Louisiana Legends; Bob Pettit

Funding for the production of Louisiana Legends is provided in part by the Friends of Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by Union National Life Insurance, a Louisiana company serving Louisiana and the South since 1926. [music] The coach of a high school freshman basketball team approached a gangling

14-year-old minutes before the squad was to leave Baton Rouge for a game in Zachary. Sorry, Bob, said the coach. The bus broke down. We're going to have to go there by car. We've got room for only 10 players. And we'll have to leave you here. Well, the kid who got left here in Baton Rouge went on to become one of the great basketball players in the history of the game and a man who more than qualifies as a Louisiana Legend and any other kind of legend that you happen to have a hankering for. Bob Pettit ,welcome. Thank you, Gus. It's a pleasure to be here. Bob, I think that to me the most fascinating thing about your career and it's been a career of massive success in every endeavor that you've gone into. You became a superstar, but you really had to work to be a superstar just to play basket- You were not what you call a natural, were you? No, anything, but that, Gus. Looking back, it's quite a few years now, when you look back on the problems and trials and

tribulations of being a 13- and 14-year-old boy who wants to be an athlete more than anything in the world and who is very thin, very little coordination and really hadn't gotten his growth yet. It was very difficult to start, but fortunately I was able to set up a goal in the backyard and, and practiced a lot. I used to practice three, four, five hours a day just shooting and, uh, this sort of thing and when I started growing and started getting a little strength and coordination. Because I had to work this hard, I was much further advanced than a lot of players my age. So, in many cases, the fact that you're not good when you first start out is a benefit. People don't look at it that way. They want to be good instantly and walk out on the basketball court or the football field or in business or what have you and be a success right away, but the fact is when you have to work for something and really work hard a lot of times you're much better off. Bob, when did you start hitting your stride as a basketball player? In high school? In other words, at what point did it dawn on Bob that hey this might not just be a game; this may be a way of life at some point.

Well, I never really thought of playing professional basketball probably until my senior year in college. I think I started to really mature as a basketball player probably my senior year in high school, my freshman year in college and from then on I started to, you know, get real confidence in myself and playing at LSU in front of the hometown and everything was a great benefit for me. It's been a benefit all my life, by the way. In fact I still...the contacts I made at LSU and the people I was there with....I still remain very close to. It's been a great benefit just being in business in Louisiana to have those, that Louisiana background. But I think I didn't really think of professional basketball until a senior in college because the pro game at that time didn't have, wasn't on television. We knew very little about it here. There were only eight teams in professional basketball in towns like Rochester, New York; Syracuse, New York; or Minneapolis...Fort Wayne. Basketball in those days was not in the Los Angeles and the Seattles and the other, some of the other major cities...Chicago didn't have a team....in the major cities in the country

so we read very little about it. I knew a little about it and it was very close to me whether I was going to play professional basketball or play AAU basketball. Bob, what did you sign for? How much money? $11,000. So let me ask you this question. Given your talents, heights, ability and so on, what would a man, what would they what would a man like you be offered today to sign? Oh, Gus, I don't know. I would guess you'd start somewhere... I was a second draft choice in the contract. So let's say. Half a million up. [Weill] Half a million up a year. My goodness. Do you have any regrets about missing out on that huge money? Not a single regret. I'll tell you, you know, I've been very fortunate. And I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. I wouldn't. You know that's great and I'm really proud for the players today that get it. If I were there today, I'd be fighting for every penny just like they are. And I have, but I have absolutely no regrets. I played at a great time. I walked away from it at a great time and, you know, my family's healthy and I'm happy and I wouldn't trade it.

How does that big money affect the game? And it must affect the game. All these huge salaries rolling around. For example, a man works like an animal to develop those skills and develops them and he signs one of those contracts for half a million dollars. How does he keep himself motivated? Suddenly he's a millionaire. I don't know the answer to that. I wish I did know the answer. I wish I had that problem. Maybe that we could you know be concerned about all of a sudden be presented a million or two million or 10 million dollar contract. I really don't know. I can't, I can't personally relate to the game today very well. It's so foreign and so different from when I played and not, not necessarily only the skills. I think the skilled basketball player of 15 years ago or 20 years ago would still be a very highly skilled player today. I think it's the other influences that influence a professional athlete that I really can't relate to and so I'm really not qualified to answer that. In the '50s in Baton Rouge there was an unusual proliferation of great

athletes coming forth. Jimmy Robinson, Billy Cannon, yourself and Ned Clark in basketball. Jimmy Taylor. Was it in our drinking water at that time? What was cooking in Baton Rouge because it never happened before and it's never happened since? Well there was a...when you look back on it, a lot of the, of course, Billy Cannon and Johnny Robinson and Roy Winston from Istrouma, but they were a few years, you know, behind me. Yes. A few years younger than I am. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was, there was a great high school program in those days, you know. When I was in high school there were only three high schools in Baton Rouge that competed for the city championship: Istrouma, Catholic High and Baton Rouge High and University High had a fine athletic program. But when we played for the city championship in Baton Rouge in 1949 we just had to beat Istrouma and Catholic High and we were city champions. [Weill] And that was it. [Pettit] That's right. And I think it was that and I think you know I really think possibly that Alvin

Roy and his getting into the strength and health, the lifting and the power lifting and things might have had something to do with it. One of the real centers in the country was right here for working with him to develop the strength. He was ahead of his time, wasn't he? Yes, he was one of the first really. In fact, I wouldn't have touched weights as an athlete as a basketball player unless Alvin had gotten me into it, and I had confidence in him. So that might have indirectly had a little bit to do with it. I want to ask you a question that fascinates me and it has fascinated me with almost all of our guests and all of them are successful people in their particular fields. Bob Pettit of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, signs a contract and a short time later is no doubt a superstar. His picture's in Time and Newsweek. He's being interviewed and thousands of people are cheering and they want his autograph. Then he's asked to endorse products and opportunities come his way that don't come the way of most of us. Did that superstardom, let's call it, did that tend to divide you from your fellow man?

Does it make you wary of other people? Did it compartmentalize you from other people? How did it affect Bob Pettit? Because you weren't prepared for it. Well I think it, it has to a little bit. I think you as a, as a professional athlete or someone who's all of a sudden in the public eye, I think you become very wary. You're very careful a lot of times, and there're very few people that you can really just sit around and relax and most of the ones that you can do that with the people that you grew up with and have known all your life, that you know, that you're very comfortable around. A lot of times your teammates are that way, but you're very careful and you know and I don't know I think I worked. I don't know that I had this, the notoriety or the fame that a lot of people had, but I know I worked very hard at it trying not to let it affect you and you become very spoiled as an athlete. I know you walk in a restaurant and if the maitre d' is standing there and you have to wait three minutes for a table, you know, you want to walk in. Your tendency is look, I'm so-and-so and I have a...I want to get a table right now or the tendency is if you don't get it you're gonna walk

out. Well, you know, that's kind of dumb, you know. Just because you're an athlete or someone in the public eye doesn't give you any particular... shouldn't give you any preferential treatment. Did you ever have to have a talk with yourself and say, Now, hey Bob, hold on? Would you ever bring yourself down to earth when you felt yourself? I have to work hard at it. You know all of a sudden you feel that you're something special and you're really not. And it's hard to, it's hard for a lot of people to keep that perspective and to realize that just because they've had a little success and something there, they're not entitled to anything any different from anyone else. I might say that, to our viewers, that it was my pleasure and honor to accompany John McKeithen when he was governor to see Bob honored in St. Louis in his last professional game, and I've never seen such an outpouring, not only of adulation, but of love. They really cared for you in St. Louis. That was a heck of an evening and I'm sure you remember it. I remember it very well. In fact, as I recall, you all were in Washington at the time and I remember Governor McKeithen and you made a special effort just to come to St. Louis for my night, and it was a great

surprise and a great thrill for me. I remember it very well. And, yes, I think I had a lot of friends and people in St. Louis liked our team. When we went to St. Louis in 1956, there was really St. Louis University basketball and during basketball season and the baseball Cardinals during the summer. There was no hockey team. There was no soccer team. There was no professional football team and we were about the only game in town during the winter and the people really followed us and we had a good team and a lot of very, very close friends there. Bob, what was your greatest thrill as a pro? Well, I guess my basketball career there were, I think, two things that stand out to me. One certainly had to be in 1958 when we won the championship in St. Louis and I scored 50 points in the final game. That would have to be as a personal effort probably the greatest thrill I ever had. And I think the other thing when I look back on, I remember a trip that I took for the State Department in 1964 with Red Auerbach and 7 or 8 for Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Oscar Robertson, and Tommy Heinsohn -- eight

of us and Red Auerbach as our coach and Buddy LeRoux was our trainer who now owns the Boston Red Sox by the way. He did very well and we traveled for six or seven weeks in behind the Iron Curtain playing basketball games and things, and I think those two things I'll really look back on always as being highlights. I'm not going to put you completely on the spot, but I'm going to put you on the spot about 90 percent. Excluding yourself, who is the best basketball players you've ever played against or with? Well, I'll start. My top player had to be Bill Russell and there are a lot of great players in the game today, but of all that I've ever seen if I had to pick one player to start a basketball team of any I've ever seen I'd pick Bill Russell. Then there are, you know, then you you have to look at your guards as Jerry West and Oscar Robertson and Bob Cousy. I didn't play against a George Gervin who had to be, you know, has to be an absolutely incredible basketball player and he'd have to be, you know, from his record and things included. I just, I just didn't play against him and he's so much after my time, you know.

Elgin Baylor, Julius Irving, that's your forwards and that it just, you know, they have to be the tops. In my, in my year, I'd take West, Robertson, Cousy, Russell, Baylor. [Weill] That's a pretty good team. And Bob Pettit. [Pettit] Well, I'd like to at least to be a substitute on it. Bob, now how many years did you play pro ball? Eleven. Eleven years. All right, so it's getting on now towards the end of that career, let's say. Maybe the ninth. At what point did you begin to say now this is going to draw to a close. And when did you start preparing yourself for that moment when those 30 or 40,000 people would stop screaming "Pettit, Pettit"? How does an athlete prepare himself? Well, I never wanted to coach. Going back to the very beginning, I always wanted to go into business. At college, I took insurance and real estate at LSU and got my degree in that, knowing that I was planning on going into the insurance and real estate business in Baton Rouge. I was an only child. At my dinner table, we never talked anything much but business, real estate, you know, interest rates, points.

This sort of thing. So I grew up in that kind of environment of talking and being involved in business. I started an insurance agency in Baton Rouge. My family is in real estate. I had planned on going into that. About two and a half years before I quit, Mr. Ourso with American Bank in Baton Rouge called me in and offered me a job at the American Bank, told me I could play two more years if I wanted. At that time he'd like for me to come to work, and I said, let's do it. And that's...You were really ready. Then I was ready and I knew that the banking business for some reason, I just knew that that would appeal to me. And he was kind enough to give me the opportunity and let me play two more years. I went to Ben Kerner, our owner, and said,"Ben, I've played nine years. I'm 29 years old. 30 years old. I'm quitting in two years. Make your plans. Two years' notice and I'm getting out." And at the end of my eleventh year, I got out and came here to Baton Rouge and went to work for the American Bank. Was there much of an adjustment, a period of adjustment from an athletic superstar to banker in Baton Rouge? Sure, a major adjustment. Number one, you're making a 5th of the salary.

Yes and I got, you know, so that's, that's, a that's a little adjustment for most families. Like eating. Some of those things get important once in a while. But, yes, it was an adjustment, but it was one that I looked forward to and it was not difficult for me to make that adjustment at all. I'd done everything I could do in basketball. I was ready to get out. I was ready to get in the banking business. Every year I played basketball I knew that I was going downhill. I was wasting time. That would be a year that I could take in banking business and down the road would be very important to me. So you know, I was ready. Athletic prowess is really a short-term loan, isn't it? You just made a statement that really interested me. You said that every year you could tell a slight deterioration in your prowess, your abilities. Well, I could really tell it my last year particularly. Is that right? Oh, yeah, I started to get injured. I averaged, you know, it sounds funny. I'm in my last year, I averaged 23 and a half points a game. That sounds terrible. But the year before I averaged 28. Oh. You see, and I knew

that I wasn't jumping as high and I never had the 40, 45 point games anymore. I was in a struggle to get 30. Now that sounds stupid, doesn't it? But that's when somebody's struggling to get 30 points. It sounds kinda of conceited and I don't mean it that way. I just really struggled. And I could feel it and I just, I was anxious to get out of it, looking forward to it. What about the stories that we hear and some of them verified by not only indictments, but sentences about the proliferation of narcotics and professional athletes. Cocaine. Marijuana. Did you have any evidence of that when you played? Never. No, I tell you what the only thing we ever had was occasionally, you know, if you played a night game in New York, rode a coach all night to go to another city, and occasionally somebody might take a Dexedrine, which, you know, which is like I understand a diet pill or something. Just a popular one. I never saw cocaine. I never saw marijuana or any of the hard...I never was exposed to them. You hear these things today and

obviously there's something behind it. But in those days it just was not there. You just were not exposed to it. The worst thing you did was go out and drink three, four, five beers after a game. Bob, today's basketball player, for example, who's one minute on one coast and the next night he's on the other coast playing a game. His whole night spent, a man your size in an airplane even though he'd be in a first class seat. He's in an airport waiting. Planes are late. Transportation is late even with the best planning. That has to take a tremendous toll on a man's psyche, on his body. Not really, Gus, it's the same thing in the days that I played except we rode trains and buses. Worse. You know, you didn't ride first class. You rode in the coach of the back of the plane somewhere. But you gear your life to playing two hours a night. Everything you do: the way you eat, the way you sleep, the way you travel. Everything is geared to performing from 8:00 to 10:00 at night, and you can do it. And it's tough but

but I'll tell you what, it beats carrying that lunch pail and a lot of, you know, a lot of athletes complain about i,t but none ever quit. Do you, are you ever sickened as the general public is...I know that I make a general statement which is dangerous, but I know it to be valid. Do you ever get sickened when you hear people who you know are making a million dollars unhappy and griping and angry about their conditions? As an athlete? Yes. Oh, sure. It also affects you. It doesn't affect me. I don't really care. Yeah, but sure you know a man making nine hundred thousand dollars and griping about the tough life, you know. That's to me, that's ridiculous. I mean he doesn't get much sympathy from the general public out there listening to it. I think on his part I think it's pretty dumb because you know when you get no sympathy and makes you look ,you know people sitting out there making a normal salary on an hourly wage or something have no sympathy for the athletes. Making a lot of money and griping and complaining about working conditions. Bob, I once sat in on a meeting -- I don't think I've ever told you this -- where your name was

very seriously discussed as a possible candidate for governor of Louisiana. Did you ever consider a career in politics? Yeah, I think I did after I got back into Baton Rouge in the late 1960s. Yeah, I was considering it. But I had a great opportunity in Jefferson Parish and Metairie in the banking business and I went there and I was very, very happy and I've really never considered it since then. Tell us about your life today. What do you do? You're the president of a bank. Well, I am chairman of the board of a bank. [Weill] Of a great big bank. [Pettit] Well as we're about 340, 350 million dollars, I think, in assets. It's a fine bank in Jefferson Parish. You're in Metairie? Yes, I work in Metairie, yes. We have offices on both sides of the river. We're in Harvey, you know, Gretna. We're also in Kenner and Harrahan and in Metairie. And it's a very exciting life. I love it. I can't wait to get to work in the morning. I work with an absolutely outstanding group of bankers and as chairman of the board, I sit back and let them do all the work and then I wind up trying

to take all the credit. I'm really associated with a super group. How about your kids? How many children do you have? Three. Any boys? A son, 14. Do you want him to play basketball? I want him to try everything. My daughter plays at 16. My daughter played volleyball and basketball. My son goes out for this, but, yeah, I encourage him to play. I really don't care how good they are. It makes, you know, I like the idea of them participating in athletics. I think it's a, it's a great discipline for young people today. And it doesn't really matter if you, you know, get a scholarship to college if you play first string. It's nice. I think every parent would, you know, like their child to be very good at something, but that's really not the important thing if they participate, they enjoy it, they get the discipline that they, they are occupied after school. You know where they are at all times in that gym or working out or out playing football or something. I think it's very important for a young adult today to participate in athletics and I really, really encourage them to do so. Now, Bob, let's shock folks.

You're not a pro football fan, are you? I'm a pro football fan. I'm sorry, I mean pro basketball. Not really, not really. I enjoyed college and to be very honest, I enjoy college basketball very much. I love to come to Baton Rouge and watch LSU play. You know, they've had some fine basketball teams and fine basketball players come out of Louisiana the last few years and I really enjoy college basketball. As far as professional basketball, I don't watch it that much. You ever go back to St. Louis and visit your old team? Well, I'm going back go on within about two weeks now. And we've invited to come back to the baseball writers' dinner in St. Louis for the first time in 18 years. I've been invited to come back to that and I'm going and they're honoring our team of 1958 which won the World Championships 25 years ago. It's hard to think that that's that long ago, Gus. Passage of time. You and I are so young you couldn't remember those days out at LSU. [Weill] Goodness, speak for yourself. Bob, do you have any thoughts as a banker and you're now a very experienced and successful banker. Do you have any particular thoughts about what's going on in this country today economically? What do you think's cooking?

Well, it's a very difficult thing to answer, Gus. I don't think we really have any clear cut policy right now. And economically, I think the thing that bothers, has bothered everybody up until now has been inflation. Now that seems to be under control and I think, to me, the one thing that's hanging out there that is not under control is our budget deficit and we're talking now in the area of 200 billion dollar deficit for next year. And that's scary to me and I think I really and truly it's my personal opinion until we can get that budget deficit under control, I'm not comfortable even though interest rates are down now and things seem to be turning around. I personally am not totally confident that, that some of the problems in our economy are behind us and I think we must do something to control that, that budget deficit. That's my personal opinion. You've lived in various places, cities, in your athletic career and you've surely traveled the world as an athlete and as a businessman. What do you, what do you particularly like about this state? I know you love

Louisiana and that's why I'm asking you that. Well, naturally you're born and raised in something and look back at it. You know, it's your home. Louisiana is my home. I never want to live anywhere else. I never thought of living anywhere else. The other thing I think you have a great life in Louisiana. You know there's awful lot to do here, you know, hunting, fishing, and it's a state that is just starting to move. If I had picked a state...the smartest thing I did was be born in Louisiana because I went in the banking business in Louisiana. If I had to pick a state in the United States to be in the banking business to go into, I wouldn't pick one with more opportunities than in Louisiana. I really mean that. Texas is, is, you know, you hear a lot of great things about the state and the way it's going. I would rather be in the banking business in Louisiana. I think there's more opportunity here, and this not only applies to the banking business. I think it's business in general. Louisiana is the South in a Sun Belt in Louisiana is the last frontier business I think, and I think there are opportunities for us here now that may not be here 10 years from now or anywhere else. As you think back on the guys you played

basketball with, how did most of them make out? In other words, did they make out like they would have in any other occupation? Some successes, some failures with their lives. Or did most of them do ok? When you think back on the men in your teams, how did most of them fare? I think that most fared pretty well. In fact, they seem to all be happy, the ones I talk to. I know Cliff Hagen I played with is athletic director a Kentucky now and that's you know he seems to be very, very happy there. Slater Martin that I played with, I stay in close touch with in Houston and he's in the restaurant business there and he's very happy and seems to be doing well and so some of the other you know... Ed McCauley that I played with in St. Louis is there in life insurance and broadcasting and but also they all I think have done well. The thing that we have to remember that a big salary when I played was $30,000 a year. So you always had to realize it, that you knew that athletics was a means to an end.

Today there's so much money in it that a fellow that plays 10 years at that big salary does not have to work again. Does that mean he's going to be happy? I don't think so, but it means that he really doesn't have to work again. So most of the players I played with planned a career and planned on going into something. You're such an unusual man. In addition to your athletics, you're a man who possesses great dignity. Who influenced you? Who helped mold Bob Pettit? The man, not the athlete. Well I think any person is molded initially by their family. I think they have to be by their mother and father and I was very blessed in that. I've been very fortunate. You know they were a great influence on me and encouraged me and they were both from this area so I would think you have to be molded by your parents. Any coaches had a profound effect on you? As a profound effect on me, I would you know of course I think your coaches in your younger years. You know your high school coach was Kenner Day at Baton Rouge High. At LSU was Harry Rabenhorst. Yeah, I think they definitely have an influence on you. More so than a

professional coach does. I think when you're in your formative years I think you, your parents, your coaches that you're involved with influence you much more. In business, I was very fortunate, you know, to, to be and have been in business and have some advice from some very, very astute, honorable businessmen that have really helped me and given me some guidance and direction and I've been very, very fortunate in that area. So yeah you know and anybody I think has been molded by people one way for the good or the worst. Well, Bob, it's been a pleasure being with you again. You're a Louisiana legend and you're a class act and in the rest of the career and life of Bob Pettit, I certainly wish you, on behalf of all your fellow citizens, well. Thank you, Gus. It's a pleasure being here. [Theme Music] Funding for the production of Louisiana Legends is provided in part by the Friends of

Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by Union National Life Insurance, a Louisiana company serving Louisiana and the South since 1926. Oh.