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I wrote two columns on O.J. Simpson that year. In neither of them is there even the barest hint of the momentous developments of his later travails. I covered Simpson later when he was a sportscaster and I was doing a media sports column for Newsday. At least once I criticized him for being a soft interviewer. He accepted the criticism without any anger. I later found out that as a Buffalo Bill player he responded to a rap by a Buffalo sports reporter by pinning him up against a locker and letting him hang there for some time. When Simpson's murder trial became a national obsession, there was this footnote: At the Downtown Athletic Club, the sponsors and home of the Heisman Award, there is a room in which oil paintings of all the Heisman winners are hung. There is a blank space on one wall with the outline of the frame that once held the picture of Heisman Award winner O.J. Simpson. January 29: Can Simpson Save Buffalo from Buffalo? One of the slick magazines ran a piece a few years ago on the dull-dreary cities of the country. Outposts like Baltimore, Fort Wayne, Cleveland and Buffalo. The editors aimed to tell their swinging readers how to spend two days and two nights in each of the these towns without having to go go a movie. The twist was that when the bon vivant got to Buffalo, he lasted through only a day-and-a-half of hitting the high spots and then gave up. He said, "Ah, the hell with it; you better go to a movie." The people of Buffalo have learned to live with jokes. They now raise their drinks — screwdrivers called "O.J.s" — on high in the hope that they can look forward to a brave new world in which Buffalo takes its place in the union without any accompaning titters. Yesterday, as expected, Buffalo took possession of O.J. Simpson in the slave chattel trade known as the pro football draft. Shortly after noon a representative of the Bills exercised Buffalo's first choice in the draft by writing Simpson's name on a small white card. Pro foootball commissioner Pete Rozelle called out Simpson's name and, in Buffalo, Bills owner Ralph Wilson put a call through to Simpson at his apartment near the University of Southern California campus. Wilson said, "After I told him we had drafted him, the first thing he said was, 'How's the weather up there?' I told him, 'Beyootiful,' and I hadn't even looked out the window." The weather. That's one of the Buffalo jokes. Like, "They have two seasons in Buffalo: winter and the fourth of July." The wags also say, "I went to Buffalo the other day and it was out to lunch." Or they use variations borrowed from Baltimore and others, like "I went to Buffalo the other day and it was closed." When the astronauts described the moon as a barren, desolate place where no human was fit to live, somebody said, "They must have been looking at Buffalo." And there's the line Jim Bouton first used for Clevland: "Buffalo is the kind of town that if you're going to have a plane crash, you are better off having it going in." Simpson is almost unanimously regarded as the best pro prospect ever to be made available in the draft. There doesn't seem to be any real doubt that he will make a handsome pro football hero. The larger question, though, is whether he is truly big enough to turn all those Buffalo jokes around. Let us consider Buffalo for a moment. When a few Buffalo residents were asked to name famous Buffalonians (Buffalonians? That can't be right) of all time, nobody seemed able to come up with anybody but a sports figure. The one settled on as No. 1 was Cookie Gilchrist, the Bills fullback and odd character. Mention also was made of the fact that President McKinley was assasinated in Buffalo, which was in keeping with the image. And then came an outlander who trumpeted a very special distinction for the city. Buffalo stands as the longtime home of former President Millard Fillmore. That may be the ten-strike of all. Fillmore was the 13th President, taking office after the death of Zachary Taylor. There happens to be at this time an argument about Fillmore's worth. Many people long have regarded Fillmore as the most obscure of all Presidents (again the Bufflao influence?), but a new group has taken up the cudgels for Fillmore in another area. The group is the Fillmore Society of Cambridge, Mass. The society sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times book section this week in which it took exception with a Times book review because it had called Warren Gamaliel Harding the worst President of all time. The Fillmore Society, which had the ring of Harvard hijinx about it, spoke up for its man Millard. The Fillmoreans pointed out that he was elevated to the Presidency and then when he ran on his own he lost every state but Maryland. They wrote, "We feel that the mantle of absolute failure as President must be placed upon more deserving shoulders than Harding's. Harding must not be too freely elevated to the pedestal of worst President when the alternative of Millard Fillmore stands out so clearly. To deny Fillmore his rightful place is to refuse to honor a man who was of the greatest stature and worth in all things but competence. In the first rush of joy at bringing Simpson to Buffalo the owner of the Bills announced, "We intend to play him." Wilson said that Gary McDermott, who has the No. 32 Simpson wore at USC, had already volunteered to give up his number to Simpson. "And McDermott doesn't even known he's volunteered, yet," Wilson said. Bills' publicity man Jack Horrigan added, "Acutally, we'll give O.J. any number he wants, as long as it's on a Buffalo Bills uniform." Simpson will haggle and bargain a little. Then, after appropriate space and nonsense has attended that charade, he will sign. He will be given No. 32. And he'll go forth to do battle for the Bills and for Buffalo. Watch out, O.J., the spirit of Millard Fillmore may be watching.
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Pancho Still Hears Cheers of Wimbledon 
