He went from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low.
At least that’s what people tell him.
He sees it a bit differently. Both places had fences.
Behind the first fence, he knew nothing about reality. Behind the other, he knew everything.
Mercury Morris is talking about football and prison.
— In his 20-odd years playing the game, Mercury Morris fumbled the football many times. And every time, he tried to come back and make up for it. In most cases, he did. He’d finesse this corner and sidestep that. He’d dodge a few backs and a few bullets, always mindful that his fumble was the reason the team was in this hole. Spurred on by that memory, he’d make yards and first downs, touchdowns and history.
His throaty laugh issues forth.
“I understand redemption.”
If you know that, you know something about Mercury Morris. The Miami Dolphin. The cocaine addict. The convict. The man.
Today, Mercury Morris is a man whom the Supreme Court of Florida said was entrapped. A man whose 1982 conviction for possession of and trafficking in cocaine was deemed not constitutional. That meant he was due a new trial.
It was easier for the state and him to call it a tie. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. He had given them 3 1/2 years on a 20-year sentence; they sent him home.
Mercury says he was railroaded on that trafficking charge, though he readily admits — always has, always will — that he was definitely in possession. Had been on and off for three years. Had been freebasing his brains out. Spending untold amounts of money on something we now know as crack.
The Supreme Court’s decision vindicated him, more or less. His name had been cleared, more or less.
It is all dust in the wind. Mercury’s mother died a week after he went to prison. His father died a week after he left.
Mercury won’t ever be able to make up for that.
“I never had the chance to be the type of son that I wanted to be.”
A man who is never at a loss for words, is.
His voice wavers a bit. His eyes search for a place to hide.
Is he angry at himself?
“No. Because that wouldn’t do any good.”
His wavering voice fades.
“But I’ll never call myself equal.”
— Mercury Morris is alive and well and living in South Miami. Damn glad to be with a family that loved him when he wasn’t worth it. Damn glad to be a role model, again. Damn glad that he has reached 41, albeit with a bad neck, a hurt wrist, bum knees and hypertension.
He looks great. Weighs 196, but looks 20 pounds slimmer. Has high-definition arms and legs that look as if they could go the distance. We should all look this good at 41.
He is not fooled.
“I couldn’t run 100 yards falling out of the sky with someone pushing me.”
Deep throaty laugh. Genuine self-mockery.
Here is a man who wears his new-found self-awareness like an old sweater. Here is a man who is at ease with being at ease.
Mercury has come to terms with Eugene Morris. They are, in truth, the same man. Eugene earned the name “Mercury” in the late ’60s when a sportswriter called his running mercurial. And for the longest time, Mercury was the one who suited up in uniform; Eugene was the one who paid taxes.
But when it all came apart in 1982, Mercury was the one who decided to get straight and fight for Eugene.
And Eugene is the one who is living with Mercury’s mistakes.
It is, at last, an easy partnership.
Make no mistake, Merc doesn’t repudiate his laurel-filled past. He is the sum of his parts. He was a Miami Dolphin who went 17-0 in 1972. He held, when he left the league, the all-time second best yards-per-carry average in the NFL. All that stuff, it happened. Just like prison did.
He goes to one Dolphin game a year, but valet-parks his car so that it’s easy to leave at halftime.
It’s some kind of statement about freedom. Freedom from the game, just plain freedom.
When Mercury was in prison, between 1982 and early 1986, somebody asked him what he missed most. He said, “Soul Train and Nightline.”
Nightline comes on at 11:30 p.m. In prison, it’s lights out at 11.
Soul Train comes on at 11 a.m. on Saturday. At 11 on Saturday, prison officials are counting prisoners. They always have, they always will.
So, yes, he leaves at halftime.
— These days, Mercury is touring South Florida and points north, talking about his odyssey. And getting paid for it. But not always in cash.
The school gigs are sometimes free, the corporation speeches usually aren’t.
Merc loves to tell how kids have been known to tell their parents something amazing after his visits. “They say, ‘A man came to school today and he made sense.”‘
It is pay enough for his trouble.
So Merc isn’t exactly rolling in cash. He says he is doing “alright,” but he still has debts from his drug years. He says that, by all rights, his house — the one Super Bowl money built — should have been taken from him years ago.
But his book was published last month. The mortgage is being paid.
If he is profiting from his own misery, he never meant to. He prefers to see the new career as a stay-clean spokesman as something thrust upon him, evidence that the Lord does indeed provide.
But his stay-clean message isn’t what you think.
Because he isn’t out there decrying the dangers of drugs.
He isn’t out there decrying a society that taught a young football player that he was exempt from its rules. And its punishments.
And no, he isn’t out there decrying racism or communism or sexism or elitism, having too much money or not enough money, having too many opportunities or not having any.
He is out there talking about choice.
Choice. And not “choice” as a euphemism for anything else.
In the beginning, there was God who said to Adam, don’t eat this. Adam did.
In the gospel according to Mercury Morris, “The fruit didn’t get him in the jackpot. He did. And he got his instructions from God.”
Free will. It is that simple. That black and white.
At every turn, Merc says, you make a choice. Cocaine isn’t dangerous, the choice to use it is. In a kind of neo-NRA way, drugs don’t ruin lives, people do.
“When I give advice to kids, I say two things: A) Don’t cross the street when a trailer truck’s coming; and B) don’t cross the street to a crack house. Now, if you choose to cross the street, you cannot blame the trailer truck for your consequences.”
But Merc, shouldn’t somebody have prepared you for life after the NFL? Shouldn’t somebody have taken you aside and explained about reality? Wasn’t it Coach Shula’s responsibility — or your wife’s or your tax accountant’s — not to just use you and toss you away? Wasn’t society remiss somehow?
The answer comes back a no. A defiant, emphatic no.
“There’s no fault in it. We have to develop ourselves, not just our skills. I farmed out my responsibilities — to lawyers, accountants, the like. I did not have concepts of my own. I didn’t know how to make it work. I didn’t know if I had the right people. As it turns out, I didn’t. The drugs are not the active part of this thing, I am. Fourth and one is fourth and one. There is still this job you have to do. When it didn’t get done, it’s my shortcoming, not anybody else’s.”
Not anybody else’s.
Least of all the drug’s.
“There is no such thing as drug abuse. It is not an abusable item. You got spouse abuse, child abuse, dog abuse, teacher abuse. In all those examples, you have a victim: The spouse suffers, the child suffers, the dog suffers, the teacher suffers. If you use drugs, who suffers? You do. That’s right, it’s self-abuse. What does it matter if you abuse yourself with alcohol or drugs or a .357 Magnum? It didn’t escape me that when I was convicted, the cocaine went to the property room and I went to prison.”
At least society got that much right.
“Yeah. Oh yeah.”
— His message is powerful. He has what he calls “subjective experiential knowledge.” In other words — and with Merc, you sometimes need them — he has been there.
He practices what he preaches. Something noticeably absent, he says, from the Reagans’ “Just Say No” campaign.
The Reagans, they drink. They drink the drug that is the biggest killer. In Merc’s world, there is no place for hypocrites.
There is also no place for platitudes; there is no place for slogans.
Saying yes, that’s what was stupid. He did it, and see where it got him.
Now ask him if he ever gets the urge to choose drugs again.
“The urge for what? A 20-year sentence? And give up this? My kids? My wife? No.”
See, he believes that where Nancy’s ability to comprehend drugs stops, his continues. Up to and including anything a kid could think to ask about.
He has answers now because he couldn’t find any after football.
— Bobbie Morris is the saint in this household. Mercury’s third wife married him in December 1979. After the Dolphins and before the fall.
To say she was tried in the years that followed is profound understatement. But she stood by Mercury, through the drug years, through the trial, through prison.
She says that she knew that Mercury’s drug use would end. And she waited.
She is beautiful. Stunningly so, even in shorts with a baby on each hip. She is also strong. She could have cut and run at any time.
But she waited for this nightmare to pass.
In what many would think were the hardest years, they found each other again.
“He was the faith builder. I’d go to the jail all tired and I’d leave charged up.”
She came once a week, every week to Florida State Prison. Brought the kids. Prayed and waited, even though the wait loomed 20 years.
Mercury laughs. He says the cons have an equation, that if a woman stays 2.65 years, she’ll stay to the end.
Bobbie passed that test.
She has passed every test.
— “The grass is not greener on the other side, it’s just another shade of green. When you find yourself looking for greener grass, you find yourself in the jackpot. It’s not that I searched for greener grass, I let my grass die. I didn’t take care of my lawn. I had the sprinklers put in but I didn’t turn them on. I was busy doing something else.”
His words are like a slap in the face. Not his, yours. Because he is telling us things we do not want to know. That excuses are for children. In the real world, they are so much waste of breath.
It is tough hearing it from an ex-con who says he figured it out when we sent him to a place where no one expects miracles, much less redemption.
He figured it out in prison.
Spent the mornings with weights, the afternoons with weighty philosophy — he went to chapel.
He belongs in a chapel now. His voice booms and he is preaching. And the listener knows it is a practiced speech. But it is mesmerizing.
He is quoting Scripture now. Something about God never handing us more than we can handle, never weighting us down with more than we can bear.
He knows whence he speaks.
His burden shows on his face. He is smiling.
His future looks like a future. He is talking about writing another book — something a little broader in scope. His personal appearances are scheduled into 1989.
See, Mercury Morris is not a broken man, but neither is he a martyr. His six kids are getting a father to whom discipline is not a dirty word. His wife is getting a husband who loves with a purpose.
That’s because Mercury Morris met the enemy, and it was him.
Ask him now about his glory years. With the Dolphins, the two-time world champions.
It is a question for Mercury Morris, but Eugene answers.
“Those weren’t the glory years. These are.”
Eugene and Mercury no longer disagree.
