When I left the Big O cooling his heels …

Nearly four decades ago, it was more of a novelty for the average sports fan to run into their heroes in public, certainly nothing like today when the dramatic escalation…
By Tom Bartsch
FEB 4, 2009

Nearly four decades ago, it was more of a novelty for the average sports fan to run into their heroes in public, certainly nothing like today when the dramatic escalation of autograph values has made a big business out of something once reserved for genuine fanatics.

In 1970, I spotted Oscar Robertson and Bob Dandridge walking along Market Street in San Francisco, and I sort off stalked them for a few blocks without ever pestering them for an autograph or anything else. I was in my Navy uniform, which I mention merely by way of explaining why I was in San Francisco.

I was a huge Robertson fan, having followed him even since his final days in college, and he was the first hall of famer from any sport that I ever encountered – such as it was – in person. I would have recognized “The Big O” easily anywhere, but it didn’t hurt that the two NBA stars were decked out in duds whose price tag I suspect exceeded my entire net worth at that moment.

Fast forward a dozen years to Buffalo, N.Y., where Robertson was the featured speaker to open the Empire State Games that year. Games Director Mike Abernethy knew that I was a big Robertson fan, so he asked me if I wanted to pick him up at the hotel and bring him to the Games’ headquarters before the opening ceremonies. It was a rhetorical question.

I was thrilled to have that opportunity, but in the frantic hours leading up to the 2 p.m. appointment, lots of things went haywire at the press center, which was my responsibility as PR coordinator. Pulled in every direction by reporters, staffers and volunteers, I was running around frantically when I happened to notice the time. It was 2:25 p.m!

I typically disdain exclamation points, but it’s appropriate here. I was distraught, thinking that I had bungled such an important task and quite possibly pissed off the most important dignitary at that year’s Games. I raced over to his hotel not far from the University of Buffalo-Amherst campus where we held the opening ceremonies and most of the competition.

There he was standing out front, looking now even more distinguished, possibly now several C-Notes or more on the hoof, adjusted for more than a decade’s worth of inflation (which we had a lot of in the 1970s).

He jumped into the New York State government vehicle and listened patiently while I apologized as profusely and abjectly as I ever have for anything in my life. He waved all of it away, telling me not to worry about it.

Though it wouldn’t have seemed possible, I became an even bigger Oscar Robertson fan after that one.

And I never asked him for an autograph!