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Atlanta, Georgia The phone call came late one Monday night. "Huber?" "That be me." "Lewis Grizzard here." It was the early 70s, and I had no clue who Lewis Grizzard was. "Uh-huh?" "I run the Atlanta Journal sports department." "Okay." "You figure you could get along with Pete Maravich?" I was just 25, working at my umpteenth daily since getting my ink injection six years earlier. Finishing school, however, had been the old Miami News, covering the Dolphins, the Miami Beach boxing beat and the ABA Floridians, working under a crusty old crank by the name of John Crittenden. "Hey, if I can get along with Kiick and Csonka," I offered this Grizzard fellow, "if I can deal with Muhammad Ali and Connie Hawkins and the rest of this Miami sideshow, I think I might be able to get along with Maravich." "Come see me, then. Guy we got on the beat now, can't." And so began one of the most enjoyable, excruciating, exhausting journeys of my life.  Pete Mavavich is one HOFer whose style of play would have made him even greater in today's NBA. If only, in retrospect, I had Mark Kriegel's book Pistol as a reference guide, that ride would have made so much more sense. Kriegel's new offering is a touching, incredibly-sad portrait of Pete and his father, Press, and how attached they were at the heart. I knew a little of the history, watched a bit of the histrionics, sensed the enormous pressure, but could have used Mark's immaculate research as a guide to better understand Pete and his demons. Hey, I was just a kid myself. We were nearly the same age, and I was dealing with my own pack of devils. Perhaps that's why we did get along as well as we did during those few years Maravich was with the Hawks in Atlanta. We spent a great deal of time talking, rarely about basketball, and we did our share of running, never on a court. Neither of us had much tolerance, but we tested our limits, time and time again. I watched the divide between Pete and his Hawks teammates grow frighteningly wide, heard the bitter sniping first-hand. He had been thrown to a veteran band of wolves, and not one of them had much mercy. The enormous contract set the tone immediately, and the erratic style cemented it. He was hired to put asses in the seats and, to do that, the amazing Showtime was absolutely necessary. I heard them, every night, from one corner of the old locker room to the other, bitching. Me, with my notebook, them with their very upfront anger. The animosity was staggering and very real, almost to the point of violence. That it never reached that was as much a tribute to the old coach Richie Guerin as anything. He didn't like Maravich any more than his older players did, but he knew the situation, understood the artistry and talent, and knew he had to somehow make it work. It never did. But it was fun as hell to watch on a daily, nightly, basis. We didn't have much instant replay in those days. (Heck, the first year I covered Pete, the Hawks were still playing in the old and dark Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus. Whenever network TV came in – and they visited frequently, thanks to Pete – they had to actually light the place like a movie set. So just getting pictures out was an accomplishment, much less replay.) But so many, many, times, we would be sitting on press row, watching a game, when something would happen that just seemed impossible. Oh, for a replay. Continued on next page...
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