. Irregardless of culpability, it was an impressive show, that King-Riggs tennis match, and it drew the largest media attendance in single-event sports history.
All those publications that always cover tennis or sports had writers there, as well as dozens of magazines that rarely think about covering either. Plus there were sportswriters from daily newspapers all over the world: Australia, Japan, Italy; there were eight sportswriters just representing London newspapers. All of this, of course, is harmless enough, just powerful testimony to the drawing power of ballyhoo and hoopla. The only sad thing about it all is that almost none of those "sportswriters" ever wandered over to an obscure Houston skating rink where one of the most truly dramatic events in sports is about to take place.
Houston seems an unlikely location for the greatest comeback ice hockey ever saw. Ice in Texas has always been something to pour whiskey around, and the notion of skating about on it, no less using it for a playing field, appears alien at the very least. It's strange enough to see Gordie Howe, now gray-haired and a little paunchy, flashing up-ice with that characteristic easy grace, but to see it happen in Houston borders on the bizarre.
Before his retirement in 1970, Gordie Howe had become the greatest hockey player in the game's history, a man who's always called (in the kind of apples-and-oranges analogy that sportswriters are prone to) "the Babe Ruth of Ice Hockey." In a 25-year playing career with the Detroit Red Wings, Gordie Howe had broken every hockey record that imaginative statisticians could invent, not the least of which was his own longevity. Prior to Gordie Howe, the longest career in the bloody, bruising sport spanned 20 years, and that was held by a defenseman. But Gordie was a wingman, like a forward in basketball, and hockey fans always considered it slightly miraculous that he held on as long as he did.
And yet here he is, in Houston of all places, wearing that legendary Number 9 and preparing to play once again at the age of 45. That, one would think, should be drama enough for the romantic pens of sportswriters. Yet there's more. Gordie Howe was not lured out of retirement by the Houston Aero's offer of $1 million plus; he did not leave Detroit, which he had possessed in spirit as much as Stan Musial ever owned Saint Louis, because he hankered after the smoggy, humid air of Houston; rather he came to Texas in order to provide the third leg, the eldest leg, of the first father-son combination in professional sports.
In the Spring of 1973, the same year that saw Houston reeling under the impact of a record three ephemeral snowfalls, the World Hockey Association's Houston Aeros, only one-season old, reached up to Toronto to draft Marty (19) and Mark (18) Howe. Thought to be undraftable because of a National Hockey League minimum age of 20, the two Howe boys were having to content themselves by wreaking fraternal havoc on the teams of Canadian Junior Hockey.
The Aeros' management, convinced that the old NHL rule didn't apply in the newly-created, expansionist, WHA, drafted and signed both younger Howes. Their contracts, it is said, exceeded $2.5 million. As two of the hottest young stars in hockey, they were thought to be easily worth it, and the old NHL teams howled mightily that Houston had snatched off both of them. It was still a few months before Gordie would announce the end of his own retirement.
Perhaps the reason all those sportswriters missed the Howe story is that Houston seemed a strange setting for a hockey epic. But, God knows, Houston has long needed a sports team that can finesse a winning season and the Aeros give promise of taking it all in Hockey. Even before the Howes, they had one of the hottest teams in the new WHA, and ended last season with a ten of 13 winning streak.
Houston is just beginning to discover that hockey is a fascinating spectator sport, both faster and feistier than football. Perhaps with the added human drama of the family Howe, the Aeros will earn the recognition they deserve. Even if they don't play in the Astrodome.
PLAY IT AGAIN, SANDRA
THERE IS A STRANGE MADNESS abroad in the land. Following Billie Jean King's resounding win over Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome, a new gauntlet (or rather, arm bracelet) has been thrown down.
Kilgore's own Van Cliburn has been challenged to a piano-playing contest by a female pianist. Susan Starr vows that if Van Cliburn accepts her challenge she would play "with gloves on—to give him an added advantage."
Ms. Starr has invented a whole new sport to prove her point, and it may well be sweeping the country soon. "I'd like to challenge Van Cliburn and nine other men," Ms. Starr, began, outlining the mechanics of the challenge. "We would all play the same piece behind a screen and dare a panel of judges to figure out who among us playing is a woman."
Ms. Starr's challenge was made in Manila, where she recently gave a concert in a hall where Van Cliburn had played in June. We think it would be a nice competition, but the prospect of sitting through ten renditions of the same piece of music, performed behind a screen, doesn't sound like as much fun as going to the Astrodome.
SPOON BENDER ANALOGY
THERE IS A SORT OF bird, a schematized gull that I've drawn above a triangle, and to the right of the triangle is an enclosed curve. This is the image that I'm trying to project onto and inside the right half of Uri Geller's head, the half that is facing me as he holds his hand over his eyes and concentrates, with an intensity that is almost material, to receive my transmission. The lines I've drawn, which are covered now below my hand, are glowing in my mind like the images that seem to come sometimes on the inside of your eyelids. I may or may not be getting through to Uri, it doesn't really seem to matter: I'm enjoying the attempt; there's an exhilaration I've never noticed before in engaging another mind on such an intense and specific level.
The experiment fails, or rather fails in its most obvious aspect. Uri is disappointed, and tired. He has done three interviews already today and this press conference in the state capital has so far only evidenced a bad case of Psychokinesisist's Block.
Uri Geller is an Israeli, 26 years old, who speaks near-perfect and ingratiating English, and is in Austin for his first full-scale demonstration in the South. He says he has been aware of his psychic gifts since he was three, and aware of his psychokinetic abilities since he was seven, when he made the hands on his wristwatch move. The power has been with him in apparently increasing proportions ever since.
Now he's on tour with it, a fact that moves skeptics and purists to put him in the same league with Oral Roberts or Mark Spitz. Indeed, the first question asked here today is "Why are you touring?", as though Uri Geller were Jesus on the lecture circuit with the Sermon on the Mount. But he's heard this question asked before, and he responds by simply stating that he enjoys performing, he draws power and support from an auditorium full of people. And he tours to make money, obviously. He's no ascetic, and he carries himself with such openness and lack of grandeur that the question of prostitution does not seem to apply.
And though he has been debunked in Time as a charlatan, had his tricks duplicated by professional magicians and fallen on his face in no less a public forum than the Johnny Carson show, he carries with him an impressive set of scientific credentials. He is the star subject at the prestigious Stanford Research Institute, where his powers have been observed and, as much as the term can apply, verified by physicists under rigid laboratory conditions. He is involved in a straight-faced experiment with former astronaut Edgar Mitchell to teleport Mitchell's movie camera back to earth from where he left it on the moon. Uri sees no difference between doing this and bending a key: Time and distance to not apply once you're out of the ballpark; teleporting something from the moon is a question of method and not of degree.
But at this press conference he is overdue to bend a key. Therefore one is brought to him and he places it on the table in front of him. In a few moments there is a crack in the middle of it, barely visible, then after another brief interlude during which the key stays on the table it is noticeably bent at about a 45 degree angle.
Uh huh. Maybe it's because the occurrence is so famous and so documented, but it seems not too impressive. It would be a dull trick for a magician. In fact it's astonishing how mundane such an occurrence can be, so quotidien it has to be real.
The bending of the key is the only tangibility at the press conference, and the questions keep coming with prefaces like "Frankly, Uri, I'm a little skeptical…."
The audience at the Thursday night performance, however, have come because they believe, have brought their keys and spoons to be bent, their watches to be fixed, their thoughts and drawings in sealed envelopes to be transmitted. Ray Stanford's organization, the Association for the Understanding of Man, has set up an information booth outside of the auditorium, and at the end of the performance it will be heavily patronized.
Yes, the vibes are good, the audience is consistently with him through a barely adequate rendition of his abilities.
Uri claims he has no conscious control over what he does, does not know exactly what goes on when he does it. Therefore he can offer no guarantees and has to ride the psychic mood the crowd allows him. And when he fails, he gets nervous and his energy level, or whatever it is, drops rapidly. The first part of the program goes well. Uri is an ingenuous and self-effacing stage presence (at one point he asks his audience if he's stepping on his pants cuffs with his heel—"That's a terrible feeling.")
He begins by asking several women (women are more psychically receptive to him, he says) to come up on stage and write names and colors and draw illustrations on a blackboard which is out of his sight. (The "precautions" he uses to keep from seeing the blackboard, like a piece of plywood he holds up in front of his face, are so ludicrous and simpleminded that if indeed his whole act is a fake it is a staggering example of convoluted genius.)
