The Outsider: A Memoir Read online

  “There you go, Jimmy. Go try it out with your mom,” says Pop.

  Mom hits a soft ball to me. I take an easy swing, just to get the feel of the new racquet. Whoa, what happened there? It felt like an electric shock. The racquet jerks out of my hand and the ball flies a mile over the back fence. Over the afternoon I manage to feel comfortable, then, suddenly, ZING, the next one shoots off incredibly fast, as if off a trampoline. It takes me four or five months to master that racquet, in which time I lose to virtually everyone I play. It doesn’t matter; I know I have something special in my hands. That first T2000 takes a beating over the weeks and months as my frustration gets the better of me, but I’m determined to stick it out.

  Because of the open throat on the racquet, there is little wind resistance when the ball comes off the strings. Once I get used to the speed I can generate, I realize I can make shots I found impossible before. And because it’s strung with more tension than my wooden racquets, I can hit with more power. It fits in my hand like it’s molded to my fingers, and I also like the way it looks: silver and modern, different from the rest. What was it about me, even back then, that didn’t want to be like everybody else?

  For a while I was the only kid in any of the tournaments who showed up with the T2000. Slowly, other guys started to give it a try. I liked watching them and knowing they would never have the patience to master that racquet. And I wasn’t about to give away any secrets. I loved that racquet so much that I slept with it. Seriously.

  In 1965, we moved to a nicer neighborhood in Belleville. Some of my dad’s contacts in the construction business built us a house on Gerold Lane. It was OK with Mom; her gravel court had done its job and sentiment had no role to play in the decision.

  For me, the move brought a new set of friends. Johnny and I spent a lot of time at the Dorchester Swim Club, swimming, playing Ping-Pong, and eating the best fried-fish sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. The place attracted a big group of kids and sometimes there would be some trouble. Nothing too serious, a smashed window, a few fights, the usual mischief.

  On the road to East St. Louis from Belleville, near our old grade school, there was a viaduct known as the “rat hole.” Johnny and his friends would meet guys from different areas and, as Johnny used to say, “there were a lot of broken noses.” Johnny used to enjoy that kind of thing, and he was good at it.

  “I can take a punch,” Johnny used to say to me. “After seeing what Mom went through, nothing scares me and nothing hurts. They can hit me with a baseball bat and I know it can’t be as bad as what she endured. I can get back up.”

  He built up quite a reputation for himself as a guy who loved to fight, which sometimes came in handy for me.

  Now, you have to understand, looking for trouble back then was not a high priority, even though that may have changed later on in my life. But, at the time, I had all the tension I could handle just fighting with myself while I was playing tennis.

  I had already made a bit of a name for myself in grade school and high school by winning tournaments and getting written up in the papers. I was at a high school dance and some guy decided to start giving me a hard time. He was talking shit and shoving me when suddenly Johnny turns up. He gives the guy a look.

  “I understand you want to take my brother outside,” Johnny says to him. “You know, I’ve never had respect for a guy who wanted to go outside.”

  He shut right up; Johnny’s reputation had preceded him.

  Johnny turned to me. “Jimmy, now haul off and let him have it.”

  I looked at Johnny like he was nuts.

  “Jimmy, if you don’t let him have it, I’m going to beat his ass,” Johnny said. “Then I’m going to beat your ass for not punching him.”

  What choice did I have? So we went at it. What the hell. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. That wasn’t the last time I ever mixed it up.

  I didn’t have as much freedom as Johnny during that time. When we moved to Gerold Lane, it took another half an hour, depending on the traffic, to get to the armory. Since we were still seen as outsiders, the only court time we could book would be first thing in the morning or just before they closed, which meant going to bed early on Friday night so we could be up by 6 the next morning. It was an early lesson in discipline. If I wanted to spend time with my friends I still had to get up at dawn and play tennis. After that, the rest of the day was mine to do what I wanted.

  Once we moved, Mom had to find a way to supplement our income. Traveling to tournaments and staying at hotels didn’t come cheap, and the lessons she gave at the armory didn’t cover it. She found a job coaching at the Triple A Club, in Forest Park, St. Louis, where her hours were flexible enough during the summer so that she could still come on the road with me.

  I was 15 when I won a set from my mom for the first time.

  We’re in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for the boys’ under-16 national championship. I’m playing a practice set with Mom, playing like we always do; she never gives an inch and I never want her to. Today the Tiger Juices are flowing hard. It’s a tight set, match point to me, and I make a passing shot that Mom can’t reach. I win.

  Upset, I run to the net, crying, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  Mom smiles.

  “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” she says. “Now I know you’re ready to move on.”

  My childhood in tennis is over. I win my first major title at that tournament in Kalamazoo, to become the best player in my age group. Yet the one set that sticks in my mind is the set I took from Mom.

  I had been away from home for a few weeks leading up to the nationals, so when the tournament was over I headed back to Belleville straight from Michigan. I telephoned Johnny from the airport to find out if he would be home. He congratulated me and told me to meet him at a bar to celebrate. He said they had a new game they called foosball and he wanted me to come and watch him play.

  When I got to the bar, Johnny was at the foosball table with his friend Mike and they were destroying these two guys who were getting really pissed. I could tell things were about to turn ugly. When Johnny scored the goal to win yet another game, one of the guys got up in his face.

  “You’re a fucking cheater, you little shit. You lifted the table.”

  “Fuck you. It’s bolted to the floor. Who do you think I am, Hercules? Or are you too stupid to know who that is?”

  The punches started to fly. It was crazy in there and not someplace I wanted to be. I hit the floor and crawled out, leaving Johnny in his element. He’d chosen his path and I had chosen mine.

  Mom knew she had taken my game as far as she could for now and decided it was time for me to take the next step in my tennis education. When the professional circuit came to St. Louis, Mom and Two-Mom took me to meet one of its stars, Pancho Segura. Mom knew Pancho from her days playing tennis back in the 1940s. According to Pancho, he had tried to “romance” Mom. In fact, he’d had a rival at the time, Jimmy Evert, Chrissie’s father, but neither guy had any success with her. My mom was a good Catholic girl, barely in her twenties, and had no interest in a relationship, but Pancho later told me he’d gotten pretty close during a tournament in Mexico City. There was a group of players in a hotel room and Pancho thought Mom might be giving in to his charms. Just then, they heard noises coming from the next room, where the actor Gilbert Roland was getting busy with some young woman. It spooked Mom and that was it for Pancho. His romantic hopes crashed and burned then and there.

  Mom had always admired Pancho’s game. In the pre-Open days of the 1940s and ’50s, Pancho was one of the best players of his generation. Throughout his professional career, he was never out of the world’s top five, claiming the number one spot in 1952, the year I was born.

  Pancho should never have made it as a tennis player. He was only 5'6", slender, with bowed legs from a bout of rickets he had suffered as a child. He was brought up in extreme poverty in Ecuador, the oldest of nine kids living on an annual income of $2,000 that their father brought
in from his job as a caretaker of a tennis club. Pancho earned a handful of change as a ball boy at the club, then fought his way to the very top of the professional game in the United States, winning the US Pro Tennis Championships for three years running. In 1950, he beat Jack Kramer in the semis, followed by Frank Kovacs, and then in the finals in 1951 and 1952, he overcame Pancho Gonzales, one of the greatest players of all time.

  When I first met Pancho Segura, he had been retired from the circuit for several years, and was coaching at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, in LA, but he still made appearances in professional tournaments from time to time, which was why he was in St. Louis in 1967.

  We met on a hotel balcony, where Pancho was doing a photo shoot. I barely said a word as Mom and Two-Mom discussed my future with him.

  “Pancho, my son has some talent. I want you to take a look at him.”

  I remember peering out from behind Two-Mom and seeing Pancho roll his eyes. He’d heard it all before, many times. But this was Gloria Thompson and he would do anything for her.

  “OK, if you want to send your son to train with me, that’s fine. Let’s see what he’s got.”

  Later that day, Mom asked me what I thought about living in California. Since I hated my high school, Assumption High, a Catholic school run by a bunch of tough Brothers I couldn’t relate to—I’ll leave it at that—I took about two seconds to answer.

  “California? Sure, Mom.”

  “If that’s what you want, then let’s go for it.”

  What was it that Pancho saw in me? Why did he agree to take me on? I wasn’t even going to be the highest-ranked kid he worked with. I was number four in the country, which was pretty good, but Pancho already had the number one, 18-year-old Erik Van Dillen. Why did he think I’d outplay all those other guys? I’ve asked him about this many times over the years, over many beers. His answer is always the same.

  “Jimbo, I loved your pride. You were born to be a champion. I could see you had big balls. And you were coachable.”

  Pride mattered to Pancho. He had fought hard to get to where he was. I think he also saw something of himself in me.

  “You were like a deer running around that court, Jimbo, reacting fast, chasing down every ball, a showman who would excite people. You made me smile.”

  At 15 years old, my game was still raw, but Pancho identified two shots that he believed were better than anything he’d seen before.

  “Your first-serve return, no one saw it but me. I knew as you grew stronger it would become the best in tennis. But your backhand—that was the difference. It barely cleared the net with pace, and by the time the other guy had a chance to react, it was too late. That draws a short ball, which is the secret of the game.”

  Mom and I went to Beverly Hills and I hit a few tennis balls with Pancho. In the summer of 1968, I moved to California for good. And nothing would ever be the same again.

  4

  LOSE LIKE A MAN, WIN LIKE A MAN

  I want to go home.

  It’s late summer and I’m a million miles from East St. Louis, not even 16 years old, and I feel completely out of my element. At home I was seen as a little weird, running around in white tennis shorts, playing a game that was still reserved for rich kids with country-club backgrounds, but at least I knew the place and the people. Now Mom, Two-Mom, Pop, and I are sitting in Ships, a diner on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. I open the menu and the first thing I see is a veggie burger and a soy smoothie. I don’t think we’re in East St. Louis any more, Toto. Do I really belong here?

  Mom and I, arrived in the morning from St. Louis. We had taken a taxi from the airport to the Del Capri hotel, but Two-Mom and Pop had driven all the way from Illinois in my 1967 maroon Corvette. For years afterward they’d talk about how they arrived in LA with the top down, like Hollywood stars. Man, they loved that.

  I’d bought that used ’Vette earlier in the summer for $2,600, money I had saved from helping Johnny out in the tollbooth and part-time jobs I picked up whenever I had time. I spent a couple of winters at a gas station and did other odd jobs: shoveling snow, raking leaves, and mowing lawns. I’d do anything to put money toward that car.

  “Why don’t you want to stay, Jimmy?” Mom asks.

  “I miss my dog. I miss Johnny. I don’t think I can do this.”

  “All right, I understand,” she says. “We can arrange a flight home, but since we’re here, why don’t you and Pop take the car and go exploring.” Mom always knew how to play me.

  She takes a map out of her purse and spreads it on the table.

  “Look,” she says, pointing, “that’s the LA Tennis Club, and here’s the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, where Pancho teaches. Why don’t you and Pop go take a look if you feel like it?”

  What Mom understands—and what I don’t—is that in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, unlike in East St. Louis, tennis is hot.

  Pop and I were gone most of the day. We just got in the car and drove. We were looking for the tennis clubs but got distracted by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood sign, and Sunset Boulevard, sights I knew only from the local news in East St. Louis. By the end of the day we’d put some miles on the car and become familiar with my new stomping grounds. I had told Mom we’d be back by dark, in time for dinner, and when we got to the hotel, Mom and Two-Mom were excited to hear about how our day went.

  “I’m not leaving,” I announced. “No way. I’m staying.”

  And that’s how my life changed forever.

  We stayed at the hotel for three days, cruising around the city and having fun. Then Pop went back home on the train and Mom, Two-Mom, and I looked around for an apartment. The plan was for them to stay with me and help me settle in; they would then go back to Belleville and leave me on my own for a while. Every now and then one or both of them would come back for a week to make sure I was under control. Never a problem, of course, for a 16-year-old living on his own in LA . . . I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

  My first apartment was clean, cheap, and on the third floor. We realized the mistake after the first week; I came in one day and saw Two-Mom leaning against the wall on the second-floor landing, wheezing. I’d never seen that before.

  “You OK, Two-Mom?” I asked.

  She looked a little embarrassed. “It’s nothing, Jimbo.” (She was the only one who could call me Jimbo without permission.) “Just a little out of breath from walking up those stairs too fast. I’m fine.”

  As we took the last flight of stairs together I noticed Two-Mom gently rubbing her chest. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I wish I had.

  We managed to get out of the apartment lease and find a new place on Wilshire Boulevard, a two-bedroom on the ground floor that was five minutes from Rexford High, my new school, five minutes from the Beverly Hills Tennis Club and five minutes from the courts at UCLA. The only problem was the rent, $400 a month.

  “We’ll manage, Jimmy,” Mom said. And somehow we did. When Mom was in LA, she coached tennis and waited tables at Nibblers Restaurant, on Wilshire. To help us out, Pop would send me $20 from his Social Security check every month. But I knew I’d have to find a way to make some money with tennis.

  Pancho got me enrolled in Rexford High School in the same class as his son Spencer, who was my age. It was as far away as you could get from Assumption High in East St. Louis. The kids at Rexford were either really rich, like the Hiltons, or showbiz prodigies, like David Cassidy.

  Los Angeles in the late 1960s was a hotbed for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. If you wanted it, you could have it—whatever it was.

  “What’s that shit?” I asked Spencer the first time I saw a table lined with white powder at a high school party. “Sugar?”

  Cocaine was pretty tame compared with the other stuff that was going around. Back home, my buddies might sneak some Ripple or Mogen David grape (my favorite wine), but here guys were smoking, and snorting God knows what.

  I was growing up fast. Some of the lessons I learned were pretty ha
rsh. One day a guy in school OD’d right in front of me, in the school parking lot, at 10:15 in the morning. I don’t know what he was on—LSD? heroin?—but he just collapsed and went into convulsions. I watched him flopping around like a fish and foaming at the mouth, and that told me all I needed to know about drugs. I didn’t want any part of them. I got in my car and took off for the tennis courts. Mom had worked too hard to provide me with opportunities that didn’t exist in East St. Louis. It might lead to a career or to college, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to screw things up.

  I knew I had two choices. I could take advantage of everything that was offered to me and get as much out of it as possible, or I could be a half-assed prick and end up back in Illinois. I wasn’t going back. The other kids could get their highs from drugs, but I would find mine on the court.

  Spencer Segura felt the same way. In the beginning he must’ve thought of me as a redneck pushed on him by his father—a kid straight out of the Midwest with a corncob up his butt. In fact, his friends used to call me “cornpone,” but soon Spencer and I became like brothers. When Mom or Two-Mom weren’t around, Spencer and Pancho were my family. Before I even got to California, Pancho had told Spencer that he thought I was going to be “the next great player.” I don’t know how I would’ve reacted to this if I had been Spencer, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He was a good player in his own right and would join the professional tennis circuit in the 1970s, but he never saw me as a rival. We had the same goals, the same attitudes, and the same work ethic. We both had hardworking fathers who weren’t around much when we were young, and although we had a lot of fun with other friends at school, we always knew we were different. And best of all, Spencer knew the LA scene and helped me adjust to my new life.

  I had four classes a semester and the arrangement was that I’d go to school from 8:15 a.m. until the nutrition break at 10:15, when I would escape to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. As for getting through school, let’s just say I got there. I graduated, even with my reading issues and attention-deficit problems. I could play five hours of tennis without losing my concentration, but I still couldn’t read five pages of a schoolbook.