The Draft (23 page)

“Well, can you tell me the whole truth now?”

Pressner took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think it's about time.”

*   *   *

He lit a cigarette. When it had burned about halfway down, he said, “I had the opportunity to make history and I blew it. When I first came into the league there were no black quarterbacks. None.” He emphasized the word by slicing his hand through the air horizontally. The cigarette drew a line of smoke above it. “But I was good, really good, and I knew it. I also knew a lot of people would have a problem with that. Not everyone was ready for a black quarterback back even in the '80s—coaches, owners, players. Some were okay with it, attitudes were changing. But not everyone's. I knew I was still facing an uphill battle. But I kept at it, working hard and doing everything right. I took my team to the Rose Bowl, and we won it thirty-four to ten.” Quincy smiled at this bright spot in his personal history. “I had a hell of a game that day. Threw for three hundred twenty-two yards and four touchdowns against the best defense in college that year. We tore through them like tissue paper.”

“It sounds great.”

“It
was
great. The guys carried me off the field like I was the hometown hero.” He ground the cigarette into the wood and went for another, pulling a deck of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket. “Anyway, in spite of a great senior year, the writers were saying I wouldn't be drafted until late in the first round, maybe not even until the second. Those bastards sure as hell didn't like the idea of a black quarterback being a starter in the pros. A big white boys' club is what they were, make no mistake. And I believed what they were saying. I thought for sure I'd go in the second round, maybe even the third.

“Then I get a call from Herb Schummer, the Rams' president, about a half hour before the draft begins. He tells me Artie Newhouse, one of the owners, wants to take me with the first pick.” Quincy looked to his son. “I thought it was a prank call, but it wasn't. Artie and Herb drafted me less than thirty minutes later. Next thing I knew I was being handed a Rams' uniform and a Rams' playbook, and carrying all their hopes into the future.”

“Wow.”

Quincy nodded. “It was a lot for a kid to handle. But Art and Herb believed in me. That was the key. They took a lot of heat from people who didn't want to see me succeed. They figured it was bad enough that I was drafted before all those white players, but to have me be the starter and maybe turn the team around, too? No way.”

“But that's exactly what happened, right?”

“At first. Artie and Herb wanted to win and decided to look past the fact that I was black. I was never sure if it bothered Herb anyway, but I know it didn't bother Artie. He was a rare breed—a multimillionaire conservative who didn't give a damn about race. All he wanted to do was win, and if you could help him do that, he wanted you. He and Herb treated me as good as they treated the white players. They knew I had a chip on my shoulder but they never made an issue out of it. I had all the same privileges, all the same perks.” He paused, blowing a lungful of smoke into the air. “They also gave me the same kind of fat contract any other number one pick would get … and that's where my problems started.”

“I don't understand.”

Quincy surveyed the field. “It was too much money for a kid to handle,” he said softly. “They didn't have money managers and personal advisors and all that stuff in those days. They just handed you a pile of cash. I didn't know what to do with it. I was a poor kid from the streets of Philly. My old man disappeared when I was nine, and my mama died three years later. I was raised by my Aunt Jean. You knew that, right?”

“I know a little bit about it.”

“I never had more than twenty bucks in my pocket in my life, and all of a sudden I've got four hundred thousand. That ain't a mouse turd compared to what they're paying out now, but back then it was a fortune. I had no idea what to do with a fortune. I put some of it in the bank for you, some of it in the bank for your mama so she'd have some spending money—she was just as poor as me when she was a kid—and the rest…” He shook his head in disgust. “The rest went to whores, booze, and dope.” He looked back at his son. “That's right. Your old man was a philanderer. Oh, I had it all—a big black Cadillac, fine threads, gold rings, sideburns. I even had a wide-brimmed hat with a damn feather sticking out of it. Shit, I looked more like a pimp than a quarterback.

“Your mama kept quiet about it at first. I think she was hoping it was just a phase I was going through. But then pictures started showing up in the papers and on TV. Pictures of me with other women, coming out of bars, a bottle in my hand.…” He held up his cigarette. “One of these hanging out of my mouth. That's when your mama decided she'd had enough. We had a lot of fights over it, and I was in denial the whole time. I was telling her the reporters were making more out of it than it really was, but they weren't. You get sucked into that world. You never control it—it controls you. And your mama didn't want any part of it. Not long after you were born, she left, dropped my last name and everything. She didn't want you growing up in that world. I pretended I was angry at first, but all I was really interested in was the next joint or the next drink. I couldn't help it—I was hooked.”

“Didn't Art Newhouse or Herb Schummer say anything?”

Quincy laughed. “Herb didn't say much, but Artie did. Maybe he didn't give a damn what color you were, which is why I loved him, but he sure as hell didn't like you boozin' and dopin'. He'd had a strict Catholic upbringing, all fire and brimstone. He wasn't a Bible-thumping lunatic, but he was close. He tried to warn me away from what I was doing, and I knew he was speaking from the heart. But I didn't listen. I was too cocky. I was creating magic on the field, breaking all sorts of records and turning the team around. By my second year we won fourteen regular season games.
Sports Illustrated
ran that long article on me, and I was being interviewed on TV every week. I was the hottest dude around, and I knew it. I figured I could get away with anything because I was getting results.

“But like I said, there were still a lot of people in the league who didn't like the idea of a black hotshot quarterback, and those people got together and decided to take me down. I know that sounds paranoid, but you got to remember the world was a different place back then. There was still a lot of that white supremacy shit around. And to be honest with you, I wasn't helping my cause very much. People were saying blacks were only interested in drinkin' and dopin' and gettin' laid, and that was exactly what I was doing. The NFL tried to maintain a clean public image, and here I was stumbling around drunk in the streets with a woman under each arm, neither of whom was my wife.” He shook his head again and flicked the dead cigarette over the rusted fence. “I was a real piece of work.”

“You were young. You didn't know any better,” Raymond said.

Quincy shook his head. “Yeah, and I paid a big price for it. Guys started roughing me up on the field, taking the penalties for late hits and stuff like that. I think they figured if I got hurt, I wouldn't be quite so valuable any more, and then I wouldn't be able to get away with everything else. Man, the hits I took back then.…” He rotated his right arm and grimaced. “I took a shot from a Chiefs' linebacker that dislocated my shoulder. They popped it back into place on the sidelines, and I screamed like a little girl. I never knew such pain.”

“Is that why you stopped playing?”

“No, I hung in there. All they did by pushing me around was make me more determined than ever. I got tougher and played better. And that made me even cockier. I partied more, and I caused more trouble. I started speaking out to the press, criticizing people, which they definitely did not appreciate. They still don't tolerate it, but they were really against it back then. But I figured I was indestructible. Nothing could touch me. And then came Judgment Day—December twenty-fourth, 1988. A date I'll remember it if I live to be a million years old.…”

He shook a third cigarette from the pack and positioned it between his lips. “We were playing the Redskins in the first round of the playoffs. They were damn good. But I knew we could beat them, so I went out the night before, prowling around like a tomcat in spite of Coach Jessel's orders to stay in and rest up. I was hung over and feeling like crap.

“I came to the stadium early because this kid who worked for the league, Bobby Cartwright, called and asked me to. I didn't know him, but I knew he was part of the inner circle, so I wasn't about to say no.

“I get there before anyone else and go down to the locker rooms. Newley wasn't there, but three other guys were. I'd never seen them before. One was small and fat, dressed in a gray suit. He was, as it turns out, one of the silent partners in the Rams' ownership. The other two wore dark suits. One of the dark suits was older than the fat dude, the other looked like he was fresh out of college. They were all white and they all looked pissed. The moment I saw them I knew I was in trouble…”

The heavyset man motions for Quincy to come toward him. “Mr. Pressner, can we have a word with you?”

“What's this about?”

“Come on in here. We want to talk to you for a moment.”

He puts his arm around the big black man—around his waist because he can't reach his shoulders—and leads him into the showers. One of the heads is dripping, the drops ticking off the minutes on the tiled floor. When they stop, each man takes a different position, surrounding Pressner. The two dark suits fold their hands together at the crotch and bear down on him with their eyes. The other man puts one hand in his pocket and the other to his lips in a pose of deep reflection.

“Mr. Pressner, I'll get right to the point—we've received some complaints about you.”

“What kind of complaints?”

“Complaints about drugs, alcohol, and prostitutes.”

Pressner's eyes go from man to man. “Who are you guys? Who sent you?”

“Don't worry about who we are,” the same man replies. Quincy realizes he's the head of this little nest of serpents and thus the one who will do most of the talking. “That's not important. What's important is the league. There are a lot of people working very hard to keep its image clean, and frankly you're not helping with your behavior.”

“My behavior? What I do off the field is my business, understand?”

The dark suits suddenly look uncomfortable, but the gray suit is unfazed. He tilts his head back and evaluates Pressner carefully, as if trying to guess his age or exact height. Then one of the other men sweeps back the flaps of his jacket and puts his hands on his hips. As he does, a Browning 9mm handgun is revealed. Pressner realizes the gesture was intentional.

“No, Mr. Pressner, what you do off the field isn't just your business,” the heavyset man continues. “What you do off the field is everyone's business, because it affects everyone in
this
business. Do
you
understand?”

Pressner doesn't answer, and in spite of the gun he has no intention to.

“A lot of people have tried to be reasonable with you. You've been asked to keep your drinking under control. You've been asked to keep your womanizing quiet. And you've been asked to lay off the dope. But you don't listen. You seem to think you can do anything you want, anytime you want, just because you're a star.”

“Other guys dope and drink. I've seen them. But you don't bother them because they're white.”

“Take it easy,” the older of the dark suits says, nudging Pressner with a long, bony finger. He's much older than Pressner originally thought.

“Mr. Pressner,” the fat one continues, “we don't want any trouble. We're just here to deliver a message, that's all.”

“Yeah? What message?”

“It's time for you to step down.”

“Step down?”

“That's right. Walk away, hang it up. Call it whatever you want. It's time for you to go away, Mr. Pressner. You won't play along, so you've become too much of a risk.”

“To who?”

“Mr. Pressner…”

“If you think I'm going to throw away my career, you're out of your fucking mind.”

“Mr. Pressner?”

“You can kiss my ass if you think—”

The man with the gun reaches into his jacket, and Pressner stops. The man doesn't pull out the weapon, however. Instead he retrieves a small envelope.

“Have a look at these.”

Inside, Pressner finds a collection of photographs. They were taken at different times and in different places. Some are of him alone, others are with friends or prostitutes. In all of them he's either snorting coke or using a needle.

“Those would be very hard to explain to your wife, Mr. Pressner. Or the media.” Then the fat man smiles. “Or a prosecutor.”

Pressner looks at the other dark suits. They're smiling, too.

“You're a bunch of fucking parasites.”

“No, we're doing our job.” The man takes the photos back and replaces them in his jacket pocket. “Try to remember, Mr. Pressner—the good of the league. So what's it going to be? You can go to jail for a long time, or you can walk away at the end of this season by declining to sign a new contract, and keep your money and the warm memories of your brief but spectacular career.…”