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Going by the Book  |
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Bobby Knight's Own Book |
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Knight's autobiography
needs a reality check
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
Ralph Houk had just become the manager of the New York
Yankees for his second tour of duty early in the 1966 season.
The team was dreadful. The Yankees actually finished 10th in
a 10-team league.
I wrote a column in the New York Post about the lackadaisical
play of this Yankee team with sleepy performances by kids like
Joe Pepitone, Tom Tresh and Jim Bouton and over-the-hill gang
phone-ins by Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Roger Maris.
Houk had been a managerial whiz the first time around with three
straight pennants right out of the box. He turned the job over
to Yogi Berra in 1964, who also won the pennant but lost the
Series as Houk’s Yankees did in 1963 to the pitching-rich
Dodgers. Berra was fired for his trouble by new GM Houk.
Johnny Keane became the manager in 1965 and he was way over his
head in New York. Houk canned him early in 1966 and put the uniform
back on.
I saw the 1966 Yankees were going nowhere and tried to put some
of the blame on Houk’s lap. Now this was a guy who had been
a World War II Ranger hero, a hustling back-up catcher to Yogi,
a great minor league manager, a terrific coach and the former
field boss.
He was about as tough as ball players and managers come, with
a strong body and a stronger personality. John Wayne and Gary
Cooper could have learned how to be the strong, silent type from
Houk.
One word in my column drove Houk wild: Marshmallow. I suggested
Houk II was much softer than Houk I. The Yankee players, running
a little wild in 1966, would have been chewed up and spit out
for those after-hour offenses in Houk’s first term.
When I walked into his office the next day he grabbed me by the
shirt, leaned me against a wall and threatened my children with
orphan status.
“Did you read it?” I squeaked.
That was my defense. I was suggesting that most of the column
indicated Houk had been a great, tough manager and needed that
old spice to get this team going again.
“What the hell does that have to do with it,” Houk
bellowed back.
So he didn’t read what I wrote and still wanted to execute
me. “Friends” told him what I said. Others heard the
noise that day and rescued me.
Of course, I never forgot that experience.
Now I just finished reading, “Knight: My Story” (Thomas
Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press) by Bob Knight with Bob Hammel.
It is a wonderful, syrupy self-congratulation about one of college
basketball’s finest coaches and strangest guys.
I’m not mad at that. Autobiographies are supposed to be
that way. Nobody writes an autobiography saying I was a jerk,
a loser, a failure and a fool. Only writers of biographies can
do that.
Knight writes that the deal he made with stylish writer John
Feinstein of the Washington Post for the wonderful tome "Season
on the Brink" was that Feinstein would never quote Knight,
after total access to his team, using the word, “Fuck.”
“I read the first six pages and I think the word was used
sixteen times. I put it down, sick, and never read another word
of the book,” writes Knight.
The 1986 book became one of the great sports classics of all
time, mostly because it gave the reader a sense of intimacy into
the doings of the team, the coach, the players and the time.
“I never did read the book other than those first six pages.
All these years later I still haven’t read it, so I’m
pretty sure I never will,” he said.
After being fired after 29 sparkling years at Indiana, including
three national titles and the move to Texas Tech and an NCAA
slot this year in the final 64, Knight writes of his life and
career.
He denies nothing of his abrasive personality. He lists some
of the negative highlights from thrown chairs to tormented players,
from challenged officials to careless remarks. He once answered
a question about stress from NBC’s Connie Chung by saying,
“I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
The book is a recital of all the wonderful things Knight has
accomplished in his career. True enough. He is a deserved Hall
of Fame coach. He talks often of his friendship with Ted Williams,
his shared fishing outings, his success at turning out great
players and future coaches, his meetings with so many of the
rich and famous.
He speaks little, as any autobiographer would, of his arrogance,
his intimidation of players and press, his inability to ever
consider the status and standing of anyone beneath him. He could
never understand the zero tolerance rules imposed on him at Indiana
after dozens and dozens of acts considered embarrassing to a
state university.
What emerges from Knight’s own words is a classic example
of what might really be wrong with college sports, the size of
it, and the exalted status on the national scene of those who
maneuver 18 and 19-year-old kids into such notoriety and financial
success.
I’m so old fashioned I wish we knew the names of the Academic
All Americans as well as the Athletic All-Americans.
On page 372 Knight writes, “I’ve never felt my job
was to win basketball games, rather that the essence of my job
as coach was to do everything I could to give my players the
background necessary to succeed in life.”
How’s that for hogwash? His 1975-1976 team won the national
title with a 32-0 record, the last undefeated college basketball
champion.
Take Knight at his words and imagine that team--or his Texas
Tech team--now going 0-32 but producing wonderful kids ready
for success in life.
Knight: My Story is a gem of spin control. The real Bobby Knight
appears regularly in "Season On The Brink."
© 2002 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel.
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