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ALL WORK, NO PLAGUE Largely overlooked in the early telling of the Nome Serum Run: Seppala and Togo, who covered the most treacherous stretch of an antitoxin delivery. 51

Nome Norton S ound A A ruthless epidemic is slicing through town, creating an urgent health crisis. Citizens are spreading this plague unwit- tingly. Those who catch it complain of respiratory problems. Not long after, they begin dying—brutally and apart from THIS SPREAD: AP; PREVIOUS PAGE: GEORGE RINHART/BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES their families. The local health care infrastructure bends and then breaks; those on the front lines act heroically but are quickly overwhelmed. Civic leaders call for a quarantine, which, while generally observed, is met with some resistance, as it shuts down commerce. Even shelter-in-place orders don’t repel this deadly blight. Amid this distress comes a blast of hope: news that a serum—an antitoxin to neutralize the bacteria—is being produced and soon will be available in mass quantities. Homespun remedies have not worked; now the product of actual research and testing and science is available. But distribution is complicated, not least by a brutal winter, which complicates logistics. By the time the antidote can be delivered, who knows how high the death count will climb? Venture back to the first two weeks of 1925, in the city of By chance, that doctor ordered a diphtheria antitoxin Nome, a remote Alaskan territory outpost on the southern serum one summer ago. But it hasn’t yet arrived, and the shore of the Seward Peninsula, 160 miles from the nearest supply is in Anchorage, 1,000 miles away. Reaching Arctic Circle. A frontier town of 1,400, Nome sits closer Nome is a challenge even in the most benign of times; now, to the Russian border than to the nearest Alaskan city. The in the guts of winter, it is nearly impossible. The harbor is only doctor in town examines a boy complaining of labored iced in. Commercial airplanes are just coming into vogue, breathing and suspects tonsillitis—until the boy dies the next but those in the region have open cockpits, rendering them day. By which point other patients start to line up, describing incapable of flight in subzero temperatures and whipping similar symptoms. The doctor changes his diagnosis to diph- winds. The Alaska Railroad, recently christened, goes no- theria, a highly contagious bacterial infection that among where near Nome; the nearest train station is in Nenana, Alaskan natives has an expected mortality rate of 100%. as far away as New York City is from Indianapolis. 52 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM

THE NOME SERUM RUN Nenana The territory’s governor, Scott Bone, and the Board of TURNED TO MUSH Health hatch a plan: The serum will travel by train from Seppala, an ex-prospector (pictured years after the Anchorage to Nenana. From there, a coordinated, around- the-clock relay team of the heartiest dogs and the heartiest Nome relay), covered the most ground and saved men in Alaska will brave the cold and transport the antitoxin hours—and lives—by taking a risky shortcut. via sled, across tundra, frozen lakes and dense forests. A LMOST FROM BIRTH, Leonhard Seppala was con- The volunteers arraying themselves along this route, ditioned to harsh living. Born in 1877 in a small town awaiting their turn, are a motley crew of locals, Athabascan in Norway, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, he was Indians and Inuit people, all familiar with the terrain and tasked with fishing and hunting while his father worked as the weather. The diphtheria serum—unlike most COVID-19 a blacksmith. At age 20, Seppala entered the family trade, vaccines, which must be preserved in cold—can be rendered and it was around this time that his childhood sweetheart, ineffective by freezing temperatures, no small consideration Margit, died unexpectedly before they reached the altar. in an Arctic climate with little daylight. Craving an escape from his grief, Seppala listened What would come to be known alternately as the raptly when a friend—one of the so-called Three Lucky Nome Serum Run of 1925 and the Great Race of Mercy Swedes—returned from Alaska, newly rich. He’d found marked one of the towering rescue efforts in American his- gold at Avil Creek, outside Nome, and become a prominent tory, a feat of interspecies heroism that would captivate the figure in the Alaskan Gold Rush. Why not come back with country. In addition to saving lives, this rescue operation me? he asked. was an ideal episode—content!—for newspapers, as well as for the new medium of radio. This episodic drama unfolded With no good reason to stay, Seppala boarded a ship to across an exotic locale and featured colorful characters, a New York, a train to Seattle and another vessel to Nome, high-stakes crisis and an uncertain outcome. When it was all where he went to work for the friend’s mining company. over, the story would be cemented as a chapter of Americana. But there he found brutal work in brutal cold. Claim jumpers took particular advantage of immigrant miners. As successful, though, as that mission was, those who later told the tale were considerably less successful in Seppala never struck it big. He did, however, make good apportioning proper credit. Too often, in nearly a century’s use of a skill he’d mastered in Norway, winning skiing worth of retellings, the most heroic figures—a man and his dog—have gone overlooked. FEBRUARY 2021 53

THE NOME SERUM RUN contests for speed, endurance and jumping. Though Seppala make one cluck or one click and the dogs would dig into stood only 5' 4\", he was an exceptional athlete—sinewy- their harness and pull like they’ve never pulled before.” strong, relentless and tough. He prevailed in barroom wrestling matches against far bigger men and sometimes, A S NOME’S EPIDEMIC raged in the first weeks of 1925, for fun, walked down the streets of Nome on his hands. authorities mapped out the serum relay. It was by then Far from home as he was, he made friends quickly. The an article of faith that Seppala would lead the effort. Though pacing, climate and overall vibe of Alaska felt familiar. 47, he was still in peak physical condition, and he knew the terrain—and the dogs—better than anyone. The route be- In the early 1900s, Seppala joined a mining party sent tween Nenana and Nome traced much of the same ground to stake claims in a river basin so remote that the travel- as the Sweepstakes. There were even considerations that he ers had to be aided by sled dogs. And it was there that he make the entire run himself: Nome to Nenana and back. was enchanted—not by gold, but by the “splendid” (his word) animals transporting him, the 120-pound mongrels Ultimately, officials enlisted a larger cast. They tele- pulling “loads that would have staggered ordinary dogs.” grammed for volunteers, hoping to recruit an all-star team of sled drivers and dogs from the region. Some of those who Dog mushing—from the French marchons, or let’s march!— signed up were Sweepstakes racers; others were trappers, was essential for commerce in the region, but it also became guides and mailmen. The final plan included 150 dogs and a source of recreation, competition and, eventually, wager- 20 mushers arrayed between the station in Nenana and as- ing. Sled dog racing’s status as sport had been made all but sorted towns and villages on the route to Nome. They would official in 1908 with the inaugural All Alaska Sweepstakes, hand off the serum like a sort of pharmaceutical baton. a multiday derby tracing a 400-plus-mile route along the Bering Sea, starting in Nome. The first victory went to At the time, the fastest recorded trip from Nenana to John Hegnes—like Seppala, a Norwegian ex-pat—in 119 hours Nome was nine days. With multiple drivers, maybe the relay and 15 minutes, but the real winners were the bettors who would shave off a day or two. Initially, Seppala was slated to backed him. The Sweepstakes had turned into a gamblethon. carry the serum for the final leg, but organizers reconsid- ered, deciding instead that he was the best musher for the One year later a Russian fur trader drove a team of most perilous stretch, crossing the frozen Norton Sound. Siberian husky sled dogs across the Bering Strait and He would be responsible for covering 91 of the 674 miles, entered the race. The Siberians, who were about half the almost twice the distance of anyone else. weight of their Alaskan counterparts, went off as 100-to-1 long shots—which nearly bankrupted the bookies when Seppala would later say it never occurred to him that the the team took second place. team triumphantly delivering the serum into Nome would be accorded a disproportionate amount of fame. Even then, The Sweepstakes grew in popularity, with organizers it wouldn’t have mattered; he was trying to save lives, not boasting: “What bullfighting is to the Spaniard, horse-racing T H E E N T I R ET HER E W ER E C ONSIDER AT IONS T H AT SEP PA L A M A K E to the Kentuckian, a Marathon to the Greek . . . so is the chase glory. Beyond pure altruism, he had an eight-year- BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES (3) annual All Alaska Sweepstakes Dog Race to the Alaskan.” old daughter, and children were particularly susceptible to Seppala, meanwhile, grew fascinated by the Siberians—like diphtheria. It was all deeply personal. him, long on durability if short in stature—and began breed- ing and racing them. In 1914 he entered the Sweepstakes O N JAN. 27, a train from Anchorage arrived in and nearly perished: When a blizzard hit, his team came Nenana and 300,000 units of serum—placed inside within feet of going over a precipice along the Bering coast. a 20-pound cylinder and wrapped in fur—were unloaded to (Wild) Bill Shannon for the first leg. With temperatures The following year, with clearer skies, Seppala and his hovering around –40°, Shannon lost three of his Malamutes Siberians won handily. But success was offset by tragedy. On and his face was blackened by frostbite as he slogged through Oct. 15, 1915, Leonhard’s kid brother Sigurd, who had also his 52 miles. immigrated to Alaska, died in a cabin fire. Ten days later, Seppala’s coworker Olaf Kaasen, another native Norwegian, He was hardly alone in this distress. Another musher, succumbed to injuries suffered in the same blaze. Charlie Evans, got caught in an icy fog. At one point he and his team crossed a river, believing it had frozen over. Seppala funneled his grief into training. He defended his But water had seeped through, and when several of Evans’s All Alaska title in 1916 and again in ’17, becoming a legend dogs collapsed from frostbite, he had no choice but to strap within the Alaskan territory, known for his sixth sense in the serum into his sled and take the lead himself. managing his Siberians, over whom opponents claimed he had “hypnotic” control. As one historian put it: “He would In Nome, Seppala started off toward Shaktoolik, 170 miles 54 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM

RELAY-LIFE STORY Snowed-in Nome (top) had one hope: a fragile serum delivered by volunteers, including the team mushed by Kaasen and led by Balto. R U N, NOME TO NENANA AND BACK . to the east. Temperatures had by then plummeted as low as –65°. The dog in the lead, though, was up for the challenge. 55 Born 12 years earlier, Togo, a gray and brown Siberian, was named after a Japanese admiral who served heroically in the Russo-Japanese War. Togo was so ill-behaved at first that Seppala gave him up for adoption. At his new home, though, Togo is said to have jumped through a glass window and found his way back to his original owner. Admiring both the loyalty and the resourcefulness, Seppala reclaimed the dog and started training him. While Togo never grew bigger than 50 pounds, he was durable and tough. His first day in a harness he ran 75 miles, a staggering distance for a young sled dog. He would soon become Seppala’s lead, logging as many as 4,000 miles in a single year. For part of his relay leg, near an inlet of the Bering Sea, Seppala had a choice: He could go around Norton Sound, or he could take a dangerous 42-mile shortcut across it. And here he had some history weighing on him. According to the book The Cruelest Miles, by Gay and Laney Salisbury (which was indispensable in researching this story), Seppala and Togo had years earlier found themselves stranded on an ice floe as they tried crossing the sound. “When the wind shifted and pushed the ice closer to shore,” the Salisburys write, “Seppala tied a rope to Togo and threw the dog onto the main pack of ice so he could pull the two pieces together. Then the rope snapped and slipped into the frigid waters. . . . Togo dived into the water, struggled back up onto the land, rolled around until the rope was looped around his shoulders and pulled the ice floe close enough that his master could drive the rest of the team across.” Seppala again took the risk. As the Salisburys recount: “In the dark, in 85-below temperatures with wind chill, Seppala could not see or hear the cracking ice, and was dependent on Togo.” Ultimately, they made it across to the stopping point on the north shore, an Inuit igloo, where Seppala fed his dogs, slept a few hours and, with tempera- tures at –30° and the storm still raging, finished his leg. The treacherous shortcut had saved at least a day. Charlie Olson took the serum and continued north, only to hit gusts that drove him off the trail. But he recovered and made it to a roadhouse, where he found the next driver, Gunnar Kaasen, who back in Nome worked under Seppala at the Pioneer Mining Company, and whose own younger brother Olaf had perished alongside Sigurd Seppala in the cabin fire a decade earlier. (The two were buried side by side.) A hulk of a man, with the build and stoic disposition of a lumberjack, Kaasen, then 40, drove a team that in- cluded Balto, a black Siberian with white paws, also bred by FEBRUARY 2021

THE NOME SERUM RUN Leonhard Seppala but considered second-rate by his owner. We don’t want complexity. We need one hero, please.” By this point, the relay—this elemental battle of man and Balto benefited, too, from dumb luck. Because Kaasen’s dog vs. nature—had thoroughly captivated the Lower 48. other lead dog (also bred by Seppala) was named Fox—not A precursor to reality TV (and, for that matter, live sports), only prosaic, but potentially confusing—Balto received a the operation was covered by newspapers and on radio disproportionate measure of the acclaim, even compared services in the era’s version of real time. Among the breath- with his own sledmates. less New York Times headlines: serum relief near for stricken nome. And blizzard delays nome relief Seppala, meanwhile, returned to Nome exhausted. His dogs in the final dash. distress was compounded by the fact that Togo temporarily went missing, having run off after a reindeer. If Seppala During the 28-mile penultimate leg, the storm became so and Togo had traveled nearly twice the distance of Kaasen intense that Kaasen couldn’t see the dogs in front of him. At and Balto—90 miles (not counting the 170 they ventured one point a gust of wind, estimated at 80 mph, collided with to their starting point) compared with 53—and covered the his sled, knocking the package of serum into a snowbank. most treacherous leg, these were details lost in the delirium. Kaasen shed his gloves and pawed through the snow to recover the payload—which he did, but not before suffering Says Gay Salisbury: “The story had already heralded a a severe case of frostbite. He later recounted: “I couldn’t winner by the time Seppala made the 100 miles home. It hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. . . . I felt as if the dogs was too complicated to showcase 20 drivers and 150 dogs. and I were fighting all the devilish elements of the universe.” The relay as a concept was not as exciting as ‘Balto crossed the finish line.’ ” W E N E E D“ I T W A S L I K E , W E D O N ’ T W A N T C O M P L E X I T Y. Still, with Balto leading the way, Kaasen arrived at his I N THE END an epidemic was snuffed out, and—instructive transfer point ahead of schedule. He was exhausted and and relevant today, even at a fraction of the scale—life in the cold had penetrated his multiple fur parkas but, he later Nome quickly snapped back to normal. Within three weeks explained, the next scheduled driver was asleep. Kaasen de- the quarantine was lifted. Businesses and schools reopened. cided to take on the final leg, another 25 miles, himself. And Citizens resumed their lives. so it was that around 5:30 a.m. on Feb. 2, Gunnar Kaasen arrived in Nome and completed the relay. With journalists For Kaasen and Balto, however, there would be no normal. and hand-crank cameras waiting, he staggered off his sled Driver and dog were flown to Seattle for a special ceremony. and walked immediately to acknowledge Balto. “Damn fine Then Hollywood came calling. Sol Lesser, a prominent film dog,” he said, before collapsing. producer, wanted to make a movie about the Serum Run. The collective crew of mushers had covered 674 miles in According to one account, Kaasen asked for Seppala’s 127 hours and 30 minutes—five and a half days—a remark- blessing before accepting the movie deal. (It would mark able clip, especially considering the extreme conditions one of the last few times that the men, once close, spoke.) amid the coldest winter in decades. The serum was quickly Seppala assented, confident—naively, of course—that the distributed and administered. Innumerable lives were saved. Hollywood producers would demand accuracy and that Togo would get his due. Instead, the movie, Balto’s Race to Nome, Predictably, Kaasen, having completed the equivalent only accelerated the legend of Kaasen’s lead dog, who had of the anchor leg, was feted like a conquering hero, his his own hotel suite during filming. After the movie’s release picture gracing newspapers across the country. President Kaasen and Balto toured the country with a vaudeville act, Calvin Coolidge and the U.S. Senate commended him. After recounting their heroic story at every stop. all, he had “brought it home,” as one telegraph dispatch put it. Kaasen was quick to acknowledge his lead animal— Kaasen, the archetypal stoic Scandinavian, was uncom- “It was Balto who led the way,” he told a reporter; “the fortable with the publicity. The rare times he granted inter- credit is his”—and the Siberian instantly became America’s views he seldom said more than a few words. Like most of favorite canine. the mushers, he was awarded a medal for heroism, but his ended up in a Seattle pawnshop. What’s more, his extended In reality, man and dog had benefitted largely from victory lap didn’t go over well in Nome, and his conduct logistics. Many of the Native drivers and their animals during the relay was ultimately reconsidered. At one point quietly headed home to their villages after their runs. They he claimed that the driver to whom he was supposed to were hundreds of miles from the journalists dispatched to hand off the serum had been asleep; in another account he Nome, overlooked by those writing the first draft of his- said the cabin had been unlit, leaving him to believe no one tory. “They didn’t partake in the end glory, and everyone was there. More than one musher suspected that Kaasen forgot about them,” says Laney Salisbury. “It was like, simply understood the tricky thermodynamics of glory and 56 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM

realized the fame and admiration that would redound toBETTMANN/GETTY IMAGESin delivering a cure were no longer needed for transport. “If the man who made the final handoff. there had been the same [diphtheria crisis] in 1926,” says Gay Salisbury, “it would have played out very differently.” Near the end of 1925, when Kaasen stood in New York’s Central Park for the unveiling of a statue honoring Balto, What’s more, with Kaasen back in Alaska, interest in Seppala abandoned the high road. If another man was Balto and his crew diminished. The tour promoter who now getting disproportionate acclaim, so be it. But he wouldn’t owned the dogs created a shabby dime-a-look sideshow, watch Togo go unacknowledged. He sent word for Kaasen— chaining the animals to a stage, and the spectacle drew still, technically, his employee at the mining company—to the attention of a Cleveland businessman, George Kimble. return to Nome. (Kaasen complied but, without the means Appalled, Kimble complained to the promoter and was told to pay their passage, he left Balto and his other dogs with that for $2,000 he could buy the entire team. Kimble took the vaudeville promoter.) As Seppala recalls in his memoir, this appeal to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which kicked Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver, “I resented the statue to Balto, off the 1920s equivalent of a viral GoFundMe campaign. for if any dog deserved special mention, it was Togo.” Kennel clubs chipped in. Kids donated milk money. After barely a week, the goal was met and the dogs were trans- A different kind of Nome relay ensued: No sooner had ferred to Cleveland’s Brookside Zoo, where on Balto’s first Kaasen returned to Alaska than Seppala and Togo com- day more than 15,000 visited his exhibit. When he died on menced a year-long U.S. victory lap of their own. They March 14, 1933, at 14, it was a national news event. (The appeared at fairgrounds and at department stores; they mounted body still remains on display at the Cleveland were even featured in a national cigarette ad campaign. At Museum of Natural History.) As recently as 1995, Disney released an animated film, Balto—starring the unlikely ONE HERO, PLEASE.” trio of Kevin Bacon, Bridget Fonda and Phil Collins—that perpetuates his starring role in the serum saga. WALKOFF, NOME RUN Arriving at the end of the relay five and a Over the years, though, Togo clawed back some of the half days after it began, Kaasen is said to glory that was rightfully his. In 2011, Time named him the have staggered off his sled and declared to most heroic animal of all time, noting rightly, “The dog that often gets credit for eventually saving [Nome] is Balto, Balto: “Damn fine dog.” but he just happened to run the last [53]-mile leg.” And last year Willem Dafoe starred as Seppala in Togo, which Madison Square Garden, during halftime of a Rangers game, was among the first offerings on the Disney+ streaming explorer Roald Amundsen awarded Togo a medal of honor. service. (Seppala himself likely would have been pleased: A book titled Togo’s Fireside Reflections was “autographed” Balto makes only a cameo.) Togo even got his own statue in by the subject via inked paw. New York, in ’01, at a playground on the Lower East Side. Seppala finished the tour in Poland Spring, Maine, where Cementing sled dog racing’s place in the pantheon of he raced and defeated a breeder of Chinook sled dogs. He revered sports, the Iditarod was christened in 1973, 14 years took part in an Olympic demonstration race tied to the 1932 after Alaska was admitted as a state. Half a century later, Lake Placid Winter Games and opened a Siberian husky mushers and their dogs still spend days tracing a trail kennel in Poland Spring—which is where he left Togo when through forests and mountain passes, finishing in Nome. he returned to Alaska. The quiet canine hero of the Nome And while that race was not—contrary to many reports— diphtheria epidemic lived a cosseted existence before being established to pay homage to the Serum Run, the relay of euthanized on Dec. 5, 1929, at 16. ’25 echoes prominently at today’s marquee mushing event, as do its two towering figures. Togo’s mounted body is on By the early 1930s, the Alaska Territory had changed. The display at the Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla, and each attention brought by the Serum Run had the unintended year race veterinarians hand out the Leonhard Seppala effect of accelerating modernization. Soon, U.S. airlines Humanitarian award to “the musher who takes the best were bidding on Alaskan routes. Telecom companies were care of their dog team.” installing lines at a rapid clip. The dogs that were so heroic In the late 1940s, Seppala settled in Seattle, and while he never repaired his friendship with Kaasen, he continued to breed Siberians, serving as a sort of wise, old man of Alaskan dog culture. He died in 1967, at 89, having lived an impossibly full life. According to The Cruelest Miles, Seppala wrote this diary entry when was 81, decades after the Nome Serum Run, and long after the death of his prized lead dog: “When I come to the end of the trail, I feel that along with my many friends, Togo will be waiting, and I know that everything will be all right.” FEBRUARY 2021 57



ILLUSTRATION BY TIM MCDONAGH

Bill Raftery, would blow in whenever the urge struck. Which was often. “You rarely said, ‘I’ll meet you at Runyon’s,’ ” recalls Bob Costas, another stalwart. “You just went in, and you knew at least five or six of a core of two dozen would be there.” It wasn’t just the locals. Plenty of sportswriters would a round or two before checking into their hotel. But you had to know the rules. Mike Lupica recalls a day in the summer of 1984, when he was a young Daily News columnist, that an out-of-towner came in, hoping to watch the start of the Los Angeles Olympics. As a Yankees game played on one TV and a Mets game on the other, the man asked: “Would you mind putting on the opening ceremony?” From behind the bar, a voice bellowed: “We don’t do parades here—unless they’ve got a line on them.” In this convivial solar system—this conclave of born ra- conteurs and immodest drinkers—one man was the unques- tioned star, the gravitational center. Not only did everyone know Pete Axthelm’s name. They all wanted to be in his orbit. One source of this popularity: Without lording over anyone, Ax, as he was inevitably known, seemed to do everything better than everyone else. He wrote with more Wall Street types had the Oyster Bar at Grand Central, where than the trained sportscasters, his disheveled appearance they could toast their gains or drown their losses before notwithstanding. He was wittier than the wits and more staggering onto their commuter trains back to the suburbs. philosophical than the deep thinkers. He put larger sums Downtown hipsters hung at the Village Vanguard and the into action than even the most hard-core gamblers. White Horse Tavern; the cocaine-and-disco set at Studio 54 and Limelight. And for the media crowd—sports report- Pete Axthelm didn’t make it to age 48. ers, in particular—there was Runyon’s, wedged between brownstones on East 50th Street, just off Second Avenue. entry into the canon of blazing artistic talents self-extin- Runyon’s was, of course, a nod to famed newspaperman guished far too early. The tragedy of his death, though, goes and short-story writer Damon Runyon, the quintessential beyond that. In one sense Axthelm was a throwback. As he hard-bitten and hard-living New Yorker. The bar’s name took his spot near the oaken bar in Runyon’s—he preferred served, too, as a kind of code, an implied challenge. As to drink standing up—clutching his Canadian Club, neat, Jay Lovinger, a longtime regular and a titan of magazine and touting the next day’s races at Yonkers, it would have editing, once put it: “At that place, you kind of wanted to been easy to picture him in Runyon’s New York, alongside try and out-Runyon Runyon.” That is, patrons were invited— Nathan Detroit or a charismatic bootlegger or some cor- expected, even—to belly up to the bar and show off their rupt beat cop. wit and storytelling chops. It was assumed that a Runyon’s regular would nourish, yes, their thirst, but also their ap- But Ax was also a man of the future, glimpsing around petite for the flavorfully seamy tales of the city. civilization’s corners. He was socially and culturally progres- The newspaper types repaired to Runyon’s after the last credited him with “guarding the ramparts of the down- of their headlines and deadlines. The sports guys—and they were almost exclusively men—from the local TV stations the potential for players to use their platforms for social came directly after the 11 p.m. news, still caked in makeup. activism—and sometimes he openly encouraged them to This was an era when athletes and coaches still socialized do so. Before DraftKings and FanDuel and betting apps, with one another, so it was that Keith Hernandez would pop in following Mets games, Walt Frazier would swing PETE, YOUR WORDS . . . by after the Knicks played and a lovably outgoing college Prose aside, Megan remembers a “charmed” childhood, basketball coach from across the Hudson, Seton Hall’s captured in her photo collection. “My dad spoiled me, for sure. He called me ‘princess,’ the ‘perfect daughter.’ ” 60 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED



PETE AXTHELM he envisioned an increasingly busy intersection between (who later became a theater director in L.A.), recalls the sports and wagering, often wondering why leagues weren’t night he and Axthelm stared longingly at the bottles more hospitable to fans who put money on outcomes. (They arrayed behind Rudy’s bar. How long would it take to drain would profit so much more!) Before mobile devices afforded the entire inventory? they wondered. “Hm,” Ax said pensively. instant updates he was obsessed about information, stopping “How are you for February?” a conversation to duck into a booth and call Sports Phone for a score. During his senior year Axthelm appeased his mother by taking the LSAT. Attending law school was a way to avoid Axthelm was also quick to see that the skills of success- the Vietnam draft and a fallback for liberal-arts types skilled ful journalists are transferable; they don’t have to pick a with words and logic. Axthelm didn’t study for the test platform or a medium. And as long as you’re slinging words much. He stayed up late drinking and playing poker the for a living, television is preferable to print. They pay you night before he took it. He earned a perfect score. more and work you less! But Ax never bothered applying to law school; he already So, it wasn’t just a profound pity that one of the towering had a career path. He’d met Jimmy Breslin, the inimitable sportswriters of his generation drank himself to an early death. It’s that Pete Axthelm died before he could witness FAST TRACK all the changes he had anticipated. Ax (with Cauthen) began his journalism career at 22 as a Herald Tribune turf writer, then branched B OB WOODWARD knew what was coming. In the out to newsweeklies, books and TV. spring of 1965, the future luminary of political journal- ism would hear a knock on the door of his dorm room at Yale: Axthelm, his fellow senior and scribe, was asking to play gin rummy. “Which meant that Pete was running low on funds,” recalls Woodward. “He was a hustler. But you never felt hustled. He’d let you win enough so you didn’t feel bad when he took your money. Which he always did.” Axthelm had arrived at Yale, fresh from a Catholic high school, seemingly ahead of the game. He was well-read. He wrote beautifully. He appeared to know something about everything, and he was always game to learn more. Woodward remembers Axthelm as “brilliant . . . the guy we all figured was going to write the great American novel.” Having lost his father when he was 15, Ax was already, in many ways, mature beyond his years. He could play cards and shoot pool and mix drinks and move easily among peer groups. Says Gerold Libby, a fellow Yalie and later a prominent L.A. lawyer, “Most of my classmates were anxious about academics. But there were a handful of people capable enough to rise above all of that. [Pete] was unburdened by the demands of an academic curriculum.” Axthelm wrote for the Yale Daily News, eventually be- coming sports editor. He could hold his own in the most challenging course and dominate the most elevated dining hall debate. His senior thesis, titled The Modern Confessional Novel, was so precociously brilliant that Yale University Press published it in book form. Comfortable as he was with his mostly white and wealthy classmates, he was equally at ease talking sports or music with the cafeteria workers. Influenced by a grandfather who worked at Belmont Park, he was drawn to characters on life’s sooty, sweaty margins. That, and he was drawn to gambling. “He was smart and versatile, interested in high culture,” says Woodward. “And definitely interested in low culture.” It was also at Yale that Axthelm developed his love of drinking. When he wasn’t at the Daily News building, odds were good that he was at a dive near campus called Rudy’s. Perhaps his closest friend at the time, Charles Dillingham 62 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

COURTESY OF MEGAN AXTHELM BROWN; ERICK W. RASCO (3) newspaper columnist, who recommended this mordantly “It was like funny and freakishly fast-writing Yalie to his bosses at the playing jazz New York Herald Tribune. (One telling of the Breslin-Axthelm meeting has the two crossing paths at the racetrack. Of on a piano course.) As it happened, the paper’s owner, Jock Whitney, when he was a Yale graduate who traveled often to New Haven. (He also knew his way around a racetrack; the Whitney Stakes, wrote,” says run every summer at Saratoga, is a family legacy.) After a Bonventre. brief interview in the back of Whitney’s limousine, Ax got the “He’d riff job. He would be a Tribune turf writer while still in school. and smile— he’d never Yale’s class of ’65 graduated on a cloudless afternoon in agonize.” June. For many, it was a happy rite of passage. Axthelm, though, wasn’t there. He skipped the festivities to cover knowingly. It was like cashing a bet on a race in the bag.” the races at Belmont. Back at the hotel, Axthelm pecked out his account for As one of the great perks of his job, Axthelm got to write Newsweek, writing: “Judged against some of the alterna- for the Trib’s Sunday magazine. The editor, Clay Felker, tives that black militants had considered, the silent tableau gave so much latitude to his writers—Breslin; Tom Wolfe; seemed fairly mild.” Gail Sheehy; Charles Portis, who was working on his second novel, True Grit—that their freewheeling style got its own A YEAR LATER Axthelm began work on his second catchy name: new journalism. book, which married his high-low sensibilities. He would cover the Knicks, who featured Bill Bradley—a After a year or so, Axthelm was picked off by Princeton grad, also class of ’65—and braid that account Sports Illustrated (where a story about the New York with dispatches from blacktop courts like Rucker Park, in Rangers began: “There is something about a hockey puck Harlem, where “street ballplayers” tried to find their own zinging in at 80 mph that brings out the expressiveness in versions of hoops salvation. goalies”) and then, two years later, by the Washington Post– funded Newsweek, a hipper, more left-leaning alternative to Published in 1970, The City Game became an instant Time. This was the golden age of the newsweekly, and it was classic. The narrative gods had smiled on Axthelm—the an ideal forum for Axthelm, who knew his interview requests Knicks beat the Lakers in the Finals that May—but the book would be granted. He could travel—he joked that some of remains at its soaring best when he profiles Rucker legends his most creative writing was in his expense report—or stay like Earl (the Goat) Manigault, whose skills (“freewheeling, home and write from his Manhattan apartment. unbelievably high-jumping, and innovative”) were offset by “weaknesses and doubts that left him vulnerable.” Writes Early on at Newsweek, Axthelm, then 25, went to Axthelm: “Earl is now in his mid-twenties, a dope addict, Mexico City for the 1968 Summer Olympics, and there he in prison. . . . He had symbolized all that was sublime and did more than write columns and file dispatches; he played terrible about this city game.” a muted role in the Games’ seminal moment. Axthelm was quick to see the occasion of a global sporting event as a Axthelm explains the codes and slang and fashion of the stage for protest, and he covered the events wearing a white blacktop, but he’s not the clinical anthropologist. He ren- button adorned with the letters OPHR, for the Olympic ders characters with empathy, leaving readers to consider Project for Human Rights, an organization led by sociolo- how bad luck and a few lousy decisions can determine a gist Harry Edwards to protest systemic racism. player’s trajectory. The New York Times hailed the writer as “a poet. . . . [His] eye is cinemascopic, his prose precise.” In talking with Edwards about how to send a powerful message from the podium, Axthelm also got to know a pair All the while Axthelm continued spinning gold at of American sprinters, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, and Newsweek, where he distinguished himself for his speed he watched the 200 meter final in the stands with their and his versatility in assignments beyond sports. The maga- wives, not in the press box. When the race ended—Smith zine went to print on Fridays. Time and again, Ax would took gold, Carlos bronze—Ax sprinted down the gangway to start writing that morning, drinking his black coffee and see his friends. Carlos had run wearing an OPHR button, but Smith had not. He asked for one, and Axthelm shared his. The two sprinters then took the podium. In an image that endures a half-century later, as the national anthem played, they bowed their heads and each raised a gloved, clenched fist in protest against racial injustice. The Los Angeles Times would later note of the famous moment (photos of which capture the white buttons, partially obscur- ing the U in USA on each runner’s track jacket): “Whereas folks looking at it draw back in shock, [Axthelm] smiled FEBRUARY 2021 63

PETE AXTHELM puffing on a cigar. A few hours later he’d have a polished story on anything from Vietnam to the Son of Sam killer to Willie Nelson. Over the span of a few weeks in 1973 he of his Newsweek gig, to come on as a gambling columnist. COURTESY OF MEGAN AXTHELM BROWN wrote cover stories on Loretta Lynn, the New York mafia Axthelm didn’t merely explore the sports betting sub- and Secretariat. culture; he inhabited it. A not insignificant chunk of his Axthelm and the other Newsweek sportswriter, income went toward wagering. Yes, it was the gambler’s Pete Bonventre (who met his wife at Runyon’s), became rush, the surges in fortune, the oscillating moods. Beyond wingmen. The friendship between Pete A. and Pete B., as that, though, he saw something almost metaphysical in they were known, superseded any rivalry. They divvied up gambling. Drawing on the philosophers he’d studied at stories and critiqued each other’s work. Not that Axthelm Yale and the diet of religion he’d consumed in high school, required polishing. Which he knew. Pete A. would fling his Axthelm concocted a sort of Tao of gambling. There was copy at Pete B., smile wryly and say, “Read it and weep!” something pure—vital, even—about taking a stake in an outcome yet determined. He often shared his creed with Covering the Munich Olympics, in 1972, Axthelm spent others: “You gotta make at least one bet every day, or else the first week in the press center, mostly socializing as he you don’t know if you’re walking around lucky.” looked, half-heartedly, for an offbeat story. From New York, a Newsweek editor ordered up a piece on the Games’ break- Axthelm talked more about the losses than the wins. out star, a teenage Russian gymnast. “Who the f--- is Before the term fully entered the lexicon, he had a personal Olga Korbut?” Axthelm replied. compendium of “bad beat” stories—dubious disqualifica- tions, near misses, photo finishes. But he had plenty of wins, “You’re kidding, right? You’re in Munich and you’re too. And who knows? The next wager could be a windfall. learning about Olga Korbut from me?” Lupica recalls Axthelm’s flashing an expansive smile Axthelm held his hand over the phone and surveyed when Steve Cauthen won the 1978 Triple Crown aboard his colleagues: “Do any of you know about Olga Korbut?” Affirmed. Apart from Ax’s authentic happiness over the teenage jockey’s success, he had a contract to write Cauthen’s Barely a day later he fired off a story that thoroughly book, eventually titled The Kid, which would now fetch a disguised his ignorance. “It was like playing jazz on a piano heftier advance. “My enduring vision of Affirmed versus when he wrote,” says Bonventre. “He’d riff and smile—he’d Alydar is not those three photo finishes,” says Lupica. “It’s never agonize.” Axthelm could report, work sources and the image of Pete running alongside Cauthen and the horse, write earnest news as well. A week after the Korbut piece, taking notes, looking like it was Christmas morning.” he and Bonventre cowrote a moving, deeply reported story about the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches. If Axthelm was seduced by horse racing and gambling and drinking, so too did women hold a power over him. Axthelm wrote with flair, but also with authority. As fond as he was for underdogs and strivers, he had no tolerance for those who abused their power or undermined the integrity of sport. Here’s the lead to his May 1982 Newsweek profile of spitballer Gaylord Perry: He scowls at the world from behind a growth of gray stubble, his small darting eyes always searching for a competitive edge. Slathered in grease and heat rub, he smells like a ransacked pharmacy. He is superstitious and set in his ways, and those who interrupt his grumpy pregame rituals may find him an intolerant bully. Gaylord Perry . . . embodies many of the rough-hewn, independent pioneer instincts. But he leavens them with a thoroughly modern tendency. He cheats. As often as Axthelm wrote about stars and covered big events, whenever possible he circled fringe figures, especially those with connections to gambling. The railbirds and other hapless bettors held particular appeal. One typical Axthelm gem: an October 1981 profile of a fan at the MLB All-Star Game in Cleveland who wagered $50 that he would catch a foul ball. (Spoiler: He did not.) In the late 1970s, The Washington Post launched another magazine, Inside Sports, to compete with SI. The founding editor, John Walsh, was a character’s character—a former Rolling Stone boss who kept the company of rock stars and Hollywood types, like Bill Murray—and he hired a mur- derer’s row of sportswriters: Tony Kornheiser, Gary Smith, Diane K. Shah. He also gave Ax a freelance contract, on top 64 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

“Yeah,” Axthelm said, “but they were the first two words of the entire piece. Breathtakingly beautiful.” BETTOR DAYS M OST OF Axthelm’s stories were long elegies or deeply Ax stayed close to the track, and to his daughter— reported profiles and features, but in his bon mots— which often placed young Megan in equine company. his zingers and asides—he could match any writer quip for quip. He likened the Jets to “green fungus.” He referred to His marriage to Jill Delaney, in the mid-1960s, brought him the Buccaneers-Packers rivalry as “the Bay of Pigs.” (ESPN’s a daughter, Megan. Pete would take her to Runyon’s and Chris Berman was borrowing from Ax when he popularized order her a sizzler steak; he’d teach her to play gin and to the nickname.) Covering Wimbledon, he laughed when gamble; and when he was away on assignment he would, one match was called on account of darkness and fans invariably, mail a postcard. “People ask if he was strict,” protested by flinging their seat cushions onto the court. says Megan, who recalls father and daughter bonding over “Typical British,” Axthelm observed to a fellow reporter. the grifter movie Paper Moon. “Yeah. Never play the lottery. “Their idea of a riot is to throw something soft and squishy.” Never bet to place or show—only to win. And here’s how you read the other guy’s hand. He wasn’t a drive-you-to-soccer- This kind of wit was appealing to TV execs, and in 1980 practice kind of dad, but he was fun. Probably too fun for NBC hired him for his writing artistry, his unfiltered com- his own good.” mentary and his horseracing expertise. But mostly Axthelm arrived as an NFL prognosticator and pundit who would Devoted as he was to his daughter, Axthelm’s relationship pop in periodically. On rival CBS, a gravelly voiced forecaster with Jill was more complicated. “He had a girlfriend in every with an irresistible nickname offered pregame picks each port,” says Megan. “I don’t know how he got away with it, week, giving the appearance of being vaguely connected. because they were serious relationships.” Pete and Jill split Ax would be NBC’s answer to Jimmy the Greek, rumpled when Megan was young but remained friends and, Megan and looking like he’d flown in on the red-eye from Vegas. says, didn’t bother officially divorcing for another 20-odd years. (A pause to note: Damon Runyon’s own marriage In 1984, Ax was promoted to a prime slot on NBC’s NFL broke up when he fell hard for a Mexican woman while studio crew, teamed with Costas, a young and versatile host, covering the Pancho Villa raid of 1916.) and Ahmad Rashad, a recently retired star wide receiver. Costas, for one, appreciated Axthelm’s stylish prose and Axthelm once harbored a particularly strong crush on enjoyed the gambling-man persona, as his own father had Phyllis George, then a trailblazing cohost of CBS’s NFL regularly put up big money on sporting events. But he was pregame show, as well as the wife of Kentucky Governor concerned that, as a serious writer, Axthelm might be re- John Brown. After prevailing on his Inside Sports editors to luctant to indulge in the theatrics of TV—in the schlockier assign him a George profile, Axthelm described the ordeal side of the medium. That concern evaporated early on at Runyon’s as he brandished the published story. when Axthelm volunteered for a black-and-white halftime send-up of Casablanca, with a production assistant play- “Damn,” Ax lamented. “They changed two words.” ing a barmaid. “He was game for anything,” says Costas. “They only changed two words?” replied Lupica, con- “Some writers, there’s a line they won’t cross. Ax jumped fused. “That’s great!” over it. Happily.” Still, one would not have described Axthelm as classically telegenic. Even with NBC’s stylists and makeup artists, he looked often as if he had walked into the studio straight out of bed. Or in the rain. His clothes were invariably wrinkled, his comb-over mussed. When the red light was on, he projected a nervous energy and spoke in frantic bursts. As one colleague told producers: “The key is, we have to get him as comfortable in front of the camera as he is in front of the window at Aqueduct.” Ax was no great prognosticator, perhaps because his picks were based not on algorithms or advanced statistics; they came from his gut. He readily admitted to having two favorite teams, the Dolphins and the Raiders, and he hated betting against either. (The former employed one of Axthelm’s sources as a defensive coach; the latter was owned by one of his childhood idols, a Brooklyn hustler named Al Davis.) Says Costas, “He had all these superstitions. If a bet was going well, he wouldn’t go to the bathroom. If he had pizza on Saturday night and he won his bets on FEBRUARY 2021 65

PETE AXTHELM Sunday, you knew he was going to eat pizza again next Ax’s Saturday. . . . He was this brilliant thinker and writer—but response he was also your crazy Uncle Louie from Bayonne.” when For all his clumsiness, there was an everyman charm to friends Axthelm on television, and he turned that lack of polish intervened: into a virtue. Here was the balding, bespectacled, affable If you took guy next to you at the bar. “You could hear the smile in away my his voice,” says Mary Carillo, who was playing on the pro drinking, tennis circuit, in the 1970s, when she first befriended I wouldn’t Axthelm, and who later became a Runyon’s regular and be living. then an NBC commentator herself. “He had this playful- So I lose ness. . . . He didn’t try to act like a suit. He knew his voice either way. and knew that’s what people wanted.” young, ambitious field producer named Norby Williamson. More than one of Axthelm’s friends would speculate on (“That guy is going to run the company one day,” Axthelm another reason he took to TV: It was more conducive to the said of Williamson—yet another bit of foresight.) Ax was drinking that was starting to figure more prominently in there mostly for studio work, again playfully picking NFL his life. “Writing is hard,” William Nack, the longtime SI games, and he was often paired alongside a burly host writer, once told a friend. “TV, for him, wasn’t.” with a booming voice. (Berman would eventually replicate Axthelm’s likable prognosticator shtick, too, turning it into Without looming deadlines, Axthelm was free to get an alter ego he called the Swami.) loaded as soon as a show ended. Owing largely to his drinking, he aged conspicuously. Viewers were, without Alas, Axthelm struggled at times to get through his show. fail, shocked to learn he was two decades younger than He was gaunt and looked tired. His clothes no longer fit they’d assumed. Megan noticed the decline, too: “He was his withering body. Friends would ring one another while never falling-down drunk or face-planting in the birthday he was on TV and commiserate about his appearance, cake, but more and more, he would be slurring his words.” speculating about how much he’d been drinking. Bonventre got a call one night from Breslin, disgusted that his pro- After a few seasons NBC moved on from Axthelm. And tégé was, in effect, disrespecting his own talent. And, also, in 1988, Jimmy the Greek made some racist comments Breslin wondered: Couldn’t he at least drink something about Black athletes and breeding, costing him his CBS sophisticated—not Canadian Club? gig. Combined, this marked an opportunity for the NFL, which had never been comfortable attaching itself to sports It fell largely upon Walsh to plead with Axthelm to con- wagering. (Those concerns only intensified after revela- trol his drinking, and by multiple accounts he finally gave tions about Pete Rose’s baseball betting in ’89 tore MLB an ultimatum: If you don’t get help, your job is in jeopardy. asunder.) Millions of Americans might have been filling “Yeah,” Axthelm replied resignedly, “my daughter says out pools or handing in wager slips every Sunday, but the the same thing.” league made clear to its TV partners: They were no longer to mention gambling on their broadcasts. Then and there Walsh realized the hopelessness. If he’s not going to quit for his own daughter, he sure as hell By this point, the drinking that had always been part ain’t quitting for me. of Ax’s charm and personality was taking over. He had no interest, though, in dialing back. A string of friends told One night around 1990, Axthelm staggered around his him that he was killing himself. His response: If you took Midtown apartment, blood trailing everywhere. The alcohol away my drinking, I wouldn’t be living. So I lose either way. had stripped away the lining of his esophagus, and every time he inhaled, he spat up plasma. He might have bled The drinking was exacting a price on his work, too. to death had a friend not come by. Nack paid a visit to the After two decades at Newsweek he was suddenly blowing hospital and implored, “Pete, you gotta stop drinking.” deadlines, his prose slipping. Happy as he was to indulge in TV froth, writing was different, sacred—and so when he moved to People magazine he had to have known that, in terms of gravitas, it was a demotion. (“Can you imagine,” he said to Bonventre, “I’m ending my career at People?”) And yet he struggled there, too. Bonventre, on one oc- casion, quietly called management, offering to help edit Axthelm. “Don’t do it,” warned one editor at People. “He’ll break your heart.” Meanwhile, after Inside Sports died a noble death, John Walsh hooked on with a cable startup in the hinter- lands of Connecticut. The old editor hired Axthelm at ESPN, which was starting to turn a profit, and paired him with a 66 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

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PETE AXTHELM “I can’t,” Axthelm responded. “I can’t cope.” to ban smoking. Depending on your perspective, New York “What do you mean, you can’t cope?” was either losing its grime or losing its color. Much of “I tried to stop for three days and I couldn’t cope,” said the Runyon’s roster was abandoning Manhattan, with its NFL PHO T OS/AP Axthelm. “I’d rather die than quit.” Reflecting on this ex- unfriendly rents, for places like Florida. change, Nack would later observe to writer Alex Belth: “And he got his wish.” Poorly as he once aged corporeally, three decades later There’s an unmistakable irony to it all. Axthelm’s great Axthelm has aged damn gracefully as a media archetype. He literary feat, The City Game, was largely about athletes helped loose an army of writers who either moonlighted in whose talents were undermined by bad choices and bad television or decamped there entirely. Who knows whether habits. Ax was in the power corridor of Manhattan, not on a print refugee like, say, Kornheiser—an Axthelm protégé— the blacktop of Harlem. His gift was writing crisply, not would have gotten even a sniff from a network exec had not dunking or shooting the J. His poison was alcohol, not another high-strung, witty, occasionally cranky columnist on the Washington Post payroll proved it could be done. heroin. But here was the author, tracing the same Axthelm’s urban anthropology in The City Game helped arc. Who was he if not Earl unleash an entire industry. The conceit of spending a season the Goat, self-sabotaging with a team spawned a whole genre of books. What’s more, and squandering his gifts? in a profession too often fixated on winners, he showed that losers yielded equally compelling stories, characters When Yale’s class of 1965 and lessons. Before long, writers like David Halberstam, met for its 25th reunion, Rick Telander, Darcy Frey and Buzz Bissinger would take Axthelm was absent, just up the search, and they in turn would inspire everything as he’d been for graduation. from Slam magazine and the And1 Mixtape Tour to docu- This time, though, he wasn’t mentaries like Last Chance U. at his beloved racetrack. He was in a Pittsburgh hospi- As sports betting and the appeal of action has moved tal, awaiting a liver trans- in from the margins, Axthelm’s obsession with odds plant. It never came. He and lines and probabilities . . . it no longer scans so died on Feb. 2, 1991, at age degenerate. If Brent Musburger, at 81, has his own sports 47, his luck having officially gambling network, Lord knows what Axthelm’s profile run out. might be today, at 77. (It’s more than a little fitting that Megan’s son, Matthew Brown, Pete’s grandson, scored an T HE TRIBUTES followed, first acknowledging Axthelm internship several years ago at Barstool Sports by winning as a generational writing talent. Says Walsh, “The ca- a football picks contest.) dence he had, the organization, sentence for sentence, the appreciation for language. . . . I edited Jimmy Breslin. I As a journalist, Axthelm practiced the antithesis of stick- edited Hunter S. Thompson. Kornheiser. [Axthelm] was in ing to sports. Every sportswriter who in 2020 wrote about that elite category.” the Black Lives Matter movement or the COVID-19 cri- sis—considering sports as society’s connective tissue, not Then the stories, predictably, flowed freely. Most refer- a disembodied organ—was, in effect, channeling Axthelm. enced his carousing, his adventures at the track, his alloy And then there’s his writing itself. Damon Runyon may have of highbrow-lowbrow sensibilities. To the end, he was been the guy they were all trying to emulate, but his stories, more proud of the exacta box he scored at Hialeah than while they pack undeniable charm, came larded with clichés he was the perfect LSAT he scored while at Yale. and silly plot devices, trapped in a black-and-white era. By contrast, reread Axthelm’s work and, man, it holds up. He Thompson, a friend and kindred spirit, eulogized Axthelm wrote with graceful extravagance, but also with grit. There’s in Esquire: “If he couldn’t go to the track he swore he would anger, but also empathy. His stories are the kind a writer go to the tomb. He wrote brilliant essays and sometimes gets only by reporting and observing and asking questions. asked morbid questions, which eventually led him into a place that some of his friends called ‘the gray area.’ It was Pick a line, any line. He wrote about fans with arms an essentially Buddhist concept based in karma, laughter, outstretched “not to grasp but to supplicate.” The second and occasional human sacrifice.” baseman Davey Lopes was “the angriest Dodger, fielding the postgame questions as he does ground balls—aggressively When the Runyon’s crew—and so many other giants of and inelegantly.” He described the Celtics as “celebrating sports journalism—toasted Axthelm, they were also saying springtime by making inches of height advantage into farewell to something deeper and broader. Newspapers yards—and translating canny court sense into a textbook were already headed toward their inexorable, sad decline. on how the game should be played.” Magazines would soon follow. The divide between athletes and the folks who covered them was deepening, draining His work remains deeply consequential. Metaphors sing. both intimacy and fun from sportswriting, turning it into Quotes zing. And in a hard-boiled, soft-hearted, booze- something perilously close to a job. Bars were beginning stained, no-bulls--- way, his prose is often, to borrow a phrase, breathtakingly beautiful. 68 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

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F 70 A C E When AKIM ALIU tweeted about his experiences with racism in hockey more than a year ago, he set off what was supposed to be a reckoning for the NHL. But today, he—and the players who’ve joined his cause—have never been more frustrated with the league

ICY RELATIONSHIP A journeyman defenseman who’s played across the globe, Aliu believes his NHL career never took off because of the bigotry he endured. Living now in Toronto, he’s become an advocate for diversity in the game—and an outspoken critic of the NHL. BY ALEX PREWITT PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN BIELASKI

On Sept. 3, just past the midway point of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs, the NHL issued a 2,500-word press release cataloguing, as the headline declared, INITIATIVES TO COMBAT RACISM AND ACCELERATE ITS INCLUSION Based in Toronto, the program would be run with the Hockey Diversity Alliance (HDA), a group of nine current and former NHL EFFORTS. players cochaired by Kane and Akim Aliu, a 31-year-old former NHL defenseman who shook the sport in November 2019 by expos- ing his encounters with racism. Just three months old, the HDA hadn’t been shy about raising a gym bag’s worth of stink about the NHL’s approach to social It was a sensitive moment for the league. A week earlier, justice issues, both in public statements and on regular after police in Kenosha, Wis., shot a 29-year-old Black man calls with league officials. But the conciliatory tone of named Jacob Blake seven times in the back, player-led pro- the press release indicated a truce: “We appreciate the tests in the NBA, WNBA, MLB and MLS spawned a night HDA’s input and will remain attentive to all of our Players’ of unprecedented work stoppages. The NHL, meanwhile, concerns,” it said. “[W]e look forward to continuing the had continued to hold games inside its Edmonton and dialogue with the HDA, and working together to bring Toronto bubbles, provoking outrage. “[T]he lack of action about the change in our game we both strive to achieve.” and acknowledgement from the @nhl [is] just straight up Behind the scenes, though, the two sides’ relationship insulting,” tweeted Sharks winger Evander Kane, one of was closer to crumbling than continuing. According to the league’s few Black players. The NHL finally went dark multiple HDA sources, players were irked that they didn’t the next day, suspending play for two nights. learn about the existence of this “first-of-its-kind” part- The release, then, offered the league a chance to show its nership until the previous day, when an NHL executive commitment to a cause sweeping the world. Atop the list sought approval to use the group’s name in the release. of initiatives, the NHL trumpeted the launch of a “first-of- HDA sources say the group asked to review the text’s its-kind” grassroots program for young skaters of color. wording, but the league refused. Requests for program 7 2 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

JEFF VINNICK/GETTY IMAGES details, such as how much funding the NHL planned to Aliu hoped his revelations would spark a long overdue contribute, were also rebuffed, they say. reckoning for the white-as-ice hockey world and its shut- up-and-stick-handle culture. Last season 18 Black players Only after the deadline was extended by a day and logged more than five games, according to the NHL’s players were finally permitted a peek at the announcement, count. Once this might have been viewed as incremental, did the HDA vote to approve its role in the program. “Tell- if overdue, progress, with NHL teams’ icing a total of 18 ing them, in good faith, ‘Use our name, make yourself look Black players from 1917–18 to ’90–91. But consider that good, because the hockey world is watching,’ ” Aliu says. a Sports Illustrated feature from 1999 heralding a new generation of “hockey’s emerging [B]lack stars” The NHL disputes the group’s timeline: “The HDA was projected that season would feature . . . 20 Black players. given at least two days to collaborate on the wording of the Since that year, the U.S. has grown far more diverse and joint programming release,” says Kim Davis, the NHL’s the Black population of Canada has roughly doubled, to diversity czar (and highest-ranking Black executive). 1.2 million, according to the country’s 2016 census, its most recent. But the NHL largely looks the same. Either way, it was yet another example of the two sides’ struggling to see eye-to-eye. On Oct. 7, the HDA released As another season begins, Aliu believes the league is no a statement vowing to “operate separate and independent closer to truly reckoning with its racial issues. And in the of the NHL,” accusing the league of “performative public relations efforts” that ignored “important conversations IN THE BUBBLE about race needed in the game.” The HDA’s Dumba delivered a pregame speech after Blake’s shooting and became the first It is a dialogue Aliu has been seeking to advance ever NHL player to kneel during the U.S. anthem. since the Blackhawks’ second-round pick revealed on Twitter that his coach in the minors, Bill Peters, had “dropped the N-bomb” on him during the ’09–10 season “because he didn’t like my choice of music.” After the account was confirmed by several witnesses, Peters, who had gone on to become the Calgary head coach, resigned, apologizing publicly to the Flames, but not to Aliu. FEBRUARY 2021 73

AKIM ALIU 14 months since his tweets, he’s grown more fed up than ever long enough to spew in Russian, “I’m not picking you up with the game that he continues to love, even if he hasn’t because you have two n------ with you,” before speeding off. always felt that it loves him back. “It’s not hard to figure Seeking a more welcoming world for their sons, Tai and out our sport is suffering,” Aliu says. “Whatever the NHL Larissa Aliu stuffed their belongings into a few suitcases is doing is clearly not working. It’s just posturing, window- and relocated to the Toronto suburb of Parkdale when washing, nonmeaningful half measures. That’s all it is.” Akim was eight. They rented a single upstairs bedroom in a stranger’s house and picked up multiple jobs each to E ARLY ONE evening in December 2019, as snowfall make ends meet. Akim fell in love with the local pastime, caked the Toronto area, Aliu (al-EE-you) wrapped saving up to buy a pair of used skates at a garage sale and up a workout at a Lifetime Fitness in Vaughan and practicing for hours by himself on area outdoor rinks. “I drove to his favorite eatery, a no-frills, family-run pizzeria. was in my sanctuary, man,” he says. “It was peaceful.” He settled into his customary table, back near the Until it wasn’t. As he rocketed up the hockey ladder kitchen, where he wouldn’t be bothered, and ordered the thanks to his slick skating, rugged frame and powerful shot, usual: Greek salad, veal hoagie and penne dressed in what racism met Aliu at most every rung. After scoring 34 goals he dubbed “the best rosé sauce ever.” A month into his new on a U-16 team with current Leafs captain John Tavares, life, he was still learning to handle all the attention. Lately, Aliu, then a winger, went sixth in the 2005 OHL draft. On the restaurant owner, a friend, had taken to flipping the his first day with the Windsor (Ont.) Spitfires, 16-year-old channel whenever Aliu became the subject. Aliu went to meet some of his new teammates at the billet “I’m still so mad that I can’t even watch,” Aliu said. home of star forward and then recent Flyers draft pick “But it’s everywhere. It’s hard to cut off.” It was far from what Aliu had expected when he sent his tweets. He’d been standing in the stairwell of that same Lifetime Fitness, reading about how just-ousted Toronto coach Mike Babcock—a mentor of Peters—had humiliated a former player, and decided to share his story: how Peters had slurred him, how he pushed back and then how he was demoted to a lower minor league. “First one to admit I rebelled against him. Wouldn’t you?” Aliu had posted. “Instead of remedying the situation, he wrote a letter to [manage- ment] to have me sent down . . .” Supportive texts and calls had flooded his phone, many from fellow Black players or other members of hockey’s underrep- resented communities. But those were Bettman asked the HDA players what drowned by torrents of bigoted social media posts. He scrolled through a few he’d saved: they had done and where they You’re a dumb f------ n------ that’s causing s--- because his feelings are hurt had been in the fight against racism. All I see is some f---y ass p---y that wants to be in the spotlight HE BACKTRACKED, BUT THE What a b---- I hope your family burns in hell DAMAGE WAS DONE. WINSLOW TOWNSON/USA TODAY SPORTS (BET TMAN); “I could probably show you another SCOT T ROVAK /NHLI/GET T Y IMAGES (DAVIS) couple hundred of these,” Aliu said. “What I hear most is, ‘Why didn’t you come out 10 years ago?’ ” He paused, holding up his phone. “Well, this would’ve happened.” Steve Downie. “Never seen him before in my life, but I Bigotry has been a constant presence in Aliu’s life. He looked up to him,” Aliu says of Downie, whose nine-year was born in Nigeria to a white, Ukrainian mother and a NHL career ended in 2016. “And the first thing he said Nigerian father; the family moved to Kiev when he was when I walked in was, ‘What is this n----- doing in my a baby. In one of his “most vivid” childhood memories, house?’” Early that season, Aliu refused to take part in a his mom was trying to hail a taxi for herself, Akim and team hazing ritual; later on, Downie cross-checked him his older brother, Edward. A cab driver slowed down just in a practice and knocked out seven teeth. The pair then 74 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

ANDY DEVLIN/NHLI/GETTY IMAGES fought while teammates watched. (Downie could not be two parties sat down. “Whatever you have to say, say it.” reached for comment despite multiple attempts.) In addition to detailing the Peters incident for the NHL’s Six years later, in 2011, an equipment manager with investigation, Aliu and his lawyers presented measures the ECHL’s Colorado Eagles dressed as Aliu for a team they wanted the NHL to enact, like a whistleblower hot- Halloween party, arriving in blackface and a custom- line. Spurred by Aliu’s suggestion, an NHL spokesperson printed Eagles jersey with Aliu’s longtime nickname, confirms, Bettman announced at a Board of Governors “Dreamer”—a nod to fellow Nigerian Hakeem Olajuwon— meeting the next week that the league would implement on the back. The experience caused Aliu such “terrible that exact idea (albeit without crediting Aliu). “One week anxiety and insomnia” that he checked himself into the I was just sitting around, trying to find a job,” Aliu says. hospital for two days. “A dark, f----- up time,” he says. “Then a week later I’m meeting with the commissioner of the NHL. Life comes at you fast.” Other racial barriers were subtler, like the high equip- ment costs and registration fees that his parents struggled At the pizzeria, Aliu recalled a recent chat with his parents, who have long begged him to quit the sport after POWER PLAYERS seeing its mental toll on him. “They were saying, your The HDA says Bettman ( left) and dream the whole time was to be an NHL superstar for 10 to Davis (center) came up short on their efforts 15 years, but now you might do more to change the game to promote social justice in the bubbles; Kadri than you ever could’ve as a player,” Aliu said. “Obviously ( below, left) spoke alongside other players I’m not there yet, but hearing that is almost surreal. Hockey, after play stopped following Blake’s shooting. out of all the major sports, needs the most retooling. Why can’t I be the guy that sparks that conversation?” to afford. “I don’t think I understood all the financial implications at that age,” Aliu says, “but you learn early O N DEC. 5, 2019, at 3:38 p.m., Aliu sent the first that you’re different.” Even when he made his NHL debut message in a text thread that he titled, hockey for Calgary in April 2012, notching two goals and an assist diversity committee. Initially composed of in his first two games, the triumph came at a personal about 10 NHL players of color, within two days the chat cost: At the season-long urging of an official of color in swelled to 20-plus, including All-Stars P.K. Subban and the Flames’ farm system, who had cautioned Aliu against Seth Jones. “standing out” in a conformist sport, Aliu had shaved off his Afro prior to his call-up. “It wasn’t in a malicious way,” The goal: a safe space where members could share Aliu says of the official’s advice. “I just think he wanted their experiences and create a unified force for change. the best for me and he knew how the system works.” There was plenty to discuss. In the league’s 103-year exis- Much of this personal history spilled forth when Aliu tence, no team has employed a Black general manager. Only visited the NHL’s Toronto office on Dec. 3, 2019, eight days one Black head coach has stood behind an NHL bench— after his tweets about Peters. Flanked by his new three- Dirk Graham, who led Chicago for 59 games in 1998–99 man legal team, Aliu met for an hour with commissioner before getting fired—and, though records are spotty, it is Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly, who believed that just two Black assistants have ever hoisted flew in from New York City just for the occasion. “I’m here the Stanley Cup: Lightning video coach Nigel Kirwan to listen,” Aliu remembers Bettman telling him as the (2004 and ’20) and goalie coach Frantz Jean (’20). On-ice representation isn’t much more diverse. In ad- dition to the 18 Black players who appeared in more than five games in 2019–20, the league counted just a hand- ful more identifying as Asian (eight), Indigenous (six), Hispanic/Latino (four) or Arab/Middle Eastern (four). “There’s that sense of loneliness we’ve all felt,” says Wild defenseman Matt Dumba, who is Filipino Canadian. “Who do you tell when you’re going through these things, besides your family? None of your teammates are going through it. And what am I going to say to a GM, an older white gentleman, who hasn’t seen the game the way I have?” The forum that Aliu wanted, though, never materialized. Some players were spooked that he included his lawyers on calls and wondered whether he was trying to rally support for himself. “I think guys were concerned with Akim wanting to sue,” says Trevor Daley, a defenseman who recently retired after 16 years in the NHL. “I’m sure that crossed people’s minds,” says Aliu, who declined to discuss his legal plans. Other players voiced concerns FEBRUARY 2021 75

AKIM ALIU about the career risk of speaking out. “There’s just so their screens, but the quarterback spent two hours offering much unknown that comes along with that,” Dumba says. advice, impressing the group with his knowledge of the A few players dropped off the thread without explanation. Colored Hockey League, an early-20th-century, all-Black “It was completely dead,” Aliu says. outfit in Nova Scotia that, among other contributions, pioneered the technique of goalies playing the puck. When Aliu signed with a Czech club in January 2020— his 15th pro team in his sixth country since he last played “Everything Kap said, I think we all held on to it in the NHL in ’13—it became even harder for him to keep pretty dearly,” says Dumba, one of seven founding ex- in touch with NHL friends. By the time he returned to ecutive committee members of the group, alongside Aliu, Toronto in early March, just as the COVID-19 outbreak was Kane, Daley and longtime NHL wingers Chris Stewart, hitting North America, he worried that the momentum Wayne Simmonds and Joel Ward. “But the unity of it all from his tweets was fading. But incident after incident was really the strong message that I took away from it. proved that the conversation wasn’t going away. In January, Staying together as a group, not letting anyone else pull AHL defenseman Brandon Manning was suspended for us in other directions. Strength in numbers.” slurring a Black opponent; in April, the comment section of a fan chat with Rangers prospect K’Andre Miller was T HE HOCKEY Diversity Alliance officially launched spammed with the n-word; in early May, Capitals forward June 8, with a press release posted to the indi- Brendan Leipsic was waived after it became public that he vidual social media accounts of its members. The made misogynistic comments in an Instagram message group had no website, no Twitter presence, no specific thread in which others hurled racist insults. initiatives—just a bold mission “to eradicate racism and intolerance in hockey,” focusing on community outreach Seeking to reassert his voice, Aliu wrote a 4,000-word and antiracism education. There was also a message for article for The Players’ Tribune on May 19 headlined hockey the NHL: “We are hopeful that we will work productively is not for everyone—a neck-high slap shot at the with the league to accomplish these important changes.” hockey is for everyone diversity campaign that the NHL has run since 1998. The story described Peters’s com- In response, the NHL invited the HDA to spell out its ments, Downie’s cross-check and other instances of racial objectives in a virtual meeting in late June with Bettman abuse in raw detail, prompting a viral response far more and Davis, who had been hired from a corporate advisory positive than what Aliu experienced after his tweets. Activ- firm in 2017 to focus on diversity and inclusion. The players ist celebrities such as Alyssa Milano and Marshawn Lynch saw an opportunity to tell the commissioner about their sent him direct messages, forming relationships that last encounters with racism in the sport. “Hockey, out of all the major sports, needs the most retooling,” Aliu says. “WHY CAN’T I BE THE GUY THAT SPARKS THAT CONVERSATION?” to this day, Aliu says. So did several NHL players, with Ward spoke about being bombarded with racist tweets others expressing support in public posts. from Bruins fans after his Game 7 overtime goal for Washington eliminated Boston from the 2012 playoffs. Six days later a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the Simmonds discussed having a banana thrown at him by a neck of George Floyd until the 46-year-old Black man fan during a 2011 exhibition. Daley recounted how his then died. Aliu marched in one Black Lives Matter protest in Ontario Hockey League coach John Vanbiesbrouck called Toronto, stopping after out of COVID-19 concerns. But he him the n-word in 2003. (Vanbiesbrouck resigned shortly was advocating action on a different front. The Zoom calls thereafter, acknowledging the slur. He is now an executive with fellow Black players had resumed, with a group of for USA Hockey.) Kane described a fan yelling at him to about 10 usually on the line. A common feeling emerged: go play basketball as he sat in the penalty box in Colorado Enough was enough. “All of our stories were basically the during the 2019 playoffs. (Kane says he reported the incident exact same,” says Daley. They decided to formally create to an on-ice official, but “there was zero follow-up” from an organization, with Aliu and Kane as its coheads. the league. In the past, the NHL has said that the teams were aware, but the issue never reached the league office.) In one of their earliest meetings, the (then unnamed) group welcomed a guest speaker whom Aliu had gotten to As members began blasting Bettman for not doing more know through Ben Meiselas, one of his lawyers. Some were to prevent these incidents, the commissioner seemed to unsure what to expect when Colin Kaepernick appeared on 7 6 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

MIKE RIDEWOOD/GETTY IMAGES grow defensive. Citing various NHL diversity initiatives its postseason messaging campaign around a catch-all during his 27-year tenure, he then asked the players what hashtag, #WeSkateFor, lumping the Black Lives Matter they had done and where they had been in the fight against movement with the pandemic and other unrelated causes. racism. He quickly backtracked, but the damage was done. “It’s like showing up to the breast cancer fundraiser and protesting that there’s other diseases, too,” Dumba says. “I think he knew he had put his foot in his mouth,” Kane says. “Everyone on that call has done a lot of things on In public, the sides presented a united front. The HDA’s their own to grow the game within our own communities. logo was displayed at times on video boards in the bubble, A comment like that really rubbed guys the wrong way.” and Dumba delivered a speech about racial justice on (Through a spokesperson, Bettman declined comment.) reopening night in Edmonton, after which he became the first NHL player to kneel during the U.S. national anthem. On July 14, two weeks before the season restarted, the HDA presented Davis, Bettman and other league officials But the HDA’s frustrations were privately mounting. with a PowerPoint deck titled, our ask of the nhl. Among them: that the league asked Dumba to give his speech on just three days’ notice. And that while the league UNKIND CUT had agreed to help secure TV airtime for HDA ads in ex- Aliu had two goals and an assist in change for Dumba’s speaking, Kane says, nothing came of his first two games for Calgary—but it. “They promised they’d have our logo on the JumboTrons had to play without his Afro, which throughout the tournament,” Kane says. “They only did he shaved off to avoid standing out. it for the first week.” (The NHL insists Dumba was given six days and declined comment on Kane’s claims.) Much of the request focused on an eight-point “HDA pledge” that the coalition wanted the league to sign; items Still, talks continued, largely thanks to a line change: included specific hiring targets for Black personnel in After both sides agreed that their meetings were getting too league and team front offices (including 5% Black hockey- “emotional,” as Davis puts it, players stopped attending and related personnel by the end of 2020–21) and funding of tagged in the HDA’s advisory board, consisting of Meiselas; $100 million over the next decade (or just above $300,000 Toronto lawyers Ted Frankel and Glen Lewis; financial per team, per year) to back grassroots initiatives and other advisor Chris George, an ex-Avalanche draft pick; and programming. The HDA also asked for various antiracism Rico Phillips, the OHL’s diversity and inclusion director. displays during the upcoming playoffs, such as changing the blue lines to black and painting the HDA logo on the The players continued to make their voices heard else- ice. Kane recalls Davis and Bettman commending the where. By the time of the Blake shooting, just one HDA presentation’s thoroughness. “I was hopeful,” Kane says. member remained in either NHL playoff bubble: Colorado forward Nazem Kadri, who had joined the group in July. But disappointment soon followed: The NHL built But the rest contributed from afar, serving as sounding boards for numerous white players who reached out with questions and helping advance the discussions inside the bubbles that led to the NHL’s two-day postponement. The HDA also held Zoom calls with several teams on Aug. 28 to present a 20-minute deck that included basic info about the Black Lives Matter movement, stats on incarceration rates among people of color, and videos of Floyd’s killing and Blake’s shooting. That same day Kadri, who is of Lebanese descent, joined dozens of players at a powerful press conference to explain their decision to sit. “I think we have a unique opportunity to try to create sustainable change,” Kadri said. I N SEPTEMBER, during one of the HDA’s calls with the NHL, the group’s advisers followed up about that “first-of-its-kind” grassroots program. Expecting the league to provide a rollout plan for the program, the HDA was upset to learn that it needed to create a plan itself and apply to the Industry Growth Fund, a joint NHL– NHL Players Association community relations program that had until then given money to only teams. The league offered to help the HDA through the ap- plication, one HDA adviser says. According to an NHL spokesperson, “The NHL and NHLPA actually were taking an unprecedented step to mine the resources of a FEBRUARY 2021 77

AKIM ALIU CBA-negotiated fund that had never been used for such According to Davis, the NHL invited at least two HDA a purpose before.” But where the NHL thought it was members onto each of these committees, which began bending over backward, the HDA saw the league as barely meeting virtually in late October. The HDA declined. moving a muscle. “It just seemed like a big game,” Kane says. “Why do we need to have this intense negotiation if, Davis touts the intersectional diversity of the players, genuinely, you want to see this type of change?” coaches, agents, media members and others on the NHL’s committees, which contrasts with the HDA’s lack of women Then, on Sept. 11, the NHL sent what the HDA inter- and LGTBQ members. “We’ve got a coalition across all of preted as an official response to its list of pledges. Titled the dimensions: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orienta- hockey’s commitment to cultural change, the tion,” she says, later casting the HDA as “such a small two-page document proposed soliciting a host of potential body” relative to the league’s “47 active players of color.” signatories for an “actionable public commitment” toward “eradicat[ing] racism” in hockey, including every NHL Asked by ESPN in October to compare the league’s ef- team, Hockey Canada, USA Hockey, and various men’s forts with those of the HDA’s, Subban took the historical and women’s pro leagues. But the text contained no hard approach. “I’m excited for the opportunity to work with hiring targets or specific funding commitments, only the NHL, but there’s always going to be multiple people vague vows to, for instance, “further engage” people-of- fighting that fight, multiple people trying to eradicate color- and woman-owned businesses. To HDA players, racism,” said Subban, who cochairs the player inclusion this was evidence of an unbridgeable gap with the NHL. committee. “Everyone is going to have a different way, right? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King didn’t always Or, as Aliu puts it, “How long are you going to waste see eye to eye, but they had an impact in their own right.” each other’s time before you call it quits?” HDA players take this view: The house is ablaze, and According to Davis, the HDA’s frustrations were news to the league is off studying the best types of hoses. Or, in the league. “We were shocked and disappointed that they the case of some power brokers, ignoring the fire. In one decided that they did not want to continue the dialogue,” meeting over the summer, according to multiple people the NHL executive says. “We had been in constant con- present, Davis commented in passing that some NHL versation with them, working through what we thought owners simply didn’t see racism as a pressing problem in were the details of a partnership.” hockey. The HDA members understood her to be illustrat- ing the barriers to instant change, but they were still jarred. Asked to assess why talks ultimately crumbled, Davis In another meeting later in the summer, multiple sources points back across the aisle: “My sense is they wanted to control how we are executing our plan and weren’t ON THE MONEY willing to hear and understand that much of what they Aliu has been pleased by were requesting in the pledge were things that were NHL sponsors’ signing underway, and that the best way to influence timing and on to support HDA accountability around that would be to work within the programming. “We’re structure. . . . Partnership means that it’s a two-way street, showing the NHL that both sides giving and getting a little. And I just felt like everybody’s on board to do collaboration, from their definition, was pretty one-way.” the right thing, including their partners,” he says. Under Davis, the league has been taking a slow-and- steady approach toward diversity. Rather than commit to the HDA’s hiring targets, the league commissioned a demographic study through the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. The whistleblower hotline finally became fully operational in December, a year after Bettman an- nounced it, but not before what Davis calls a “comprehen- sive search” for an operator that settled on Deloitte. And while teams have been mandated to complete antiracism training, Davis says 100% participation isn’t expected until 2022, due to its cost ($500,000 for the league front office) and the economic uncertainty of the pandemic. Rather than joining the HDA, several Black NHL play- ers, including Subban, winger JT Brown (the first NHLer to protest during the national anthem, raising a fist in October 2017) and Vegas enforcer Ryan Reaves (the first player to sit post-Blake), decided to work with the league on a series of inclusion committees. Their recommendations will be evaluated by an executive council codirected by Bettman and Sabres owner Kim Pegula, who is Korean. 7 8 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

recall Davis’s relaying how several owners had reported Dancing with the Stars. Hotels couldn’t take him, so he isolated losing season-ticket holders after Dumba’s bubble speech. in the windowless basement, rolling back the rugs to make room for yoga mats, weights and his hockey equipment. “Obviously we know as players what a lot of these owners are thinking,” Aliu says. “We were just shocked to hear it.” At first Aliu had resisted joining Battle of the Blades, fearful of “the stigma of being on a reality TV show” as an The NHL had no comment on Davis’s statements. active player looking to find another team for his 13th pro Aliu concedes the validity of certain criticisms of the season. But he was swayed by his girlfriend and parents, HDA, notably that it right now consists of nine men. “Not who emphasized both the potential financial benefits and having any women, not having any Indigenous people, I the national reach of the program’s weekly prime-time TV think people need to understand that, number one, we are slot. Competing with his partner, 2019 European pairs going to be doing that, and pretty quickly,” Aliu says. “We’re champ Vanessa James, they formed the show’s first-ever a new organization, so a lot of those things take time.” Black couple, finishing fourth and winning $25,000 for But the HDA has thus far rejected the idea that it would Aliu’s Time to Dream Foundation. “The show is all about be better served working within the NHL’s structure. To sharing your message,” Aliu says. “So I just thought that them, systemic change requires rattling cages. Like when was important, for the country to see what I’m doing.” Kane appeared on ESPN’s First Take in May to call out Sidney Crosby, among other NHL players, for not speaking Aliu remains steadfast that he should be playing in the out against racial injustice after Floyd’s death, leading to NHL, that he was branded uncoachable after the Peters 128 players’ posting statements condemning racism on their incident and “essentially blackballed.” He notes that four respective social media accounts. (The league counted.) men who worked in the ’10–11 Blackhawks’ front office “If we hadn’t been as aggressive on some stances as we were NHL GMs last season. “Hockey’s a small circle,” he were, no one would even know who the HDA is, or what says. “Once you get labeled something, especially if you’re we stand for,” Dumba says. somebody of color, it doesn’t matter how good you are.” W HEN NEWS broke in October of the HDA’s Asked what he hopes to come from the NHL’s inves- schism with the NHL, Aliu was two days into tigation into his case, which the league says is ongoing, a two-week quarantine at his parents’ house in Aliu doesn’t hesitate: “the truth about why I wasn’t able Vaughan. He had been exposed to COVID-19 while training to be successful in the National Hockey League,” he says. for Battle of the Blades, Canada’s figure skating version of For all of his bitterness toward the NHL, though, Aliu be- JONATHAN BIELASKI lieves the HDA is fulfilling its mission. He points to the re- cent team hires of three group members—Ward (Las Vegas), Daley (Pittsburgh) and Stewart (Philadelphia)—and that of Florida’s Brett Peterson as the league’s first Black as- sistant GM. He describes “great conversations” with reps from the NBA’s Cavaliers about potentially building a joint basketball-hockey youth program in the Cleveland area. With newfound corporate support providing a push for social justice efforts across all sports, the coalition has also partnered with several NHL sponsors, Aliu says, including Sportsnet (to produce antiracism education videos) and Kraft Heinz and Scotiabank (to build youth programs in Toronto, with Pittsburgh and Vancouver targeted next). “We’re showing the NHL that everybody’s on board to do the right thing, including their partners,” Aliu says. The league is similarly forging ahead on the youth hockey front, with plans in Pittsburgh for a program to develop skat- ers of color. Run by the Penguins, it is slated to be named after Willie O’Ree, the NHL’s first Black player, and will ide- ally serve as a model for other teams in the future, Davis says. If the HDA’s and NHL’s pilot programs meet success and the efforts expand, a bizarre scenario is possible: dueling grassroots programs run by each group in the same cities, funded by the same sponsors, with the same goals. “Being realistic, there’s things that we can’t do without the NHL, and there’s things the NHL can’t do without us,” Aliu says. “Us being in a quarrel is not positive for either side.” For now, though, Aliu and his fellow HDA members will keep fighting, at once together and alone. FEBRUARY 2021 79

POINT AFTER RIDE THE WAVE THE SUPER BOWL TV AUDIENCE IS HUGE—BUT SOME SUPER MOMENTS ARE HUGER THAN OTHERS 99.9 MILLION. When the press releases went minute-by-minute viewership totals, including Fox out after Super Bowl LIV last February, and Fox Deportes, from the coin toss to the trophy that was the average number of viewers presentation (all times ET). The graph shows an for the broadcast on Fox, according to the standard audience that ebbs and flows—and likes the halftime metrics cited by networks and ad buyers. But there’s show (shaded) better than most of the football action. a more interesting story when you look deeper. The There’s also a message for ad buyers: If you want your media measurement firm MVP Index broke down the spot seen, buy the fourth quarter, not the first. 120,000,000 12 11 7 5 110,000,000 3 HALFTIME 8 4 SHOW 2 VIEWERS 100,000,000 1 90,000,000 6:30 p.m. 7:00 p.m. 7:30 p.m. 8:00 p.m. 8:30 p.m. 9:00 p.m. 9:30 p.m. 10:00 p.m. 10:30 p.m. 1. 6:30 p.m. 4. 6:54 p.m. 7. 8:01 p.m. 10. 9:09 p.m. 13. 10:11 p.m. 100,252,256 108,380,823 117,438,039 113,777,360 109,618,994 Pregame coin toss First in-game 2nd quarter ends 4th quarter begins 4th quarter ends, commercial break Chiefs win 31–20 2. 6:41 p.m. 8. 8:32 p.m. 11. 9:46 p.m. 105,257,547 5. 7:19 p.m. 111,906,282 117,261,301 14. 10:19 p.m. 112,490,028 91,450,992 Opening kickoff 3rd quarter begins Damien Williams TD, 2nd quarter begins Chiefs go ahead Trophy presentation 3. 6:53 p.m. 9. 8:57 p.m. 24–20 begins 110,265,379 6. 7:39 p.m. 114,529,629 115,678,162 12. 9:53 p.m. Robbie Gould field 49ers take 20–10 118,733,533 goal, 49ers go up 49ers touchdown, lead 3–0 game tied 10–10 Most-viewed commercial break SIMON BRUTY 80 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM

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