The subject matter of a new book on Richard Nixon dives into never-before-seen papers of the 37th president, unknown to the reader until a researcher and writer from Fort Worth pulled the veil on a historical treasure trove.
After the Fall is the work, 10 years in the making, of author Kasey Pipes, who was the first to be granted permission by Nixon’s family to go through memos and diary entries written by Tricky Dick, from his resignation in 1974 until his death in 1994.
The book ultimately is a portrait of redemption and endurance, painting the picture of man in his darkest days, the disgraced former president driven into exile but who, through it all, reinvented himself over the next 20 years as an admired senior statesman, whose advice to his successors proved critical in shaping American foreign policy in the post-Cold War world.
Sports history has no equivalent in terms of comebacks, particularly considering that had Nixon been anywhere else in the world of, say, early 19th century France, he’d have been marched off to the guillotine. In Bolshevik Russia, to Siberia and a firing squad.
We’re not quite there in 21st century America but give it a little time. We’re still so young in this game of empire.
Given the chance — more like presented the chance — Nixon remade himself, and, Pipes pointed out, there was perhaps no better or more poignant description of his post-presidency journey than his own words about someone else, a controversial sports figure but a close friend of the former president.
Woody Hayes won five national championships at Ohio State, beginning in 1954. Everything about his public persona was heated confrontation, his approach to life like a bison fighting for harem rights, perpetually in motion, seemingly always in a quarrel with any one of a dozen bêtes noires.
What was it he had for breakfast each day?
Of the My Lai massacre, one of the most violent episodes of the Vietnam War in which innocent men, women and children were slaughtered by American soldiers, the coach opined that the men killed had it coming, and “I wouldn’t be so sure those women were innocent. The children are obviously innocent, if they are less than 5.”
In 1971, he raged acidly at referee Jerry Markbreit over, in Woody’s opinion, a missed pass interference call. Sideline markers were the victim of his fury, as was the penalty flag thrown to mark his unsportsmanlike conduct, thrown into the crowd as if to the lions. The first-down marker was slammed into the ground like a javelin.
Hurricane Woody on this Saturday night was hit with a suspension and fine.
The 1978 Gator Bowl was his last game, the punch to Clemson nose guard Charlie Bauman’s throat on the Ohio State sideline considered over the line by school officials.
The opposing coach slugging opposing players is never a good look.
The Ohioan football pharaoh was fired, sent into his own retirement exile in disgrace.
After his passing in 1987, Woody’s family asked Nixon to speak at his funeral in Columbus, Ohio.
These two were friends with similar career ending scandals.
* * * * *
I vividly recall meeting Woody Hayes 30 years ago. It was right after the Ohio State-Iowa football game in 1957. It was a great game. Iowa led 13-10 in the middle of the fourth quarter. Ohio State had the ball on their own 35-yard line. A big sophomore fullback, Bob White, carried the ball 11 straight times through the same hole inside left tackle. It was 3 yards and a cloud of Hawkeyes. He finally scored. Ohio State won 17-13. It was Woody Hayes’ second national championship.
Afterward, at a victory reception, John Bricker introduced me to Woody. I wanted to talk football. Woody wanted to talk about foreign policy. You know Woody – we talked about foreign policy.
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Nixon’s love of sports, particularly football, was lifelong.
He was a reserve offensive guard at Whittier College, his career more closely favoring in appearance Rudy Ruettiger — the Notre Dame dreamer whose long-shot story Hollywood embraced — than Larry Allen. A 5-foot-11, 175-ish pound frame was a decided disadvantage even in the early 1930s.
His enthusiasm for sports and sports figures remained until his last breath. He loved its astonishing intensity and the merit-based equality spawned from ceaseless work and practice.
Sports also presented political opportunities.
When an adviser suggested the president attend a big football game to gain a stronger foothold in the football-crazed South, the Nixon team got lucky. No. 1 Texas versus No. 2 Arkansas, the “Game of the Century,” fell into their laps.
The political cover was set, too. This wasn’t about politics … it would be fitting for the president to attend a game in the 100th anniversary season of college football.
On Dec. 6 of 1969, Nixon watched from the stands – with “the people” – as Texas beat Arkansas in Fayetteville. Afterward, he presented a plaque to Texas coach Darrell Royal, declaring Texas the national champion even though not a one bowl game had been played.
* * * * *
For 30 years thereafter, I was privileged to know the real Woody Hayes – the man behind the media myth. Instead of a know-nothing Neanderthal, I found a Renaissance man with a consuming interest in history and a profound understanding of the forces that move the world. Instead of a cold, ruthless tyrant on the football field, I found a warmhearted softie – very appropriately born on Valentine’s Day – who spoke of his affection for “his boys,” as he called them.
* * * * *
Nixon interjecting himself in the race for the national championship – in those squally days of college football, voting in the AP and UPI coaches polls determined the champion – peeved Joe Paterno, whose Nittany Lions finished the season ranked No. 2 in both. Paterno believed the president’s influence had sway and compromised the final voting, despite the No. 1 Longhorns beating Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl to finish an 11-0 season.
“I’d like to know,” Paterno said a few years later, “how could the President know so little about Watergate in 1973 and so much about college football in 1969.”
It’s worth noting, in the spirit of objectiveness, that Paterno’s career also ended in disgrace.
No one is getting out of here without a few marks, to be sure. It is only a matter of the size of the blotch. O.J. Simpson, for example, will appear in just a moment.
Nixon’s association with sports figures included George Steinbrenner, another longtime friend and the Yankees boss, whose attempted arm’s length association to the Nixon presidential campaign was the subject of federal prosecutors.
Steinbrenner said he misunderstood federal election laws when he pleaded guilty in 1974 to one count of violating federal campaign laws. Steinbrenner had been accused of funneling $100,000 in illegal corporate contributions to Nixon’s 1972 reelection bid.
Steinbrenner had allegedly awarded “bonuses” to officers of his American Shipbuilding Co. Those were diverted to the Nixon campaign chest.
He was fined $15,000 and suspended from Major League Baseball for a year.
The episode clearly was a source of chagrin for Steinbrenner. It prompted Billy Martin, Steinbrenner’s manager nemesis, to say of Reggie Jackson and The Boss: “One’s a born liar, the other’s convicted.”
When he was pardoned in 1989 as President Reagan left office, Steinbrenner’s sarcasm dripped of a teenager: “I am very grateful to President Reagan for his confidence in me. I will be certain to try and not let him down.”
Whatever, Steinbrenner had restored his full citizenship rights.
In Nixon’s exile and subsequent resurrection – there really is no better descriptor – sports and athletes were his respite. He watched the games and recalled them with childish affection.
After moving to New York, it was the Mets, whom he identified with as an underdog, Pipes noted, and not the Yankees he became a fan of.
Lunch with Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez at Rusty Staub’s restaurant was common. When pitcher Ron Darling was traded to the Expos, Nixon sent him a message lamenting that the one-time Rangers farmhand had suffered from a “lack of support and too many no-decision games which should have ended up in the W column.”
* * * * *
I saw another Ohio State game on New Year’s Day in 1969. The Buckeyes were playing USC, Mrs. Nixon’s alma mater, in the Rose Bowl. O.J. Simpson electrified the crowd in the first quarter when he made one of his patented cutbacks after going over left tackle and then sprinted 80 yards for a touchdown. But the Buckeyes came roaring back in the second half and crushed the Trojans 27-16. It was Woody’s third national championship.
He could have quit … with three national championships. He had to know that it was a risk to stay on. It is a rule of life that if you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you will win no victories. Woody did not believe in playing it safe. He played to win.
* * * * *
The incident at the Gator Bowl, one of his life’s “shattering events” would have destroyed an ordinary man, but “Woody was not an ordinary man.”
The last nine years of Woody’s life, out of football, Nixon noted, were probably the best of his life. He made speeches all over the country, giving all the honorariums from those speeches to the Woody Hayes Cancer Fund at Ohio State. He raised thousands more for crippled children through is birthday phonathon.
* * * * *
Winston Churchill once said, “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.” Woody lived by that maxim. He was never satisfied with success; he was never discouraged by failure.
* * * * *
Two thousand years ago, the speaker said, the poet Sophocles wrote, “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.”
And there ended, Pipes noted, the eulogy that doubled as “one of the most introspective statements [Nixon] ever made about how he felt about failure” and why he persisted in carrying on in his own life.