Old-timers’ Day
They’ve been friends—and friendly antagonists—going back to their time as Cowtown’s most colorful ink-stained wretches. Half a century later, Dan Jenkins (whose new novel, Slim and None, arrives in stores this month) and our own Gary Cartwright duke it out over Bill Parcells, Ann Coulter, and that wealthy divorcée in the bar at the Colonial.
(Page 2 of 3)
Don’t you love it that Congress finally discovered steroids, only thirty years after every linebacker and first baseman in North, Central, and South America? With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat of Al Qaeda, and budget deficits that stretch to China, you’d suppose that politicians have more urgent matters to debate. “Performance enhancers” have been around for years. They just weren’t a sexy political issue until Jose Canseco’s book hit the best-seller list.
You’ll remember that amphetamines were as common as salt tablets when we started covering the NFL back in 1960. Just outside the Cowboys’ training room hung three half-gallon tins of pills—one filled with calcium, one with vitamin C, one with Dexedrine. Who can forget that wild-eyed linebacker from West Texas who used to gobble a fistful of Dexies on his way to practice. Practice! What did he do for a real game—mainline wolverine urine? Eventually, the league ordered teams to stop passing out speed—or at least put the pills where reporters couldn’t get to them—at which time several promising careers cratered.
The purpose of the hearings in Washington was mostly to give congressmen an opportunity to pose with former big-league ballplayers, but surely our elected clowns hoped that tales of steroid abuse might get the attention of young athletes. Naturally, they botched the message. Did you get a look at Canseco and those other guys? Teenage boys would kill to get a head of hair like Canseco’s, not to mention his biceps. Canseco said all the right things about the dangers of juicing up, but in his book he predicts that “intelligent, informed use of steroids, combined with human growth hormone, will one day be so accepted that everybody will be doing it.” If Congress really wants to contribute to the commonweal, it should pass a law forbidding the baseball season to last longer than ten days and requiring the NCAA to determine the best team in college football by establishing a sixteen-team playoff that would extend the season through Easter.
Granted, such a system would create a dilemma for TCU and other schools in the WAC, the Big 3, and the Chitlin’ Circuit, or whatever you people call your little leagues. Then, instead of foaming at the mouth about the University of Texas, you’d have to step up and face the big boys.
Jap
March 23, 4:05 p.m.
Jap,
Is that what those pills were? The trainer for the Cowboys assured me they’d prevent a bad cold. Then, of course, I found out the orange ones would keep my hair from hurting and the green ones would help me cope with the fact that I couldn’t afford to live in Highland Park.
I’m not concerned about athletes taking steroids. We’ll have the last laugh when they reach their mid-forties. That’s when their joints will drop off and the acne on their shoulders will spread to their gums.
As for foaming at the mouth, only the zebras can make me do that. My position has been clear for years. All zebras should have their throats ripped out and die screaming on the twenty-yard line, where they’ve called back another touchdown with a phony holding penalty.
Anyway, speaking of foaming at the mouth, I thought Blackie came close a couple of times at the Times Herald, when you wrote one of your memorable leads about the moon being a half-slice of lemon and some halfback wearing a pound of liver strapped on his chest.
Tempt me all you wish about politics, Jappy. You can even tie me down and make me read a Molly Ivins column. But I’m living quite cheerfully now by only two mottoes: “My country, right or wrong” and “Take Auburn, give the six.”
Ownself
March 24, 10:51 a.m.
Yo,
Okay, I confess: I love the dog-ass Cowboys, year after miserable year, win or lose. That’s why I’m damn tired of waiting for Galloway or Cowlishaw or one of the other big-shot Metroplex sports columnists to bitch-slap Bill Parcells. There was a time when I thought Parcells might turn this franchise around. Now I realize that the NFL has passed him by and everyone except Jerry Jones knows it.
Parcells is old, tired, and stubborn as a dead snake. You know why he stuck with his 41-year-old retread quarterback Vinny Testaverde last year? Because he thought it might add one or two more victories to his precious career. Instead, they lost three games in December, when it really counted. This clown is supposed to have a genius for inspiring players, but by season’s end the Cowboys resembled a prisoner-of-war camp. His forte is discipline, yet the Cowboys were among the most penalized teams in the league; Flozell Adams probably set a personal record for screwups. As for developing young talent, Parcells forced himself to go into the 2005 draft without a clue if either of his young quarterbacks could cut it. He surrounds himself with has-beens like Richie Anderson and Keyshawn Johnson because they remind him of the man he used to be. I’ll tell you who he used to be: a coach who won championships because he had at his side a top assistant named Bill Belichick, who, as coach of the New England Patriots, has won three of the past four Super Bowls. So who do you think was the brains behind Parcells’s previous winners?
The Taciturn Tuna (I love coining catchy nicknames) plays the Metroplex media for the saps they are. They ask him a question about the three-four defense, and he says something like, “In this league you’ve got to watch things, because things do other things, but that doesn’t mean necessarily what you think things are about in the long run, see?” Which is another way of telling sportswriters that they’re even dumber than he thought. He starts this season with a new batch of old faces, including Drew Bledsoe, who hasn’t been a good quarterback since Parcells was a good coach. Sure, the Cowboys have a shot at the playoffs—and another quick and horrible exit to oblivion. What is truly pathetic and unforgivable about Parcells is that he has mortgaged the Cowboys’ future in one final attempt to pad his own glorious and ultimately futile legend.
I assume that your motto means to say: “Bush, right or wrong.” That’s not an unreasonable assertion, given your record. So keep the faith, my friend. Watch Fox News, listen to Rush Limbaugh, and always put your money on whoever the Cowboys are playing on a given Sunday.
Jap
March 24, 5:22 p.m.
Jap,
I know you’re smarter than anybody in Atlanta law enforcement—we all are—but when you go on at length about pro football, it makes me wonder. Surely you realize that it’s become about as vital as figure skating, which is not a sport; it’s dinner theater. I too used to think there were all these smart guys in the NFL, but then I started watching them take these All-American wide receivers and in no time teach them to drop passes. But thanks for straightening me out about Parcells and Testaverde. All along I’d thought Parcells traded him so he could keep Tortellini Parmigiana.
I do watch Fox News. The “mainstream” networks drove me to it, and because I watch it nightly, and read Ann Coulter religiously, I am happy to be constantly entertained and better informed than your normal, ordinary, everyday Austin socialist who’s busily trying to overthrow our government. As you may recall, my foreign policy hasn’t changed much from our days at the Press and the Herald. It’s pretty simple and the same as a character in Slim and None says: “If they talk back, nuke their sorry ass.”
Ownself
March 25, 9:05 a.m.
Danny,
Ann Coulter? Whoa! If Jenke read anyone religiously, I would have guessed it was George Will. At least Will is intelligent, articulate, and honest. Coulter is just mean. Meanness and self-righteousness are two of the least attractive traits of hard-core conservatives. Tom DeLay told a group of Christian conservatives a few weeks ago: “One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America.” And what was going on in America that required God delivering up Terri Schiavo? Attacks against DeLay and against the conservative movement, which in his mind are the same thing. With people like Coulter and DeLay, it’s all about ideology; screw what’s right or fair or sensible. I’ve always wondered who writes the ideological orders of the day. They don’t have God’s style.
My Library
