No. 108: JIM BROWN & MICHAEL JORDAN: The write-around in Chicago, Part I. When MJ wouldn't talk, I had to find another who knew such heights. One GOAT on the subject of another.

Back in '98, when MJ was retiring for the second time, I sought out another whose star shone so brightly, who walked away at the very top.

I’M often asked who is the biggest name I’ve ever interviewed. Sometimes I’m asked who was the toughest to interview. To both I answer Jim Brown, the greatest football player who ever lived (and please, spare me the cases you’ll make for Tom Brady).

Jim Brown was inarguably the greatest running back to ever pancake Hall of Famers. He was almost certainly the best all-around athlete to have played in the North American professional leagues—if you want to make a case for Bo Jackson, fine, just so long as you acknowledge Brown earned varsity letters in four sports at Syracuse (football, lacrosse, basketball and track). By walking away at the top of his game in a dispute over principle (owner Art Modell threatening to fine him for arriving late to Cleveland’s training camp), Brown proved himself to be the baddest of bad asses. I don’t think he was a great actor but he was only ever cast as bad asses in films like The Dirty Dozen, so he didn’t have to be Olivier.

I wish I had a chance to write a profile of Jim Brown, even if it had to be a lion-in-winter deal. I’m old but not old enough to remember him as a player. In fact, my interest in the NFL timed almost directly of Brown’s checking out.

In Toronto we picked up a grainy signal from Buffalo’s CBS affiliate in the late 60s and WBEN on Channel 4 had the NFL rights. The Bills games in the still-renegade AFL were over on WGR Channel 2. For reasons of proximity, WBEN broadcast Cleveland Browns games rather than the Giants’. They’ve never been my favourite team but I’ve always had a soft spot for the luckless franchise.

(In a previous SubStack essay and in my Audible Original and Kindle e-book, “Don’t Mail in the Scene-Setter,” I recount my experience working the last game at Municipal Stadium before the Browns franchise was checking out and relocating in Baltimore back in the ‘90s. Paid subscribers have access to the archive.)

In 1966 Leroy Kelly, previously Brown’s back-up and then his successor in Cleveland’s backfield, was the NFL First-Team All-Pro. The next year he was repeated as a First-Team All-Pro and led the league in rushing. Ditto the year after that and he took league MVP honours as well. And Kelly himself understood that even as an All-Pro he was a piece of patchwork. "I'm just glad [Brown} quit when he did," he said. "If he had played a few more years -- and he certainly could have done that -- I might never have had the chance I had.” Here’s a nice little summary of Kelly’s work, where his ex-coach Blanton Collier doesn’t quite damn him with faint praise, but basically says “he ain’t Jim Brown.”

When I watched Kelly, the league’s best, I wondered who could have kept him out of the Browns’ line-up. It was of course the nearest thing the NFL ever had to Superman.

Over the course of my lifetime, Jim Brown has gone from NFL history to NFL ancient history. We’re almost 60 years after he led Cleveland to the championship, but that was back in the pre-Super Bowl era, so it seems about as remote as Red Grange.

When I got into the sportswriting game, there were really only a few famous names that I wanted to interview. Most go back to the late 60s and early 70s, when the idea of writing about sports crystallized for the teenage version of me. The era was rich in characters who were something more than star athletes.

I was lucky to get a chance to interview Curt Flood, whose challenge of MLB’s reserve clause cost him his career. (At some later date I’ll write about my talk with Flood and what I wrote about him, including a piece of fiction for Spitball, a journal dedicated to baseball literature,) I had always hoped to write about Bill Russell, but he was famously private. Tommie Smith, the 200-metre gold medalist, who was sent home from the Mexico City Olympics after he raised his black-gloved hand in a podium protest. Flood, Russell and Smith weren’t just stars in the outfield, in the arena or in the straightaway. They were social-justice warriors and you’d count Jim Brown in that number.

In the front row left to right, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The youngest there, the only collegian, Kareem was still going by his birth name Lew Alcindor.

Brown was the driving force behind the Cleveland Summit, the fabled conference that brought together leading African-American athletes in the summer of ‘67. As laid out in this story by Jonathan Eig, the conference is now mostly remembered as a show of support for Muhammad Ali, who was facing charges for refusing to serve when drafted. In fact, Brown had a separate agenda for the Cleveland Summit: economic empowerment for African-Americans. The choice of Cleveland for the setting was on point. I was impressed by what Jim Brown accomplished on the field (even if I had only seen evidence of it in highlight reels and banks of statistics). The Cleveland Summit, though fascinated me. Look at the photograph above and read the body language—Bill Russell hanging on every word, Kareem deep in thought, the assembled other athletes lined up as if to join the chorus. Ali is talking but seemingly to Brown alone. In fact, Ali seems to lack his usual lustrous bluster, a man pleading his case. At the centre Brown is the one Ali is pleading to. Brown owns the room. He’s the chairman. No question quien es mas macho.

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WHEN Michael Jordan was retiring for the second but not last time in 1998, I was sent to Chicago to write about his farewell tour, what was the start of his sixth and final NBA championship run. It was the sports-media event of the year and would be the sports-event of most any year.

It was a less appealing assignment than it sounds. Jordan had no time for the media other than Ahmad Rashad, the sideline guy for NBC, which was broadcasting the NBA back when. I had to seek out other people to talk to about Jordan’s legacy and, to my mind anyway, the emptiness of his stardom. You’d suspect that Jordan wouldn’t chair a summit for social justice but maybe lend his name to a celebrity golf tournament for the right price. (Air, the film in theatres right now, contextualizes his legacy somewhat, how his Nike shoe deal wound up benefitting many athletes, but that’s not exactly taking on the reserve clause or refusing to go to Vietnam.)

In sportswriting or in fact any other featuring there’s an approach called the write-around. It’s the fallback when the subject of a profile declines to talk to the writer, who then has to seek out other sources. Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” in Esquire is probably the best-known write-around. I wound up talking to a lot of people for Jordan piece, which is at the foot of this SubStack for paid subscribers and the comped. I sought out a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent, academics, ex-teammates, kids on the playground and even the Marshall High School coach in Hoop Dreams. And I tracked down Jim Brown.

(In my Audible Original and Kindle version of my memoir, I dive more deeply into my wanderings around Chicago and how I landed at Marshall High School.)

Despite the worshipful tone, I don’t want to stand accused of godding-up Jim Brown. I’m not glossing over his history of violence against women—that’s been well-aired out in the obituaries that ran in these last few days, this New York Times piece a great example. His legacy was decidedly mixed—a hero on the field, far less so elsewhere. He was many things but not a role model. I wasn’t writing Jim Brown’s life story, though, just what he thought about Michael Jordan, what Brown regarded as a missed opportunity. I boiled down the interview for this sidebar item to the main story.

In the main story, Brown reserved praise for Craig Hodges, a former teammate of Jordan, who was released by the Bulls because of what management felt was radicalism unbecoming the team’s brand, an opinion that might have been shared by Jordan.

Fast forward: The story caused a small shitstorm when it ran. I got hate mail from Jordan' loyalists, in part because U.S. papers that picked up the story in syndication ran it in a shrunken version—which is to say, they cut Jim Brown, Craig Hodges, Marshall High School William Bedford among others and all that remained was my opinion unsupported. All that remained was a thesis, a premise.

As noted, paid subscribers, selected complementary subscribers and anyone who takes out a subscription, please read on. Leroy Kelly wasn’t Jim Brown and neither is Michael Jordan.

From The Globe and Mail May 1998

FACING THE COURT OF APPEAL

Michael Jordan is an idol to some, but to others he is a fallen hero for not endorsing social causes such as the abject poverty of the neighbourhoods around the arena where he performs.

By Gare Joyce

Dateline: Chicago

THERE'S no escaping Michael Jordan in Chicago, which means the city is like the rest of the civilized world, only more so.

His name is attached to a restaurant, but any near-celebrity can do that. There is his own shrine, Niketown on Michigan Avenue. He looks down on the city from billboards.

At the United Center, his image, that splayed-legged dunk, appears immense on the scoreboard's video screen. It appears in miniature on the heels of his and his teammates' shoes and on the lapel pins of the security guards and ushers.

Yet on one count there is no finding Michael Jordan. In one way you can look for him and he will never be there, not on a grand scale, not in miniature. In just this one regard, the man whose image is ever present wants to be never present. When talk turns in one direction, that most famous of names aspires to anonymity.

What does Michael Jordan believe in beyond the court? What are the causes he is committed to? What is just one thing he believes in?