Some Things Can Never Be Forgotten. . .
Like Kentucky's Winston Bennett III
Wnston Bennett III and things. There has always been a mystical presence about Kentucky's mahogany hunk of a forward. Strong, steady, dependable, but grim. I remember three summers ago when Winston agreed to take time out of his
Bob Watkins
Cats' Pause Columnist
summer to travel to Elizabethtown and be part of the Heartland Festival. Before going out to a local park to meet the many kids and parents who are UK fans, Winston, his father Winston Jr. and I sat down for lunch together. It was a perfect time to talk about the weather, the baseball season, fishing. An occasion for, "what's happening this summer. Winston''"
But Winston III. clad in his basketball sweats from having played for the U.S. team in the World Games in Taipei, Taiwan, sat quietly. He ordered a steak and potatoes as if it were the Last Supper.
I used to think Winston Ill's grim countenance was just city-tough bravado, part of an adopted macho image acquired in battles down at the dirt bowl, or in the dingy gym over on Brook Street at Male High School in Louisville.
It made good press too. Bennett's "I ain't happy till I win" approach has fascinated fans, made opponents quake, made his coaches chortle, and made sportswriters nervous.
Unswerving, uncompromising, he has overcome the frustrations of zero-for-four tries at the Final Four, come back from knee surgery, and kept his head (and game) this season when those around him were losing theirs.
His goals remained in sharp focus. Patriotic-types like that sort of resolve.
Without compromise Winston III has labored to be the very best he can be at what he does at this time in his life, play basketball.
"Winston's always been intense, but the last few weeks he's been even more so," Coach Eddie Sutton before the Villanova game last week. "I think he's playing his best basketball since I've been here."
Yes. Winston III averaged 17 points in each of UK's eight games up to the Villanova one. But even that is deceiving because his points have come like "home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning." a knockout punch in the 15th when the team was "behind on all cards."
Winston III has been a wonderful player in the clutch, in the crunch. A money player.
But Winston Ill's great stone face has remained, a kind of badge, like when UK quarterback Bill Ransdell carved UK into the hair of his temples. We all thought it was weird, but somehow it was cool too.
Maybe in his youth Bennett saw Sonny Liston on television and liked the image portrayed by the menacing heavyweight boxing champion who. in the 1950s, wore a scowl better than any man I ever saw. He made opponents quake with it and boxed Floyd Patterson's glass chin, but never smiled before or after.
Make em quake, that was Liston's credo. It is Winson Ill's also.
I've seen reporters stroll into the Kentucky locker room at Rupp Arena, then "stand back" while interviewing Winston III. And he always gets the "soft" questions.
If Bennett's countenance were put into colors it would be tan on brown, or maybe the color of Kentucky hills at dusk. A pose? Strictly background. Leave the glamor and flash to Rex and Eddie, leave the smiles to Winston II, his Dad.
Winning. That's what Winston Bennett is all about.
Strong, steady, grim. He will be remembered as one of the finest and most admired and respected basketball players ever at Kentucky.
Shooting stars
Remember when Roy Hobbs hit a home run in his last at bat in the motion picture The Satural? The music and sparks and joyous faces, how it all made you feel?
How about Gene Hackman's expression when the winning shot swished in Hoosiers? Hickory High School was king of the world and for a few seconds, we were there in Butler Fieldhouse too.
Or. how about when Rex Chapman rises up for one of his best blue ribbon jump shots from the three-line as the numbers count down to zero on the game clock.
Oh. what a feeling. Right people, right moment, right mix. Boom!
Everyone hopes to look up one dark night and see the shooting star, but usually it's gone by then and we are left with someone saying, "hey, didja see that? It was great!"
Shooting stars don't come often, but they can be worth the wait.
It happened last month in a cover story for Sports Illustrated, (Mar. 21) called A Player For The Ages. Larry Bird and Frank Deford got together for a few days, and it is a terrific combination, the Hick from French Lick, better known around the NBA as "Larry." spending time with an urbane and perceptive wordmaster from Up East, known around sports as Deford. Heavyweight on heavyweight.
Through Deford's penetrating narrative we see flesh and bones Larry Bird, not always dressed out in white and green shorts running the parquet floor and not always the safe millionaire celebrity either.
When he was a kid Bird once crawled under the porch at his grandma's house and imagined he had found a million dollars in cash. Years later he would tell Deford he had found his million "and a little more to go with it." _
By the mid-1970s, after he quit Indiana University and went home, Larry Bird worked for the city in French Lick, on a garbage truck.
"I loved that job." he tells Deford. "It was outdoors. You were around your friends. Picking up brush, cleaning up. I felt like I was accomplishing something."
The article is a poignant view of one of America's most recognizable celebs who was once a mixed up, messed up kid from rural America and how he has met success. Bird still thumbs his nose at plastic people, clubbies and pretentiousness. Deford writes about the time agent Bob Woolf telephoned Bird at home two summers ago saying he had some important business.
"I have three things," Woolf said when Bird came to the phone. "Derek Bok, the president of Harvard would like you to address the freshmen class this fall."
"No."
"Sports Illustrated wants you to pose for a cover." "No."
Life Magazine wants to do a photo essay on you, but you won't have to pose. The photographer will..."
"No." Pause. "Mr. Woolf. I thought you told me this was an important call."
Winston Bennett: Strong, Steady, Grim. . .And Always A Winner
That's Larry Bird.
And this is too: Larry's kid brother Eddie is a sophomore at Indiana State where he plays basketball for the Sycamores. Big brother bought little brother a Jeep to get around in. but when Eddie scored a 'D' in one of his courses, back went the Jeep. He will get it back, when the 'D' is gone.
"If money isn't going to change Larry Bird, Larry Bird doesn't see why his money should change anybody else, either," Deford writes.
But. it a later passage in Deford's piece that I thought particularly relevant to those who treasure their rural roots, home communities sometimes to the brink of being snobs about it.
"I think when you grow up in a small town you learn better to weed out the good and the bad." Bird says. "There's always going to be a lot of petty jealousy in a small town. If you understand that and I always have you can learn better to make your own judgements."
Adds (heavyweight) Deford, "The hard part, Bird seems bent on proving, isn't that you can't go home again. The hard part is showing the ones who never left that the best part of you never left either."
Sparkle.
A Player For The Ages is a thoughtful peek into Larry Bird. It is also a wonderful