My Life As a Jock Watcher

It is difficult to identify the exact moment when I began my life as a jock watcher. Most likely it began some time in the tenth grade at Heights High.

On our first day at school, there was an orientation in the auditorium, and the first thing I noticed were these big muscular Arian looking men in the front, looking extremely important.

They each wore a black cardigan sweater with a large gold H, meaning they were athletes, rewarded with the letter for their physical prowess.

I decided that I really admired these guys, and perhaps at that moment I became a “jock watcher,” better described for me as a sports writer.

It made sense. There was no way that I was going to be one of them. I wouldn't be invited to their parties, certainly not their fraternities, and wouldn't have a prayer with their girlfriends. They were in another world, and I knew it that first day at Heights.

But as a writer I could become close to them. (As close as a little five foot five Jewish kid with glasses could ever become.)

So I signed up to be a sports writer for the school paper, The Black and Gold, a pivotal point in my young life.

This assured me immediate entree into the magical world of sports, into the locker rooms and all the games, even allowing me to travel with them to away games. But let me be clear, this was not a sexual thing. By that time as a high school freshman, I had clearly defined myself as a raging heterosexual. Or at least as hetero as one could be in the tenth grade. You do what you do for satisfaction, but that was it. I liked these athletic bodies, but I didn't want to touch them. It was more of a form of hero worship.

My heterosexuality was pretty much limited at that time to Virginia Hill, a tall slender, blue eyed blonde, who was a hall guard three days a week. Each of those days, I made of point of walking slowly past her, smiling and moving on. At first she didn't notice, but as time wore on she began to smile at me, and I smiled back. That was pretty much it for the tenth grade.

Back to those guys up front in the auditorium on the first day. One of them was a fellow named Sam Sheppard.To my mind, he was the classic picture of the ultimate jock; handsome and muscular. And standing next to him was his attractive girlfriend, Marilyn Reese, whom he would later marry.

Sam was a classic athlete. A star on the basketball team, quarterback in football, and a runner on the track team that won the state championship in Columbus. My career as a jock watcher in high school gained me some recognition, and even Sam would call me by my first name. “Hi Bud!" he would say. 

I would say "Hi Sam!" as though we were real pals. That gave me the stature at Heights that I longed for.

My next encounter with Sam Sheppard came a number of years later when I was working on the city desk at the Cleveland Press one Fourth of July. The call came from the police reporter that the body of Marilyn Reese Sheppard had been found in her bed, brutally beaten, bloodied, and partially dismembered by blows from a sharp instrument. 
Sam had become a surgeon in his father's hospital on the lake.

Sam protested his innocence and claimed that a bushy haired stranger had entered the house, fought with him, and then murdered Marilyn. So much for hero worshipping. The rest is history.

As I progressed in my young life as a jock watcher, I signed on as a sports writer at the University of Michigan Daily, after my stint in WW II. This was the big time. And I became totally immersed in the ethos of big time sports.

There would be none of this fighting for seating in Michigan's gargantuan 100,000 seat arena, the largest in the western world. There was greatness here, and I planned to become an integral part of it. Early on I arranged for my press pass and entered into the enormous press box high above the field, and of course high above the ordinary fans. They served hot dogs and coffee there, for free. Everyone had a seat with their name on it.

I pretended to know the game and its intricate ins and outs. Michigan executed its plays from the single wing formation. Half back Bob Chappuis as the passer, became famous. And coincidentally, he also had a girlfriend named Marilyn. I worried about her in later years.

By my senior year Michigan had won two national championships and made it to two Rose Bowls, and I went with them. 

On campus some people noticed me in class. Once, my philosophy professor asked me who I liked for the upcoming Ohio State game. I would puff up and respond, “I like the Wolverines, but we will have to wait and see to see. Pete Elliot has a bruised knee," I would tell the philosophy prof. As if really knew.

"Cogito ergo sum."

 "I think, therefore I am”, I whispered to myself, feeling certain that I now would get at least a B in this intellectually challenging class.

As for my jock watching, after graduation I gave it up to become a real reporter on a real newspaper, only once returning to Ann Arbor for a football game in 65 years, more than half a century.

Now on football Saturdays I can be found at The Fox and Hound Tavern at Eastgate, frantically cheering on the Wolverines along with “ordinary alumni," rarely recognized as the storied jock watcher of another mighty era. No press pass, no free hot dogs, no adoring sorority girls.

Just this little guy struggling to bring home a winner for another generation.