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A year or so ago I saw Jerry West interviewed about a book he wrote about his life. He said it was about his troubled childhood when his father physically abused him and his mother.
He wrote about his long-standing struggles with mental illness. Because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, his family didn’t want him to publish it but he went ahead and did it anyway.
My assumption was he wanted to unleash the pain he lived through so readers could learn from it and understand the damage a tumultuous upbringing can do to a person throughout their life.
A few years before hearing Jerry talk about this book I read another book of his that is the most complicated, unusual, and incredibly high-achieving success story about an athlete I’ve ever endured. In his last few decades of life, he would often get invited to social events. He would pay for the whole event but wouldn’t go. Again and again. Didn’t want to be with other people for some reason, but wanted them to enjoy each other. Sad and selfless all at once – a rare combination of traits, it seems to me.
Not typical behavior for one of America’s most revered athletes, talent evaluators, and professional basketball general managers. I remember reading and thinking how unsettled and uncomfortable he seemed with his life. You wanted to say “Jerry, why can’t you just enjoy your life? You’re rich, famous, and widely loved?”
Only he could answer that, and the answer never came through in the book. Mentally, he was just not at peace, never quite feeling he was good enough – even though he was great.
His Lakers teams lost time and time again to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals and this devoured his soul. Several years after reading about it, I can still feel the agony he said he felt losing to the Celtics. The man felt less than a lot of the time; ironically he was so often more than almost all of us.
Crushed by losing. And openly admitted it.
It was perplexing and stunning, this self-doubt and loathing. You look at him and see a handsome man with a charming and sweet personality, as selfless as any man could be, and yet he was bothered.
Inside his head. Negative thoughts must have run amok and he couldn’t erase them.
I’m not saying he always felt this mental torment because I don’t know. But throughout the book I was struck at how unfulfilling his life seemed to be even though he was doing what he loved, playing basketball, and was one of the greatest to ever do it. For most of us that would be gratifying, but not for Jerry West.
Yesterday, this enigmatic man died at the age of 86. I am hopeful he feels better about himself today, and that his troubles are no longer trapped inside his mind.
A true American hero to all of us and yet somehow less than that in his own mind for reasons we will never understand. The lesson in all of this is we can’t know what others are feeling about themselves or understand why they view themselves the way they do when, objectively, it doesn’t make sense.
People are complicated. Life is a constant struggle. Jerry West seemed to embody those truths more profoundly than most of us. Throughout his life.
I can’t think of one athlete or anyone, I have ever read about who seemed more bothered by things that happened during their times on Earth than Jerry.
His life was both unfathomably successful and eerily disquieting and sad, seemingly cloudy more often than any of us would want to endure.
I wish him everlasting peace. And thank him for contributing far more than he gave himself credit for.
What a jewel he was, Jerry West.
What a basketball genius.
So troubled.
So human.
Gone.
Loved in life, loved forever.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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