A woman, nice as can be, tells me, “Wait here. I’ll bring in Magic and introduce you.” Quite considerate. Not necessary.
I was in Lansing, Mich., on the day in 1979 when the peerless point guard of Michigan State’s national championship team announced that he was turning pro at age 19. I had a front-row seat beneath a Philadelphia hoop in 1980 when he played center in place of the injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, scored 42 points and took the Los Angeles Lakers to an NBA championship at age 20.
I was in Inglewood, Calif., on an eerie 1991 afternoon when a 32-year-old physical marvel in his prime revealed that he’d contracted the deadly HIV virus. I was at a tiny airport in the remote town of Reus, Spain, a few months later when this same man and his “Dream Team” teammates touched down for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and proceeded to demonstrate to everyone on Earth exactly how great a game of basketball could be.
Right now, at 9 o’clock in the morning, I am on the seventh floor of a Los Angeles executive tower, inside the offices of Magic Johnson Enterprises, where attached to every door is an engraved plate that bears a reminder: “No one person wins championships.” On a cabinet, on display like fine china, are ceremonial keys to the city that Earvin Johnson Jr., sports and business superhero, has been given by what seems like every metropolis or small village on the map.
On a wall is a blown-up photograph of a stately baseball stadium, an indestructible one that the Los Angeles Dodgers have called home for half a century. Pictured along with the park is this old team’s new face, the likewise indestructible Magic Johnson, who, presto, now appears before my very eyes, right on time. He gives me a hug. Guys his size seldom give me hugs.
“I’ve decided to call you Air Johnson,” I say.
“Why?”
“Airline magazine.”
Michael Jordan won’t mind, I assure him.
“I hope not,” he says. “You better hope not.”
Air Johnson gets around. Not even a Harlem Globetrotter can trot a globe the way this guy can. “Let’s see,” Magic says. “I’ve been to Argentina twice, and Brazil, and to Japan three times … to South Korea twice. I went to Australia to play their national team in five games and then New Zealand from there. I took a team to Europe for 11 games. We played in 11 different countries that trip. “Not many places I’ve never been.”
I already know the answer, knowing him, but I go ahead and ask: Do you try to get away by yourself for some peace and privacy while on those trips?
“Oh, no,” he shoots back. “I want to see the historical landmarks, the different cultures, meet the people. I like to sightsee. I was in Spain a while ago and went to a soccer game between Real Madrid and Barcelona where 100,000 people were there. It was unbelievable to be a part of that. To see a whole country come to a complete stop for one game? That was just amazing. It was like the Super Bowl and more.
“I like getting out there with the people. They see me and they say, ‘Ma-jeek! Ma-jeek!’ And: ‘You play the basket? You play the basket!’ Yes, I do — or, yes, I did. I played the baskets. And everybody you see over there has a jersey on. Here, we might have half a crowd with a jersey on at a game. Everybody wore one to the game there.”
I continue to maintain a conspiracy theory that there are actually 10 or 20 Magic Johnsons — cloned, manufactured, impersonators … whatever — who travel the world, popping up wherever you go. No one guy can be as many places as he seems to be. Perpetually in motion. Omnipresent. Nonstop, 24/7/365. Always has been. Always will be. The day he was born, Aug. 14, 1959, when the doctor gave the backside of Earvin Johnson Jr. a slap, I bet he found a slot for AAA batteries or a wind-up key.
Long retired from running and jumping for a living, Magic now has business interests galore. A foundation to run. Companies, charities, job fairs, health-care and HIV-awareness functions. Tech centers that provide home computers to needy kids. Scholarships for 150 more. A television network called Aspire that features family-friendly African-American programming. A preservation of the Soul Train brand, the one so familiar to guys and girls of generations ago.
As on a basketball court, Magic Johnson has a hand in practically everything. You’re a passenger on American Airlines today? OK, I can reasonably assure you that he is not in the cockpit. He won’t be coming down the aisle with your beverage cart. (Well, probably not.) But a company Magic controls does furnish the food for the Admirals Club lounges in major airports.
“We go way back,” he says. “My relationship with American dates all the way to when I was doing my ‘Midsummer Night’s Magic’ basketball benefits for scholarships to the United Negro College Fund, which was so close to my heart. They were my first sponsor.”
He seemed like a kid then — a fully grown, prematurely balding, totally mature-beyond-his-years kid, a born leader in every way. I was in the Lakers’ team hotel on the road one night when it caught fire. The alarm went off, and I descended a staircase with a few of the guys when we realized Magic wasn’t with us. He was Pied Piper-ing other hotel guests through hallways and down a fire escape before getting out to safety himself.
Today, a somewhat heftier but still spry 53, Magic is an elder sportsman-statesman. He has three kids. A daughter is about to go off to college. He and his wife, Cookie, have a pair of grandchildren, Gigi and Avery.
He got married to Earleatha “Cookie” Kelly in 1991, the same year of his serious health announcement. HIV seemed like a death sentence then. AIDS was a plague on the planet. He vowed to beat it. He had defeated opponents of all sizes in his day, but this one struck people as beyond even his reach.
A lot of friends, colleagues and strangers, myself included, overreacted. We weren’t sure Magic Johnson belonged on a basketball court risking cuts and bruises with contaminated blood. We watched in amazement when the league allowed him to play in the 1992 NBA All-Star Game because his fans had voted him in, and scored 25 points, becoming the game’s MVP. We watched with anxiety as he chose to unretire, play for the Lakers a little while longer, then re-retire, this time because he wanted to, not because he had to.
Now when he stands before a crowd, as he did at a Birmingham, Ala., event in 2012 where he was presented a key to that city, the first words out of Magic’s mouth are: “They said I was supposed to die.” He pauses to let that sink in. “But God kept me safe.”
I ask him what the experience was like. “When I announced what I had,” he says, “there was one drug to fight it. Now there’s 20. Now people can talk openly about it, which wasn’t easy to do 20 or 25 years ago. Early detection and medication saved me. It’s the most important message I can give to anybody anywhere: Get tested.”
It seems that no matter what he does, Magic Johnson makes news. He outdid himself, however, last May. The Dodgers baseball club was for sale — the former owners in the midst of a nasty divorce — and a lot of people wondered who would buy the team. Names of potential buyers bounced around: the rich and the super-rich; old ballplayers linking up with syndicates. I wrote a story at the time identifying a dozen or more. I added, half-seriously, the name of Magic Johnson, just so he could bring his patented brand of “Showtime” to a team that could use some. I kidded how cool it would be to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a Dodgers coach during batting practice, swinging a fungo bat. Hahaha.
Darned if he didn’t do it. He bought the team.
Well, he and his Big Moneyball Dream Team bought it. Mark Walter, Stan Kasten, Peter Guber, Todd Boehly and Bobby Patton, his new wingmen, pulled out their checkbooks and purchased the Dodgers with him — for $2.15 billion. As in two-thousand million and change. Magic Johnson and baseball? Wait a minute, someone out there must have thought. They go together like peanut butter and pepper, or salt and jelly. I don’t even know myself, so I ask: “Did you ever even play baseball?”
“I played one game,” he says, telling the little-known tale of Lansing’s version of a tall Bad News Bear. “I batted one time. I have to tell you, when that ball came at me, I was done. I was about 10 or 11. I stepped into that box, and the pitcher threw it. The umpire said, ‘Strike 1!’ I stepped out and back in. The ump said, ‘Strike 2!’ One more. ‘Strike 3!’ I went back to the dugout and my coach said, ‘I don’t think this game is for you.’ I said, ‘I think you’re right.’ ”
Then again, who better than Magic Johnson to be L.A. baseball’s new point man? How often do you get to see players get excited about their new owner? Each of them came to their lockers to find a pair of Magic’s basketball jerseys autographed by him — one personalized to keep, the other to go to a favorite charity. They were as giddy as kids on a playground. A while later, Magic and his partners splurged on expensive players to wear Dodgers jerseys. In they came: Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford — stars in their own right.
“When we acquired Hanley,” the team’s general manager, Ned Colletti, tells me, “I asked if he had any questions. He asked if he could meet Magic.”
Anything the new owner doesn’t know about baseball, he intends to learn. Mainly, he intends to let the baseball authorities take care of that end while doing everything in his power to make the franchise as popular and as prosperous as possible. (The first thing he did was announce a reduction in the cost of parking.)
“Did I play baseball? No,” he says. “Do I love baseball? Yes. People have been coming up to me since this happened and asking, ‘Were you a fan?’ I absolutely was. I grew up a big Detroit Tigers fan. I could take you through them all: Al Kaline, Bill Freehan, Willie Horton, Gates Brown, Aurelio Rodriguez, on and on. I grew up listening to Ernie Harwell on the radio. I got Ernie there and Vin Scully here. Talking baseball doesn’t get any better than that.”
Whereas basketball was action-packed, fast and furious, baseball is a slow dance, a picnic in a park. “If you have a friend, a client, whatever, what a wonderful place to be,” he says. “I go to a baseball game with my wife, Cookie, and we sit there for three or four hours together, just catching up.”
Of course, a new face means more new faces. The organization that gave the game Jackie Robinson needs to lead by example, so last fall during the World Series, it was disclosed that Sharon Robinson, daughter of Jackie, was joining the Dodgers’ board of directors. More history being made. Magic Johnson has many other ideas on this front. You say this is Black History Month? In his world, every month can be Black History Month.
I point out that the only thing he hasn’t tried seems to be acting. Jordan had his movie Space Jam. His buddy Larry Bird did a bit in Blue Chips. Shaquille O’Neal was a genie in Kazaam. Kareem even flew the plane in Airplane! Where’s Air Johnson’s in-flight movie?
“I have been offered a lot of parts,” Magic says. “They even asked me to do an urban, African-American version of Donald Trump’s Apprentice. But I’m saying no. I’m going to focus on just being a businessman. I have a lot of things I still want to do. A lot of things.”
I’ll just tell you now: He’ll do them.
By
Mike Downey
