Semi-Tough (3 page)

Her daddy can put you into some kind of a snore with stories about his golf game, or how he once played in a pro-am with Lee Trevino. He also goes on and on about where you can get a really good meal in New York and they are always places where nobody has gone in ten years except people from Des Moines or Cleveland.

Barbara Jane says Cissy went to school somewhere like Briardale in Westchester County and majored in Bloomingdale's and minored in Bonwit Teller. Those are stores where women go in New York.

Well, Cissy likes hanging around with old Billy Clyde, so I guess she can't be all bad. To tell you the truth, I think she's deep down a pretty good wool and if it weren't for the fact that she's such a self-centered, spoiled bitch with that nitwit accent and her shitheel parents, I'd probably marry her.

She just threw a pillow at me.

Missed, though. Kid never did have an arm.

Now I think I'd better get down to why we're all out here in California. The fact is that the New York Giants have got themselves a little old date this coming Sunday in the Super Bowl against none other than the dog-ass New York Jets.

This is some kind of joke back in New York, of course.

Here are two New York teams in the Super Bowl, finally, and the game's being played in Los Angeles.

Naturally, Commissioner Bob Cameron has been taking a lot of kidding about this. There are those who say it wouldn't have happened if Pete Rozelle was still the commissioner instead of becoming a United States Senator.

I don't know about that. I don't think it's any more unusual for two New York teams to be playing the big game out in California than it was for the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Chiefs (the old Kansas City Chiefs) to play last year's Super Bowl down in Mexico City. Rozelle arranged that, just before he got elected to the Senate.

Commissioner Cameron seems O.K. is all I'm trying to say, even though he sort of lucked into the job as a compromise candidate of the owners on the forty-eighth ballot.

I think Commissioner Cameron deserves most of the credit for straightening out the Las Vegas situation. Wasn't it Commissioner Cameron who brought in the new owners to take over the Las Vegas Blackjacks (the old San Diego Chargers) after it came out that the franchise was somehow owned by Angie and Tony Mastrioni, who also happened to own the Jets?

Commissioner Cameron ruled that nobody can own two pro teams, even if they're Italian.

And wasn't it Commissioner Cameron
—
back when he was Rozelle's assistant
—
who helped the Maras sell the Giants for twenty-five million to DDD and F so the ad agency could keep us in New York instead of Bermuda?

That was a big thing. The Maras would have moved the Giants to Bermuda or Honolulu just as sure as hell if Commissioner Cameron hadn't found a buyer who would pay the price. I think the Giants should have stayed in New York. I don't think New York would be the same without all the spooks and hebes and criminals and pro football teams which make it such a colorful city.

All I'm trying to say is that Bob Cameron is a good old boy, as far as I'm concerned, and besides everything else, he and Shake and me have chased some wool together.

Shake just stopped in to get a book and take it back down to the pool. He said
T.J.
Lambert was down there raising hell and it was kind of funny. He said
T.J.
had just run a bunch of hebes into their cabanas by putting his hand between the cheeks of his ass and asking a little old lady hebe, "Anybody got a hook I can pry this loose with?"

Shake said a lot of people at the pool had been asking him and
T.J.
and some others for their autographs and that
T.J.
had been writing some interesting things down.

He said
T.J.
wrote on a magazine that a little boy had given him, "Hope your old Daddy stays rich and you get yourself lots of cock when you grow up. Yours truly. Torn Jock Lambert."

Shake said
T.J.
went over to the pool office where the telephone and the P.A. system are and got on the microphone. He said
T.J.
made an announcement to everybody at the pool.

He said
T.J.
announced: "Telephone call for whatever Jew can get here first."

Shake also said there was a whole stack of semi
-
starlets down there that I ought to see.

I said I'd just as soon get some more writing done and contemplate some of the atrocities I might perform on Cissy Walford.

"Have you mentioned that we're gonna kick the shit out of the dog-ass Jets?" Shake asked.

"That's a foregone conclusion," I said.

"Put in there that I went on record as saying I would play the greatest game of my life," said Shake.

"Put in there that I'll probably catch two or three balls behind Dreamer Tatum and at least once I'll dough-pop him on his black ass," he said.

One thing my buddy Shake has never lacked any great amount of is confidence. I don't think anybody has ever truly embarrassed Dreamer Tatum, at least not in all the films I've seen. And I've never heard of anybody bringing him any bodily harm.

Dreamer Tatum is a roverback for the dog-ass Jets, which means that he plays a combination cornerback and linebacker and sometimes covers deep pass routes. He got his name Dreamer in college at USC because he put guys to sleep when he hit them.

I'll tell you. Dreamer Tatum is a stud sumbitch on the football field. He's the only defensive specialist who ever won the Heisman Trophy. That's a trophy that's supposed to go to the best college player every year
—
and almost never does. Seeing as how me and Shake never won it.

But Dreamer deserved the Heisman the year he got it, which was really an upset over those fuckers who vote in the East and Midwest. And besides that, he's been All
-
Pro for all three years that he's been with the dog-ass Jets.

Dreamer Tatum is what we call a pisser. I mean that sumbitch will make your helmet ring when he puts it on you. He's about the best proof I know of that a spook can go around on a football field without any keep-off signs on him.

All you can see in most any film of the dog-ass Jets is Dreamer Tatum sticking some poor sumbitch in the gizzle when the poor sumbitch has tried to run a sweep.

All of a sudden the blockers go South and there's Dreamer knocking some poor sumbitch on his butt.

Me and Shake were talking about Dreamer the other day, and I asked my buddy how in the hell Dreamer could
keep making plays like that, over and over.

"Wants to," said Shake.

We don't know Dreamer so well. Shit, he lives out in
L
ong Island somewhere, like most of the dog-ass Jets, and of course most of t
he Giants live in Manhattan or G
reenwich or Scarsdale.

You never see many of the dog-ass Jets around the city, even in the off-season, unless you want to go to a bunch of bars where off-duty vice-squad cops hang out.

We know Dreamer well
enough to say hidy but that's a
bout all. He moves up every now and then and falls into a classy place like P. J. Clarke's, which is where we go a lot. Usually it's when Dreamer is with some real estate or insurance phony who only wants to be seen with him.

I hear Dreamer's really a good spook when he's not making somebody's hat ring, but my only thoughts about him right now is that he's on the other side from me in
th
is game and that means we're at war.

It's actually sort of like the Giants and dog-ass Jets have never played each other before. All of those exhibitions we've played up in New Haven every August don't mean a damn thing.

Hell, this season nobody's first units even got in the ball game up there. Last year we only played the first half. And the year before we only played the first quarter.

The thing about exhibition games is that they ought to be for rookies, and then if the fans are dumb enough to pay to see them, they know what they're getting. All of the owners swear they have to play these fake games to stay in business but that's a pile of crap. They don't have to play seven of the sumbitches. I really agree with the spooks on this.

I really think the day will come when the veterans won't play in any of these games unless they're scheduled in Paris, Rome, London and Madrid.

Up in New Haven last August before our exhibition with the dog-ass Jets, I exchanged a few words with Dreamer when we were out on the field warming up. After we'd said hidy, I told Dreamer I didn't think he was apt to see much of my ass in the game.

"I'm about to think me up a hamstring." I smiled.

Dreamer said, "Oh, you got it, baby. I can see it hurtin' on you right now. You ought to see this hip
-
pointer I got. Oooo, it hurt. I may have to limp over and get into my street duds before them cats ever hit that anthem."

"Need some help?" I said.

"No, I believe I can jog," Dreamer said.

We talked on for a minute or so. I told Dreamer that I had noticed that our entire first unit offense either had suddenly come down with the flu or muscle spasms. He told me it was the same with the dog-ass Jets.

"Seems like New Haven's just an unlucky town for us," I said.

"There's lots of others, too," said Dreamer. "Until mid-September anyhow."

Well, of course, the Super Bowl isn't any exhibition game, and I don't know anybody on either team who wouldn't play Sunday with four or five broken ribs.

As you might suspect, the newspapers are building it up about what's liable to happen when I run at Dreamer, or when Shake runs a route at him. Yesterday a guy in
th
e
LA Times
quoted Dreamer as saying we were good in "an inferior league" and that playing the Jets would
f
inally prove how good we really were.

The
Times
writer quoted Dreamer as saying, "I hope the Giants have got their hats on Sunday because we want to welcome 'em to pro football."

You try not to get upset by anything you read, of course. Most of it is bullshit. But you read it. Any football player who claims he doesn't read the papers or the magazines about himself or his team is telling about as much truth, like Shake says, as a President or Senator.

Anyhow, Shake answered Dreamer in the papers this morning, and we all had a good laugh, even Cissy Walford who doesn't understand any of it.

The paper quoted Shake as saying, "I just found out that Dreamer Tatum's real name is Obert Kimberly Tatum. The only Obert I ever knew was so dumb he couldn't figure out a ball-point pen. And the only Kimberly I ever knew was an interior decorator. So now that I know Dreamer's straight name, I've got to wonder if he's the little bit of hell he's supposed to be."

The writer asked Shake if he planned to run his routes differently in Dreamer's direction.

"I might put a couple of new dance steps on him," Shake said.

The writer pointed out to Shake that Dreamer seems to read a fake better than any athlete he ever saw.

"Tell me that after he quits spinnin' like a top on Sunday," said Shake.

I mentioned to my friend this morning, "Old buddy, you keep talking like that in the papers and Dreamer's liable to take it out on me. You'll be sitting out there at split end with someplace to hide, but I've got to run right at his onery soul."

Shake smirked.

"Eat his ass up is all you're gonna do, Billy C.," he said.

Cissy Walford asked if the two of us were actually, terribly, very, intensely concerned.

"Shit," said Shake.

I think I'd better knock off for a while now. We've got to go to practice over at UCLA in Westwood where the Giants are practicing. After that I've got an interview at the Beverly Hills Hotel with some kind of high
-
rent bitch from a women's magazine. On the phone she said she wanted to do "a full take-out" on me, and then print it in the spring if we won the game.

She said she wanted to "rap with me" about the "underside" of the athlete's mind.

I also have to go with Shake over to a TV studio. And then all of us have to go over to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for a Super Bowl cocktail party that the magazine
Sports Illustrated
is giving.

Players really hate to go to shit like that party but our owners insist we show up. They think it's good that we mix it up from time to time with some of those big money
spenders from the East who hang around parties like that.

There's never anybody at those things but a bunch of freeloading writers who get high school drunk and a bunch of Madison Avenue types who get even drunker and tell you how they've always been with the Giants win, lose or draw.

There's also some talk between Barbara Jane Bookman and Cissy Walford about going to Ugo's for dinner. Cissy wants to go because she thinks there might be some movie stars there to look at. Ugo's is where everybody out here goes now that they don't go to La Scala or Matteo's.