THE APOTHEOSIS OF BASKETBALL GOD “PISTOL” PETE MARAVICH
Suddenly, three years ago basketball legend Pete Maravich was resurrected from semi-obscurity. CBS-TV decided out of the clear blue to run a documentary on his career during Final Four weekend. The response was delirious, not only from oldsters, who knew the legend, but also from younger sports fans, who had never seen anything quite like the ball-handling, passing and shooting of “Pistol” Pete.
After a career that spanned the mid-’50s to mid-’60s in junior high and high school, “Pistol” Pete played college ball at LSU, leaving behind shattered scoring records that will more than likely stand forever, including his 44.2 points per game average before the 3-point shot. His pro career began with the NBA Atlanta Hawks and New Orleans Jazz — later the Utah Jazz —- followed by a short stint with the legendary Boston Celtics. He died abruptly in 1988 at age 40. It was discovered he was born without a “package” of arteries all of us have, creating an additional myth concerning his physical prowess and relative longevity. By that time, “Pistol” Pete had faded into the wallpaper of round ball: The age of the super black players, which began with Pete’s era in the NBA, took hold of the game, led by the super-human accomplishments of Wilmington’s Michael Jordan, who played under the unflappable Dean Smith at UNC-Chapel Hill before he capped his career with a record-breaking run with the NBA Chicago Bulls.
There are several books about Pete, but the latest, Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich (www.simonsays.com) by former New York Daily News sports columnist Mark Kriegel — who has authored a biography of football great Joe Namath — adds bookends at the beginning and end that elevate the story of “Pistol” Pete from sports story to serious biography. Kriegel delves deeply into the early life of Pete’s obsessive father Press Maravich — a nickname we learn he received for his incessant talking, taken from the nearby newspaper, the Pittsburgh Press. Nearby meant the hellish steel town of Aliquippa, PA, where the Serbian Maravich family joined other European immigrants in a town crazy for basketball. Press was possessed with the game, a condition that literally forged son Peter into one of the most talented players in the history of the game — to many the most talented. The other bookend adds previously unknown information about Pete’s later life, and details about his two sons and how they have coped with the legacy of the legend of their father. (Kriegel will appear at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh’s Ridgewood Shopping Center march 7 PM).
But there is a big part of the story important to us here. In 1963, on his way to join the pantheon of sports gods, Pete stopped in Raleigh to play high school ball after living at Clemson University where his father was head basketball coach. Press left Clemson to be groomed for the head coaching job at NC State University by serving as an assistant to the man most responsible for bringing big-time basketball to North Carolina and the South: the grandee of the game, Coach Everette Case. Press did indeed ascend to the head position, but his dream to coach son Pete at State was upset by academic requirements in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Pete, after several attempts, could not make an 800 on the College Board examinations, a basic hurdle for admission.
Pete and Press ended up at LSU in a package deal, and the rest is history. But it was in Raleigh at Needham Broughton High School that Pete grew into the adult god of basketball — displaying his trademark floppy socks and Beatles haircut — doing things with a basketball beyond the ability of mortal men. We had him here for three years, including his postgraduate year at Edwards Military Institute in Salemburg as Press worked on the LSU deal.
Many friends of mine played ball on the team with Pete, and others saw him more regularly than I did. But I can recall vividly that Pete was the kind who got drunk after one beer, a condition that contributed to his chronic problems with alcohol until his conversion to evangelical Christianity later in his life. I can name girlfriends, and I can testify that Pete was a slave to his father’s regime of practice, leaving few windows for escape — another aspect of his tortured psyche. I can relate stories, and I can see him quite clearly in my mind’s eye.
And I can tell you without blinking or backing down: “Pistol” Pete Maravich is the best basketball player ever to play the game.
— Bernie Reeves
THOUGHTS FROM A NEW RALEIGHITE: DOES THE CAPITAL CITY HAVE SOUL?
Does Raleigh have a soul? This, apparently, is a question up for debate, at least according to the daily paper.
The problem, the argument goes, is the absence of a certain je ne sais quoi in our capital city. A you-know-it-when-you-see-it brand of groove, of atmosphere, an ineffable waft of something they say is terribly lacking.
The writers maintain other small cities like Austin have it; New York, of course, invented it. But lovely little Raleigh: no. It’s something about being too plain-vanilla. The thrumming downtown core is just cranking up. No spicy gumbo of ethnic stew.
According to this no-soul brigade, the city’s glut of transplants is partly to blame. Whatever “soul” there might have been here in the City of Oaks has been watered down in the last decade by all of the newbies from mediocre spots like New Jersey, Ohio or Connecticut (which, incidentally, is the state my family and I left last June).
All of us Yankee types — the ones who eschewed the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees, that is — apparently brought our penchant for bagels and other arguably regional foodstuffs with us, and poof, there went the soul. Or something like that.
Well, as one of the perpetrators — one with a fresher perspective, by definition — let me say that I am very happy to heartily disagree.
That spicy mixture of all sorts? It’s right before your eyes. Artists, politicians, academics, doctors, high-tech wizards, biotech researchers, writers, musicians and entrepreneurs. You can’t walk down the street without tripping over someone doing something new and interesting in Raleigh. It takes a city like this one — a capital city with a thriving business core and a future so bright it’s racing to keep up — to germinate that kind of mix. New York, for all of its vaunted soulfulness, has become an extraordinarily homogenous spot, a bastion of bankers and hedge-fund managers — the only ones who can afford it anymore.
Yes, Raleigh has soul, scads of it, the right kind of it, the substantive, fascinating, energizing kind that resides in the people; in its forward momentum; in its diversity, not its provinciality.
I, for one, am so pleasantly surprised to find this undeniable soul in this undeniably regional city that I brag about it daily to relatives and friends in New York and Los Angeles.
Soul: Substance, not Style
So, does Raleigh have soul? Last I checked, soul wasn’t something worn on the outside. The first time I visited, the outside was all I saw — a pleasant city defined by neighborhoods, easy to navigate, affordable, lovely trees, ample parking, an abundance of convenient if unexciting-looking shopping, solid schools, the world class collection at the NC Museum of Art, the well-reputed ballet and symphony, a Stanley Cup winning hockey team, in the midst of college basketball heaven and a high-tech buzz in the air. It all seemed good and solid and promising. Did it romance me? Charm me with its beauty and pizzazz? No.
But in no short time, its people did. They bowled me over, initially, with their thoroughly genuine hospitality, their consideration, their manners, their generosity.
Before Raleigh, I’d never been to a dinner party of my peers where every single man remained standing until the last woman sat down. Before Raleigh, I’d never had a grocery store clerk insist on helping me out to my car when I had children in tow. Every time! Before Raleigh, I’d never had one neighbor — much less a literal dozen — stop by to welcome us with homemade meals, call me when my children were sick, offer to help in countless ways.
Southern charm is truly underestimated by the rest of the world because it isn’t superficial. Unlike West Coast have-a-nice-day smiley-ness, it’s sincere. Unlike the more formal manners of Northerners, it’s warm. And it’s part of the fabric of human interactions that weave and bind this diverse city together that forms the basis of an embracing soulfulness.
But graciousness is only the beginning because Raleigh’s people are much, much more than gracious. They are entrepreneurial. They are hyper-educated. They are energetic and cultural and community-minded. And they are pioneering.
Until I got here, I didn’t know that this city of 354,000 people — with Greater Raleigh estimated at 700,000 — one of the nation’s fastest-growing — numbered just 5,000 at the time of the Civil War. That no city or even town existed here when the site was chosen almost at random to serve as the state capital in 1788. That between then and the introduction of the streetcar in the 1920s, it grew not at all. That until the 1960s when Research Triangle Park got its momentum, the beltline was built and IBM arrived, Raleigh had basically stayed put.
In 40 years, Raleigh has literally transformed itself. It is voted consistently as the best place to live, raise a family and start a business. And it’s not all because newcomers can have a backyard. It’s because there’s opportunity here. Raleigh is a place of promise. It’s because the people of Raleigh have enthusiasm about the future. So many people here are brimming over with it, about what they’re doing, about where they live. To talk to them is to get a baton hand-off of enthusiasm. It’s impossible not to grasp, and it’s impossible not to pass on. Do they have soul? Are you kidding?
So I would say this to the soul-seekers: Soul is not a stage set ... soul is the life force, the ember of energy that illuminates a person, a people, a city. And it’s here in Raleigh, hidden in plain sight.
— Liza Roberts
FULL FRAME TO PREMIERE MIDWAY MOVIE
Moving Midway, the film by Raleigh-born New York City film critic Godfrey Cheshire, will premiere at the 2007 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival set for April 12-15 in Durham. The film chronicles the saga of Midway Plantation, Cheshire’s family’s ancestral home built in the 1840s. The home was uprooted in 2006 and moved to a new site to make way for development around the I-540 interchange near Knightdale.
The film follows the move, as well as the emotional reactions by the family while telling the story of the transition of slave and plantation life into the modern era — with several surprises. Cheshire’s narration includes the myth of the plantation in movies, as well as in society in this multi-faceted and informative documentary.
Go to www.movingmidway.com for more about the movie and to www.fullframefest.org for more information on attending the premiere.
TOBACCO ROAD WINE
Two Raleigh entrepreneurs have combined their investment “know-how” and their passion for the finest grapes in California wine country to open Tobacco Road Cellars (TRC) in Napa Valley. Dusty Field, president/CEO of Boylan Investment Company and business partner Jason Earnest have assembled a team of winemakers in Napa to produce world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Syrah. General Manager and Chief Winemaker Michael Zitzlaff leads the team, along with Kian Tavakoli, a 10-year master winemaker. Zitzlaff was the recipient of the “Best New World Pinot Noir” award at the 2002 International Wine Challenge in London. Tavakoli was most recently the winemaker at Clos Du Val Wine Company where he ran their Red Wine program — including their highly acclaimed reserve bottling. TRC’s inaugural boutique wine, 2004 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Mélange, was released in December 2006 in limited edition. Additional details on TRC’s fall wine release and more about TRC in general can be found at www.tobaccoroadcellars.com.
Ballet Extends Offerings
Since founding Carolina Ballet in 1997, Robert Weiss has taken the Triangle area’s first professional ballet company from a four-ballet subscription series offering 18 performances to a seven-ballet subscription series of 44 performances. Carolina Ballet will celebrate its 10th anniversary season with highlights including live music for three of the productions, three world-class premieres by Weiss, a family subscription series of fairy-tale productions, and 15 performances of Nutcracker.
Weiss was inspired to create a family program of ballets that would delight young and old alike after the May 2005 production of Cinderella broke new box office records for the company. This year’s family subscription series includes the performances of Cinderella & Peter and the Wolf and Sleeping Beauty. The season will run from October 2007-May 2008. For a full listing of performances, as well as subscription advantages, call 919-719-0900 or visit www.carolinaballet.com.