15

WHO’S THE BOSS?

ON THE MORNING of May 19, 1993, Frank Chirkinian had arrived at the CBS trailer that is his office twenty-two weeks a year and found his phone ringing. The caller was Rudy Martzke, the sports television columnist for USA Today. John Daly had held a press conference the previous afternoon at the Kemper Open and had declared himself a new man, alcohol free, with all his troubles behind him. When, Martzke wanted to know, was CBS going to catch up with the rest of the world and do a feature on Daly’s rehabilitation.

Chirkinian’s answer was brief: “When I think he’s rehabilitated.” End of conversation.

“I’m like everyone else,” Chirkinian was saying later that morning. “I want to see John Daly be the star we all think he can be. But just because he holds a press conference and says, ‘I’m cured,’ doesn’t mean I buy it. I look at the kid and I see trouble ahead.”

Chirkinian apparently sees quite clearly. The next day, Daly played poorly in the opening round of the Kemper Open and failed to sign his scorecard. When a tournament official chased him out of the scorer’s tent to try and get him to sign the card, Daly ignored him and kept on walking. That same day, in a story in the Washington Post, Leonard Shapiro revealed that Daly’s claim that his legal problems in Colorado were “basically taken care of” wasn’t quite accurate. He had a court date the following Tuesday.

So much for features on rehabilitation. So much for questioning Chirkinian’s judgment.

On tour, he is known as the Ayatollah, in part because he has a ferocious bark that causes people who don’t know him to leap in sheer terror. But the title also comes from the power he wields as the executive producer of golf for CBS. Chirkinian has been producing golf at CBS since 1958 and there is almost no one on tour he doesn’t know. And, since CBS televises seventeen regular tour events a year—more than the fourteen combined for NBC and ABC—no one in golf makes more decisions on who to give network airtime to, and how to give them that airtime, than Chirkinian.

The Ayatollah is sixty-eight, a short, round man who didn’t play golf until he was twenty-four, but now keeps his handicap at about eight even though he can’t hit the ball as far as he’d like to. Nothing gave Chirkinian more pleasure than shooting a gross 73 in a member-guest tournament early in 1994 that outgoing commissioner Deane Beman also played in. “Not only did my team win all the money,” he said, laughing, “but I beat Beman straight up. Maybe I should go on the senior tour instead of him.”

Like anyone who wields a lot of power and isn’t afraid to tell people he wields it, Chirkinian has both detractors and enemies. They will tell you Chirkinian is arrogant (no one will argue that point) and that CBS’s coverage of golf is fawning, that Chirkinian’s announcers almost never say anything critical about anyone or anything in golf.

They will point out that, although it was Chirkinian who invented TV golf’s version of the wheel—the concept of a player being under par and over par for the tournament—more than thirty years ago, CBS is behind ABC technically and the ABC concept of foot soldiers rather than tower troopers brings the viewer closer to the action. What’s more, they will add, NBC, with Johnny Miller in the 18th tower, has the best commentator in the business.

Chirkinian doesn’t dispute the differences in approach. In fact, he points them out. “One of the things that makes golf unique is that each network does take an entirely different approach,” he said one morning at the 1994 Kemper (at which Daly managed to hang around for all four rounds). “If you turn on your TV and you are a regular watcher of golf, you will be able to tell almost immediately—even if the voices were somehow disguised so you couldn’t tell who was talking—which network you’re watching.

“I’ve always believed that our guys can see more and tell the viewer more from the tower, so I’ve kept them there. ABC is different, and that’s fine—for them. I hear all this talk about Johnny Miller. What is the big deal about saying a guy choked? That’s easy to say if you’re not worried about going back into the locker room. Johnny Miller isn’t welcome in any locker room on tour. We live with these guys twenty weeks a year. We need their cooperation and we get it. If we want someone in the tower after a round, or whatever it is we need, they do it for us. That doesn’t mean we don’t point out a bad shot or a mistake, but there’s more than one way to do it. If you say, ‘Oh boy, he didn’t want to hit it over there,’ the viewer gets the message.”

If you watch golf on ABC, you often feel as if you are watching an ongoing tribute to Jack Nicklaus. The fact that Nicklaus works for ABC as an announcer and the fact that the executive producer of golf for ABC, Terry Jastrow, also runs the television arm of Golden Bear Inc. may have something to do with that.

If you watch golf on CBS, you aren’t likely to miss anything Greg Norman or Fred Couples is doing. Why? Well, Norman and Chirkinian are such close friends that Chirkinian is often kidded by his friends and employees about it. When he and his wife separated last fall, Chirkinian moved out of their house in Augusta and bought a place in Hobe Sound, Florida—Norman’s hometown. He also joined Norman’s club there. And, since Couples and CBS anchor Jim Nantz were suite-mates in college and are still close friends, there isn’t much in Couples-world that Nantz doesn’t know about.

On NBC there’s no doubt that Miller is the star. Unlike CBS, which had Pat Summerall as its voice on the 18th for more than twenty years, NBC has never really found an anchor it is comfortable with. It has gone from Jim Simpson to Charlie Jones to Vin Scully to Bryant Gumbel to Jim Lampley to Dick Enberg in 1995. Since 1990, Miller has been the constant, a lightning rod who attracts attention—and sometimes anger—with his bluntness. CBS’s lead commentator for the last twenty years has been Ken Venturi, who isn’t nearly as critical as Miller but does raise more questions than he is given credit for. At the Masters, when Tom Lehman, trailing by one shot, hit a one-iron off the 18th tee on Sunday, Venturi immediately said, “I don’t understand that play. He’s got to put pressure on Olazabal by hitting a driver.”

Although it was Nantz who moved into the 18th tower after the Masters when Summerall departed to do football on Fox, the real star on CBS these days is Gary McCord. Chirkinian has always promoted a nonstar system. Ever since Norbert Doyle became known as “the anchor monster” during his latter years at CBS, Chirkinian has vowed that none of his people would ever reach that point again. “If Jimmy Nantz ever starts to behave that way, I’ll slap him down so hard he won’t know what hit him,” the Ayatollah said. “We don’t have stars here. The show is the star. If there’s gonna be a star, I’ll be the god-damn star.”

Even so, McCord has become a star. A journeyman player who never won a tournament on tour, he was plucked into the booth ten years ago by Chirkinian—after offering to work for him initially as a coffee fetcher—when he was looking for someone new with a sense of humor. McCord’s sense of humor is off the wall and he sounds totally different from anyone else doing golf on TV, but he is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes his lines sound contrived—because they are. Occasionally, as the Men of the Masters would no doubt tell you, he goes too far. But he is clever, he is witty, and most important, he understands golf and the golf swing. He spends more time on the range and in the locker room than anyone else working TV today.

That’s why he can give you a synopsis on the strengths and weaknesses of almost any player who happens to show up onscreen and can usually tell you something about them that isn’t in the media guide. He has the respect of most players because they know he works at what he does and knows what he’s talking about.

He is a Chirkinian creation. If you are Tom Watson or the Men of the Masters, that is one more black mark for Chirkinian. If you are CBS, it is another paragraph in the lengthy bio of the Ayatollah.

Day two of the 1994 Kemper Open, June 3, was about as routine as a day on the PGA Tour can be. Mark Brooks was leading, pursued by Bobby Wadkins. Phil Mickelson, playing in his second tournament since returning from his skiing accident, was playing well and lurking just off the leader board. John Daly was fighting to make the cut. Tom Kite and Curtis Strange would miss the cut. It would be a low-key weekend for CBS. Nothing like Atlanta.

But around the CBS trailer that afternoon, there was plenty of excitement. The Ayatollah was having a birthday—his sixty-eighth—and a cake had been brought in and everyone was gathering around to watch him blow out the candles. He did just that, thanked everyone, and then tried to act gruff, ordering everyone back to work. No one was buying the gruff act. At least not today.

But Chirkinian was not all hearts and flowers. He was dealing with a storm gathering around McCord, and he wasn’t happy about it.

On the last day of the Masters, McCord had made the two soon-to-be-infamous comments that had upset the Men of the Masters. The first was the crack about the greens being “bikini-waxed.” The second was about the “body bags” that could be found behind the 17th green, a reference to the fact that going over 17 was not a very good idea because you had almost no chance to make par. Or in golf vernacular, you were “dead.”

Chirkinian knew he was going to have trouble as soon as the Masters was over. He also knew that his long-term relationship with the tournament wasn’t going to help one iota. And now he knew that this letter from Tom Watson would only give Augusta chairman Jack Stephens one more reason to go to his bosses at CBS and demand McCord’s removal from the 1995 telecasts.

Watson, who had never been a fan of McCord’s, had written Chirkinian an angry letter after the Masters, telling him he should be ashamed of McCord’s comments and that McCord should be removed from the CBS broadcast team not someday, not soon, now. He called McCord “the Howard Stern of golf.” Chirkinian was incensed.

“How dare Tom Watson write me a letter like that,” he said. “Who does he think he is? I should be ashamed? I’m old enough to be his father, he has no right to talk to me that way. He is not the titular head of golf, and I don’t need him telling me who to use or not use on my broadcasts.”

Chirkinian was chagrined that the Watson letter had become public knowledge. He was convinced that it had been taken off his desk in the trailer, photocopied, and circulated. Watson was also upset that the letter had been made public. He blamed Chirkinian.

“The letter should have been between us,” he said. “It was meant to be private. Frank had no right to leak it to the press. I’m still waiting for him to have the class to respond to me.”

“Respond to him?” Chirkinian roared. “Not anytime soon.”

A lot of his frustration with Watson stemmed from what he knew was going on in private at that moment. The Men of the Masters were demanding McCord’s removal, and Chirkinian knew his bosses at CBS would have no choice but to accede to their demands. The Masters works with a one-year contract with the network, and if CBS didn’t remove McCord, they could switch networks in a matter of minutes. Having just suffered the embarrassing loss of NFL football to Fox, CBS could not afford to risk losing one of the few major properties it had left. The Men of the Masters—and Watson—would get their way.

Chirkinian was still hoping he could do some damage control with his friends in Augusta and get McCord back on the telecasts in 1996. What he didn’t know was that when the McCord dumping was announced in August, it would cause such a furor and bring about enough comments from McCord—polite but McCord-like in their irreverence—that negotiating a compromise with the Masters would become impossible.

It was time for Chirkinian to get ready for a 4 o’clock cablecast on USA Network. The way the tour structures its telecasts, the networks put on the Saturday-Sunday telecasts, and cable outlets like USA and ESPN show many of the tournaments on Thursday and Friday. Those cablecasts are produced by the network that has the weekend rights.

Chirkinian was facing a long two hours on this particular Friday. One of his leaders—Brooks—would be in the clubhouse an hour before USA went off the air. The other, Wadkins, was playing the front nine, which limited the amount of coverage he could be given to mini-cams. He paged through the computer looking for players he could focus on. When he reached the bottom, he let out a shriek. “Will you look at this Wagner kid,” he said. “He shot eighty-nine yesterday and he started with a triple bogey today. I wonder what the hell he’s going to end up shooting.”

Jeff Wagner was a four-spotter. He had shot 69 and won a playoff the previous Monday to get into the field. He was a twenty-four-year-old who gave lessons at a driving range in Northern Virginia. Clearly, the TPC at Avenel was just too tough for him. High scores by local players, especially those given sponsor exemptions, are not uncommon on Thursday and Fridays. But the upper limit is usually around 82 or 83, and most players will break 80 one of the two days. Usually, a player good enough to four-spot is at least good enough to break 80.

There was no doubting the fact that 89 was a horrendous score. It was the highest on tour all year. Now Wagner was starting out as if he might shoot a similar number. “We gotta do something on this guy,” Chirkinian said as his troops gathered.

They did. A graphic was put together, a takeoff on the David Letterman top-ten list, suggesting Jeff Wagner’s next five jobs. Among them were “swing-guru to Gary McCord,” a playful swipe at McCord; “Sports TV columnist for USA Today,” a playful swipe at Rudy Martzke; and “he’s next week’s New Breed!” a playful swipe at the weekly Nantz feature on younger tour players.

Later, as the two hours wound down to a very anticlimactic close, Chirkinian sent a mini-cam over to show Wagner in action to the viewing audience. There was absolutely nothing else going on, everyone even remotely near the lead was already in the clubhouse. Seeing the camera trailing him, Wagner turned and said, “What do you expect? I only play one day a week. I teach the other six.”

The mini-cam actually showed one of his more glorious moments—a par—as he slogged his way to an 86. In the locker room, a number of players who had finished their rounds watched what was happening and were incensed. Chirkinian and company were kicking a guy when he was down. In the press tent, the reaction was similar. Here was big, powerful CBS beating up on some poor kid playing in his first tour event, who couldn’t break 80. When Wagner finally finished, several reporters were waiting for him. He didn’t seem that upset.

“I guess it was kind of nice to make TV,” he said. “Of course this isn’t exactly the way I had pictured it.”

Of course not. Had Chirkinian gone too far? Maybe. The Letterman list was funny and anyone who found that offensive was overreacting. Following him to the clubhouse with the mini-cam and giving updates on his horrendous round might have been a bit much. No doubt if there had been real golf to put on the air, Chirkinian would have done that. He didn’t, though, and many people found his treatment of Wagner cruel.

But was it? The Kemper Open was, after all, a professional golf tournament which the public bought tickets to see. By entering the tournament at any level, Wagner and any other player had to know—should know—that just as they would willingly accept the $234,000 winner’s check, they had to willingly accept whatever might come should they play poorly.

Was Wagner a public figure in the same sense that Daly, Mickelson, Kite, Strange, or any of the tour players were? Of course not. But he wasn’t subjected to the same scrutiny either.

The person most disturbed by the overnight Wagner uproar was Jim Nantz. This was only his fifth tournament as Summerall’s replacement and, since he was the one on the 18th tower, a lot of the criticism was directed at him. He felt uncomfortable with that and wondered if perhaps he and his colleagues had gone too far in making Wagner a laughingstock. On Saturday morning, he suggested to Chirkinian that they contact Wagner and invite him to come and sit in the booth with him and Venturi. They would explain his work situation and try to cast a kinder light on his two-round total of 175—33 over par—which left him 42 shots behind Mark Brooks and 30 shots outside the cut.

Reluctantly, Chirkinian agreed. He hadn’t wanted to humiliate the kid and he knew people were saying and writing that he had. But he also didn’t want to turn his telecast into a circus. By midafternoon, that possibility loomed. In the midst of a less-than-scintillating tournament, the media had latched onto Jeff Wagner. At 3:30, half an hour before the telecast was scheduled to start, Chirkinian was in the production truck when a call came in from Alan Shipnuck, a writer/researcher for Sports Illustrated’s new Golf-Plus section. Shipnuck wanted to know if he could come over and take a look at a tape of the Friday cablecast.

“Now why would you want to do that, son?” Chirkinian asked.

He listened as Shipnuck explained he wanted to be fair to CBS and accurately portray exactly what had been done to Wagner. “Why do I think you’re up to no good?” Chirkinian asked. He listened again. “Look, this is what we did,” he said when Shipnuck was finished fending off that charge. “We always show the leader board, the guys making all the money. There is another side of golf, though, the flip side of the leader board, and we showed that. We did it one time. We weren’t trying to be cruel to Jeff Wagner. In fact, we showed him on one of his best holes.”

He hung up. “I have nothing against Jeff Wagner or any kid who wants to try to make it on this tour,” he said. “But for crying out loud, I’ve got five announcers who could give this guy two shots a side! He wants to walk the same fairways as Nicklaus and Palmer and Hogan and Hagen, fine, but if he can’t play at a respectable level, then don’t ask me for sympathy.”

Wagner was going to get sympathy—in buckets. As the telecast began, Nantz reported to Chirkinian that Wagner was supposed to be on his way. By 5 o’clock Chirkinian was convinced that Wagner was a no-show. “Maybe that kid from SI convinced him he shouldn’t go on,” he said. “Figured he’d get some kind of exclusive.”

Chirkinian didn’t lose his sense of humor during the telecast even with the spectre of Wagner hanging over him. When one of his cameras showed a closeup during a commercial of two guys passed out behind the 18th green, Chirkinian suggested that someone should paint a white line around them to indicate that they were “immovable obstructions,” in case a ball landed near them.

At 5:14, as director Artie Kempner took the telecast into commercial, Nantz’s voice came into the truck: “He’s here.”

No one had to ask who he was referring to.

“Did he talk to SI?” Chirkinian asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, put a headset on him.”

When Wagner had a headset on, Chirkinian introduced himself. “Have you gotten a lot of phone calls on this, Jeff?” he asked.

“Yes,” Wagner answered.

He was wearing a Taylor-Made cap, no doubt stuck on him by the company in honor of his upcoming appearance on national TV. “You tell the Taylor-Made people they owe you one,” Chirkinian said.

“I called and left them a message to watch,” Wagner said.

“You’re the only one we’d let wear a cap in the booth,” Venturi said.

They were coming out of commercial. Golf fans around America now had the opportunity to see Nantz, Venturi, and Wagner. The leaders, Mark Brooks and Bobby Wadkins, would have to wait.

Nantz briefed the viewers—most of whom would not have seen the Friday cablecast—on the fact that Wagner had put up a couple of high numbers, that he had been part of the show Friday, and that there was more to his story than those numbers. He went through the litany: parents divorced while he was in high school; never graduated; working six days a week as a teacher, hoping to get some financial backing so he could have time to work on becoming a touring pro.

Venturi chimed in and talked about how proud he was of Wagner for not withdrawing after the 89, which “a lot of guys would have done.” Not a lot of guys. John Daly, yes. Maybe four or five others. But not a lot of guys, especially guys in their first tournament. Wagner nodded and said he just wanted a chance to play and all he needed was some financial backing.

“Anybody got a towel?” Chirkinian asked.

“Maybe Kenny and Jim can give him some of their money,” associate producer Chuck Will suggested.

“Anybody got a hat we can pass?” Chirkinian added.

Mercifully, Kempner was calling for another commercial. “Let’s keep him a few more minutes,” Nantz suggested. Then, jokingly, he added, “Jeff wants to know if he can do this again next week at Westchester.”

Chirkinian rolled his eyes. “Tell Jeff we’re getting calls on the 800 number we’ve set up for him.”

Wagner’s eyes opened wide. “Are you serious?”

No, Chirkinian wasn’t serious, although CBS did everything but flash a 1-800-PAY-JEFF phone number on the screen. Back from commercial, Nantz again mentioned that anyone who wanted to help Wagner out with some financial backing could find him at the Northern Virginia Golf Center in Herndon, Virginia.

“How much do you get for a lesson?” Venturi asked.

“Thirty dollars,” Wagner said. “But I only get to keep ten. My boss gets the rest.”

“We got to get you a new job,” Venturi said. (He wasn’t kidding either; he tried for several weeks afterward to find Wagner work in Florida.)

Wagner was finally dismissed. The media was waiting for him when he climbed off the tower. CBS had, for all intents and purposes, put on a fifteen-minute telethon on his behalf on a telecast that had ten times the viewership of the Friday cablecast during which he had been ridiculed. Had they made it up to him?

“We’ll see,” he said. “If I get some calls and get something out of it [like financial backing, which he did get in the form of a $10,000 contribution from a viewer that sent him to the Florida mini-tour for the winter] then maybe I’ll feel different. Right now, I still feel like they humiliated me.”

Of course “they” hadn’t shot 89–86.

A few minutes later, as Mark Brooks walked up to the 18th green, he turned to the mini-cam following him and put in a plug for a golf course he owned in Fort Worth. The Ayatollah sighed. “What do you think, guys,” he asked over his intercom to all the towers, “should we take up a collection for him too?”

It had been a long two days.

Two days before Wagner-gate began to unfold, Deane Beman cleaned out his desk at tour headquarters and headed for the practice range. He had been showing up at recent staff meetings wearing a Ben Hogan–style hat and a golf glove, either coming from the range or on his way to the range. He was more than ready for June 1 to come even though it meant that the parking space marked “Commissioner Beman”—the only reserved spot in the entire lot—would be painted over. By lunchtime on Wednesday, it read “Commissioner Finchem.”

Timothy William Finchem wasn’t there that day to take advantage of his new perk. He was at the TPC at Avenel holding his first press conference as commissioner and starting the process of getting to know the players. Or, to be more accurate, getting them to know him.

“I’ve been a behind-the-scenes guy most of the time I’ve been here,” he said. “I think now the players need to see me and feel more comfortable with me.” His goal, he said, was to shake hands with every player on all three tours—PGA, Senior, and Nike.

More important than the universal handshake, Finchem wanted to dispel the notion that he was a Beman clone. He wasn’t but that perception existed anyway. Finchem was forty-seven, as much a Democrat as Beman was a Republican. He had worked in the Jimmy Carter White House and on Democratic campaigns after Carter’s defeat. He made a point of telling everyone his political days were behind him, knowing that having voted for Bill Clinton wouldn’t win him many friends on tour.

Finchem had joined the tour in 1987, first as vice president for business affairs, then as deputy commissioner. He was one of the few people on the planet who was actually close to Beman. The day after Beman announced his resignation, Finchem broke down during a staff meeting talking about how much he would miss him. He was Beman’s hand-picked successor and, when the search committee got around to making a final decision, no one ever emerged to seriously challenge him.

In the days after Beman’s announcement at Doral, all sorts of names were floated as a replacement, ranging from Dan Quayle to Hale Irwin to Donald Trump. But once Richard Ferris withdrew his name, Finchem was the clear-cut favorite for the job. That didn’t mean he thought he was a lock. He even had moments when he wasn’t absolutely certain he wanted it. He already traveled too much for a man with three young children (six, four, and two) and being commissioner, especially if he did his Forrest Gump routine and crisscrossed the country to shake hands with everyone holding a golf club (“Hi, my name is Tim, Tim Finchem”), would mean even more time away from his family.

Deep down, Finchem knew he wanted the job. He had been training for it for five years and Beman had turned more and more responsibility over to him. He already ran most of the player meetings, and when the tour decided to go ahead with the start-up of the Presidents Cup (U.S. vs. the World in a non–Ryder Cup year version of the Ryder Cup), Finchem was put in charge of the project and he—not Beman—had made the formal announcement in April that the event would take place.

Frank Chirkinian was at that press conference at Hilton Head and when it was over, he told anybody who would listen, “Well, I guess it’s pretty apparent who the next commissioner is going to be.”

It was—and it wasn’t. The search committee invited eight candidates to an airport hotel in Atlanta in April for round one of the interviewing process. Finchem came out of that session with the committee thinking he had done poorly, that he hadn’t gotten his message across and made it clear to them that he was the best choice for the job. “I just didn’t feel right about it,” he said. “I can’t tell you why, it was just a feeling.”

It is very unusual for Finchem to feel that way. Growing up in Virginia he had starred on the debate team in high school, and it was that skill that earned him a scholarship to the University of Richmond. His background as a debater and as a lawyer had made him a master of the nonanswer. If you asked him how he was feeling in the morning, his reply might be something along the lines of “Well, if we’re in agreement that it is morning—and I’m not saying that we are—then I will study the question of how I feel, in consultation of course with the board, without whom I would never take any action or make any key decisions because they are the backbone and heart and soul of all that goes on on tour and if we decide that this is morning, then we will make a decision—which will not be announced publicly—as to whether we feel fine, not fine, mediocre, or terrible, which are the options we have available to us, if in fact we agree that we need to seek an option, which I’m not necessarily saying that we are. I hope I’ve made that clear, but if I haven’t I’d be glad to clarify.”

Behind the lawyer/debater, though, Finchem had a sly sense of humor, a strong sense of what he needed to do as commissioner, and the ability to be more pragmatic than Beman, who always tended to take things personally.

When he flew to Dallas on the Monday before the Byron Nelson Classic for a final interview with the board, he was nervous but ready. Only two names had been sent to the full board by the search committee: Finchem and Jack Frazee, former CEO of Centel. This time, Finchem walked out of his ninety-minute interview thinking he had hit a home run. It was noon. He knew Frazee was going in after lunch. He went back to his room to wait. By 4:30, he was panicking. Had Frazee knocked their socks off? Had he not done as well as he thought he had done? He paced up and down in the room, trying to remember everything he had said. The phone rang. Could he come back downstairs? He bolted to the elevators. When he walked in, Ferris told him the vote had been unanimous. Congratulations. You’re it.

Several hours later, ESPN’s SportsCenter announced that the tour had a new commissioner: Tom Finchem. “I’ve spent years negotiating with those guys to give us a regular spot on the show each night,” Finchem said, laughing. “They finally give us big play and that’s what happens.”

Commissioner-elect Tom/Tim flew back to Ponte Vedra the next morning. He and Beman walked into a regularly scheduled quarterly staff meeting that afternoon and Beman introduced Finchem as the new boss. Then he went back to the range and left Finchem in charge.

“People really don’t understand Deane,” Finchem said later. “He’s tenacious and driven but he also really cares about people. He’s a lot more flexible than people give him credit for. You tell him an idea isn’t going to work, he doesn’t argue. He goes on to the next thing. I don’t think the public really understands that.”

The public’s understanding of Beman was not on Finchem’s mind on the morning of June 1. He was commissioner now, the boss. “It does feel different,” he admitted. “I know now when a problem comes up, I’m the one that has to deal with it and make a final decision. I can’t walk in to Deane anymore and say, ‘What do you think about this?’ It’s all on me now.”

He had no way of knowing what that was going to include in the months to come.