In 1961 when Jack Kerouac's novel, "On The Road" was on the best seller list, I found out he was living on Long Island, in Northport, with his mother. I knew he had a sports background, that he had played high school football in Lowell, Mass. and had won a scholarship to Columbia, so I got in touch with him. He told me about a card baseball game he had conceived and we made a date for me to go out to Northport to play the game. His mother lived in a unprepossessing Cape Cod house on a quiet street in Northport. You couldn't imagine a more unlikely setting for the man associated in many minds at that time as the king of the beatniks. Keouac actually was a more conservative and traditionally-minded guy than most people would have imagined. We sat down in his living room, with his mother clucking in on occasion to scold him about being neat. We played while sipping and finishing off a large bottle of Petri wine. The game consisted of cardboards on which Kerouac fashioned the various actions of a baseball game-single, double, strikeout, double play, stolen base, caught stealing and the like. The fascination for me was the imaginative world of colorful characters Kerouac had created, and he mouthed a sort of play-by-play, sketching in their backgrounds as we played. He had wonderous players. There were:
I was taken with the name of Burlingame Japes, who Kerouac said "was 40 years old, a little left-hander who in his younger days was the league-base-stealing champ. I put him in for Joe Boston who broke his leg sliding and who wasn't helping the team anyway." Kerouac explained that the name Burlingame came from a town just south of San Francisco. I managed the Pittsburgh Browns, who beat Kerouac's Chicage Blues, 9-3. I was not accustomed to an afternoon of sipping wine, let alone the cheap stuff, and I was a bit woozy when I left the shaggy author late in the afternoon. But, as I wrote at the time, "It was a good game." That column led to some conversations recorded in this column. December 24: Two Stories Waking Up the Echoes Jack Kerouac, the novelist who died last month, was an outstanding high school football player in Lowell, Mass. He was recruited by coach Lou Little and went to Columbia on a football scholarship. He figured to be an outstanding halfback, but his career ended abruptly when he broke his ankle in his second game with the freshman team.
Some 20 years later, Kerouac published his first novel, "On The Road," which established him as the so-called high priest of the Beat Generation. The book made No. 1 on the best-seller list. I saw Kerouac at about that time and we talked about his days as an athlete. He recalled Lou Little. A little afterward I met Little at a football game. I told him I had seen Kerouac, who had asked to be remembered to him. Little said, "Kerouac. . .oh, yes, a good boy. He would have been a fine football player if he hadn't got hurt. Say, what is he doing now?" And then there were Brud Holland and Mike Burke. Holland is now president of Hampton Institute; Burke is president of the New York Yankees. Both were outstanding football players of the late 1930s. Holland was an All-America end at Cornell, Burke was a star back with Penn. In those days Cornell and Penn were among the football powerhouses of the land. Burke generally isn't one to talk about his exploits as an athlete. But one day recently the subject got around to football and what a great player Brud Holland had been. Burke agreed that Holland was outstanding. "I remember him very well, because I had one of my bettter games against Cornell," Burke said." It was in 1938 when Cornell was undefeated and stood out as the No. 1 team in the country. Penn had lost one game as we went into our traditional last game with Cornell, so you can imagine it was a big game. "We had Cornell well scouted and we worked hard all week on getting ready for them. As I recall, it was a tough, hard game. Neither team could get an edge and it was scoreless going into the fourth quarter. "In the last quarter, Cornell made two strong moves. Each time they lined up in a formation which tipped off it would be a deep pass to Holland. I played safety and recognized the play. Each time I moved over, cut across in front of Holland and intercepted the pass. It helped save the tie for Penn. The game ended scoreless. "I always recall the game, partly because Holland was such a great end. He was a splendid man, too. One of the first black players to gain All America recognition. He's gone on to a fine career. He's recently written a fine book called, 'Black Opportunity.' " At the recent National Football Hall of Fame dinner I had occasion to run into Holland, who ws among the invited ex-immortals. I introduced myself and told him that I knew a little about him because Mike Burke had told me about that big Cornell-Penn tie. I asked if he remembered Burke coming up with two interceptions. Holland, a big, impressive man with a hearty voice, laughed and said, "Oh, yes, I remember it quite well. Mike Burke was a fine football player, a fine fellow." He paused a moment and then asked, "Say, what is he doing now?"
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Life is a shit sandwich and every day you got to take another bite. |
19. The Sporting Culture 
