2022-07-01SportsIllustrated

How DEION SANDERS Rebuilt Jackson State—and Why an HBCU REVIVAL Is Next on His List JULY 2022 VOLUME 133 | NO. 6 SI.COM | @SINOW

By

JEAN-JACQUES TAYLOR

NO. 2

Shedeur Sanders NO. 12

Travis Hunter

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2022 N O. 6 J U LY M E 1 3 3 | VOLU

E R I C K W. R A S C O ; C O V E R S T Y L I N G B Y D O M I N I Q U E J A S M I N - P A S L E Y

PR ANKS A LOT The reigning AL MVP is perhaps the most talented player in MLB history. He’s also a giant goofball.

DEPARTMENTS

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P. 6

SCORECARD

P. 1 2

FACES IN THE CROWD

P. 2 2

POINT AFTER

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we all bring unique flavor to the bowl

mms.com

© 2022 MARS OR AFFILIATES

LINEUP PARTNERS IN PRIME Sanders brought swagger and experience to JSU—and it’s helped land some huge recruits (including his own son).

E R I C K W. R A S C O

FEATURES COLLEGE FOOTBALL

NBA

MLB

BASEBALL

SURFING

COURT SPORTS

24

34

44

50

58

68

DEION SANDERS

CHET HOLMGREN

SHOHEI OHTANI

MLB KIDS

KELLY SLATER AT 50

PICKLEBALL

The Hall of Famer uprooted his life to revive a moribund small school— and now he’s ushering in a new era for all HBCUs

Could a 195-pound 7-footer be the future of basketball?

Sounds wild, but Holmgren certainly thinks so

It’s no secret he’s the most talented player on the planet— but another strength is coming into focus: his sense of humor

Growing up as the boy or girl of a Boy of Summer meant cavorting in the clubhouse and unlocking the mysteries of the bleachers

He just won the Super Bowl of surfing. What’s next? He’ll consult some GOATs, wrestle his demons and keep stoking that fire

Inside the fierce fight— bitter feuds! a bold coup!—for the soul (and dollars) of the fastestgrowing sport in America

BY JEAN-JACQUES TAYLOR

BY GREG BISHOP

BY STEPHANIE APSTEIN

BY STEVE RUSHIN

BY BRANDON SNEED

BY JOHN WALTERS

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED (ISSN 0038-822X) IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE ARENA MEDIA BRANDS, LLC. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 200 VESEY STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10281-1008. OWNED BY ABG-SI LLC. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 1411 BROADWAY, 21ST FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10018. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT NEW YORK, NY AND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES. POSTMASTER: SEND ALL UA A TO CFS. (SEE DMM 707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: SEND ADDRESS CORRECTIONS TO SPORTS ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE, P.O. BOX 37576, BOONE, IA 50037-0508. U.S. SUBSCRIBERS: IF THE POSTAL SERVICE ALERTS US THAT YOUR MAGAZINE IS UNDELIVERABLE, WE HAVE NO FURTHER OBLIGATION UNLESS WE RECEIVE A CORRECTED ADDRESS WITHIN T WO YEARS. CANADA POST PUBLICATION MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40624074. YOUR BANK MAY PROVIDE UPDATES TO THE CARD INFORMATION WE HAVE ON FILE. YOU MAY OPT OUT OF THIS SERVICE AT ANY TIME. MAILING LIST: WE MAKE A PORTION OF OUR MAILING LIST AVAIL ABLE TO REPUTABLE FIRMS. IF YOU WOULD PREFER THAT WE NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME, PLEASE CALL OR WRITE US. © 2022 ABG-SI LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ABG-SI LLC. CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: FOR 24/7 SERVICE, PLEASE VISIT SI.COM/MY ACCOUNT. YOU CAN ALSO CALL 877-747-1045 OR WRITE SI AT P.O. BOX 37576, BOONE, IA 50037-0508.

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T HE FIRS T T IME T HE OPEN CH A MPIONSHIP WA S HELD AT T HE OLD COURSE AT S T. A NDRE W S, C A NN O T B E C O N S ID E R E D F IR S T R AT E ,” O P INE D THE DAILY NEWS O F G R E AT E R L O ND O N . T HE P L AY A ND , W HE N T HE B E S T G OL F E R S IN T HE W OR L D R E T UR N T O S C O T L A ND T HIS MON T H F OR T HE

LEADING OFF

BEARING DOWN

With the clubhouse providing the backdrop on the 72nd hole, Jack Nicklaus hit a perfect drive to close out his 15th major in 1978, the second time he raised the Claret Jug at St. Andrews.

P HO T O GR A P H B Y WA LT E R IO O S S JR .

Royal Treatment IN 1873, T OM K IDD W ON W I T H A 3 6 -HOL E S C OR E OF 17 1 ON T HE WAT E R L O G GE D T R A C K . “ T HE P L AY O V E R T HE IN T E R V E NING 2 8 OP E N S AT T HE C O UR S E H A S M A DE UP F OR K IDD ’ S R O U GH D AY, 150 T H OP E N, ONE T HING IS C E R TA IN: NO T HING S HOR T OF F IR S T-R AT E W IL L B E G O OD E NO U GH T O W IN

FOLLOW THROUGH

John Daly (top right) shot a 67 on Thursday en route to the 1995 championship, while Bobby Jones put up a 68 in his first round when he won in 1927. Tiger Woods, the winner at the Old Course in 2000 and ’05, saw his chances for a three-peat evaporate with a 73 on Friday in 2010 (below).

PHO T OGR A PHS B Y F RED V UICH ( W OODS) J A C QUEL INE DU V OISIN (D A LY ) BE T T M A NN/GE T T Y IM A GE S (JONE S)

FOLLOW @SPORTSILLUSTRATED

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LEADING OFF

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COLD SPELLS

The list of golfers who never conquered the Old Course is just as impressive as those who did. Five-time Open champ Tom Watson (left, on Swilcan Bridge in 2010) was twice tied for the 54-hole lead at St. Andrews but never won.

Arnold Palmer (far right) made his British Open debut in 1960, finishing second in blustery conditions. He’d take the next two Opens, but he never again finished in the top 10 at St. Andrews.

PHO T OGR A PHS B Y ROBER T BE CK ( WAT SON) A ND JERR Y C OOK E (PA L MER)

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GAMEPLAN p. 18

NEWSMAKERS p. 20

FULL FRAME p. 21

FACES IN THE CROWD p. 22

W H E N I T C O M E S T O I T S P L AY E R S E S P O U S I N G E XCESSIVE E XPLE TIVES, THE NBA ISN’T MESSING AROUND. BUT THE QUESTION REMAINS: WHY ?

B Y HO WA RD BE CK

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IL L US T R AT ION B Y C A RL O C A DEN A S

OMETIME IN the last year, NBA executives noticed something alarming—

press conferences peppered with profanities, f-bombs flying freely.

S-bombs and other assorted bombs, too. So before it could turn into a decided to act.

Memos were sent, warnings issued, fingers wagged. The message? Curtail the cursing, or pay the price for your impudence.

Then came the fines.

Knicks forward Julius Randle was hit for $25,000 in early January, for saying (twice) that he up”—an “egregious use of profane language,” according to the league’s statement. The next week, Nets star Kevin Durant was hit for $15,000 up”—a quote the league deemed merely “profane,” though clearly not egregious, given the lesser fine.

In April, feisty Timberwolves

veteran Patrick Beverley was docked $30,000 for a dual infraction: first, told y’all” on the night Minnesota made the playoffs; then taking to Instagram to tell the Clippers (his here.” The league called this onetwo punch both “inappropriate” and “egregious.”

Then came Jazz center Rudy Gobert, who in a live TV interview dismissed his team’s talk”—and was nailed for $25,000 by league officials, who clearly were in no mood to pardon his French.

The clear lesson? When it comes to excessive expletives, the league All told, players put at least $95,000 in the NBA’s swear jar this season—the most since 2003–04, the earliest for which the league provided data. Many more players have been warned or fined privately, even for quotes in print publications. “We gotta be better,”

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SCORECARD

says Byron Spruell, the NBA’s president of league operations.

“This is about league standards and making sure we have the right look and feel and demeanor to our game, on and off the court.”

This isn’t about FCC rules or protecting young ears. Spruell says it’s simply a matter of “decorum,” a word he invokes often in explaining the policy. “We get the emotion,” says Spruell. “We get the sort of element of authenticity. We’re not trying to take that away. But at the same time, we do have standards.”

He insists, “We’re not trying to be Pollyannaish about this at all.”

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a BFD. “Young people globally don’t care about profanity,” says Bergen, who conducts an annual poll of UCSD undergraduates (“admittedly a very skewed sample”). “At least among them, mid-20s of most offensive words. It’s think even cracks the top 50.”

The NBA calls the profanity crackdown part of a broader effort to reinforce decorum in all facets of the game. Officials noticed the spike in public swearing over the two pandemic seasons, along with an increase in aggressive language and behavior on the court.

In addition to the four public penalties issued during the regular

WE’RE NUMBER ONE! Irving had a message for C’s fans, while notorious yapper Beverley (opposite) dissed the Clippers.

season, the NBA has also issued warnings or fines privately—“in the teens,” per a league official.

Among those said to be on that list, according to a source: Nuggets center DeMarcus Cousins, who was put on notice after using multiple profanities in an interview with Andscape—quotes that appeared only in print, not on video or audio.

And although the NBA has not yet begun policing players’ podcasts, league officials won’t rule it out.

Simply put, the NBA does not

J I M D AV I S / T H E B O S T O N G L O B E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( I R V I N G ) ; D AV I D B E R D I N G / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( B E V E R L E Y )

author of In Praise of Profanity.

“It’s just not the case that you can really blot profanity out of speech,” says Adams, a professor of English at Indiana University. “And certainly people have tried for hundreds of years. And it hasn’t worked.”

Profanity, Adams says, is simply a “natural element of language”—a useful tool for the moments we require “those expressive extremes.”

“Is it worth regulating for the NBA?” Adams asks. “Maybe if it makes business sense for them, because they need a certain decorum to make a certain amount of money. But in the broadest sense, in the 21st century, is it worth worrying about? My answer is no, it’s not.”

Indeed, studies generally indicate swearing has “no measurable negative impact on those who are exposed to it, whether they’re adults or kids,” according to Ben Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego and the author of What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains and Ourselves.

And though foul language may put off some older fans, Bergen says his students consider it, well, not

want players cursing in any setting—not on TV or on their IG, not in the rain or while they train, not with a computer mouse and presumably not with Danuel House.

“We want to have a look and a feel that’s professional,” Spruell says.

“So to ask to take those words out?

I think that’s an O.K. ask.”

Spruell conveyed that message directly to players, coaches and other team personnel in a December memo. But the crackdown has raised concerns for officials with the National Basketball Players Association, who say they were never consulted on the matter.

Targeting quotes from off-air interviews, as in the Cousins case, was perhaps even more alarming.

Union officials also note that the collective bargaining agreement contains no specific prohibition against foul language.

Warriors star Draymond Green, one of the league’s most outspoken and candid players, says he understands the NBA’s concerns.

But he’s not convinced fining players is justified. “You have to understand that sometimes there are emotions and understand that we aren’t robots,” Green says.

“When something’s overboard or malicious, all right, tamp down on that. But if a guy is in the flow of talking and a curse word comes up, you can’t fine the guy for that— well, you can if you want. But I don’t necessarily agree with that.”

T he NB A d o e s n o t wa n t p l ay e r s c u r s in g , no t on T V or on t he ir IG , no t in t he r a in or w hil e t he y t r a in , no t w i t h a c omp u t e r mou se a nd p r e s u m a b ly n o t w i t h D a n u e l H o u s e .

are subject to the same standard, although none have been publicly fined since 2015, when Raptors exec Masai Ujiri was dinged $35,000 for offense in a 12-month span.)

All of these matters are considered and adjudicated by Spruell’s office, with commissioner Adam Silver providing the final judgment, if necessary.

The league says it assesses each situation independently. Suns guard Chris Paul, for instance, was not this week, presumably because he was reacting to the harassment of his family members at a game in Dallas. Nets guard Kyrie Irving was fined $50,000 in April for directing obscene gestures and language at Boston fans, but the league chose not to fine him for then repeating the fans’ alleged

press conference.

League officials stress they don’t expect to eliminate the f-bombs and s-bombs entirely. They just hope to make them a little less frequent—a goal that UCSD’s Bergen believes is both pointless and unlikely.

“Punitive approaches to managing language usually backfire,” Bergen says. “Telling an adult that he can’t use a word—especially an adult who is used to being a leader and using that word in his job—is unlikely to engender acquiescence.

They just learn that if they’re going to use that word, to get their money’s worth.”

Indeed, players know the consequences before they rip referees or curse in a press conference, and they do it anyway.

Sure, they know it’s against the rules and perhaps not the ideal image to project. But sometimes, in the

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GAMEPLAN: THE SMART FAN’S GUIDE TO RIGHT NOW

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR THE CHURCH OF BASEBALL By Ron Shelton

At age 76, Ron Shelton has written his first book, and the biggest question upon reading it is, What took him so long?

The Church of Baseball details the production of 1988’s Bull Durham, which Shelton wrote and was his directorial debut. It’s a remarkable account of how the Hollywood sausage is made, but it’s also a touching account of the author’s relationship with baseball.

Shelton (above, with Kevin Costner) was a minor leaguer, and a few of the escapades he recounts will be familiar to people who have seen the movie. (He once tried to get his slumping team a rainout by drunkenly removing a tarp. The gambit didn’t work READ

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O R I O N P I C T U R E S C O R P/ E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N ( S H E LT O N ) ; J O H N B I E V E R ( H I L L )

A BRILLIANT FIRST BOOK D E TA I L S T H E A U T H O R ’ S F I R S T M O V IE : B ULL D URHAM

as well as it did onscreen.) He was the rare baseball player who spent his time before games taking in the works of Sam Peckinpah, and he ultimately describes Bull Durham as “Lysistrata in the minor leagues.”

If it sounds pretentious, it isn’t, because Shelton is, in addition to a damn good writer, a self-effacing one.

(After Shelton’s baseball career ended, a local jeweler lamented to his face how Shelton never made the majors. “It was clear that not only could you not go home again,” Shelton writes, “you couldn’t even go home the first time.”)

Shelton walks through the screenplay scene by scene, discussing his motivation and his reasoning. He then shifts to the production phase, the highlight of which is Shelton’s fighting the studio’s bizarre belief that Anthony Michael Hall would be a better Nuke LaLoosh than Tim Robbins. The movie, of course, ultimately became a classic. This book? Every bit as good. —Mark Bechtel

SCORECARD

FOR LOVE OF THE GAME A H A L L OF FA MER REMINIS CE S ON HIS CAREER’S HIGHS AND LOWS GAME By Grant Hill

One thing Ron Shelton notes in his Bull Durham book is how the movie still resonates because it’s about loving something more than it loves you back. That same theme is at the heart of Grant Hill’s autobiography, Game.

After a stellar career at Duke, Hill put up fantastic numbers over the first six years of his NBA career, READ including 25.8 points per game in his sixth season.

And then the game turned on him. A misdiagnosed ankle injury kept Hill off the court most of the next four years, and when he returned he was never the same.

Hill’s love of basketball shines through in Game as he recounts his time as a highly touted recruit in an upper-crust family (Hill sheepishly had to pull Chris Webber out of a house party because Webber

was staying at Hill’s house and his mom insisted Grant’s midnight curfew applied to C-Webb as well) and his days with the Blue Devils (Christian Laettner was way into Chubb Rock). What sets the book apart from other similar autobiographies is the way in which Hill—always one of basketball’s most thoughtful players—deals with the end of his career and the toll basketball took on his body. “[At] times, the throbbing ratchets up,” he writes of his ankle. “Each stride feels like a timid probe on fiery coals.”

Hill now holds a stake in the Hawks and runs USA Basketball. To be sure, the game isn’t always fair.

But it’s one Hill always managed to win. —M.B.

SI SPORTSBOOK:

PLAY TO WIN SI’S BE T TING E XPERTS ON THEIR FAV O R I T E N F L O V E R / U N D E R B E T S With the NFL season fast approaching, the SI Sportsbook staff laid out their favorite wintotal wagers: •Craig Ellenport: The Saints finished 9–8 last season and should be

stronger in 2022 with the return of Jameis Winston, a healthy Michael Thomas, the drafting of Chris Olave and the signing of local product Tyrann Mathieu.

Bet: Saints over 7.5 wins (-188)

•Matt Ehalt: As usual, the NFC North is a joke, and the Packers should at the very least go 5–1 in the division.

Bet: Packers over 11.5 wins (+100) •Bill Enright: Matchups against its division foes and its out-of-conference slate against the NFC East should lead to at least seven wins for Indianapolis. That leaves

just three more wins over bad or mediocre teams.

Bet: Colts over 9.5 wins (-152) •Frankie Taddeo: The Eagles fast-tracked the development of young QB Jalen Hurts when they traded for wide receiver A.J. Brown, and they have the third-easiest schedule in the league in 2022.

Bet: Eagles over 8.5 wins (-200)

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NEWSMAKERS

BALANCE OF POWER O

MLB (min. 100 games)

NBA (min. 60 games)

NFL (min. 15 games)

MIA-WAS 242–242 (.500)

DET-SAC 174–174 (.500)

GB-LAR 46-46-2 (.500)

DET-CLE 1,136–1,135 (.500)

ATL-POR 60–60 (.500)

CHI-SF 32-32-1 (.500)

MIN-BAL 974–973 (.500)

CLE-ORL 59–59 (.500)

LV-MIA 18-18-1 (.500)

SEA-TEX 354–352 (.501)

CHH-GSW 32–32 (.500)

NYG-SF 17–17 (.500)

OAK-MIN 1,019–1,016 (.501)

MIL-ATL 115–114 (.502)

ARI-NO/CLE-IND 15–15 (.500)

HOU-SEA 110–67 (.621)

SA-LAC 132–48 (.733)

IND-ATL 15–2 (.882)

STL-ARI 100–63 (.613)

SA-NO 53–20 (.726)

PIT-ATL 14-2-1 (.853)

STL-KC 73–47 (.608)

HOU-CHH 47–18 (.723)

CLE-ATL 12–3 (.800)

NYY-KC 307–201 (.604)

SA–MIN 91–36 (.717)

IND-HOU 31–9 (.775)

STL-MIA 126–82 (.606)

SA-ORL 48–19 (.716)

DET-CLE 16–5 (.762)

* T H R O U G H M AY 2 2 | D ATA C O U R T E S Y O F S P O R T S R E F E R E N C E

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K E N B L A Z E / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S

most lopsided

most even

previous 2,270 contests. Here are the tightest—as well as the most lopsided—regular-season series among active franchises (including past homes) in MLB*, the NBA and the NFL. —M.B.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER IOOSS JR.

DEION SANDERS is making headlines for bringing blue-chip talent to Jackson State (page 24), but Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders are hardly the first big names to grace the banks of the Pearl River.

Lem Barney, Jackie Slater and Jimmy Smith are just a few of the players to parlay success with the Tigers into NFL stardom.

But none loom larger than the running back drafted fourth by Chicago in 1975. “[Walter] Payton, from Jackson State, is the leading scorer in NCAA history. He is, in fact, being compared with Gale Sayers, a comparison Payton rejects,” Mark Donovan wrote in the Sept. 22, 1975, issue of Sports Illustrated. Payton actually outshone

the Bears legend, retiring in ’87 as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

SI’s own Walter—longtime photographer Walter Iooss Jr.—took his most memorable photo of his namesake in a 1979 NFC wild-card game. “It was in Philadelphia, right before the start of the second half.

I shot him against a red wall,” Iooss says. “You gotta be in the right place at the right time.”

It had been a fruitful first half for Payton, whose pair of touchdowns staked Chicago to a 17–10 lead against the Eagles. After the photo, Philadelphia reeled off 17 unanswered points to win. Iooss nevertheless came away with a picture of one of the 20th century’s greatest athletes at the twilight of a fourth straight All-Pro season. “Rarely do you get this close to someone like this,” he says. “This was the closest I ever got to him.”

—Patrick Andres

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FACES IN THE CROWD Photograph by KOHJIRO KINNO

GISELE AND ALYSSA THOMPSON Hometown: Studio City, Calif.

Date of Birth (Gisele): Dec. 2, 2005 Date of Birth (Alyssa): Nov. 7, 2004 Sport: Soccer Club: Total Futbol Academy 22

SP OR T S ILL US TR ATED | SI.COM

ON SEPARATE TRIPS to the

Dominican Republic in the first half of 2022, the Thompson sisters both returned home with Concacaf gold.

The second-youngest player on the U-20 team, Alyssa (above right) scored three goals as the U.S. went undefeated in tournament play.

Gisele, a defender, contributed to a back line that surrendered just one goal in seven games en route to the U-17 side’s fifth title.

Together, Alyssa and Gisele

became the first high school athletes to sign a name, image and likeness deal with Nike in May. “[Being sisters] definitely helped us become the players we are today, because we got to play on a boys team at a very young age,” says Alyssa, a junior at Harvard-Westlake School in L.A. “I felt like I had both a friend and a teammate having a sister there, so it was really nice.”

The Thompsons didn’t start out as

SCORECARD

a soccer family. Their father, Mario, ran track at Occidental College, and their mother, Karen, raced cross-country in high school. Alyssa and Gisele played multiple sports growing up, and each brought their parents’ speed to the pitch.

Alyssa takes it to the track, too: In April, she ran California’s secondfastest 100-meter (11.74) time of the 2022 girls outdoor season.

Alyssa and Gisele, who started playing soccer together 12 years ago, have both verbally committed to Stanford. As rising stars in the USWNT pipeline, the Thompson sisters dream of becoming the second set of sisters to represent the U.S. in a senior international competition. (Sam and Kristie Mewis were the first.)

“We’ve already had that experience of playing Concacaf together when we were younger,” Gisele says. “It was the best feeling, winning it together, so it would definitely be cool winning together again.”

—Patrick Andres

C O U R T E S Y O F S A M R O E C K E R ( R O E C K E R ) ; G A L L A U D E T/ D AV I D S I N C L A I R (GRE GOR Y ); COUR T E S Y OF BRI A N NEL SON (SNEL L ING)

ERIC GREGORY

MARATHON

RACE TO DAYLIGHT THE IDEA sprung up as a way for Sam Roecker to combine her two passions of running and nursing: break the record for the fastest marathon in a nurse’s uniform. The Penn student, an RN at an ENT clinic, had witnessed the trauma her friends and coworkers faced as front-line health care workers and was stunned by the gap between the mental health support they

Sport: Track and Field

needed and the help that was available.

She partnered with the American Nurses Foundation ahead of the Boston Marathon and raised more than $48,000 for its well-being initiative, which provides free counseling

resources. While wearing scrubs, Roecker finished the race in 2:48:02, breaking the old mark by 20 minutes.

Says Roecker, 30, “Maybe we can fix the system in some small way.”

—Dan Falkenheim

Hometown: Metairie, La.

Gregory, a sophomore sprinter at Gallaudet, ran the 200-meter dash in 20.62 seconds with +1.4 wind to win the Colonial States Athletic Conference (CSAC) title in the event.

His time broke the Division III record and was the fastest ever by a Deaf person. Named the CSAC Track Athlete of the Year, Gregory won two more conference championships with a school-record 10.42 in the 100 meters and 51.28 in the 400 meters.

ROBBY SNELLING Sport: Baseball

Hometown: Reno

Snelling, a senior lefthander at McQueen High, fanned 20 batters in a 6–2 defeat of Spanish Springs, setting the Nevada record for most strikeouts in a seven-inning game. A top-100 prospect in the 2022 MLB draft, Snelling finished first in the state record book with a large-class-best 145 strikeouts in 62 1/3 innings.

NOMINATE NOW To submit a candidate for Faces in the Crowd, email faces@si.com.

For more on outstanding amateur athletes, follow @Faces_SI on Twitter.

PRIME’S

T

I

by

J EAN - JAC Q U E S TAYLO R

Photograph by E R I C K W. R A S C O

It hasn’t even been two years since Hall of Fame cornerback DEION SANDERS uprooted his life to revive a moribund small-school program. But after a record-setting first full season at Jackson State, followed by the unprecedented arrival of a fivestar recruit (and a public quarrel with Nick Saban), he’s ushering in a new

SUI T ED F OR SUC CE S S With Shedeur (left) and Hunter (right) in the fold, the expectations for Sanders’s program have reached new heights.

Photograph by M A R C U S S M ITH

A ROLLED UP PIECE OF PAPER THE SIZE OF A MARBLE SITS ON THE FLOOR, AND DEION SANDERS JUST CAN’T STOP STARING AT IT.

S T Y L ING B Y DOMINIQUE JA SMIN-PA SL E Y

Five seconds. Ten seconds.

Sanders has stopped answering questions. He’s at a local eatery in the trendy Deep Ellum section of Dallas, and he’s ignoring his grilled chicken sandwich and fries.

He leans forward, oddly captivated by a singular piece of trash nine feet away.

Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds.

“I’m looking at a white piece of paper on the floor and I’m wondering: How did that get there? The carpet is black, so you can see it plain as day,” Sanders says. “It’s misplaced. It shouldn’t be there.”

For Sanders, it’s instinct to look at a situation, see what it needs and try to fix it, instead of turning away.

Says Sanders: “I can’t do that.”

These days, this is the situation Sanders is addressing: transforming Jackson State’s football program into a powerhouse and making historically Black college and university (HBCU) football relevant again. He arrived on campus in September 2020 with a plan to return Jackson State’s moribund program to its glory days of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, when the Tigers were synonymous with winning and regularly produced NFL players—it’s the alma mater of Walter Payton, among four Pro Football Hall of Famers from the school. How far had the program fallen? In the eight seasons before Sanders took over, JSU had employed four head football coaches and four athletic directors.

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DEION SA N DER S

In 2018, Ashley Robinson arrived promising change.

The new AD had grown up in Jackson, Miss., but his hometown school hadn’t offered him a scholarship, so he played point guard at Mississippi Valley State instead.

Still, he understood the football team’s importance in the community, and he knew a strong program would lift up Mississippi’s capital city.

And he had ideas about what that would take. When Robinson heard Sanders, on an NFL Network broadcast in 2019, mention his desire to coach, he moved in. In August 2020, Robinson fired John Hendrick, after just one full season as coach, and pursued his man.

The result: “There’s been no hire who made a bigger impact on a program than Coach Prime,” Robinson says. Last year, in his first full season, Sanders led the Tigers to a school-record 11 wins and their first Southwestern Athletic Conference championship since 2007. He did it while missing time after complications following foot surgery led to the amputation of two toes. He earned FCS Coach of the Year honors. And this, perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that big things are coming to JSU: Three days before the season wrapped he f lipped five-star recruit Travis Hunter, from Suwanee, Ga., who had originally committed to play cornerback at Sanders’s alma mater, Florida State.

“Folks are screaming, ‘I believe!’ now—but they didn’t [before],” he says. “It’s easy to scream now. But I meant that on Day 1.”

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HERE’S NOTHING SANDERS enjoys more than an evening of fishing at Lake Prime, as he calls it, filled with bass, blue gill and crappie. The lake sits 40 yards from the front door of Sanders’s Tuscan villa home in a sleepy little town located 60 miles east of Dallas.

That home, and the lake, are part of a sprawling estate, perhaps most recognizable by the massive 10-foot-high, black rod-iron gates with “21” emblazoned in red. Above them, the archway reads, also in red, country prime.

The main house itself took about 16 months to build.

Sanders had been living in it for about eight—only a few paintings and pictures had been hung yet—when Robinson called to gauge his interest late in the summer of 2020.

Sanders didn’t yet have a college coaching résumé.

He’d been the offensive coordinator at Trinity Christian High, in suburban Dallas, where his sons Shedeur and Shilo helped win three Class 2A state championships, and he’d coached for more than a decade with his own youth organization, TRUTH, in Dallas, which he modeled after the outfit he played for as a kid, the Fort Myers Rebels. But now the colleges were sniffing around. Before Robinson rang, Florida State and Arkansas had already gauged Sanders’s interest.

The first phone call between Sanders and Robinson lasted so long, the AD says his phone almost died. The good: They had similar visions about the program’s potential. The bad: Sanders wasn’t sure he wanted to complicate his life like this. He’d just signed a lucrative contract to do a podcast with Barstool Sports, and with his kids approaching graduation he was about to become an empty nester. But Robinson was relentless. If ever it was going to happen, it was now, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, with the Black Lives Matter movement in full force and the profile of HBCUs soaring. Additional downtime due to the pandemic provided time to think and clarity.

“Most people move because of discomfort; you’re forced into transition,” says Sanders. “I was comfortable. . . . It wasn’t an easy process. It was a godly process.

I had just gotten comfortable in my new home, and now it was time to leave for the unknown.”

L IK E FAT HER . . .

Shedeur Sanders made an immediate impact, earning the Jerry Rice Award as FCS football’s top freshman in 2021.

E R I C S H E LT O N / C L A R I O N L E D G E R / U S A T O D AY N E T W O R K

After a week and a half of daily conversations, Sanders finally told Robinson to call his agent and make a deal.

Ultimately, school president Thomas K. Hudson signed off on a four-year, $1.2 million contract that included incentives for attendance and championships.

Sanders knows how a championship organization looks and operates. He played on two Super Bowl winners and in the 1992 World Series, still the only athlete to have played in both championships. At Jackson State, changes were needed.

In a pandemic-shortened 2020 season (which was played in the spring of ’21) Jackson State started 3–0 . . . and then fell apart, finishing 4–3. The facilities were far from championship standards; the practice field, for instance, constantly flooded when it rained, forcing the Tigers to travel to a local high school on days the skies opened up.

Constance Schwartz-Morini, Sanders’s long-time business partner, recalls a Zoom talk that first Christmas in Jackson: Sanders connected with Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart. “We said we needed money to build a turf field,” says Schwartz-Morini. “He was Santa Claus.

He partnered with Coach and got [JSU] a practice field.”

Sanders’s connections continued to pay off. He wanted a new dining hall, so players could bond over grilled chicken breasts and French-cut green beans; Magic Johnson, through SodexoMagic, the food and facilities management provider he owns, got a deal done.

Sanders wanted a different look for the players themselves; Michael Strahan provided them with suits from his clothing line.

During Sanders’s playing days, his image was built on the swag of his celebratory end-zone dances; as a coach, he is strictly old-school. Fifteen minutes early to a meeting is Jackson State’s new “on time.” Earrings are prohibited in the Tigers’ facility, and everybody must wear the same colored socks in practice and games.

Players, coaches and support staff wear suits to games and team functions. Any violation can get you kicked out of a team meeting or practice.

“Old school ain’t earrings on the football field,” Sanders says. “The guys I loved and adored weren’t like that. My contemporaries were Magic and MJ and those kind of cats. No tats, no facial hair. It was a different era, a different generation. If it worked for them, it can work for us.”

“I’d just gotten comfortable in my home,” says Sanders. “Now it was time to leave for the unknown.”

Sanders’s voice carries on the practice field, increasingly hoarse, and verbal corrections come with the force of a summer squall (though the most profane words he ever utters are “durn” and “bull junk”). Like a good teacher, he misses nothing. He corrects players on everything from body language in team meetings to postgame attire.

Details matter.

“The small things really make your program go,” says Robinson. “Seeing him setting the vision for the program, and helping everyone understand what we’re doing and believing in the vision he had, was so important.”

Immediate results fed the belief. The Tigers came back in the fall and went unbeaten in the SWAC, their only regular-season loss coming at Louisiana-Monroe, an FBS program. Sanders, however, missed three games. After going in for surgery to repair a dislocated toe on his left foot last September, he developed blood clots and spent nearly a month in the hospital, primarily in the ICU. His

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Photograph by M A R C U S S M ITH

DEION SA N DER S

F R O M L E F T: S T Y L I N G B Y D O M I N I Q U E J A S M I N - P A S L E Y ; A L B E R T D I C K S O N / S P O R T I N G N E W S / G E T T Y I M A G E S

A NE W OL D SCHOOL Sanders was known for his flash during his NFL career, but he has adopted a strict approach as a coach.

big toe and the one next to it had to be amputated, and he lost nearly 40 pounds. He coached three games, including the SWAC championship, from a motorized scooter.

“Sunday through Friday, he was so sick he didn’t talk to nobody,” says equipment manager Cedric Buckley.

“But on Saturdays he’d be wide awake for game day. As soon as it ended, he’d be out of it again.”

That season ended in disappointment—a loss to South Carolina State in the Cricket Celebration Bowl—but the foundation was laid. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son, earned FCS Freshman of the Year honors, passing for 3,231 yards with 30 touchdowns. Shedeur, a four-star recruit, had helped his father land the best FCS recruiting class when he flipped his commitment from Florida Atlantic to JSU. He was, at the time, the highestrated recruit to sign with an HBCU. Then Sanders put together his 2022 class; now Hunter holds that honor.

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HEDEUR SANDERS SIGNED with Jackson State because he wanted to play for the only coach he’d ever had. And Travis Hunter? He wanted to play for the only player he’d ever idolized.

Those two are clear about their motives: They want to return Jackson State to prominence and they want the school to be a catalyst to their NFL dreams. They’ve been teammates only a few months, but already they’ve forged a tight bond.

“We understand each other; we both had similar situations,” says Shedeur. “We came to Jackson State for the same reason: to make change.”

The returning quarterback (Shedeur) and arriving cornerback (Hunter) compete in everything. Before one practice this spring, Shedeur couldn’t help himself. “He said I’d never had a pick on him,” Hunter says with a smirk. “I was like: Just wait, it’s going to happen.” During one team drill that day, Hunter read receiver Shane Hooks’s route and accelerated toward the ball, thrown low and outside at the pylon. He made a diving one-handed interception.

About those flipped recruits. For Shedeur, all it took was a one-hour chat between father and son a few weeks after Deion took the JSU job, and he was out at FAU. He understood the scrutiny and expectations that would accompany him, but being Prime Time’s son is the only life he’s ever known. “He’s been my dad my whole life.

There’s not much difference between my dad and Coach.

He’s definitely gonna yell a lot.” (Deion’s older son, Shilo, is a redshirt sophomore defensive back for the Tigers.)

With Hunter, it was more complicated. From the start, Sanders had refused to settle for traditional FCS recruits; he targeted elite players. Ultimately, the coach earned the trust of Hunter’s parents, telling them he could prepare their son better than anyone else for the NFL—but also that he could teach him how to make a brand of himself and how to succeed in life after his playing career ends.

Hunter had always dreamed of playing for Florida State; he visited Jackson State over homecoming only because he’d never met Sanders in-person—“I wasn’t passing up that opportunity,” he says. Once there, the more Hunter talked to Sanders about fishing and life (“I don’t even think we talked about football,” he says), the more he realized he wanted to play for the Hall of Famer.

And in Hunter, one can’t help but see some of his brash old coach. “Travis thinks he’s that dude,” Sanders says.

“He wants to be that dude. He has it.”

While Shedeur spent his freshman season proving he could be an impact player, Hunter did it even earlier, in Jackson State’s spring game. Playing both cornerback and receiver, he intercepted two passes, scored on receptions of nine and 80 yards, and gained 25 yards on a reverse.

“I knew what kind of spring game he was going to have,” Sanders says. “Before the game I told him: ‘Breathe, stay calm and stay cool. . . . You don’t have to try to be something you already are. You already that dude.’ ”

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ANDERS WANTS TO talk about the lie Nick Saban told about his program. But he wants to discuss it in the setting where he’s most comfortable—Country Prime, in the quaint town filled with mom-and-pop spots, where the closest neighbors seem to be a 5K away.

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DEION SA N DER S

Settled comfortably on his patio, he’s enjoying a picturesque view of Lake Prime, where a black pontoon boat with red trim is docked. A laptop with a Jackson State ibelieve sticker rests on the coffee table beside him.

“This is my office,” says Sanders, wearing a black hoodie and matching joggers with slippers. “I do everything out here.”

It’s a Thursday afternoon in May. Shedeur phoned his father the night before, waking Deion from a deep slumber, to ask whether he had heard about the comments Saban made to a room full of local business leaders in Birmingham regarding Jackson State’s football program.

“Jackson State paid a guy a million dollars last year that was a really good Division I player to come to school,” Saban had said. “It was in the paper. They bragged about it. Nobody did anything about it.” Saban never named the player, but he was clearly referring to Hunter. And at 11:08 p.m. Wednesday, Sanders responded, angrily, on Twitter: “We as a PEOPLE don’t have to pay our PEOPLE to play with our PEOPLE.” Now, nature provides the soundtrack as Sanders settles in to discuss the lie.

“We never bought Travis,” Sanders says in response to Saban.

“We never tried to buy Travis.”

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“We never bought Travis,” Sanders says. “We never tried to buy Travis. Do I want Travis to have NIL deals?

Certainly, I do. Do I want Travis to have some of the things his ability can allow him to acquire through NIL? Certainly, I do.”

There’s been speculation about how Hunter ended up at Jackson State since the day he flipped his commitment. As of May, he had two NIL deals worth less than $250,000 together. He is expected to finalize two more before fall practice begins.

Sanders rattles off a list of reasons why he’s the right coach for Hunter, with his experiences as a Hall of Fame

cornerback and a media- and business-savvy superstar.

“To insinuate the only way we could acquire somebody like that is to pay them $1 million,” Sanders says, “that didn’t sit well with me.”

Sanders says he considers Saban a friend. They’ve filmed a series of Aflac insurance commercials together over the past year, and Sanders has used that time to consult the Alabama coach on everything from practice schedules to schemes to motivation techniques.

According to Sanders, the morning after his comments Saban reached out to talk. Sanders, though, says he isn’t interested in a private conversation.

E R I C K W. R A S C O

T W O-WAY GO Between his recruiting pedigree and his spring performance, Hunter (12) is poised to make an impact on defense and offense.

“You can’t do that publicly and call privately,” he says. “I admire Coach Saban. He is the magna cum laude of college football coaches, and those statements don’t take away from what he’s accomplished. It wasn’t a good look for him. I didn’t look at it as a direct shot.

I see what you’re trying to do. I see who you’re talking to. You’re naming us, but you’re talking to your donors and your boosters.”

Perhaps more than anything, Sanders believes Saban’s insinuation spoke poorly of Sanders’s coaching staff, his players, the university, the SWAC and all HBCUs. Since arriving in Jackson, Sanders has been “very vocal about the need to elevate all the HBCU football programs,” says Hudson, JSU’s president. Most of the school’s games were televised on ESPN last season; that will happen again in 2022. The cable network also televised the Tigers’ spring game, a first for an HBCU program. Sanders has appeared on national TV and radio; his social media team takes fans behind the scenes of his program to Sanders’s 2.4 million followers on Instagram and 1.3 million on Twitter.

Sanders’s role has gone beyond increased exposure.

When Alcorn State needed athletic trainers, he worked to secure help. He has vowed to aid Mississippi Valley State in getting a new practice field, and he’s been an advocate of HBCU programs’ receiving a more equitable split with promoters when the schools play Black college football classics, the regular-season matchups that also serve as celebrations of HBCU programs. Sanders pressured the NFL to more diligently scout HBCU players after none were selected in the 2021 draft.

“Anything you touch you have to have an effect on if you’re that kind of person,” Sanders says. “It is my objective not to just come to Jackson State and touch Jackson State, but to touch everything nearby.”

Since the day he arrived, other coaches—in the SWAC and beyond—have bristled at his lack of coaching experience, that he hadn’t paid his dues. Some envy the attention he receives. Those coaches don’t understand Sanders has always colored outside the lines and challenged those who ask him to conform. It’s a mentality that led to the creation of Prime Time, Sanders’s attention-seeking alter ego who revolutionized the cornerback position in the 1990s. And it’s an approach that helped Sanders play professional baseball and football simultaneously and become the first NFL player to play both ways since Chuck Bednarik did it in ’60.

Now, that same mentality is leading to a rebirth for HBCU programs. At the FCS level, Jackson State is on the precipice of becoming a powerhouse. And coaches at the FBS level will have to contend with a unique recruiter to whom, in some ways, they can’t measure up.

In April, four HBCU prospects were taken in the NFL draft. There are programs looking for their version of Coach Prime and aspiring coaches who look at Sanders and wonder whether they can do the same.

Would Tennessee State have hired Tennessee Titans great Eddie George, who had no previous coaching experience, if not for Sanders’s early success? Would Hall of Famers Ed Reed, Ray Lewis and Marshall Faulk have flirted with HBCU programs if Sanders hadn’t created a buzz?

The college football landscape has changed, and Deion Sanders has carved out his space within it—for himself and his program, and for the next Coach Prime and his program.

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GREG BISHOP

KOHJIRO KINNO

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

BY

CERTAINLY THINKS SO

FLAT-FOOTEDLY—

AND BLOCK SHOTS

BLOW BY GUARDS

CAN DRAIN JUMPERS,

CHET HOLMGREN—WHO

SOUNDS WILD, BUT

BASKETBALL?

THE FUTURE OF

7-FOOTER BE

COULD A 195-POUND

TALE

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DOWN AN UNMARKED side road, inside a nondescript gym with adjoining basketball courts, the most remarkable draft prospect in NBA history is raining threes in an unremarkable setting. Local advertisements—organic ice cream, discount car washes, Blender’s basketball league— hang from the walls. His father trains a camcorder on the court. Women tow yoga mats inside.

Sweat drips down Chet Holmgren’s much-discussed frame, soaking his T-shirt for emphasis. He’s toiling to realize his evolutionary promise, make sense of what he cannot fully explain and solve a problem that may not, in fact, be one. But he is not priming for the NBA draft alone.

On the other court, there’s another is-this-reallyhappening scene in an is-this-really-happening life.

Holmgren hardly notices the women bending and bouncing, clad in stretch pants and armed with foam rollers, as they warm up for a workout of their own. Their teacher, a peppy instructor wearing a headset that blares her instructions over a pair of speakers, stands atop a stage and orders, March it out. Techno thumps. Legs churn.

Jazzercise class begins.

Holmgren continues hoisting jumpers while running, twisting, drifting and shifting. The women feel the rhythm! Holmgren hears splash, splash, splash. When he misses, which is rarely, he bangs his fists together or drops a f---, bro! in frustration.

The scene is revealing, on near and far horizons, in distinct and contrasting ways. It’s impossible to watch Holmgren and not be transfixed by his size (7' 1"), his elegant fluidity (think: ballerina who blocks shots) and the physics he defies from the combination of both.

Holmgren once drove around Steph Curry at a camp, while still in high school, if that helps.

Unicorn is an overused sports cliché. But it applies here, in mid-May in Santa Barbara, Calif., the NBA draft

S WAT T E A M In his only season Holmgren tied the Gonzaga record with 117 blocks, including two games with seven.

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looming in six weeks. To study a true unicorn up close, to observe Holmgren slide and duck into positions most centers wouldn’t dare attempt, is entrancing and forwardpointing. Because he just turned 20. Because he’s already good. And because of what he can be: the next step in an ongoing, leaguewide transformation.

The other reveal is just as obvious and more fiercely debated. When Holmgren removes the dripping shirt, it’s possible to clearly delineate each individual rib and those twig arms on his skeletal frame.

That’s the crux of his “problem” and the equation he must solve in the weeks and years ahead. Will Holmgren seize on all that makes him unusual? Or will he falter, because of that bookmark-thin body, whether from injury or getting knocked around like the world’s tallest pinball?

After taking almost 600 shots, while Jazzercise class intensifies, an app on his iPad sends him statistics for the workout. He checks the data—in the paint (77%), midrange (68%), beyond the arc (67%). A little low,

“I SEE MYSELF IN THIS NEW ERA, NEW STYLE OF BASKETBALL,” SAYS HOLMGREN, “WHERE GUYS CAN DO EVERYTHING.”

he muses. His overall benchmark for sessions is 70%.

He dons a virtual-reality headset and sits in a chair.

Sequences borrowed from recent NBA playoff games unspool, only he’s there, reacting, picking correct options.

“That guy left the space open. Go right at him and boom,” he tells a trainer, mimicking a seated windmill dunk.

The goal with all this is to marry both sides of his brain, by deploying a pragmatic approach to an endeavor that is inherently creative. All so a pro prospect long tabbed for stardom, one-and-done at Gonzaga, can transform from a future NBA star into an actual one. “Yeah,”

Mr. Unicorn says, his nonchalance warranted and striking. “I see myself in this new era, new style of basketball, where guys can do everything. And it’s not just wanting to go for it. I feel I can do everything, or get to that point, on offense and defense.”

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N HOUR L ATER, a few miles away, Holmgren begins his other daily workout alongside prospects (Jermaine Samuels, E.J. Liddell), a volleyball star (Kim Yeon-koung) and his comedic foil, Tacko Fall, the 7' 6" center. Fall refers to Holmgren as “Tiny”; Holmgren

responds with “Short Stuff.” Their relationship is ripe for a sitcom: Towering Comics Who Can Dunk Without Jumping.

When Holmgren skips rope to warm up, he recalls a boxer’s grace. (At 195 pounds, he’d be the world’s tallest cruiserweight.) He moves on to ladder hops, then standing jumps, where he starts on a box, hops down and leaps atop a training table. Easy, smooth.

His trainers at this peak performance laboratory, P3, tout their focus as the intersection of sports and science.

They study how basketball players move: hunting for weaknesses, imbalances and anything that portends future injury. And their data has projected NBA futures with staggering accuracy.

In the last 10 years, P3 has trained eight No. 1 picks.

What separates true superstars from mere mortals, according to gym founder Dr. Marcus Elliott, is “something physical, some sort of movement system, that gives them a competitive advantage.” Lateral speed and horizontal force separated 2020 top pick Anthony Edwards

L IF T ING OF F Critics worry that Holmgren’s slight frame— which he is trying to bulk up, at least a bit—will not stand up to 82 games banging with the NBA’s heavyweight big men.

from every other prospect, foreshadowing his early success that surprised some. Elliott argues that such disbelief highlights a flawed evaluation system. Scouts know how to identify young talent, because it’s obvious.

Start with the bouncy kids, the ones who can jam in sixth grade. Study their careers. Then fall back on what he calls “a historical paradigm.” This guy is like that guy, and that’s how we’ll make sense of him.

Elliott is looking for outliers, anything that makes a prospect “special.” Few evaluators study how those same springy players interact with the ground. Fewer still teach

CHET HOLMGR EN

them how to land. Or explain to them why their knees hurt. Or apply data to gut instincts to build out those systems that separate the superstars. Teams embrace places like P3 a little more each year, but progress remains slow, despite how much the NBA continues changing.

P3’s studies show commonalities between elite players.

They use a jargon-heavy process called principal component analysis to compile data sets from a player’s movement. The data reveals patterns that inform how individual movements combine for overall athleticism, from smooth on down to sputtering.

Elliott is most interested in athletes whose numbers place them in a group he calls “kinematic movers.” They’re typically not flashy in how they jump or run. Many— Trae Young, C.J. McCollum, Edwards—are doubted, because there’s no obvious superpower to hold up and compare.

Instead, kinematic movers elevate with a totality of movement, every jab step and sideways leap and spin move tying together. They don’t have “asymmetries,” or imbalances, meaning they’re less likely to get hurt. They present fewer attackable weaknesses because of elite equilibriums. “They’re movement experts,” Elliott says.

Holmgren’s early test results backed up his nickname.

Super rare, Elliott says, unlike anyone we’ve ever had. They suggest not only NBA success but also career longevity.

That’s no, um, small thing at his height. Most players who stand at least 6' 10" register unpredictable patterns, because their systems are longer; there’s more to connect.

Should Holmgren move into the kinematic-mover cluster, which Elliott predicts will happen, he would morph into something else, something bigger: a player unlike any other in NBA history.

The next step in this basketball evolution.

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NSIDE AN OFFICE on that day in Santa Barbara, The Unicorn leans back. He’s momentarily silent, trying to remember the first time someone compared him to a mythical animal, horn and all. He thinks it started on Twitter and knows it spread instantly. He only wishes he had looked into trademarks, or at least slapped chuncrn on a personalized license plate. And, while he would never describe himself that way, the moniker doesn’t bother him. Over time, he even came to understand the premise.

“It doesn’t make sense to me, either,” he says. “Why I’m 7 feet tall and I have this coordination that people haven’t really seen before.”

Perhaps the ensuing laugh stems from the real weight of all this, the projections and the skinny-player problems and the parallels to an animal that’s as real as Santa Claus.

The path to an implausible existence began not with a single confident step but several painful (and awkward)

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ones. While growing up in suburban Minneapolis, baby Chet managed to climb out of his crib and fall backward, his shenanigans announced with a thud. In elementary school, he tried various sports, even moonlighting briefly as a linebacker/tight end to improve his coordination.

By middle school, a growth spurt had inflamed tendinitis in both knees. Physical therapists introduced Holmgren to the concept of movement patterns and how to bolster them. His pain vanished. Point made.

If Holmgren is skinny now, he was whatever is lessthan-skinny then. He couldn’t do five push-ups without dropping his knees to the ground, couldn’t bench-press his body weight and couldn’t perform a single pull-up.

But his childhood coincided with that NBA trend. He noticed it in Tracy McGrady, a 6' 8" swingman who towered over defenders on the perimeter and blew by them for easy buckets, a precursor to the versatile big men who would move out from under the basket and show off their perimeter skills.

Enter Larry Suggs, a local AAU coach. A friend pointed Suggs toward the tall kid, but height alone didn’t pique his interest. This tall kid could scale trees and jump onto his roof, signaling two critical traits: fearlessness and body control.

Suggs had already developed his own philosophy, teaching a European style of positionless—or multiple position—basketball and adding isolation moves popular in the 1980s to further diversify skill sets. He hated how other coaches just shoved tall kids into the paint. He taught Holmgren the same way he schooled his son, Jalen, who stopped growing at 6' 5", then starred at Gonzaga and was drafted fifth by the Magic last year. “I showed them pro moves in a little kid’s body,” Larry says.

Counterparts all but laughed Suggs out of the gym.

He continued drilling the boys with footwork exercises, spacing concepts and agility training. Holmgren continued growing but retained the soul of basketball’s tallest point guard. He was Suggs’s proof of concept, part savant, part fast learner, all unicorn. The teen spied foreign concepts on television, or learned new maneuvers from his coaches, and applied them the same afternoon.

Movement set up everything else, from crossovers that wobbled defenders to leaps timed to swat shots into the stands. “A lot of times, playing pickup, stuff I’ve never worked on just kind of happens,” Holmgren says, “just kind of comes to me.”

At an AAU tournament, Suggs watched Holmgren block a shot, grab the ball, dribble and pull up for a three-pointer.

Suggs glanced at Kentucky coach John Calipari. “Did I just see that?” Calipari mouthed. Suggs nodded. Stakes, raised. “I wanted to make Chet the best American-born white basketball player since Larry Bird,” Suggs says.

RUNNING T HE G A MU T Holmgren’s workouts are both traditional (lots and lots of jumpers) and ultra high tech (virtual-reality sessions).

Holmgren’s systematic development only broadened the creative flair that made him unicorn adjacent. With Jalen, he led Minnehaha Academy to state titles in 2019 and ’20. With Larry, he helped turn the awesomely named AAU outfit—Grassroots Sizzle—into a force. The success, in turn, morphed Holmgren from tall and awkward into the nation’s top recruit.

Every step in his evolution mirrored how the NBA was shifting, away from the specialists—the shot blockers, defensive stoppers and long-distance marksmen.

This heightened already lofty comparisons, like to a

certain future Hall of Famer who roamed outside, drilled triples and stood 6' 10". Yes, basketball experts watched Holmgren and saw . . . Kevin Durant.

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OMETIMES, WHEN ELLIOTT hears endless debates over what he refers to as the weight-versus-resiliency equation, he wonders why “outlier” equates to “problem.”

The same bloviators who say a 300-pound center is too heavy to join the legion of NBA leapers now collapse in concern over a 195-pound post who, they insist, can’t be that skinny and survive.

Elliott believes those fears stem from the unknown.

The subconscious is a mystical place, transmitting “that can’t be right” when eyes see what they have never before witnessed. There’s no real understanding; the brain simply cannot comprehend something like . . . a unicorn.

While some view Holmgren as a potential bust, and others insist he must add 40 pounds to a frame that threatens to disappear when he turns sideways, Elliott turns instead to the same place: objective data and relevant comparisons. Both show that Holmgren is less likely to suffer a serious injury by running into a human brick wall than if he carries too much weight. Strength and size do matter. But not as much as his wingspan (7' 6") or his movement efficiency.

On Holmgren’s f irst day inside the performance center, P3 hooked 22 tiny circular sensors all over him. When he jumped, force plates in the floor turned the feed into data points that measured his coordinated movement—right shin to right knee to right hip—and how one movement led/tied to the next.

The results (quite well) formed a better baseline than anticipated.

“Typically, our models don’t like big guys,” says Eric Leidersdorf, P3’s director of biomechanics.

But they loved Holmgren.

One measure: A typical NBA post player averages between 24 and 25 inches for a standing vertical jump. Holmgren, without any P3 training, leaped 27, which already ranks among the top 10% of NBA high jumpers.

Another: The risk stratification model—convoluted science speak for $1,000, Alex!— produced a 3-D model of The Unicorn’s frame. On a laptop screen, there’s Holmgren in

bionic form, with circles placed on his digital body. Red ones indicate injury red f lags. He has none, in what Leidersdorf calls a “clean profile” that predicts a long career with few missed games.

Holmgren’s baseline so blew his trainers’ minds that they considered (not really) sending Gonzaga’s staff a gift basket. They polished Suggs’s creation, adding weight but naturally, so he wouldn’t slow down. Holmgren studied film of NBA workouts, hunting for new movements while embracing mental training—sessions every Monday on personal growth, meditation and sleep scheduling—that helped him move even more freely.

He didn’t wow teammates with any one thing but with how he did everything well. On defense, he protected the rim like a one-man Secret Service detail. It was one thing, at his height, to block shots and intimidate scorers away from closer attempts. It was more impactful for him to leap, soar, absorb contact, contort and block shots to waiting teammates for easy transition buckets. Sometimes, he even shadowed guards on the perimeter, serving as the rare post who blew up every variation of the pick-and-roll.

At Gonzaga, Holmgren’s presence alone opened space, as did his range (39% from deep, 61% overall). He could pass with aplomb and showcased surprisingly nimble hands. His coordination powered his progression.

Despite playing only 26.9 minutes per game, Holmgren averaged 14.1 points, 9.9 rebounds a nd 3.7 block s. Ef f icienc y models fell in love. He was the nation’s best rim finisher (PPP) with 100-plus possessions (1.64).

His win shares per 40 minutes was .294, fourth in the nation.

Since the 1992–93 season, a player has posted higher averages for points, rebounds and blocks 51 times, according to Basketball Reference. Think: Tim Duncan, Emeka Okafor, Greg Oden. With the exception of maybe Duncan, Holmgren is a much better mover—and Duncan bricked four of five long-range attempts.

Put everything together and that’s the top of his projection: a game so versatile and impactful not just on offense but also defense that it’s hard to conceive.

“Evolutionary player is a fair target,” Elliott says.

“IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE TO ME, EITHER,” HOLMGREN SAYS OF HIS BLEND OF HEIGHT AND ATHLETICISM.

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CHET HOLMGR EN

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LIKE CHET HOLMGREN,

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allow him to better cover space in perimeter defense, such as when he’s guarding pick-and-rolls. He can add pounds without losing fluidity; offset weight deficits with agility, lateral speed, angles, elbows and elite change of direction; and become even more creative, the tallest kinematic mover in the NBA. “We’ve accepted that Steph Curry can be small and not ridiculous in terms of jumping ability and still have an amazing career, right?” Elliott says.

What Holmgren cannot do is convince whichever team might draft him to follow the same strategy. To focus on what makes him The Unicorn, not what makes him the world’s skinniest mythical beast.

B E L O W, F R O M L E F T: C H R I S K E A N E ; T O D D K I R K L A N D / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; D AV E K A L L M A N N / M I LWA U K E E J O U R N A L S E N T I N E L / U S A T O D AY N E T W O R K

NYONE EXPECTING HOLMGREN to wave off talk of his potential that’s now taller than he is or beg for new brakes on the hype train will be surprised. He does not. He’s not actively pushing anything. But he answers questions honestly, and he honestly believes that someone could stack several Chet Holmgrens atop one another and the highest head still wouldn’t touch his ceiling. “I’d agree with it,” he says, when relayed Elliott’s target. “Where I’m trying to get to is: Take everything that’s been done and add to it.”

He’s circled back to the Durant comparison, pushed by a theory. It’s unlikely that he’ll ever shoot or score like KD, and yet, he believes he will shoot, he will score and he will protect the rim, block shots and swallow space like Durant never will. Holmgren won’t have a taller player behind him. He won’t need one.

Holmgren is asked what he means, for specifics on what’s possible. He starts to answer and stops, before deciding not to go too far. He’d rather show than tell.

He says, instead, “It comes down to what position you’re put in.”

There’s the other crux of this experiment—right team, right situation—and it’s entirely beyond Holmgren’s go-go-gadget reach. He can dive into the science, everything new, the “sports world controlled by a bunch of geeks—and it’s awesome.” He can shore up his minor deficiencies: how his feet interact with the ground as he moves and cuts; his ability to absorb load from landing and cutting with his hips, which would save his knees later in his career; and his lateral drive, which would

HOLMGREN COULD HAVE A GAME SO VERSATILE IT’S HARD TO CONCEIVE. SAYS ELLIOTT, “EVOLUTIONARY PLAYER IS A FAIR TARGET.”

For the four likeliest options—Holmgren, Jabari Smith (Auburn), Paolo Banchero (Duke) or Jaden Ivey (Purdue)— expected to be drafted first, no one disputes that the tallest and skinniest prospect also holds the most potential. The doubts that flutter around him are reminiscent of Luka Dončić in 2018. Dončić wasn’t athletic enough, supposedly, which shifted focus away from his strengths.

Elliott offers a science lesson as a warning. “Basketball,” he says, “is movement.”

Best case: Holmgren becomes like Durant, only with a greater defensive impact. Similarly built centers roam NBA courts like guards. The evolution of versatile basketball becomes taller and even more varied.

Holmgren already has better “defensive instincts” than any of the taller players draining threes on the NBA perimeters, according to Packie Turner, his basketball trainer. Turner believes Holmgren would “make for a hell of a pro” if he stood only 6' 6".

Worst case: Someone knocks Holmgren into reality, breaking a really long board in half.

Either way, there’s no precedent, and that’s why Holmgren inspires awe and fear. When those are the stakes, it’s easy to forget he’s only 20. He returned to Gonzaga in early May, taking final exams in legal ethics in sports, business computing, freshman English and sports finance. He devotes his free time to video games.

He might own a razor but doesn’t need one.

“They call me The Unicorn now,” he says. “But it won’t matter.”

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funn IT’S NO SECRET THAT SHOHEI OHTANI IS THE MOST TALENTED BASEBALL PLAYER ON THE PLANET. AS HE GETS MORE COMFORTABLE IN MLB, ANOTHER STRENGTH IS COMING INTO FOCUS: HIS SENSE OF HUMOR

BY

STEPHANIE APSTEIN

yball PHOTOGRAPH BY

ERICK W. R ASCO

As Angels assistant pitching coach Dom Chiti strolled by the visiting weight room at Fenway Park one day in May, he noticed the team’s two-way star and defending American League MVP doing one of the things he often does: working out. Shohei Ohtani grimaced as he tried to lift a silver ball about a foot in diameter

“Heads up!” and throw it against the wall. Suddenly he turned.

Ohtani called, whipping the ball at his coach.

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HEN MINASIAN TOOK over as GM before the 2021 season, he made two important changes to Ohtani’s routine. First, his usage: In Japan, where Ohtani was born and played until ’18, he pitched once a week and played the outfield three or four times, never the day before or after a start. He never had more than 382 plate appearances or more than 24 starts in a season. At first the Angels tried to mirror that, tracking everything from how much sleep Ohtani got to how often he dived back to first base on pickoff attempts in an effort to protect him. After three goodbut-not-outstanding seasons, Ohtani rebuilt his body.

He adjusted his diet based on a series of blood tests.

He went to Driveline, a private facility that has helped many elite pitchers streamline their mechanics and add velocity. Ohtani finally felt healthy, he said. So before the ’21 season, Minasian and manager Joe Maddon decided that Ohtani would dictate his own availability.

As it turned out, that meant playing nearly every day.

The other change was to Ohtani’s training program. Because he was both a pitcher and a hitter, he was never fully either. In spring training he would

COMFORT ZONE Ohtani has shown more of his personality publicly as he has settled in as an MLB veteran.

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The lob almost knocked over the 63-year-old Chiti, who braced himself for what he expected to be a 20-pound projectile . . . only to realize it was just a rubber ball filled with air. Ohtani, 27, dissolved into laughter.

“He got me bad,” says Chiti. There’s not much shame in that, though. Chiti was one of three victims that week of that prank, which Ohtani says is his favorite. As it turns out, Ohtani was doing another of the things he often does: goofing around.

“He’s always messing around,” says Angels pitcher Patrick Sandoval. “Very innocent-type stuff. It’s fun.”

Ohtani rarely speaks to the media—he declined through the team to be interviewed one-on-one for this story—so some elements of his personality have been slow to penetrate the public consciousness. But this season cameras have caught him dramatically collapsing on first base coach Benji Gil’s chest; jokingly firing a ball at a fence behind which a White Sox fan was watching him; and, after going 3-for-24 to start the year, pretending to perform CPR on his bat in the dugout. It’s well known by now that Ohtani can throw the ball 100 mph and hit it 400 feet and is perhaps the most talented player in the history of the sport. But fans who pay close attention are beginning to learn what his teammates already know: Ohtani is also pretty funny.

“He can come across as so focused, because he’s as disciplined as anybody I’ve ever met,” says Angels general manager Perry Minasian. “His work ethic and his routine are insane, [down to] the minute, but there are times where he can relax and joke around, and it’s pretty fun to watch.”

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skip pitchers’ fielding practice to get to batting practice on time. He would play catch with his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, instead of with the other hurlers. All this bred discomfort and sometimes a touch of jealousy among teammates. So Los Angeles adjusted its scheduling so its star could participate fully in both areas.

As Ohtani’s teammates got to know him better, they were surprised by what they learned. “At first I was very [taken aback],” says outfielder Brandon Marsh. “I was like, ‘Whoa, all right, Sho, you got a funny side.’ ” A convincing poker face helps sell some of his pranks.

It also hides his personality from outsiders. “He’s a lot more outgoing than I thought he was gonna be,” says

second baseman Tyler Wade, who joined the Angels from the Yankees last November.

Although Ohtani’s English has improved, he still relies on Mizuhara for nuance. But the language barrier is less imposing than it might seem, and besides, many gags require no interpretation: the weightless-ball prank, for example, or his exaggerated reactions. (His surprised face, eyes wide, mouth agape, is a favorite.) He likes to sneak up behind teammates in the dugout, tap them on their far shoulder and act innocent when they turn around. He plays Clash Royale with teammates and gloats outrageously when he wins. (“I’m the king!” he will remind them for days.) His laughter—often directed at himself—is childlike and infectious.

“He just giggles a lot,” says Maddon.

When Ohtani swears, he mostly does so in English, for his teammates’ benefit. He often pops up with a welltimed expletive, although no one wants to be specific

about which ones he uses. “Everyone learns the bad words first, right?” says third baseman Anthony Rendon.

Some jokes are made funny only by the joy Ohtani takes in them. After he throws a bullpen session, he waits until Sandoval is not paying attention, flips the ball to him and laughs when Sandoval drops it. Ohtani also likes to stare at Sandoval until he notices, then repeat whatever the pitcher says. Before a game in May, Sandoval turned around at his locker to find Ohtani glaring at him.

“Are you serious?” Sandoval said.

“Are you serious?” Ohtani mimicked.

“You’re a bully!” Sandoval said. They both cackled.

When teammates are discussing an opposing pitcher, Ohtani sometimes offers an incorrect scouting report.

WELL POSITIONED By aligning his schedule with both pitchers and hitters, Ohtani has made himself—and his jokes—a bigger part of the team’s culture.

their brains before they realize he’s kidding.

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bright the spotlight is for him. Some two dozen Japanese reporters cover him as their full-time beat, and because he addresses the media only after he pitches spring training in 2018, they sometimes answered questions about what Ohtani had eaten for breakfast that day.

“He deserves all the recognition that he gets, but it’s

F R O M L E F T: T I M H E I T M A N / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; J O H N W. M C D O N O U G H

the boys in the clubhouse,” says reliever Mike Mayers.

Many Angels are famous in Japan because they keep showing up in photos of Ohtani; he recently informed Wade that the second baseman has many admirers abroad, and he now addresses him only as “ikemen,” which means “hot guy.” Ohtani hands out chocolate from the piles of fan mail he receives each day. “I like to him in Anaheim. “He gives me a lot of candy.”

Ohtani goes out of his way to be a good teammate, the people around him say. Typically veteran hitters, for example, select a convenient hour to use the batting cage, and rookies get out of the way. You might expect that to be doubly true for a veteran hitter who also has to find time to throw a bullpen session.

“He’s Shohei Ohtani, but when people come into the cage, he’s very cordial; he lets them go first,” says assistant hitting coach John Mallee. “He makes sure his teammates are taken care of before himself, and that is a really unique thing for a superstar.”

Ohtani understands how good he is. After four years of sharing the field with Mike Trout, perhaps the best player who has ever lived, and still never making the postseason, he understands how badly he needs his

ONE ANGEL’S REACTION TO AN OHTANI PRANK: “SHO, YOU GOT A FUNNY SIDE!” teammates to be good, too. “I really like the team,” he told reporters in September through Mizuhara. “I love the fans. I love the atmosphere of the team. But more than that, I want to win. That’s the biggest thing for me. So, I’ll leave it at that.”

The Angels have made strides this year: They won 26 of their first 43 games and sat just 1 ∏ games behind the Astros in the AL West while leading the American League in runs scored. Ohtani is doing his best to boost that number. Early in the season he hammered a line drive into the gap for a double. He came around to score and dramatically flung himself onto the bench.

“Ugh!” he moaned.

“What?” his teammates asked, worried.

Ohtani sighed, waited for a beat and said, with perfect comedic timing, “Homer pitch.”

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At The Office With by

STEVE RUSHIN

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GROWING UP AS THE BOY OR GIRL OF A BOY OF SUMMER MEANT BEING REGALED WITH RUTHIAN TALES, CAVORTING IN THE CLUBHOUSE AND UNLOCKING THE MYSTERIES OF THE BLEACHERS FATHERS’ DAYS Hodges and Furillo landlubbed with their kids (top right), the Martins had a ball and Killebrew was honored with his clan (below left)—years after bringing them to the park.

“THE STEAKS TRAILED SMOKE WHEN THEY BROUGHT THEM OUT,” SAYS BILLY JOE MARTIN, WHO WATCHED THE SIRLOINS EMERGE FROM THE KITCHEN HISSING AND STEAMING, LIKE A LOCOMOTIVE, A BOVINE TRAIN NOW TRANSPORTING HIM TO ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE.

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T H I S P A G E : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E M A R T I N FA M I LY ( 2 ) ; P R E V I O U S S P R E A D , C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T: C O U R T E S Y O F T H E K I L L E B R E W FA M I LY ; J I M K E R L I N /A P ; C O U R T E S Y O F T H E M A R T I N FA M I LY ; B E T T M A N N / G E T T Y I M A G E S

Billy Joe and his father a boy literally looking always sat at the bar at up to bartenders and Steve’s Sizzling Steaks. ballplayers, in the only Even the name comes out childhood that he knew, hissing. From his stool which was the world of in that wood-paneled Major League Baseball. room in Carlstadt, N.J., He was belt-high, like a on the Route 17 run-up to bad fastball, but spendthe George Washington ing his summers with the Bridge, Billy Joe could Bronx Zoo Yankees. look past the bartender “I was 12 years old,” to two framed photosays Billy Joe, now a graphs on the back wall: 57-year-old man who FA M I LY A F FA I R S one of Babe Ruth and goes by Billy Martin Jr. Billy Joe and his dad spent time together on the one of Billy Martin, the “I was just going to the road and at the yard, while Hodges was honored manager of the Yankees. shop with my dad.” near the end of his playing career in 1962 with There were other photoJoan (opposite, next to Gil) and Irene ( far right).

RENE HODGES WAS graphs, of other famous 18 years old when she people, on other walls.

“But behind the bar,” says Billy Joe, “there were just visited her father at his shop in New York City on a fall day in 1969. A raucous workplace celebration was underway. two: Babe Ruth and my dad.”

Whenever Billy Martin and Billy Joe went to Steve’s, The firm managed by Irene’s dad—the Mets—had just owner Steve Venturini appeared, summoned by staffers won the World Series. Irene and her 19-year-old brother, whispering on the phone that the skipper was in today. Gil Hodges Jr., braved the crossfire of champagne corks “Tell Billy Joe about the Babe,” Billy Martin would say to get to their father’s office, where the silent phone on to Venturini, who took over the steak joint in 1936 and Gil Hodges’s desk drew the attention of their mother, Joan.

“Gil,” Joan told her husband, “you should call your became a fishing buddy of Ruth and Ernest Hemingway.

The stories were really for Billy Joe’s father, who was mother.” Gil’s mother was at home, watching the celestar-struck by only one human being. “My dad had a bration on TV in Indiana, where Hodges began his long journey to secular sainthood, first as a Marine man crush on the Babe,” he says.

As their steaks sizzled, father and son listened to in World War II, then as a beloved member of the Venturini describe the great man’s Ruthian appetites, Brooklyn Dodgers, then as a player for the original his preferences in steak, beer, whiskey and waitresses, how Los Angeles Dodgers and the original New York Mets, the Babe would wake up in a steakhouse booth at 6 a.m. and finally as manager of those Amazin’s.

Gil thought for a moment and said: “That’s a longto go fishing with Steve, then get dropped at the dock in time to hit two dingers at Yankee Stadium. Billy Joe distance call. I think I should make that one at home.”

Irene Hodges is now 71 and living again in the house sat enraptured in the dark room, as if in a movie theater,

AP

where she grew up, in Flatbush, where she’s caring for her 95-year-old mother. It’s the same split-level to which Gil Hodges returned in the 1960s after managing the Mets, in the same borough where he played first base at Ebbets Field, 75 feet from Jackie Robinson, once upon a time. “He used to walk to the stores around here,” says Irene. “He was part of the church, part of the community, did the same things anyone else would do. He’d go to the butcher, go to the supermarket. People would shake his hand, put an arm around him and say, ‘Hey, Gil, how are you? Good luck tonight; we’re rooting for you.’ It was never intrusive, never threatening.”

It was a 20-minute drive home from Shea Stadium on that crisp Thursday afternoon 53 years ago, and Irene is now thinking of the lost world it betokened—of longdistance calls, rotary-dial phones, World Series day games and baseball at the center of attention. All of it has long

since passed from this world, as has her father, but that day in 1969 keeps his memory alive. “He had just won one of the biggest World Series in New York history,” Irene says of that phone call to her grandmother. “But that didn’t change the essence of the man. He was still going to do the right thing.” In his moment of professional triumph, Gil Hodges called his mother from home. Says Irene: “That’s the perfect story of who my father was.”

He was a man who never swore, at least not at home. (“He probably did in the clubhouse,” she concedes, and perhaps in combat in Okinawa.) He didn’t countenance lying. (“There was no coming back from that,” she says.)

She traveled to Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla., for spring training every year. “We played with Carl’s children, Jackie’s children,” she says, referring to Furillo and Robinson, the Dodgers of the 1950s, immortalized as the Boys of Summer. “It was a wonderful time to grow up.”

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HESE ARE THE boys and girls of the Boys of Summer, the grown men and women who were children in a golden age of baseball in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, who had a child’s-eye perspective of the game and its trappings, for better and sometimes for worse. And like most adults who have lost a father, regardless of how many years have passed, they miss their dads.

Harmon Killebrew, who frequently brought his sons, Cam and Kenny, into the Twins’ clubhouse, drew them aside when they were still boys and said: “You’re gonna hear a lot of things and see a lot of things in here, but that’s not the way we talk or act. It’s just ballplayers letting loose.”

“And we did see and hear a lot of things,” says Cam. “A lot of swearing and a lot of horseplay. It was just a different way of growing up.”

Billy Joe Martin was sitting in a locker in the Yankees’ clubhouse on the road when Dave Winfield, wearing only sandals, walked past. Billy Joe peered over a magazine at the 6' 6", 220-pound exemplar of athleticism. The Yankee in the next locker lowered his newspaper, too, and watched Winfield walk to the shower. Yankees scout Gary Hughes had told Billy Joe the key to evaluating baseball players: “Trust your eyes.” Unknown even to himself, Billy Joe was already trusting his eyes. “Winfield was one of those guys, like Deion Sanders, your eyes just went to him,” he says. “You could spot them from the upper deck.”

Kenny Killebrew found freedom in t he upper deck or a ny ot her cheap seats. He usually sat behind home plate at Twins games when he wasn’t working in the commissary at Metropolitan Stadium, making the food the vendors sold. Kenny couldn’t eat that food. He and his siblings were raised on a strict diet: no sugar, no caffeine, no candy, none of the things on offer at the ballpark where his father played third base. At home, Harmon Killebrew made wonderful ice cream with peaches or raspberries. He made root beer sweetened with honey. But Kenny, like every other kid at the park, craved a Coke and a hot dog.

So occasionally he’d sneak to the stadium’s less desirable seats, where he’d enjoy an illicit Frosty Malt, an ice cream confection whose circular lids could be thrown like Frisbees. Those lids littered the warning track, calling out to Kenny in his seat behind the plate. On June 22, 1971, against the visiting A’s, Kenny absconded to the left-field bleachers. He’d never sat in them before—right field was his junk-food refuge— but in the bottom of the sixth inning on that Tuesday

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night he was there sneaking a hot dog as if it were a cigarette when his father connected on a pitch from Daryl Patterson. By some small miracle of fate, aided by the Twins’ abysmal attendance, 13-year-old Kenny caught the 498th home run of his father’s career.

Ecstatic, Kenny raced to the top of the tunnel that led from the dugout to the clubhouse, where security knew him. Harmon was summoned by a guard in midgame. The slugger put his massive hands on his hips and said with a singsong note of suspicion: “What were you doing out there, Kenny?”

“He knew,” says Kenny. “He knew.”

Forty-nine long days later, on Aug. 10, 1971, Harmon hit his 500th home run, then only the 10th man to have done so. Sometime in the hours that followed, Cam answered the home phone, tethered to the wall by 50 feet of coiled cord: “Killebrew residence.” An operator asked the teenager whether his father was available.

“Who should I say is calling?”

“President Nixon.”

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KILLER’S KIDDOS Cam joined Harmon in his last season, in K.C. in 1975, while Kenny shared Dad’s penchant for big cuts.

it now,” says Cam, “but they met Ferdinand Marcos on that trip.”

Kleptocrats, Kojak, cowboy actors, all the biggest Bobs—they were drawn to baseball players when athletes, politicians and fictional gumshoes dominated the three-network monoculture. “I met James Garner of The Rockford Files when he played golf with my dad,” says Irene Hodges.

Billy Joe Martin was 9 when General Patton knocked on the door of his family’s hotel room in the Bahamas.

It was actually the movie star George C. Scott, filming The Day of the Dolphin on Abaco. “He was a baseball fan who wanted to meet my dad,” says Billy Joe. “That kind of thing happened all the time.” Billy Joe went to the set and sat in the director’s chair. The memory endures nearly half a century later. “I got to pet the dolphin,” he says.

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N S TA R TLING WAYS, the children of baseball were confronted by their fathers’ fame. Teenage Ken K illebrew was dr iv ing w it h Ha rmon f rom Los Angeles to Idaho and stopped at the Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas for sourdough pancakes. “We go in, we’re having pancakes, and I see Robert Wagner,” says Kenny. Wagner so frequently appeared on the console TVs of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s that his Zenith-framed face was like a family portrait in many American homes.

“So Robert Wagner comes over and says, ‘Harmon, how you doing?’ ” Ken says. “And my dad stands up and says, ‘Hey, Bob, good to see you.’ ” Ken howls. “Bob. And I’m like, You gotta be s---ting me.”

Cam Killebrew played baseball at BYU. He was having lunch with his parents at the Sundance ski resort when Robert Redford walked over and introduced himself.

“Harmon,” Redford said, “Big fan.” Harmon, ever polite, told Bob he’d seen all his films.

Hall of Fame baseball players and A-list actors were kindred spirits in many ways. For more than 20 years, Telly Savalas lived in a third-floor suite at the Sheraton next to Universal Studios, where he filmed Kojak in the 1970s. He watched so many ballgames at the hotel’s bar they eventually renamed the joint Telly’s. His love of the game drew him to Harmon’s charity golf tournament in Idaho, where the two developed a friendship. They were two of America’s most famous bald men, accustomed to room service and pillow mints, and remained close until Savalas’s death, in his suite at the Sheraton, in 1994.

Harmon and Savalas once vacationed together in the Philippines. “They probably wouldn’t be too proud of

So many of their memories are sensory: tastes, sounds and smells. Cam Killebrew’s earliest baseball recollection is walking into Griffith Stadium in the nation’s capital as the 5-year-old son of the Washington Senators’ slugger: “Colorful signs, cigar and beer smells, a lot of green painted wood. Comiskey Park had that same green paint.”

Billy Joe remembers the very moment he realized what a privileged world he had entered: as a teenager, in a Yankees uniform, shagging flies at Fenway Park while wearing Thurman Munson’s catcher’s mitt. A batting-practice ball hit the Green Monster and made that distinctive thunk. The carom of the baseball was like Newton’s apple falling from a tree. “It all hit me right there,” says Billy Joe. “Wow, man, Babe Ruth used to run around this outfield. And the DiMaggio brothers, and Ted Williams, and the Mick. I got goosebumps. My knees were wobbling on the next fly ball. Holy cow, I’m lucky.”

Cam Killebrew was sitting in the Twins’ dugout in Minnesota when his dad called him to the batting cage.

“Mickey wants to say hey,” Harmon said. Mickey Mantle came out of the cage, called for a baseball from the BP pitcher, asked a reporter for a pen and wrote: to cam, your friend, mickey mantle. “I was 12 years old,” says Cam. “I still have the ball.”

“I bond with other children any time I meet ‘THE SON OF...,’ ” says the son of Billy Martin.

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ASEBALL WAS NOT just a show but The Show, entertainment on the grandest scale. Irene’s birth was on the front page of the Daily News in 1951, six months before the Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit history’s most famous home run, against the Dodgers. Irene’s dad began the long walk from first base to the center-field clubhouse at the Polo Grounds before Thomson made it to first base.

On a Tuesday night in 1977, 14-year-old Billy Joe Martin went to visit his father at his office. Billy Joe watched Game 6 of the World Series from his seat near the home dugout at Yankee Stadium. That summer, the Bronx had burned with urban fires. New York City endured bankruptcy and blackouts. Billy Joe and his mom, Gretchen, stayed at the family’s offseason home in Texas most of the so-called Summer of Sam. But now, as Reggie Jackson hit one, then two, then three home runs on consecutive pitches, the teenager couldn’t imagine being anywhere but the Bronx. A security guard told him, as the evening wore on and a joyful menace suffused the air, that he needed to get to the clubhouse for his own safety. “But I didn’t want to miss the show,” he recalls. Fans tore up sod and snatched other holy relics—caps and jerseys— directly off the fleeing Yankees. Cops swung batons as Billy Joe scampered to the clubhouse. “It was awesome,” he says. “I had my first champagne that night, with Willie Randolph’s little brother.”

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UT BASEBALL DADS were gone when other dads were home: nights and weekends.

“I wish my dad managed the Texas Rangers,” a boy told Billy Joe when he was a kid in Arlington, and Billy Joe replied: “Sometimes I wish my dad worked for General Motors.”

Billy Martin saw Billy Joe play one game in four years of high school. The man famous for his brawls and his temper was managing the A’s, who were playing in Arlington that night. His presence was soothing to his son. “My father never yelled at me,” says Billy Joe. “Never.

He went out of his way to show me love and support because he knew he couldn’t be there all the time. He had the ability to turn it on and off. I think he had to, to keep from going totally crazy.” Billy Joe hit the first pitch he saw that night to the wall and went 5-for-5. It was the best game of his career. His taskmaster coach didn’t ride him that game. “He was probably worried my dad would beat him up,” says Billy Joe. Harmon Killebrew came to only one of Cam’s high school games, and in that game the boy, who hadn’t whiffed all year, struck out looking. Cam still maintains it was a bad call, and he said so at the time to the umpire.

Harmon called his son over immediately. “You will never argue with an umpire again,” he said. Cam never did.

When the Dodgers left Brooklyn for L.A. in 1958, the Hodges family moved with them. Irene was 7. She made her first communion in California. They rented a house in Long Beach, but Joan Hodges, a Brooklyn native,

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K IDS OF SU MMER

couldn’t adjust to the palm trees and sunshine and surf.

Joan Lombardi was a Dodgers fan before she met Gil. She was working at Martin’s department store on Fulton Street when her friend and coworker Peggy mentioned that her apartment building on Pacific Street had just gotten two new tenants: Gil Hodges and Eddie Miksis of the Dodgers. “Peggy knew that my mother loved the Dodgers so much she used to skip school to go to the games,” Irene says. Peggy invited Joan to her building. Joan Lombardi became Joan Hodges.

Like any Brooklynite, Joan was heartbroken when the Dodgers, and the Hodges family, moved to Los Angeles.

“My mother had never been that far away from her parents,” Irene recalls. “She wouldn’t even unpack.”

And so the Hodges family stayed in Flatbush the following seasons, visiting Gil in L.A. over the summer. In 1962, Irene’s father signed with the expansion Mets but moved to Washington, D.C., a year later to manage the Senators. She wept. “You want to eat, don’t you?” Joan asked Irene by way of consolation.

“She’s an Italian mom from Brooklyn,” Irene says.

“It’s always about food.”

Indeed, there is now a club for the progeny of former U.S. presidents. The Society of Presidential Descendants is a year-old, invitation-only association whose mission is “to share a camaraderie” among this unique cohort, which is also what these baseball descendants like to do.

Feeling their own mortality and, in this lockout-delayed season, the mortality of the game they love, some of these friends talk about starting a podcast, writing a book together or forming their own fraternal order to keep alive their own memories, and those of their parents.

“It’s such a pleasure as adults to talk to each other about how cool our dads were,” says Ken Killebrew.

Not all baseball kids are the children of ballplayers.

The circus has many performers. Billy Joe met Dave Pepe in 1975 when both were newly minted teenagers at

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G I L’ S G I R L Irene still lives in Brooklyn, where she and Gil Jr. helped their dad pack in the winter of 1956.

Yankees spring training in Fort Lauderdale. They were the blue-collar baseball kids in a school full of children whose wealthy parents wintered in Florida. Dave’s dad, Phil, covered the Yankees for the Daily News. The boys bought their first vinyl LPs together that spring—ZZ Top’s Fandango! and Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog. Billy Joe and Dave are now business partners, baseball agents who follow the advice Billy Joe got as a kid from Gary Hughes in the Yankees clubhouse: “Trust your eyes.”

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ICKEY MANTLE AND Billy Martin won four World Series together as Yankees teammates in the 1950s and remained best friends until Martin’s death, on Christmas night of ’89, in a single-car crash

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HEY’RE FRIENDS NOW, these children of the game. Like the leather laces of a glove, some are tight, some are loosely tied, but all are bonded by baseball. Among their acquaintances are familiar surnames: Kelly Drysdale. Roger Maris Jr. The Mantle boys. Irene lost touch with the children of the Dodgers diaspora but not with the former president of the Gil Hodges Fan Club. Sixty years after 15-year-old Joann Duffy of Long Island organized Gil Hodges Night at the Polo Grounds, she and Irene remain Facebook friends. “As I got older, I very rarely told anyone who my father was,” says Irene, whose closest friends remain her grade-school classmates. “They either had to ask me or they never found out.”

This discretion is familiar to any child of a famous parent. Billy Joe was a student at Texas Tech in 1986 when he was asked to appear on a new talk show, for a segment called “Children of Controversial Figures.” On a lark, he allowed producers to fly him to Chicago, where he met Bobby Knight’s son on The Oprah Winfrey Show. They hit it off. “I instantly bond with other children anytime I meet ‘The Son of . . . ,’ ” says the son of Billy Martin.

When George W. Bush owned the Rangers and was merely the son of the president of the United States—and not yet president himself—he gave Billy Joe a bro hug at a ballgame. They’d never met before but appeared to share some secret knowledge. Billy Joe realized, “I might have a little bit of an idea of what it’s like to be the son of the president.”

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in upstate New York. Martin was buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in suburban New York City, beneath a stone that reads until we meet again. After his father’s service, Billy Joe walked the 99 paces or so from Billy’s grave to the final resting place of Babe Ruth— “It’s the throw from home plate to second base,” says Billy Joe—and paused over one of the baseballs placed around Ruth’s headstone. hey babe, someone had written on it. show the kid around. Billy Joe was suddenly overcome, thinking of his father and his father’s idol and those adolescent nights at Steve’s Sizzling Steaks.

Billy Joe Martin was a young man, just 25, when his father died and bore a striking resemblance to him. He was working at a TV station in Dallas, where once a

month he’d get a call from his dad’s former coworker, inviting him to dinner, which meant asking permission to leave the station in mid-afternoon. Dinners with Mickey Mantle started with cocktails at 3:30 p.m. At one of those dinners, the most famous baseball player of his generation reached across the table, pawed at Billy Joe’s face and said: “Take those damn glasses off.” When Billy Joe removed his glasses, a tear rolled down Mantle’s cheek. Said Mickey: “Now you look like that dago I miss so much.”

Mantle died of cancer in 1995. His sons David and Danny remain close to Billy Joe, bound as children of the game but also as grown men who miss their dads.

“Everybody always said, ‘Your dad was a god,’ and everything,” David Mantle told The Oklahoman, in his father’s native state, in 2016. “I think I heard that so much I believed he was God.”

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IL HODGES DIED of a heart attack at age 47 in 1972. At his funeral, Howard Cosell pulled Gil Jr. out of Our Lady Help of Christians in Brooklyn and led him to a car outside the church. In the back seat was Jackie Robinson. “Hysterical, crying,” Gil Jr. recalled in the 2021 documentary The Gil Hodges Story. “He leaned over, he gave me a hug and he said, ‘Next to my son’s passing, this is the worst day of my life.’ ” Gil Hodges was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, a mile and a half from the site where Ebbets Field once stood.

For Irene, happy signs—often literal—of her father abound in Brooklyn. She gets a warm feeling driving over the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge into Queens. P.S. 193 is the Gil Hodges School, near a section of Atlantic Avenue called Gil Hodges Way. Fifty years after his death, Irene’s dad will go into the Hall of Fame this month. When Hall chairman Jane Forbes Clark called to deliver the news, she made it as far as: “I’m so happy to tell you . . .” Irene began sobbing. Then Irene told Joan, “Nobody,” she says, “has waited longer than my mother.”

In the weeks after his dad died, Billy Joe Martin would give his name over the phone to pizza makers or delivery workers, and they would say, “Billy Martin? I thought you just died.” To avoid these exchanges, and to honor his father, he began going by Billy Martin Jr. Billy Jr. is a father himself to three grown children whose every game and recital he made sure to attend. “I probably went overboard,” he says, laughing.

Years after Harmon Killebrew retired in 1975, his name would pop up in strange pop-cultural contexts.

On Cheers, Carla reminded Sam of the time “Harmon Killebrew hit those three moon-shot homers off of you.”

David Letterman devoted an entire episode of his NBC show to “Harmon Killebrew Night,” on which no less an authority than Liberace said: “He ranks right up there with Babe Ruth!” Harmon died in 2011, and Cam said that his surname, naturally, is recognized less frequently than it once was. But 30 years ago, Ken Killebrew started a business based on one of his dad’s old recipes, and Killebrew Root Beer remains a fixture in Minnesota, including at Target Field, where kids can shotgun it in bleachers.

The baseball children of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s are now in their 50s, 60s and 70s, but they keep their fathers’ names alive in novel ways. After Ken suffered some health scares, his wife, Mary Jo, bought him a companion dog, a King Charles–Shih Tzu mix named Harmony.

Whenever Ken brought Harmony to the dry cleaner or the groomer, someone would ask: “Who do we have here?”

Ken always replied, “This is Harmony Killebrew.” He seldom got a glimmer of recognition. Finally, he asked his doctor’s receptionist, to whom he had just introduced the dog, “Have you ever heard of Harmon Killebrew?”

She hadn’t. “Have you ever heard of Mickey Mantle?”

Ken asked, and she said: “Of course!”

“Well, Harmon Killebrew was my dad,” Ken said, “and he hit a lot more home runs than Mickey Mantle.”

“What can I say?” Ken sighs. “I’m proud of my dad.”

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AT 50, KELLY SLATER JUST WON THE SUPER BOWL OF SURFING.

BY

BRANDON SNEED PHOTOGRAPHS BY

TODD GLASER

HIS DEMONS AND KEEP STOKING THAT FIRE. UNTIL HE DOESN’T

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IN A RENTAL car with broken air conditioning, somewhere south of L.A. on the 405, as afternoon temperatures rise, misery begins to take hold. Kelly Slater, in the passenger seat, has been talking about aerials: When he was 10, he saw someone catch air on a surf video and his mind exploded. That’s pretty standard stuff in surfing today, but back then, he points out, it was rare. Young Slater had no idea how to finish; he just zoomed up waves and launched, departing his board, taking flight with no plan in mind. “Why do that if you’ll never land it?” his dad asked. “One day I will,” he replied.

Now, though, he’s sweating. “I can’t take it anymore, man,” says Slater, who started this drive in sneakers, sweatpants and a hoodie. And then, there go the pants. That’s how he ended up riding shotgun in his boxers. Amid a series of emotional conversations, the metaphor has written itself: the world’s greatest surfer, laying himself bare.

It’s been a long day. Around 5 a.m. on March 25, Slater and his girlfriend of 14 years, Kalani Miller, loaded three surfboards, three massive suitcases and two carry-ons into a separate car at their house in Cocoa Beach, Fla., drove an hour to Orlando, flew to L.A., loaded up the rental with the busted AC and headed to Beverly Hills.

Now they’re due south, toward a second home in San Clemente. Miller is napping in the backseat and Slater is yawning, resting his head on a hand beside an open window. Ready for home. See the dog, eat some food, rest. Another day in the life.

Slater is packed for two weeks in Southern California, followed by a month in Australia. He’s been around this sport for 40-odd years, but still he’s competing on the World Surf League Championship Tour, where he’s claimed 11 world titles, including once as the youngest winner ever (at 20) and once as the oldest (39). Along the way, through relentless success and the kind of charm that landed him a recurring role on Baywatch, he helped take surfing mainstream. Some would argue that he’s accomplished more in his sport, and done more for it, than

“WHY DO THAT IF YOU’LL NEVER LAND IT?” SLATER’S DAD ASKED WHEN YOUNG KELLY TOOK FLIGHT WITH NO PLAN TO LAND.

“ONE DAY I WILL,” HE REPLIED.

Slater arrived at Pipeline in February having gone nine years without a win there. His opponent in the final wasn’t even half his age.

K ELLY SL ATER

any other athlete across time. “I don’t care who you mention—Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali,” Mark Richards, himself a four-time world champion surfer, once told Sports Illustrated. “Kelly is unquestionably the greatest athlete ever to stomp around on this planet.”

On this trip Slater will stand next to two of the few people who might realistically have a bone to pick with Richards: At the Oscars he gets onstage and presents a James Bond video tribute alongside skateboarder Tony Hawk and snowboarder Shaun White. (“Surreal,” Slater says of an evening that will trend on Twitter for days.) In this tribe of GOATs, each of whom has forced his once-fringe obsession into the forefront of American culture, one thing differentiates Slater: While Hawk (who’s 54) and White (35) have retired from competition, Slater’s still at it.

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In late January he started yet another season on the tour, beginning with the Billabong Pro Pipeline, held on the North Shore of Oahu. Although surfers compete to add up points in pursuit of a world title, each location on the tour carries its own significance, and Pipeline is a Super Bowl–level event.

That comes down to the nature of the surf. Many competitions feature long rides on smooth waves, allowing riders stylish cutbacks, slashes and aerials until they disembark with grace. If the waves allow and you catch a barrel, disappearing into the tube formed by a cresting wave, all the better.

Pipeline, though, is different. Swells rise and fall fast and hard. They arrive sometimes 20 feet tall, crashing with violent force, landing like bombs. Here, the barrel is the way. Catch your wave, drop in and make it out before the ocean swallows you. Most rides end with surfers vanishing into explosive foam and chop, with sharp coral reef waiting below. Here your arena is an obstacle, but

also a teammate that you can neither predict nor control.

Slater began this year’s competition having not won the weeklong event in almost a decade. In fact, it had been five and a half years since he’d won any competition—four since he thought about retiring for good, after shattering his right foot in South Africa’s Jeffreys Bay. And now Slater faced adversaries less than half his age.

His finals opponent, 24-year-old Seth Moniz, was the son of a man Slater had surfed against two decades ago.

And Moniz was good in Oahu. But Slater, the master, was better, catching barrel after barrel. Near the end of his heat he snagged his biggest wave of the day, plummeting from the upper lip into the barrel like a man off a cliff—as if, he says, “I fell out of the sky.” He thought the crest would clip him, but the tube curled over instead.

He would later call the moment “spiritual,” the ocean giving him something.

Emerging afterward, Slater held his face in his hands and fell back into the ocean in ecstasy as time expired, knowing victory was his. Moniz embraced him in the water. On the shore, fans and opponents lifted him onto

HOME S T R E T CH In his backyard sauna and getting wrenched by Miller, Slater fights off 30 years of pain.

their shoulders. He popped champagne. He kissed Miller.

He cried in his post-heat interview. He was No. 1 in the world for the first time in eight years.

That was Feb. 5. He would turn 50 within a week.

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IX WEEKS LATER, back home in Cocoa Beach, the afterglow lingered. Slater was staying low key, playing some cards and some golf, visiting family and friends, cooking with Miller. But he could still feel the high from Pipeline. “The whole thing was like a dream,” Slater says one night from a back porch overlooking the Banana River.

“It seemed like somebody wrote a script and put me in it.”

In the aftermath, Slater got a congratulatory text from Tom Brady, a friend of 15 years who himself has found some time to surf between Super Bowl wins.

In the middle of his own brief retirement at the moment,

Brady, whose longevity has been talked about as much as any athlete’s ever has, found himself in awe. “At 50 years old, accomplishing what he did—it was mindblowing,” says Brady. “No one ever imagined that.”

And that’s from a 44-year-old football player. To dominate so late in life at surfing (or skateboarding) is perhaps even more mindblowing. “Our sports continue to evolve,” Hawk, another friend, points out. “They’re so artistic and subjective. The levels keep getting pushed further and further. For Kelly to be able to adapt to that is really the most impressive thing.”

Slater, today, is weighing whether this will be his own final tour.

“I’ve put so much time and effort into this thing over the years,” he says. “And it’s great; I love it. But also: Sometimes I just want to get away. . . . That’s gonna be fun for me, to watch everyone else deal with these pressure situations and close heats. The thrill and agony of it all. I can feel that fire burning out.”

In at least one way, facing the DEEP T HINK ER end is like facing the beginning: Out in the ocean, “I get really calm,” says Slater, who turned 50 in February. “Everything becomes really easy. I have a Slater isn’t sure what will happen breakthrough, and then it comes out during my surfing.” next. “At some point,” he says, “I’ll get too old to get the results [I want]. But I don’t think that’s yet.”

The fire burns low, but it still burns. Seeing friends body, the long-term effects. And the idea that when you forced to move on, Slater, for now, feels compelled to have to, how are you going to let this go?” use what he still has. He describes playing golf recently That’s the question for Slater, a man who describes the with Drew Brees, who retired in 2021 after 20 years in ocean as a “canvas” and who says surfing is “about somethe NFL. “He was like, ‘Man, I miss it,’ ” Slater says. “ ‘I thing deeper about yourself, an expression of your soul.” miss that fire.’ ” How? A life like that, without the fire, sometimes feels L ATER’S GLITCH WAS born when he started appealing to Slater. “I kind of look forward to it,” he says. surfing in Cocoa Beach as a boy, the waves offerBut then there’s the matter of that thing inside of him that keeps the fire going—the thing that got him ing escape from a turbulent home, elements of which here. “I really think that to be a great competitor,” he he says shaped him into “a competitive beast.” A father says, “there needs to be some kind of personal glitch.” who struggled with alcoholism; a funny but, Kelly says, Brady knows about it, even if he doesn’t understand often harsh mother; an angry older brother. “If I win,” it. “There’s something that has allowed us to get to the he recalls thinking, “it’ll fix stuff.”

Slater would stare up at the Pipeline posters on his point we’re at,” he says. “And unfortunately, we’re not walls and study the waves in magazines and on videos. necessarily in control of that.”

“I just get consumed by it,” says Hawk. “And that can But when he got his first chance to confront them, at 12, he was overwhelmed by Pipeline’s monsters. A wave, be a curse, for sure.”

Brady: “I think that’s the hard part. I can’t turn it off. he says, slammed him into the water, against the reef I don’t think [Kelly] can turn it off. And that’s hard. You beneath, pinning him under his board. All he could do was hold his breath until the ocean let him up. just gotta manage it the best way you can.”

A few years later, undeterred, Slater moved to the Hawk: “There’s a price to pay. A price to pay with your

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North Shore—this was where you made a name for yourself. But many days he just sat on the beach, watching the Pipe waves, “stuck with fear” as he studied them and the brave souls who tried to tame them. “Surfing’s a calculated risk,” he says. “There’s danger and there’s skill, and you figure out where those two things intersect.”

That, and you “eat s--- a bunch of times.” Slater remembers a trick an old friend taught him: Laugh at the waves.

“Get rid of the fear,” he says. “Understand what the wave is going to do. And become part of it.”

That was the way. Become part of it. And he found that to do that, to know the ocean, he had to know himself.

“You’re dealing with a lot of unknowns,” he says. “But there is a pattern in the ocean. Yes, there is some kind of luck—but it just seems like the more connected you are with yourself, the better luck you have.”

“THAT’S GONNA BE FUN FOR ME, TO WATCH EVERYONE ELSE DEAL WITH THESE PRESSURE SITUATIONS,” SAYS SLATER. “I CAN FEEL THAT

FIRE BURNING OUT.”

K ELLY SL ATER

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HE WORLD’S GREATEST surfer has a favorite mechanical engineer. Feels a connection with him.

Slater has read several books about Nikola Tesla, famous for his breakthroughs around electric power, and what stuck with Slater is that Tesla accomplished all he did despite crushing migraines that left him debilitated.

“He realized,” Slater says, “that he was either going to control and understand [the migraines], or he was probably going to kill himself.”

Tesla, though, said he found power in those piercing headaches—visions that spurred, in the end, invention. Intense emotion, Slater says, “turned out to be his superpower.”

Slater says he, too, experiences emotions with a profound intensity, beyond the norm. Extreme highs and lows. Early on, those highs came with fame and fortune and that world championship at 20, clinched at Pipeline. It was a hell of a crest for a self-described redneck from the Space Coast. But the lows came just as heavy, one year later. He ended an engagement, he lost the world title and he found himself six figures in debt. He has never publicly shared the depths that his anguish reached, but emotionally he felt almost like he was pinned against the reef again. He says that one night he found himself at the edge of an apartment building’s roof in Coolangatta, on Australia’s Gold Coast, with a beautiful view of the eastern Indian Ocean. He remembers “just looking down . . . like this would all be over in a few seconds. That’s where my mind was. . . . I was suicidal for a minute.”

Thirty years later, he says: “That’s not something I want to identify with. . . . It’s just factual. I was in that state of mind. And once that thought creeps in your head, it can always creep back in.”

To quell this he says he tried therapy (but inconsistently at the time) and antidepressants (but he didn’t like how they numbed him). He cares too much about his body to escape into drugs, and he found drinking’s hangover a waste of time. Instead, in these peaks and valleys, he says surfing became a place to funnel those emotions, redirecting them toward the waves. “I learned how to focus and channel that energy [into competition].

It consumed me. I became really obsessive about it.”

In other words, he gave himself to surfing in total.

Winning became his vice. “When I get past that intensity, I get really calm,” he says. “Everything becomes easy. I have a breakthrough, and then it comes out during my surfing. I understand how to tap every bit of a wave’s energy.

“The lows are almost like Tesla’s migraines,” he says. “[They] exaggerate everything in my life. I feel like that’s sort of my superpower. Ultimately, it’s probably why I’ve done what I have.”

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HEN BRADY TEXTED his congratulations after the Pipeline win in February, Slater wrote back that it had been the best feeling—the greatest win—of his life.

“I really took that to heart,” says Brady. “I was like, Wow. Kelly feels like winning at his age, after all he’s won, this was the greatest one.”

A month later, Brady shocked the world, ending his brief retirement and returning to the NFL. That thing inside that drives him, he couldn’t turn it off. “I don’t think you want to,” Brady says. “I think it eventually turns off for you.”

After that twist, Slater texted Brees, who’s now 43.

“C’mon man,” Slater joked. “We’re all doing it.” And he smiles remembering Brees’s reply: “ I’m starting to like it. I’m starting to get the hang of [retirement].”

Slater can imagine himself getting to that point.

(Technically, he has retired before, in 1998, after his sixth world title. That lasted three years.) Of his famous friends, though, perhaps Hawk has the most realistic blueprint for what an exit might look like. The skating legend retired from professional competitions in 2003, but he keeps at it recreationally, out of the spotlight. The fire still burns, even after he broke his right femur in a skating accident in March. “I can’t let it go if I think there is a chance that I can get back out there,” he says.

“I will be [skating] as much as I can—it just might be behind the scenes, if I feel like my skills are fading.

I don’t want to rot in public.”

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S THE RENTAL car with no air approaches San Clemente, a marine layer rolls in over the ocean, providing sweet relief to a pantsless passenger.

Later, after dinner at Miller’s family’s house, Slater falls asleep early on the couch, snuggled with his mixed-breed rescue, Action.

The next morning, Slater finds his way to a private gym in a garage tucked behind a neighbor’s home. He’s here to work out the pain. His shoulder muscles, often contracted forward from paddling on his board, require constant care. His hamstrings and quads need loosening.

The foot that he shattered still throbs. Older injuries nag at his left heel and ankle, too. And he’s had scoliosis for ages, so his back muscles tend to bunch together, pulling on everything else. A long travel day in a rolling sauna has only exacerbated things.

Inside, two men administer aggressive bodywork over several hours: twisting, turning, stretching, rooting through stiff muscles and tissue. They use hands, elbows, knees and heels. A massage therapy gun. At one point, a muscled man laces up a pair of soccer cleats and walks across the back of Slater’s legs. Kelly writhes around, covering his face with his hands, arching his back and twisting away from them. “Oh, f---! God f------ damn it!”

And they dig more.

One of Slater’s torturers smirks. “It’s not that bad, dude. Jesus.”

This is good pain, though. Within hours, nothing hurts

anymore. “New man,” Slater says. “Just gotta have the balls to get some pain going.”

That’s made all the difference. Everyone has pain.

Their paths are shaped by what they do with it. Later that evening, Slater is back in L.A., with friends at the SoHo House in West Hollywood, overlooking the lights below. Here he considers what separates people.

He sees a sometimes blurry line between passion and vice, creation and destruction. Slater has lived 30 years since Coolangatta, in and out of therapy and other help, especially the last few years. “You spend the first decade of your life learning,” he says, “and then the rest unlearning.”

The big lesson has been simple: “I definitely have learned to be kinder to myself,” he says. “I used to have a really negative internal dialogue.”

He knows now, too, that for him there’s more to living than giving himself to his sport. There’s life after the last heat. “I don’t feel as much of a need for competition,” he says. “If the waves are good, life’s great. At all moments.

It seems to answer everything for me.”

SPR AY OF HOPE Victory in Oahu, where Slater got a champagne toast, is the type of thing that keeps him going.

K ELLY SL ATER

He can picture it. Surfing just to surf. Maybe he’ll taper off, a couple of competitions each year, then let it all go.

“There’s a part of everyone that, when they quit, becomes a little empty,” he says. He does wonder, though, what might fill that void. “Maybe something could.” But he won’t know until he lets this go. “Not until [surfing]’s done.”

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N MAY, SLATER checks in from the Gold Coast. He has now finished outside the top 10 in four out of six competitions. On one hand, this is good practice in applying what he’s learned, to be kind to himself and to just have fun surfing. On the other hand, the fire burns a little hotter now. The call to see what you’re still capable of. “When you own it and you’re in the moment, there’s nothing better,” he says. “Pipeline this year, nothing can top that.”

Going back, on video, you can see that moment in real time in Oahu. It’s there, one wave before the end, when Slater makes it through a barrel with a rare window to throw a trick. Instead he goes full send, like he’s 10 again, back in Cocoa Beach, f lying off the top of the wave and away from his board, no plans to land.

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July, 2022

BARBARIANS IN THE

BY

JOHN WALTERS

ILLUSTRATION BY

JONATHAN BARTLETT

INSIDE THE FIERCE FIGHT FOR THE SOUL (AND DOLLARS) OF THE FASTEST-GROWING SPORT IN AMERICA: PICKLEBALL

HEN IN FEBRUARY 2021 an unholy tremor shook the seemingly carefree sport of pickleball: news that a second hall of fame was in the planning stages. The announcement, from USA Pickleball (heretofore USAP), incited a bevy of questions, such as: Wait, there’s a pickleball hall of fame?

(Believe it or not.) Is anyone famous solely for playing pickleball? (Not yet.)

Why stop at two? (Actually . . . ) Dinkheads.com, the top pickleball blog, referred to USAP’s intent to erect a rival Hall as a “douche-y” move, but it’s far more serious than that. The Hall is just one parry in a series of turf wars and satellite skirmishes plaguing the fastest-growing sport in America—a sport whose ambitions extend from real estate at your nearest park to reaching the Olympics. To wit: • There exist two international—feuding—governing bodies: the relatively venerable International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) and the renegade World Pickleball Federation (WPF).

• And two domestic pro tours: the Association of Pickleball Professionals (APP) and its rival, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA).

• Meanwhile, a pair of competing Texas-based billionaires seem poised to go to the mattresses over the sport.

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P I C K L E B A L L WA R S

• All of this against a backdrop of well-founded angst among the tennis set that pickleball is usurping both its real estate and its participants.

Until recently, pickleball was widely perceived as the last athletic refuge of those who’d undergone a knee, hip or spouse replacement. In reality, the sport—where 300 paddle-makers bear witness to a yet-unrealized potential—is in the throes of its terrible tweens. Growing pains aplenty and a litany of f-words: factions, fractures, friction.

In short, picklebalkanization.

“Some days you wake up,” says Connor Pardoe, founder of the PPA Tour, “and it all feels like a land grab.”

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PICKLEBALL: the progeny of tennis and Ping-Pong.

The new shuffleboard. “Half-court basketball for elderly people,” as actor Jeff Daniels put it. Or so you thought.

You might have read about the sport with a silly name and 4.8 million adherents. Or seen your local park or tennis club—or Leo DiCaprio—install a pickleball court, or a dozen. Or caught Drew Brees’s tweet about his football afterlife: “I may train for the pickleball tour.”

“Pickleball is the social media influencer of the sports

DINKERS AND BANGERS

KNOW YOUR PICKLEBALL POWER PLAYERS

PAT MURPHY

SEYMOUR RIFKIND

KEN HERRMANN

CONNOR PARDOE

IFP president

WPF founder

APP Tour founder

PPA Tour president, CEO

STEVE KUHN

TOM DUNDON

MLP founder, billionaire

PPA owner*, billionaire

*Reported Jan. 2; not yet official

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: C O U R T E S Y O F P AT M U R P H Y ; C O U R T E S Y O F S E Y M O U R R I F K I N D ; C O U R T E S Y O F P P A ; K ARL DEBL AK ER/NHLI/GE T T Y IMAGES; COURTESY OF TOM WEBB; COURTESY OF K EN HERRMANN

ON FEB. 14, 2022, something less than a Valentine’s e-card arrived in Pat Murphy’s inbox. For the president of the IFP—thus, the most powerful figure in the world of amateur pickleball—the missive was loaded with arrows. But not Cupid’s.

“As Board members and Directors of the International Federation of Pickleball,” the letter began, “we respectfully submit this letter of ‘no confidence.’ ” It then cited 13 alleged breaches of protocol and called for the recipient’s “immediate resignation.”

Murphy, a genial but imperious gent in his late 60s, did not respond. Six weeks later, the letter’s 10 co-signees, representing two of the IFP’s five board members and all eight of its program directors, resigned en masse.

Nine of the 10 largest national governing bodies also withdrew, including USAP, which governs nine of every 10 picklers on the planet. The lone holdout? India, whose commissioner, Sunil Valavalkar, is one of two board members who remain loyal to Murphy.

“That was the cannonball that went over the bow,” says Murphy, who remains the titular head at pickleball’s equivalent of FIFA (whereas USAP is like the U.S. Soccer Federation). He’s the captain of a ghost ship. As one resigned board member points out: “The IFP just lost 95% of the world’s registered players.”

For more than a decade the IFP has been the flagship of a grassroots (read: volunteer) movement to make pickleball an Olympic sport—at the earliest, likely 2032 in Brisbane. Suddenly, that ship has no crew or sails. Despite the coup de Pat, Murphy refuses to abandon his post.

world,” Kelly Ripa said on Live With Kelly and Ryan. “I’d never heard about it. And then I only hear about it.”

Born in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Wash., and mostly confined to the Pacific Northwest for half a century, pickleball got its name from “pickle boat” (a hastily assembled rowing crew), a nod to the paddle sport being cobbled together from parts of others: badminton, tennis, even Wiffle ball. The moniker invited curiosity and derision in equal measures. But, as time passed and pickleball gained traction in sun-splashed, gated retirement communities from Palm Beach to Palm Desert, it became more addictive than Blue Bloods.

Now, pickle-buzz is inescapable, its proselytizers as zealous as crypto crusaders. One big reason: the gentlest of learning curves. “It’s so damn easy,” says 70-year-old Seymour Rifkind, founder of the IFP’s rival, the WPF, and, like so many figures in this story, a postretirement adoptee of the sport. “The first four or five years, I couldn’t wait until the next morning so I could go out and play again.”

“Of the hundreds of players I’ve taught to play,” says 73-year-old Steve Sidwell, a former IFP program director who signed his name to February’s no-confidence letter, “I have never heard, This is no fun.”

SEE Y OU IN C OUR T !

Part of pickleball’s move toward legitimacy: relocating the nationals from an RV park to Indian Wells.

S T E V E TAY L O R / D I G I TA L S P AT U L A

“My in-laws, very active, play tennis three times a week,” says Chris Hall, a 51-year-old club pickleball pro in the Phoenix burbs. “But with pickleball, they play six times a week, sometimes twice a day.” Active adult living, indeed.

Eventually, obsession begat oversight, which begat structure. The money followed. And now, the turf wars.

“When I was running [USAP], we were trying to grow the sport,” says Mark “Yoda” Friedenberg, the original president of pickleball’s seminal governing body. “Now they’re primarily concerned with money.”

Pro tours. Sponsorships. Equipment. Instructor certification fees. Pickleball-themed franchises, akin to Topgolf.

Streaming. TV. Much like crypto, the revenues are either ephemeral or invisible at the moment, but at least two billionaires have invested heavily. The sharks have arrived.

“Power and money,” says Lynn Cherry, who last year launched Pickleball Fire, a website and podcast. “It’s unfortunate, but I cannot say it’s unexpected.”

“PICKLEBALL’S THE WILD, Wild West,” says Justin Maloof, the COO of USAP. You hear that refrain plenty around this sport, but Maloof and I are seated in the midst of what once was the actual wild, Wild West.

On this weekend in April, the 41 pickleball courts at the Legacy Sports Park in Mesa, Ariz., are home to an APP Tour event, the Legacy Open. But 100 years ago

we’d have been surrounded by nothing but saguaro cacti. Today, this mega sports complex is surrounded by tract homes and the grace notes of affluent exurbia: a Pita Jungle and a Trader Joe’s. They paved paradise, all right.

For better or worse is a matter of perspective. The same holds for pickleball. “This period of the past three or four years has kind of been a black eye,” says Maloof. “Look at any pro sport: Two equal pro tours are not sustainable. We don’t need two international governing bodies.”

Maloof, like pickleball, was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. He recalls playing the game as a boy in the 1980s, whereas his father now plays four times a week in his 70s. “We had pickleball in the schools,” says Maloof. “A family friend had a court in the backyard.”

For decades that was pickleball’s realm: primarily in backyards, primarily in Washington. The first nonwooden paddles were designed by a Boeing engineer.

Then, in 2005, USAP was formed with the purpose of establishing a rule book, a tournament structure and a national membership program. From anarchy to order.

As president, Friedenberg installed a board of 14 members. “We were a governing body,” says the George Washington of pickleball. “If it’s only me, then we’re a company. I chose people who were deeply involved in pickleball.”

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In 2009, the first national championships, at a 55-and- unless the perforated plastic ball bounces there first. over community nearly 50 miles northwest of Phoenix, By the fourth hit, a point is distilled into dinkers and drew 400 players and offered $7,000 in prizes. The event bangers. To dink is to gently and repeatedly lob the ball was emblematic of pickleball’s place in the national over the net, lulling your opponent—and spectators—to consciousness: off the map. sleep. Dinks are why a single point can last upward of One year later, USAP created the International 50 shots. Eventually, though, someone opts to bang, to Federation of Pickleball, rationalizing that “if the sport whack the ball from fewer than five yards, setting off an is gonna go global,” says Maloof, “it can’t be under the exchange of rapid-fire shots. A slap fight with paddles. auspices of USAP.” Seymour Rifkind is a banger. “Some people think I’m By global, Maloof means Olympics. To be considered a disruptor,” says the sport’s single-most disruptive force. an Olympic sport pickleball would need at least 75 USAP-type national governing bodies across the hemispheres. All of them, USAP included, would operate under the umbrella of the IFP . . . which USAP had spawned.

But first, pickleball had to blossom stateside. That was Maloof ’s mandate. In 2015, the nationals were relocated to an RV park in Casa Grande, Ariz. And if that sounds like a scene from a Coen brothers film—well, yeah. Total prize money: still only $10,000.

By 2018, however, the pickleball invasion was in full swing. USAP signed a five-year deal with the famed Tennis Garden at Indian Wells, hosting its prestigious tournament HO T IN T HE K I T CHEN there ever since. And the Pickleball’s top bangers: Johns (above), who’s PPA-committed, and pa ndemic acted as a n Johnson, who came out of nowhere to challenge for supremacy. adrenaline boost for the sport, which conforms to both social f itness and Upon first encounter, “Rif” may incite an eye roll social distancing. The total purse at nationals this year or two. A self-made millionaire through his adveris expected to reach six figures.

“Everything is moving at lightning speed,” says Maloof. tising firm, he has completed an Ironman. Run an Lightning creates thunder. Explosions that reverberate ultramarathon. Earned a black belt in taekwondo. across the landscape. As pickleball mania surged with Bicycled solo from coast to coast. And all of this after his double-digit percentage increases in participation year 50th birthday.

But Rif is a pickleball visionary. He created the game’s over year, evangelists and opportunists appeared out of first certified instructor course and introduced its first thin air. Collisions were inevitable. system for rating players, similar to how tennis and table IN PICKLEBALL, play begins with an underhand serve. tennis operate at amateur levels. In 2017, he announced Baseline rallies are almost unheard of, especially in dou- he was creating the first pickleball hall of fame. And in bles, where on most points all four players have advanced ’18 the World Pickleball Federation, to rival the IFP. to the edge of the kitchen by the third or fourth hit.

“Seymour Rifkind is a doer,” says Karen Mitchell, the What is the kitchen? Pickleball’s no-man’s-land: president of Pickleball England. “The WPF being around a rectangular box extending seven feet from the net acted as a catalyst for the IFP to finally get things done.” (a full court is 44' × 20') that players may not enter Rif says he first pitched all of his ideas—save for the

WPF—to both USAP and the IFP, which at the time were overseen by essentially the same individuals. And “they were not at all interested,” Rif says. “I think there were big egos. In their view, they owned pickleball. If they didn’t come up with the idea, they’re going to copy it or try to buy it from you.”

If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em. Rif ’s WPF began recruiting member nations. And you don’t need to be a game-theory expert to see that, as a foreign federation, the shrewd move was to register with both. Nearly two dozen countries—the notable exception: USAP—did just that.

Seymour Rifkind just cannot stay out of the kitchen.

And he considers the folks at USAP and the IFP to be clueless dinkers. “I don’t think any of them had a vision for where the sport could go,” Rif says. “If they aren’t interested in doing it, then I have the skill set.”

CONNOR PARDOE moves at a frenetic pace, as befits a 27-year-old with two sets of twins under age 3. The University of Utah grad crackles with energy and ambition. Buff, blond and blue-eyed, he looks as much the No. 1 player in the world as any actual pro on either tour.

Pardoe is a banger. Hell yeah. In 2018, he and his father, Derk, a former tennis player at BYU, attended

“PICKLEBALL,”

says Maloof, the COO of USAP, “is the wild, Wild West.”

a pickleball tournament in Atlanta. “I said to my dad, ‘This is more fun than Indian Wells [the ATP event],’ ” Pardoe says. “ ‘I think we can do this better.’ ” At about the same time, Ken Herrmann was making plans to open a tennis club in suburban Chicago. On a whim, the former USTA coaching staff member took his blueprint to Wilson Sporting Goods in search of a partnership. “Where are all your pickleball courts?”

P I C K L E B A L L WA R S

the Wilson gang asked. “I had no idea what they were talking about,” confesses Herrmann, now 56.

He would learn. In 2018, Herrmann and Pardoe, independent of each other, descended on the pickleball nationals, intent on market research and filling a void.

It wasn’t exactly Daniel Plainview claiming to be quail hunting in There Will Be Blood, but each man saw valuable land and an untapped market. And a year later, within weeks of each other, they launched their respective tours, which delineated themselves in two ways: • Herrmann’s APP used sanctioned referees and required its players to register with USAP. In short, by the book.

Pardoe’s PPA did not. “USAP needed a lot of work,” says Pardoe, intimating that he hoped to give his tour a more professional sheen. “I wanted the autonomy.”

• The PPA signed some of the world’s top pros to one-year exclusivity contracts. In exchange for guaranteed appearance fees, they would need to recuse themselves from nearly all APP events, essentially declaring themselves PC or Mac. The APP made no such stipulation.

Then, as 2021 bled into ’22, a more jarring schism rattled the pro tours. Two days after Christmas it was announced that Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon had purchased Pickleball Central, the Amazon of pickleball retailing. And on Jan. 2, another banger: The billionaire had reportedly bought Pardoe’s PPA Tour (keeping Pardoe on as CEO), and now Dundon wanted the world’s top players to sign three-year exclusivity contracts.

“Tom didn’t just double down on what we were doing,” Pardoe enthuses. “He tripled down!” By the time the PPA news broke, Dundon had already signed pickleball’s reigning prince.

RAFAEL NADAL never had to defend his world No. 1 ranking while cramming for a kinetics of diffusion exam. Ben Johns has. The formerly homeschooled 23-year-old is the top-ranked men’s player on thePPA Tour, and a soon-to-be-former materials science engineering major (GPA: 3.7) at Maryland.

The trajectory of pro pickleball, tracked against the backdrop of Johns’s college career, is stunning— “it’s night and day,” says Johns, who walked at commencement in May, missing the singles division of the Atlanta Open to do so. (“My mom [made] me.”)

When Johns enrolled in 2017, there were no pro pickleball tours. He’d only just started playing. Five years later, he earns the top appearance fee on the PPA Tour, rumored to be $3,000 for each of the 20-odd events every season.

But that’s spare change. In 2019, Johns’s paddle sponsor, Franklin, signed him to a $70,000 per annum deal. When that contract expired, this March, he inked a new two-year

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pact with Joola, for seven figures. Such are the spoils of a man who once compiled a 170-match win streak—more than five times as long as Nadal’s longest run.

Last fall, Dundon invited Johns to meet him in Dallas.

Two years earlier the billionaire had impetuously sunk $70 million into the Alliance of American Football, but he swiftly folded the startup before his losses hit nine figures. Now he, too, had been bitten by the bug, and he was curious to see whether Johns could become the “Tiger Woods of pickleball.” At their meeting, Johns and Dundon played a few matches without Dundon scoring a point.

Then, shortly before the new year, Dundon hosted Johns at his casa in Cabo San Lucas. Again, Johns skunked him, 11–0. Dundon, who amassed his fortune in subprime auto loans, teamed up for a second match, this time adding a partner, Ernie Garcia, the founder of Carvana. Once again, nada.

“Finally, they made up jungle rules,” says an eyewitness. “Tom and Ernie could go into the kitchen, but Ben could not. They got a few points off him, but Ben still won.”

Dundon won too: He signed the world’s best pickleball player to one of those three-year exclusivity deals. Then he told the sport’s top players that Johns was in his stable and that they needed to sign their own contract offers

by Jan. 1. Or risk missing out.

Douche-y move.

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PAT MURPHY, the ghost ship captain of the IFP and a retired retail management executive, arrived in Goodyear, Ariz., in 2009. Soon he discovered pickleball.

Before long the club at his posh retirement community, PebbleCreek, boasted one of the largest pickleball memberships in the U.S., with more than 1,500 members.

Murphy got involved in USAP administration and in 2019 was named president of the IFP. To hear him and a few others tell it, the IFP had never truly been independent of USAP before then; it was managed by USAP board members. Which is why Murphy wanted to clean house. “When I was appointed,” says Murphy, “I told them, ‘I will do this job, but first I’m firing everybody.’ ” And now everybody is firing him.

To be fair, Murphy, almost immediately upon taking office, was combating insurgents from within (USAP, which, again, constitutes more than 90% of the IFP’s membership) and without (that meddlesome Rifkind and his rival WPF). Identifying country membership totals as the simplest way to keep score against the WPF, Murphy installed Steve Sidwell as director of memberships and trotted out—no kidding—a No Country Left Behind policy. A contest between the two federations to accumulate 75 nations.

Dinkheads, the blog, ardently followed this arms race (“Nepal joins IFP!”), though it often sounded like competing Girl Scout troops announcing who had sold more Tagalongs—and often to the same grandma.

IN 1991, STEVE KUHN graduated from his Ivy League school in the midst of an economic recession. He returned home to Minneapolis, lived in his parents’ basement and applied for a job delivering for Domino’s. “On the application there was a line that read Last School Attended, and I wrote Harvard,” Kuhn remembers. “The manager smiled and said, ‘Smart-ass.’ ” Kuhn evokes Rain Man when he says “I was an excellent driver,” but also when he talks numbers. Between 2008 and ’14, Kuhn’s extraordinary understanding of finance and the upside-down housing market helped him take a relatively small hedge fund from $1 billion to $14 billion. He cashed out and began searching for windmills at which to tilt.

Clean water in Africa. A reasonable approach to immigration reform. “I met with 60 senators, 300 members of the House, and President Trump four times,” says Kuhn.

Then he moved to Austin, discovered pickleball and created a latter-day Xanadu. Kuhn refers to his 86-acre spread in Dripping Springs, Texas, as Dreamland.

It holds a concert venue and a mini-golf course. And 16 pickleball courts.

Somewhere along the way, Kuhn teamed up with Seymour Rifkind and agreed to build Rif’s Pickleball Hall of Fame on the property. (Construction has yet to begin; right now it’s online-only.) And Dreamland is a

SPA CE JA M Do the math: Four doubles pickleball matches, as Johns points out, take up as much real estate as one tennis court.

NILS NILSEN

P I C K L E B A L L WA R S

pro pickleballer compound, too; Kuhn is luring premier players to come work as instructors by allowing them to live rent-free in anything from a modular home to a five-bedroom ranch. He has designs on a Bollettieri-style academy, because, yes, the age of the pickleball brat is just around the corner.

The dreamiest thing about Dreamland, though, is Major League Pickleball. Last November, Kuhn, using his plush venue and $150,000 in prize money as bait, assembled 32 of the world’s top players, from both tours— like Marvel and DC heroes in one film—for a three-day event. Athletes were divided into four coed teams and played singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

“I think it was the most important and best event in pro pickleball that ever happened,” says Kuhn.

Ever? You’ve got a jar of cocktail sauce in your fridge that’s older than pro pickleball. Still, the reviews were universally positive. “It’s going to be hard to go back to the other tours after this,” Johns said afterward.

About that. After it was announced in January that Dundon had purchased the PPA, Kuhn ventured north to Dallas to inquire about how that three-year exclusivity clause would be applied to his new mega event. “I was dreading that meeting,” says Kuhn, “but people told me Tom and I would get along fine.”

Within minutes, though, the tycoon tête-à-tête devolved into a scene from The Godfather. Dundon told Kuhn his stable of PPA talent would play in the MLP— as soon as Dundon owned the MLP. Kuhn bristled.

I buy you out; you don’t buy me out! “That meeting lasted 20 minutes, but it might have lasted two,” recalls Kuhn.

“I don’t know why I wasted those 18 minutes.”

Dundon’s camp sees it differently. “Steve wanted 10 events, and he did not want to pay for them,” says PPA spokesperson Hannah Johns (yes, Ben’s sister).

“At that point, it’s almost a third tour. There has to be a good reason we do this besides out of the charity of our own hearts.”

This year, Kuhn will host another MLP event at his compound (and two more elsewhere). That competition will feature zero PPA players—even though Ben Johns lives in Austin . . . though, as you can understand, not at Dreamland.

BEFORE STU UPSON vacated his role as the COO of the International Tennis Hall of Fame to become the CEO of USAP, he had some fun at the expense of his soon-tobe-former boss, two-time Grand Slam finalist Todd Martin.

“Todd just loves tennis,” says Upson. “He thinks pickleball is Satan.” Hence, in Upson’s final staff meeting, when only Martin knew he was about to depart, Upson jokingly suggested a redesign on the hallowed site in Newport, R.I. “Let’s pave over all these grass courts,” Upson said. “We can make 40 pickleball courts.”

The laughter was muted. Nervous at best. Is he serious?

Whereas skiers have had to learn to share the slopes with snowboarders, tennis and pickleball are playing a zerosum real-estate game. And tennis is not exactly holding serve. Remember: fastest-growing sport in America.

On a Sunday afternoon at the IronOaks Country Club in Sun Lakes, Ariz., pickleball’s ascension is on full display. Nine of the club’s 10 pickleball courts are in use, each with four players. Just one of its 10 tennis courts is inhabited, by two players.

“It’s simple real estate,” says Ben Johns, tapping his inner engineer. “You can fit four pickleball courts on one tennis court, and four pickleball players [each] versus two tennis players. That’s an 8-to-1 ratio in the same space.”

Johns was once a teen tennis player. Robert Elliott, whose Engage paddle is by far pickleball’s top seller—he developed it himself in his garage—played on the men’s tennis team at Villanova. Ken Herrmann played tennis in college, and long ago he was Seymour Rifkind’s son’s private tennis coach.

Tennis manufacturers and tennis clubs are practicing the first rule of survival: Adapt or die. Which is why Prince and Wilson now make pickleball equipment, and why clubs have reallocated space. At IronOaks, for example, annual pickleball memberships eclipsed tennis memberships; as a result, they removed two clay courts and added eight for pickleball.

At the time, IronOaks’ tennis stalwarts went door to door with a petition, hoping to stymie this incursion.

They argued that the thwack of pickleball play was noise pollution. But this was Frank Sinatra trying to stop Elvis and the Beatles. “They told everyone it was about the sound the ball makes off the paddle,” says one IronOaks pickler. “Really, they just felt tennis being threatened.”

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IN APRIL, at the Legacy Open in Mesa, Ken Herrmann could be seen toting trays of iced tea, which he distributed to thirsty players and patrons. It’s a good schtick, as it provides Herrmann an organic means to strike up conversations. But it’s also representative of the APP’s image.

Hospitality. Herrmann’s six years at the USTA training facility in Florida provided him numerous opportunities to learn from Billie Jean King, who had launched her own pro women’s tennis tour in the 1970s.

“You work every single day,” King told Herrmann.

“Every single day you wear a different hat.”

Now, “if I watch Ken at tournaments, I’m exhausted,” says one player on the APP Tour. “You’ll see him setting up nets, announcing matches, draping medals around players’ necks and writing checks.”

Herrmann is a dinker. He refers to USAP respectfully as “the mothership.” Goes out of his way to accommodate the senior pro players and the amateurs. Thinks like a host. Should I serve sweet tea at the South Carolina Open?

Pardoe, in contrast, is a precocious sports entrepreneur.

His tour is unapologetically geared toward the top pros.

“I want a PPA event to feel like a PGA event or an ATP event,” he says. “When we first came in, there were four pros making enough to pay the bills. Now we have 30.”

Pardoe calls the PPA’s now three-year exclusivity contracts “a protection on our investment.” As for the APP, he harbors no enmity. He foresees Herrmann’s league being a place where up-and-comers can cut their teeth. Triple A. “Pickleball is so big,” says Pardoe, “there’s a place for

DAVID LETTERMAN once joked in one of his trademark Top 10 lists that the NBA’s slogan ought to be Come See Our Johnsons. The APP should consider it.

At the Legacy Open, while Herrmann platters iced tea, JW Johnson takes refuge from the glaring sun in the pros tent. At 19, he’s the No. 1 men’s player on the APP Tour.

His sister, Jorja, only 15, is the No. 2 women’s player. And their mother, Julie, 50, is No. 1 among senior women.

“I started playing to get away from you guys,” jokes Julie, who will play 30 tournaments a year with her brood and act as family travel coordinator. “King Richard had it easy.”

Whether you think the Johnsons are the first family of pickleball may depend on your tour allegiance. Another 15-year-old, Anna Leigh Waters, is the top PPA women’s player, and her mom, Leigh, is a top-five doubles player. JW, though, is one of the more intriguing players on either tour.

Last August, only two months after shelving a nascent tennis career (see!) to focus exclusively on pickleball, JW entered his third event, the Tournament of Champions, in Utah, and beat Ben Johns, ending that epic streak.

“I said, ‘Good job, buddy,’ ” recalls JW’s mom. “And he said, ‘About time.’ ” Two months. That’s about the quantum of fortitude in pickleball, which is clearly in its Big Bang phase. “If you had told us about pickleball three years ago,” says Julie, “I would not have known what you were talking about.”

On Dec. 29, Pardoe texted JW and offered him one of the PPA’s exclusivity contracts. The guaranteed tournament appearance fee offered to the one player who had beaten the PPA’s marquee attraction? $1,000. And

C OUR T E S Y OF P PA

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RISING IN PHOENIX The center of the pickleball surge? Try Arizona, where locals like Larry Fitzgerald have bought in.

everybody.” (“That’s total bulls---,” says Herrmann.

“Four top players, including the women’s world No. 1, Simone Jardim, have gotten out of their PPA contracts to play on the APP Tour.”)

How many people conjure and then actualize their own pro sports tour before their 30th birthday? Pardoe has. But there are times, you will hear, when he behaves like a tyrant. “[The PPA] can be f lat-out rude,” says Kim Jagd, a senior women’s pro who bounces between both tours. “And that’s not smart. [Pardoe] got pretty full of himself pretty fast. I still play his tournaments, though. I need the experience.”

In September 2020, another female player won $400 at a PPA event. Pardoe didn’t have her prize money check that weekend. She sent two emails to the PPA that went unanswered. Five weeks passed before the player, who wishes to remain anonymous, says she confronted Pardoe about her winnings. Finally, he wrote out the check. Waved it in her face. Then pulled it back for a moment.

“Here’s your check,” he said. “It’s your lucky day.” (A PPA spokesperson did not deny this exchange occurred.)

Herrmann, meanwhile, just delivered pickleball to Flushing Meadows on Memorial Day weekend for its big close-up. The APP hosted the New York City Open on tennis’s largest stage in the U.S. But Johns, potential breakout star that he is, was AWOL. Because he’s PPA.

Pardoe needed an answer ASAP. Happy New Year!

“We hired an agent [with a background in pro tennis] who told us this is absolutely the worst sports contract he had seen in 30 years,” says Julie. But JW will be just fine. “The prize money and appearance fees aren’t what it’s about. The sponsorships are.”

Of the $60,000 JW has already earned in 2022, most came from endorsements. After he defeated Johns a second time, in February, Pardoe approached him again.

“What will it take to get you to sign with us?”

Some days it all feels like a land grab.

Pardoe better hurry, though. He may already be too late.

Steve Kuhn has offered the Johnsons a home in Austin if they relocate to Dreamland.

THE FIERCEST rivalry in pickleball is not Johns versus Johnson. Nor is it between the top-rated female players, teens Waters and Jorja Johnson. It’s not even Dundon and Kuhn. No, the most piss-and-vinegar feud in the sport is Pat Murphy against Seymour Rifkind. Why neither Herrmann nor Pardoe has yet organized a best-of-three grudge match is simply a failure of imagination.

To Murphy, Rif kind is an interloper. The Hall of Fame.

The W PF. A nd to R if k ind, Murphy represents the old-boys network. It’s pickleball, yes, but it’s also tug-of-war (which once was an Olympic sport).

Rifkind cites an episode from DOUBLE WHAMMY Mixed doubles—here with two No. 1 players ( far), 2017 involving a teacher certifiJardim and Johns—are a spectator favorite. cation program that he personally developed and shared with Murphy, who was then USAP’s director of training. Rifkind had hoped that USAP would From Murphy? Silence. Then, on a January conference pick up his for-profit training program, but instead they call, Ramamurthy made a last-ditch proposal: that the partnered elsewhere. When Rif asked why, he says that IFP offer Rifkind a seat on its board, to unify the warring USAP’s president at the time, Jack Thomas, told him sim- federations. Murphy adamantly refused, citing Rifkind’s ply, “Money.” And “from that moment on,” says Rifkind, “deceptive and unethical practices.”

And so followed a second letter, the Feb. 14 no-con“USAP was dead to me.” (Thomas says he does not recall fidence note, the signees of which all agree on, foremost, the particulars of this exchange.)

“There’s no secret whatsoever about the way Pat and these constitutional matters: that Murphy provided “no Seymour feel about each other,” says Steve Sidwell. “They financial disclosure of IFP revenue and expenses,” that both want to crucify each other . . . one perhaps more he never held an annual general meeting and that the IFP was “not a democratic process.” than the other.”

To sum it up: “He’s an autocratic leader,” says Sidwell, LAST FALL, as Tom Dundon sized up Ben Johns (who’s who was once close with Murphy. “Talk about an oligarch.” now 4–2 against JW Johnson) as the potential jewel in Sidwell was on a Zoom call in 2021 when Murphy his pickleball kingdom, and as Steve Kuhn staged his outlined a process by which board members could keep inaugural MLP event, and as the IFP and WPF chased voting one another in, to limit turnover. “Isn’t there after Laos or Togo or who-knows-where to onboard, the supposed to be a democratic process?” Sidwell says he

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presidents of Pickleball Australia and Pickleball Canada came to the clear realization that having two international governing bodies was untenable. And something needed to be done. So they staged . . . not a coup, but an intervention. Jen Ramamurthy and Karen Rust sent letters to both Murphy and Rifkind.

Ramamurthy, who lives in Brisbane, is keen on pickleball cleaning up its dual-governing-bodies mess, pronto.

“Australia cannot move forward,” she says, “unless there is one governing body of our sport.”

And this first letter, in short, asked Murphy and Rifkind to either come together under a single organization or step aside. Rifkind replied, agreeing to meet halfway.

asked. “No,” Murphy replied, “because they’ll form a coup and take us over.”

“That,” Sidwell said after resigning in March, “was the straw that broke this camel’s back.”

Valavalkar, the commissioner from India who remains a Murphy loyalist, has shown contempt, too, for a representative board. Why? “Pickleball is like opium,” he wrote in April to a wavering IFP member country.

“There is dire need to govern the sport with iron hands, but that does not mean being undemocratic.”

Not “undemocratic,” but then again, not democratic.

In response to all of this, Murphy (citing “outright lies . . . intended to deceive, disparage and bring harm to the IFP”) points out that “these same people asked me if I wanted to be president of the IFP; I was not elected.”

He disputes the charge of a flawed election process. “We had open elections,” he says. (In addition to Sidwell’s Zoom call, another email, from Feb. 3, 2022, seemingly undermines the purity of those elections. There Murphy writes of a “stickier issue” and lays out how he hopes to manipulate IFP term limits and make them strategically overlap, to maintain the iron hands.)

On the matter of Murphy’s alleged recalcitrance when it comes to financial disclosure—“they don’t tell us where the money is going,” as Friedenberg says; “they

P I C K L E B A L L WA R S

of fame total to three . . . except that late last year USAP halted its project. So, now we’re back to two pickleball halls of fame.

Meanwhile, the international movement languishes as the few prominent member countries vacillate on whether to register with the WPF, wait for Murphy to accept defeat (among former colleagues, the joke goes: “Who’s going to blink first, Pat or Putin?”), or burn it all down and start anew. “We had two [federations],” says Rust, from Pickleball Canada. “We want one. And we may end up with three.”

Finally, there’s this: Tom Dundon does not actually own the Pro Pickleball Association. Not yet. A few blogs reported on Jan. 2 that Pardoe and his family had sold a majority stake to Dundon’s private equity company. And neither Dundon nor the PPA ever disputed that. But “there’s still some paperwork left to do,” says Hannah Johns. “We should be announcing that in a couple of days.”

That was on April 29, and in late May, at press time, the PPA sale was still not official. If Dundon was to back out, it would mark the second professional sports league that he left financially high and dry in the past four years. “I wonder,” says Julie Johnson, “if Tom just gets bored.”

“PICKLEBALL,”

THEY MEET ON Mondays at 8 a.m.: 13 people, men and women, secular and religious.

Jews, Christians, Muslims. They gather at the Haifa branch of the Israel Tennis and Education Center, a half mile from the Mediterranean Sea. They come to play pickleball. “We have a regulation court,” says Rabbi Golan Ben-Chorin, leader of this tribe. “We use the net brought over by Seymour when he introduced pickleball to Israel.”

In 2017, Rifkind, the son of a Holocaust survivor, flew to the Holy Land with 100 paddles, 25 balls and four nets.

“You’ve got Middle East politics and thousands of years of hatred to overcome,” he says. “But almost anyone can play pickleball. Suddenly you’re laughing, teasing each other over bad shots. And you start thinking: This guy across the net’s not such a bad guy.”

And now, in a not-so-little town near Bethlehem, a man of faith and 12 followers spread the liturgy of a sport with global ambitions. “I decided to combine two passions,” says the rabbi. “The old—interfaith engagement—with the new, pickleball. I call it the ‘cross-cultural pickleball initiative.’ ” Serving the Lord while serving underhanded. Peace on Earth, and stay out of the kitchen.

wrote one IFP board member, “is like opium.

There is dire need to govern with iron hands.”

are not transparent!”—Murphy pushes back. During the IFP’s board meeting on Jan. 14, Sidwell (not on the board, but Murphy’s predecessor as prez) requested a copy of the IFP financial report. That request was met . . . but Murphy suggested sharing “on a need-toknow basis” and treasurer David Jordan proposed doing so “only upon request.”

And then there’s this: Murphy has committed $25,000 of IFP money to the construction of a mega sports complex in Toquerville, Utah, that is planned to include 60 pickleball courts in addition to—Murphy’s latest return banger to Rifkind—an International Pickleball Hall of Fame. “This is something a national governing body would do, not an international sports federation,” says Sidwell. “And this decision was made without the approval of IFP member countries.”

If built, that complex would bring the pickleball hall

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POINT AFTER

A STAR IS BORN

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SP OR T S ILL US TR ATED | SI.COM

BOB MARTIN

Serena Williams hasn’t retired, but it’s been nearly a year since her last competitive match, at Wimbledon 2021. As of late May it was unclear whether she’ll return to the All England Club this year—and if the time for official career retrospectives is near, let’s start by remembering her at Wimbledon 20 years ago. While winning her first title at SW19 (she beat her sister Venus in the final), she took over the world No. 1 ranking and took her second step toward the Serena Slam she would complete at the ’03 Australian Open. It’s hard now to imagine a time when Serena was still a rising star rather than an ironclad GOAT. In hindsight, her dominance of her sport almost seems preordained.

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Giannis Antetokounmpo