I was all of 120 pounds (soaking wet) entering Loyola High School in 1961 but my confidence grew with each grueling practice in three sports (football, baseball and wrestling) until I peaked at all of 154 pounds and as captain of our wrestling team in senior year. That year (1965) our team out performed our school’s hoops team (which only won like 5 games) and we had a new mentor – a slightly punchy gent – the late Dr. Daniel Bierne who was recruited out of West Point by our fanatical football coach – the late Leo Broadhurst – (footnote: if it sounds like we are dropping like flies, it is because we are) Leo viewed wrestling as his gridiron team’s winter weight/human body slamming training sport and Dan wholeheartedly agreed. Thus the wrestling room became an overcrowded, windowless padded cell that lurked behind the double doors in the far corner of the gym from which a distinct funky smell emanated. And when those big metal doors were flung wide open, swarms of wrestling rats of all sizes would scurry out trying to gain a moment of fresh air or maybe bathe in a sunbeam – or if the opportunity arose – a dozen grubby hands would snatch an unsuspecting basketball player who may have strayed too close to our double-doored dungeon after a lay-up…. The horrible pink-bellied screams emitting out of that squalid space would last deliciously long … talk about a bonding activity.
Once we even sent a sweathog patrol to the basement pool to snatch up a fish (read: swimmer) but he proved a tad too slippery and got kinda banged up when he eluded our grasp and flippered all the way back down the concrete steps. The AD was not amused and attached a bar-lock on the wrestling doors and stationed a health counselor/bouncer on hazard watch. Our good Doctor Bierne was undeterred. He recognized school spirit when he saw it. And since he also taught physics, he brilliantly established the wrestler’s curve whereby the lowest score of any wrestler became passing. Looking back I guess that I was probably wrong to have fed our dullest teammate crib sheets full of wrong answers but it was for the greater good and our team became very popular with the general school population who were also blessedly bribed with extra credit if they attended matches.
Now while baseball obviously nourished my soul, wrestling saved my ass. When I wasn’t playing sports, I worked road construction summers at Harry Campbell and Sons where my mom worked and earned enough to afford a series of motor scooters. (BTW, I worked on the same road gang as Kid Chocolate – a Cuban middleweight world champ who in his latter years could still nail a dime with a pickaxe.) I wouldn’t have been able to survive tough neighborhoods, semi-regular rumbles and various motor vehicle accidents and make it into the extended Loyola High/College experience had I not been toughened up by athletics and aided by a fleet of guardian angels posing as Jesuits.
I totaled three bikes myself and a fourth was stolen. Oh Odin – those days were fun! (Bucket list note to self – On my last rundown on this planet, I want to rent a Vespa and zip all over Europe and Africa giving the bird to Italian traffic cops and African rhinos. Why you ask? Because having wrestling skills gives a guy, especially after a few brews, that fine feeling of invincibility. My signature take-down move was the fireman’s carry. It came in handy in the old Carney neighborhood to lug my brother to safety after he’d been shot up, and in the new Towson neighborhood, subduing an enraged pool bouncer trying to break up an imperfectly planned after hours swim at the Colony Apartments. And downtown one spring afternoon in 1968, in convincing a crowd of angry black people that I did not start a fight with a marauding teen while waiting for baseball practice in Clifton Park during the MLK assassination riots all around the Gay Street shopping corridor. While I became a bloodied mess trying to duke it out with this tall, athletic and thoroughly trashed fellow (for no reason apparent to me – I had no idea that King had been shot), my instinct finally clicked in and told me to use my old reliable takedown to contain (and not hurt) the antagonist. That controlling gesture won over the mob who separated us and then cleaned me up while actually complimenting my wrestling prowess.
Sure, I found that being overconfident can be a problem too. Like the time my scooter and I caused some late nite road rage and after a high speed chase from Little Italy to the intersection of Harford and Joppa Roads, I faced off three toughs behind one of my favorite hang-outs – Hamburger Junction. To show just what they were in for, I unzipped my jacket to reveal my “Loyola Wrestling” T and then two of them pounced on that awkward moment to yank the jacket over my head to pin my arms back while the third turned my face into (appropriately) hamburger. Or the time 4 of we graduated Loyola College grapplers decided to work out at the Baltimore Y a couple times a week in order to try-out for the 1972 Olympic trial prelims in Virginia. A dislocated collar bone later, I was able to barely raise my glass to celebrate our group folly at our Belvedere Tavern training table.
(Larry standing on bottom far left as usual)
Wrestling truly taught me to roll with the punches – and I did just that when nailed by an oncoming car on my last scooter ride going about 40 mph soaring over handlebars head over heels bouncing through the middle of a bustling York Road intersection, Granby rolling past a screeching bus and coming to rest on a church lawn where people showered me with blankets and began to pray over me. Because of wrestling and possibly the prayers, I survived only severely bruised over every inch of my anatomy. Have you ever woke up not able to move a single muscle without excruciating pain like for three days? Just to give you an idea…
But back in the daze of Uncle Gus (remember him?) wrestlers were even tougher than, well, me. The pro sport was once a real deal. Heck, Strangler Lewis killed 3 guys in the ring. This was all before WWF types plunged this pure sport down its current black hole where these “pros” just pretend to kill people with “moves” like the Argentina Hair Drag, Haiti Head Smash, Chinese Chest Crush and Tasmanian Toe Twist! (all moves our college team thoroughly enjoyed performing when coach came late to practice…)
But the only word my family was allowed to use to describe the modern sleeze “pro” show was “Wrassling”.
I personally begged Pittsburgh’s Olympic Champ Kurt Angle not to go down that sorry path (to no avail – his agent treats me like I’m the Irate Iranian or something). Speaking of which, in a Tehran Wrestling World Cup tourney recently wrestlers from all over the world (including the USA) demonstrated against the IOC by laying down on their mats – playing dead by not breathing for a whole minute! (ok I made that last part up) But I think this may show the modern world that sweat is thicker than oil and that coordinated deep-breathing time-outs may be the secret to world peace …but again I digress.
If any town can right this OIC wrong (or get it wrong for that matter) – it is the Steel City or possibly my Rolling Hilled Charm City? Both of our bright Blue State politicos have a ton of experience fighting windmills (not to mention solar) and they continue to strive mightily to work with Republicans who would give our children easier access to booze, gambling and guns (not so much education and public transportation anymore).
To quote PA’s own Joe “the Scranton Shotgun” Biden: “why that IOC is a lot of malarkey.”
And now that Pittsburgh has hosted the G20 Summit, One Young World and a Bass Fishing thingy, why not dream of a 1 in 35 chance to host a Black and Gold Olympics in 2024? And if not in Steeler Country, why not in the Black and Purple? I am all for it as long as the IOC restores baseball and wrestling.
I know that baseball and sports in general are suffering from daily PEDS scandals but to my mind the absolute worst embarrassment rests on wrestling’s broad shoulders for being associated with the vulgar clowns of the WWF. So, hitherto and forthwith, I hereby propose a cleansing grand finale event for the 2024 games – kind of a grappler’s revenge reality show. A showdown pitting the fake wrasslers of the WWF and real deal wrestlers of the US of A – led by Kurt Angle redeeming himself by ringing up old Olympic buds like Penn State’s Cael Sanderson and Pitt’s Randy Stottlemyer, throw in Iowa’s Rulon Gardner and Dan Gable and Maryland’s Kerry McCoy to bring out their boyz to wipe up the phonies from the sport once and for all. Who would not come to Pittsburgh or Baltimore to see that?! I can feel good old Coach Bierne smiling down on it now.
P.S. Uncle Gus adopted the nickname “Americus” – a merry gus, get it? – as the brawny oldest son who worked for his dad’s turn of the century construction business down on East Baltimore street. Gus did this to cover for his unsavory wrestling moonlighting for bets in bars. His rebellion from immigrant pap Lorenz Schoenlein’s strict status quo didn’t stop there – Gus also made whoopee with that Viking Woman “Aunt May” and now I get to write my memoir with the fun title “Viking Women Don’t Care.” You just read some of the middle part or perhaps you have seen the title on various reservoir walls…Anyway, you’ll have to pay for the rest when I finish it – definitely in time for the 2024 Olympiad.
Larry “Leif” Evans is a native Baltimorean and Loyola alum. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1976 to work steel and bring luck to The Steelers. The steel industry collapsed but, balancing things out, the Steelers did just fine (until quite recently). He is retired now and has way too much time on his hands. His email is leifevans@comcast.net.
And the beat goes on – Larry’s son Ducky’s 15 minutes of fame…
