BIRMINGHAM, Alabama. Charles Barkley's revelation that he's lost $10 million gambling over the years has led to an outpouring of support in his hometown, where locals point to the good he's done for numerous charities.
Barkley and Doolin
"He's one of our biggest supporters," says Children's Hospital CEO Mack Doolin, M.D. "We're going to stick with him until he gets this thing licked. He just needs to learn how to set limits," says Doolin, who has counseled others with addictions.
And so Doolin is at Barkley's side as he enters Leeds Elementary School to participate in "Spring Fling", a fund-raiser for its PTO. "It's a baby step," says Barkley, "but I've got to start out small."
Barkley draws a crowd of excited fans as he steps up to the Wheel O' Fun, where fifty cents entitles a player to a spin for a toy or stuffed animal. "Fifty thousand on the red," Barkley says before Doolin can intervene. "One ticket at a time, Charles," he says, and the man known as "The Round Mound of Rebound" during his playing days with the Sixers, Suns and Rockets agrees.
"Okay," Barkley says sheepishly before laying down two quarters and winning a noisemaker that makes an annoying "clackety-clack" sound. "I'm gonna shake this baby in Trey Wingo's face next time he asks me an embarassing question on SportsCenter," Barkley says with a mischievous grin.
Trey Wingo
He moves on to the Action Figure Fishin' Hole, where children drop a pole behind a bed sheet and the school's fourth grade class officers attach a plastic superhero to the hook. "I want one of them Ninja Turtles," Barkley says. Behind the sheet, Nancy Rouchka, class president, giggles as she picks Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger, from a cardboard box and puts it on the line. When Barkley sees his girlish prize he explodes at Rouchka, causing Assistant Principal Morris Byrum to come running across the cafeteria.
"What's going on here?" Byrum asks in an excited tone as the class president sobs loudly. "What kinda clip joint are you running here?" Barkley yells at the hapless administrator, before picking him up and tossing him onto the conveyor belt that takes dirty plates back to the dishwasher.
Barkley moves on to the Pez Dispenser Ring Toss, where he decides to try for the Popeye model. "I like that dude 'cause he's like me--I am what I am." Barkley plunks down ten dollars for twenty rings, but he soon needs to buy more as he collects Batman, Spiderman and Snoopy--but no Popeye.
A half hour later Barkley is down $50 when Doolin again intervenes. "C'mon, Charles--just walk away--okay?" he says as he takes a roll of quarters from the former Dream Team member and leads him out of the building.
Even though he always said he wasn't a role model, the kids are sad to see him go. "I wanna be as good as him when I grow up," says third-grader Tyrone Williams. "Not everybody makes it to the NBA," his dad cautions him.
"Not at basketball," Tyrone says. "Texas Hold 'Em!"
NEW YORK. Stunned by an $11.6 million sexual harassment verdict for crude remarks and unwanted advances by head coach Isiah Thomas, the New York Knicks today selected Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to lead a team that hasn't won a playoff game in four years out of its current doldrums.
Clarence Thomas: "I'm here to clean house. Now somebody get me a Diet Coke."
"I'm pumped and I'm jacked," the normally sedate jurist said at a press conference. "I want to bring the intelligent basketball of the Knicks' glory days back to the Garden," he said, referring to the franchise's roots as the Knickerbockers, an all-Dutch aggregation that invented the back-door play.
"The 2 man cuts to the basket and the high post hits him with a bounce pass."
Clarence Thomas knows a few things about sexual harrassment, having been pilloried in a 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for allegedly making suggestive remarks to Anita Hill, a co-worker at the federal Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thomas has steadfastly denied the accusations, claiming that Hill was a "scorned woman" who turned on him after he refused to sell her NCAA Final Four bracket sheets during the late 80's. "She kept picking teams because their mascots were cute," said a former EEOC staff member. "That wouldn't have been a problem if she hadn't won all the time."
"I can't spell 'Isaiah', so call me Zeke."
Isiah Thomas has presided over a steady decline in the Knicks' fortune, marked by expensive free agent busts that have cost the franchise millions. "The reason they're going with Clarence Thomas is they'll save money on name tags and letterhead," said NBA Insider columnist Charlie Rosen. "Staples shut off their charge account."
"Offensive foul on 33 white--charging."
The jury verdict was assessed against Madison Square Garden and its chairman James Dolan but not Thomas, recalling the days when the Hall of Fame guard was an instigator on the Pistons' championship teams of the 80's while teammate Bill Laimbeer would be ejected. "Ain't that just like Zeke," Laimbeer said. "He's always stiffing somebody."
"Your feet must remain on the ground at all times."
Clarence Thomas attended Holy Cross, which was NCAA men's basketball champion in 1947 when the two-handed set shot was still legal. As an undergraduate he played intramural basketball on the "Miss Worcester Night Owls", a team named after a local diner in Worcester, Mass., that went 23-3 his senior year.
Landis: "Go ahead--pull my finger."
Other sports have turned to former judges to clean house after scandals, most notably Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who became the first commissioner of major league baseball following the Chicago "Black Sox" scandal of 1919. Landis is credited with the invention of the "pull my finger" gag, which Laimbeer used successfully on Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaugnessy in the 1980's before it was banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
