This is Throwbacks, a newsletter by me, Michael Weinreb, about sports, history, culture and politics, and everything in-between. Please join the mailing list and share, on social media or through e-mail or however you feel comfortable sharing. (It’s still FREE to join the list for now: Just click “None” on the “subscribe now” page.) If you like what you read, please spread the word, or consider chipping in and allowing me the time to do a little more research on on these posts. You’ll get full access to the archive of more than 100 previous posts, as well.
I. Charles “Lefty” Driesell, basketball coach, age 92
Driesell was the last surviving member of a high-profile genre of animated college basketball coaches (Bob Knight, Jerry Tarkanian, etc.) who helped define the image of the sport during its heyday, as ESPN propelled it into a national pastime. Driesell elevated Maryland out of the doldrums in large part by sheer force of his personality: Emerging from the tunnel and raising his hand above his bald head in a Nixonian “V for victory” gesture as the crowd howled; hurling his sportcoat to the floor and stomping on it to express his displeasure with the officiating; and generally preening, as the author C. Fraser Smith wrote, like “the hybrid of a rooster and a clog dancer.”
Driesell cultivated a public image that belied his intelligence (he made the Dean’s List at Duke, even as he occasionally bragged that he’d never read a book in his life). His problem—other than the fact that he could never quite compete with the top-tier Atlantic Coast Conference programs—was often that he said incendiary things without thinking about them.
In the end, whether fair or unfair, he came to exemplify the moral compromises inherent to college sports in the 1980s: He was accused of harassing a female student after she accused one of his players of sexual misconduct, and in 1986, he was forced to resign in the wake of the death of Len Bias over accusations that he’d lost control of the Maryland basketball program. (I spoke to him once, for this ESPN story on the impact of Bias’s death, and a subsequent book I wrote about the growth of sports in the 1980s called Bigger Than the Game. The interview did not go particularly well.)
“You’re either with me,” Driesell often said, “Or you’re against me.”
II. Chris Mortensen, NFL Insider, age 72
Amid the uneasy melding of newspaper journalism and television and the blossoming of Insider Culture in sports, Mortensen navigated it deftly, and somehow seems to have avoided making a single enemy in a nakedly cutthroat business. That in itself is worth celebrating—that you can be a dogged reporter and still be a decent human being.
III. Richard Lewis, comedian, age 76
Not only was Lewis perhaps the most distilled blend (outside of Woody Allen) of a certain type of mid-century neurotic Judaism, and not only did he serve as a manic foil to Larry David’s open misanthropy over two decades of Curb Your Enthusiasm…
…but the dude also harbored an irrational hatred for the University of Michigan. Farewell, my brother from another mother.
IV. U.L. Washington, Major League Baseball infielder, age 70
The hot question at baseball’s 1980 winter meetings in Dallas, amid an era of labor disputes that would forever mar the sport’s popularity, was about toothpicks. Particularly, the toothpick that belonged to one U.L. Washington, the Kansas City Royals shortstop who had a sliver of wood clenched between his teeth at nearly all the time.
Would this lead to tragedy? Would it inspire copycat incidents on Little League fields from Sheboygan to Savannah? Should Major League Baseball legislate against toothpicks? Was all of this, in fact, an ancestral Curb Your Enthusiasm premise?
“I never thought it’d get to the point where they’d have meetings over it,” Washington told reporters, adding that chewing tobacco—which was then, of course, perfectly legal for baseball players to use, and certainly much safer in the long term than a tiny wooden skewer—burned his lip. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking about not using it (anymore) because the toothpick gets more publicity than I do.”
Washington played 11 seasons in the majors; he ended his career with over 700 hits and 130 stolen bases. In the end, baseball chose not to prohibit the toothpick; when it happened, Washington told reporters a story about a collision with an outfielder he had in the minor leagues while chasing a pop fly. He busted open his lip, got 30 stitches, but “the toothpick had nothing to do with it,” he said. In fact, when he got to the hospital and showed his face to the doctors, the toothpick was still there in his mouth, right where it belonged.
V. David Chen, restaurant owner/entrepreneur, age 78
In 1977, Chen and his wife moved from Taiwan to a small college town in central Pennsylvania. A year later, my family followed, moving to the same college town from outside of New York City. This was a town where the ethnic food started and stopped at Domino’s and a grease pit known as Tippy’s Taco House.
According to Chen’s nephew, Walter, his aunt and uncle were unable to find jobs in State College due to the recession of the early 1980s. So they decided to open a Chinese restaurant on a busy corner of town, with the help of Walter Chen’s father. They hired a chef from New York City, opened in July of 1983, and became an overnight success. They made Americanized Chinese food the way Americanized Chinese food should be, more flavorful and balanced than any restaurant I’ve found in New York or San Francisco or anywhere else.
Over the course of the next decade, the Golden Wok became my favorite restaurant anywhere in the world; even though the place is long gone, that’s still true. And someday, when Dave and I meet again, I’ll be sure to order the shrimp with chili sauce.
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U.L. Washington is the answer to the question: Who was on base when George Brett hit his famous "pine tar" home run.