سال هزار و نهصد و هفتاد و سه

1973

Like his coach, Pre just wasn’t himself after the 1972 Olympics. He was haunted and enraged by the terrorist attacks. And by his performance. He felt he’d let everyone down. He’d finished fourth.

No shame in being the world’s fourth-best at your distance, we told him. But Pre knew he was better than that. And he knew he’d have done better if he hadn’t been so stubborn. He showed no patience, no guile. He could have slipped behind the front runner, coasted in his wake, stolen silver. That, however, would have gone against Pre’s religion. So he’d run all out, as always, holding nothing back, and in the final hundred yards he tired. Worse, the man he considered his archrival, Lasse Viren, of Finland, once more took the gold.

We tried to lift Pre’s spirits. We assured him that Oregon still loved him. City officials in Eugene were even planning to name a street after him. “Great,” Pre said, “what’re they gonna call it—Fourth Street?” He locked himself in his metal trailer on the banks of the Willamette and he didn’t come out for weeks.

In time, after pacing a lot, after playing with his German shepherd puppy, Lobo, and after large quantities of cold beer, Pre emerged. One day I heard that he’d been seen again around town, at dawn, doing his daily ten miles, Lobo trotting at his heels.

It took a full six months, but the fire in Pre’s belly came back. In his final races for Oregon he shone. He won the NCAA three-mile for a fourth straight year, posting a gaudy 13:05.3. He also went to Scandinavia and crushed the field in the 5,000, setting an American record: 13:22.4. Better yet, he did it in Nikes. Bowerman finally had him wearing our shoes. (Months into his retirement, Bowerman was still coaching Pre, still polishing the final designs for the waffle shoe, which was about to go on sale to the general public. He’d never been busier.) And our shoes were finally worthy of Pre. It was a perfect symbiotic match. He was generating thousands of dollars of publicity, making our brand a symbol of rebellion and iconoclasm—and we were helping his recovery.

Pre began to talk warily with Bowerman about the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He told Bowerman, and a few close friends, that he wanted redemption. He was determined to capture that gold medal that eluded him in Munich.

Several scary stumbling blocks stood in his path, however. Vietnam, for one. Pre, whose life, like mine, like everyone’s, was governed by numbers, drew a horrible number in the draft lottery. He was going to be drafted, there was little doubt, as soon as he graduated. In a year’s time he’d be sitting in some fetid jungle, taking heavy machine-gun fire. He might have his legs, his godlike legs, blown out from under him.

Also, there was Bowerman. Pre and the coach were clashing constantly, two headstrong guys with different ideas about training methods and running styles. Bowerman took the long view: a distance runner peaks in his late twenties. He therefore wanted Pre to rest, preserve himself for certain select races. Save something, Bowerman kept pleading. But of course Pre refused. I’m all-out, all the time, he said. In their relationship I saw a mirror of my relationship with banks. Pre didn’t see the sense in going slow—ever. Go fast or die. I couldn’t fault him. I was on his side. Even against our coach.

Above all, however, Pre was broke. The know-nothings and oligarchs who governed American amateur athletics at that time decreed that Olympic athletes couldn’t collect endorsement money, or government money, which meant our finest runners and swimmers and boxers were reduced to paupers. To stay alive Pre sometimes tended bar in Eugene, and sometimes he ran in Europe, taking illicit cash from race promoters. Of course those extra races were starting to cause issues. His body—in particular his back—was breaking down.

At Blue Ribbon we worried about Pre. We talked about him often, formally and informally, around the office. Eventually we came up with a plan. To keep him from injuring himself, to avoid the shame of him going around with a begging bowl, we hired him. In 1973 we gave him a “job,” a modest salary of five thousand dollars a year, and access to a beach condo Cale owned in Los Angeles. We also gave him a business card that said National Director of Public Affairs. People often narrowed their eyes and asked me what that meant. I narrowed my eyes right back. “It means he can run fast,” I said.

It also meant he was our second celebrity athlete endorser.

The first thing Pre did with his windfall was go out and buy himself a butterscotch MG. He drove it everywhere—fast. It looked like my old MG. I remember feeling enormously, vicariously proud. I remember thinking: We bought that. I remember thinking Pre was the living, breathing embodiment of what we were trying to create. Whenever people saw Pre going at his breakneck pace—on a track, in his MG—I wanted them to see Nike. And when they bought a pair of Nikes, I wanted them to see Pre.

I felt this strongly about Pre even though I’d only had a few conversations with the man. And you could hardly call them conversations. Whenever I saw him at a track, or around the Blue Ribbon offices, I became mute. I tried to con myself; more than once I told myself that Pre was just a kid from Coos Bay, a short, shaggy-haired jock with a porn star mustache. But I knew better. And a few minutes in his presence would prove it. A few minutes was all I could take.

The world’s most famous Oregonian at the time was Ken Kesey, whose blockbuster novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, appeared in 1962, the exact moment I left on my trip around the world. I knew Kesey at the University of Oregon. He wrestled, and I ran track, and on rainy days we’d do indoor workouts at the same facility. When his first novel came out I was stunned by how good it was, especially since the plays he’d written in school had been dreck. Suddenly he was a literary lion, the toast of New York, and yet I never felt starstruck in his presence, as I did in Pre’s. In 1973 I decided that Pre was every bit the artist that Kesey was, and more. Pre said as much himself. “A race is a work of art,” he told a reporter, “that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.”

Each time Pre came into the office, I noted, I wasn’t alone in my swooning. Everyone became mute. Everyone became shy. Men, women, it didn’t matter, everyone turned into Buck Knight. Even Penny Knight. If I was the first to make Penny care about track and field, Pre was the one who made her a real fan.

Hollister was the exception to this rule. He and Pre had an easy way around each other. They were like brothers. I never once saw Hollister act any differently with Pre than he did with, say, me. So it made sense to have Hollister, the Pre Whisperer, bring Pre in, help us get to know him, and vice versa. We arranged a lunch in the conference room.

When the day came, it wasn’t wise, but it was typical of Woodell and me—we chose that moment to tell Hollister that we were tweaking his duties. In fact, we told him the second his butt hit the chair in the conference room. The change would affect how he got paid. Not how much, just how. Before we could fully explain, he threw down his napkin and stormed out. Now we had nobody to help us break the ice with Pre. We all stared silently into our sandwiches.

Pre spoke first. “Is Geoff coming back?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Long pause.

“In that case,” Pre said, “can I eat his sandwich?”

We all laughed, and Pre seemed suddenly mortal, and the luncheon ultimately proved invaluable.

Shortly after that day, we soothed Hollister, and tweaked his duties again. From now on, we said, you’re Pre’s full-time liaison. You’re in charge of handling Pre, taking Pre out on the road, introducing Pre to the fans. In fact, we told Hollister, take the boy on a cross-country tour. Hit all the track meets, state fairs, high schools, and colleges you can. Go everywhere, and nowhere. Do everything, and nothing.

Sometimes Pre would conduct a running clinic, answering questions about training and injuries. Sometimes he’d just sign autographs and pose for photos. No matter what he did, no matter where Hollister took him, worshipful crowds would appear around their bright blue Volkswagen bus.

Though Pre’s job title was intentionally imprecise, his role was real, and his belief in Nike was authentic as well. He wore Nike T-shirts everywhere he went, and he allowed his foot to be ­Bowerman’s last for all shoe experiments. Pre preached Nike as gospel, and brought thousands of new people into our revival tent. He urged everyone to give this groovy new brand a try—even his competitors. He’d often send a pair of Nike flats or spikes to a fellow runner with a note: Try these. You’ll love them.

Among those most inspired by Pre was Johnson. While continuing to build up our East Coast operation, Johnson had spent much of 1972 slaving on something that he christened the Pre Montreal, a shoe that would be an homage to Pre, and to the upcoming Olympics, and to the American Bicentennial. With a blue suede toe, a red nylon back, and a white swoosh, it was our jazziest shoe yet, and also our best spike. We knew that we were going to live or die based on quality, and thus far our quality on spikes had been spotty. Johnson was going to fix that with this design.

But he was going to do it in Oregon, I decided, not Boston.

I’d been giving a lot of thought to Johnson, for months. He was turning into a truly fine designer, and we needed to take full advantage of his talent. The East Coast was running smoothly, but it now involved too much administration for him. The whole thing needed reorganizing, streamlining, and that wasn’t the best use of Johnson’s time or creativity. That was a job tailor-made for someone like . . . Woodell.

Night after night, during my six-mile run, I’d wrestle with this situation. I had two guys in the wrong jobs, on the wrong coasts, and neither one was going to like the obvious solution. Each guy loved where he lived. And each irritated the other, though they both denied it. When I’d promoted Woodell to operations manager, I’d also bequeathed him Johnson. I’d put him in charge of overseeing Johnson, answering Johnson’s letters, and Woodell made the mistake of reading them thoroughly and trying to keep up. Consequently the two had developed a chippy, deeply sarcastic rapport.

For instance. Woodell wheeled into my office one day and said, “This is depressing. Jeff complains constantly about inventory, expense reimbursements, lack of communications. He says he’s working his butt off while we’re lolling around. He doesn’t listen to any reason, including that our sales are doubling every year.”

Woodell told me he wanted to take a different approach to Johnson.

By all means, I said. Have at it.

So he wrote Johnson a long letter “admitting” that we’d all been colluding against him, trying to make him unhappy. He wrote, “I’m sure you realize we don’t work quite as hard out here as you do; with only three hours in the working day it is hard to get everything done. Still, I make time to place you in all sorts of embarrassing situations with customers and the business community. Whenever you need money desperately to pay bills, I send only a tiny fraction of what you need so that you’ll have to deal with bill collectors and lawsuits. I take the destruction of your reputation as a personal compliment.”

And so on.

Johnson answered back: “Finally someone out there understands me.”

What I was getting ready to propose wasn’t going to help.

I approached Johnson first. I chose my moment carefully—a trip we made to Japan, to visit Nippon Rubber and discuss the Pre Montreal. Over dinner I laid it all out for him. We were in a ferocious battle, a siege. Day by day, we were doing everything we could to keep the troops fed and the enemy at bay. For the sake of victory, for the sake of survival, everything else needed to be sacrificed, subordinated. “And so, at this crucial moment in the evolution of Blue Ribbon, in the rollout of Nike . . . I’m sorry, but, well . . . you two dummies need to switch cities.”

He groaned. Of course. It was Santa Monica all over again.

But slowly, agonizingly, he came around.

As did Woodell.

Around the close of 1972 each man handed his house keys to the other, and now in early 1973 they switched places. Talk about team players. It was an enormous sacrifice, and I was deeply grateful. But in keeping with my personality, and Blue Ribbon tradition, I expressed no gratitude. I spoke not a word of thanks or praise. In fact, in several office memos I referred to the switch as “Operation Dummy Reversal.”

IN THE LATE spring of 1973 I met with our recent investors, the debenture holders, for a second time. The first time they’d loved me. How could they not? Sales were booming, celebrity athletes were promoting our shoes. Sure, we’d lost Onitsuka, and we were facing a legal fight down the road, but we were on the right track.

This time, however, it was my duty to inform the investors that, one year after launching Nike, for the first time in Blue Ribbon history . . . we’d lost money.

The meeting took place at the Valley River Inn in Eugene. It was thirty men and women crammed into the conference room, with me at the head of a long conference table. I wore a dark suit and tried to project an air of confidence as I delivered the bad news. I gave them the same speech I’d given Blue Ribbon employees a year before. We’ve got them right where we want them. But this group wasn’t buying any pep talks. These were widows and widowers, retirees and pensioners. Also, the previous year I’d been flanked by Jaqua and Bowerman; this year both men were busy.

I was alone.

Half an hour into my pitch, with thirty horrified faces staring at me, I suggested we break for lunch. The previous year I’d handed out Blue Ribbon’s financial statements before lunch. This year I decided to wait until after. It didn’t help. Even on a full stomach, with a chocolate chip cookie, the numbers looked bad. Despite $3.2 million in sales, we showed a net loss of $57,000.

Several clusters of investors now began private conversations while I was trying to talk. They were pointing at this troubling number—$57,000—and repeating it, over and over. At some point I mentioned that Anne Caris, a young runner, had just made the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing Nikes. We’re breaking through, people! No one heard. No one cared. They cared only about the bottom line. Not even the bottom line, but their bottom line.

I came to the end of my presentation. I asked if anyone had a question. Thirty hands went up. “I’m very disappointed in this,” said one older man, rising to his feet. “Any more questions?” Twenty-nine hands went up. Another man called out, “I’m not happy.”

I said I sympathized. My sympathy only served to annoy them.

They had every right. They’d put their confidence in Bowerman and me, and we’d failed. We never could have anticipated Tiger’s betrayal, but nonetheless, these people were hurting, I saw it in their faces, and I needed to take responsibility. To make it right. I decided it was only fair to offer them a concession.

Their stock had a conversion rate, which went up every year. In the first year the rate was $1.00 a share, in the second year it was $1.50, and so on. In light of all this bad news, I told them, I’ll keep the conversion rate the same for the full five years you own your stock.

They were placated, mildly. But I left Eugene that day knowing they had a low opinion of me, and Nike. I also left thinking I’d never, ever, ever take this company public. If thirty people could cause this kind of acid stomach, I couldn’t imagine being answerable to thousands of stockholders.

We were better off financing through Nissho and the bank.

THAT IS, IF there was anything to finance. As feared, Onitsuka had filed suit against us in Japan. So now we had to file quickly against them in the United States, for breach of contract and trademark infringement.

I put the case in the hands of Cousin Houser. It wasn’t a tough call. There was the trust factor, of course. Kinship, blood, so on. Also, there was the confidence factor. Though he was only two years older, Cousin Houser seemed vastly more mature. He carried himself with remarkable assurance. Especially before a judge and jury. His father had been a salesman, and a good one, and Cousin Houser learned from him how to sell his client.

Better yet, he was a tenacious competitor. When we were kids Cousin Houser and I used to play vicious, marathon games of badminton in his backyard. One summer we played exactly 116 games. Why 116? Because Cousin Houser beat me 115 straight times. I refused to quit until I’d won. And he had no trouble understanding my position.

But the main reason I chose Cousin Houser was poverty. I had no money for legal fees, and Cousin Houser talked his firm into taking my case on contingency.

Much of 1973 was spent in Cousin Houser’s office, reading documents, reviewing memos, cringing at my own words and actions. My memo about hiring a spy—the court would take a dim view of this, Cousin Houser warned. And my “borrowing” Kitami’s folder from his briefcase? How could a judge view that as anything but theft? MacArthur came to mind. You are remembered for the rules you break.

I contemplated hiding these painful facts from the court. In the end, however, there was only one thing to do. Play it straight. It was the smart thing, the right thing. I’d simply have to hope the court would see the stealing of Kitami’s folder as a kind of self-defense.

When I wasn’t with Cousin Houser, studying the case, I was being studied. In other words, deposed. For all my belief that business was war without bullets, I’d never felt the full fury of conference-­room combat until I found myself at a table surrounded by five lawyers. They tried everything to get me to say I’d violated my contract with Onitsuka. They tried trick questions, hostile questions, squirrelly questions, loaded questions. When questions didn’t work, they twisted my answers. A deposition is strenuous for anyone, but for a shy person it’s an ordeal. Badgered, baited, harassed, mocked, I was a shell of myself by the end. My condition was worsened by the sense that I hadn’t done very well—a sense Cousin Houser reluctantly confirmed.

At the close of those difficult days, it was my nightly six-mile run that saved my life. And then it was my brief time with Matthew and Penny that preserved my sanity. I’d always try to find the time and energy to tell Matthew his bedtime story. Thomas Jefferson was toiling to write the Declaration of Independence, you see, struggling to find the words, when little Matt History brought him a new quill pen and the words seemed to magically flow . . .

Matthew almost always laughed at my bedtime stories. He had a liquid laugh, which I loved to hear, because at other times he could be moody, sullen. Cause for concern. He’d been very late learning to talk, and now he was showing a worrisome rebellious streak. I blamed myself. If I were home more, I told myself, he’d be less rebellious.

Bowerman spent quite a bit of time with Matthew, and he told me not to worry. I like his spirit, he said. The world needs more rebels.

That spring, Penny and I had the added worry of how our little rebel would handle a sibling. She was pregnant again. Secretly, I wondered more about how we were going to handle it. By the end of 1973, I thought, it’s very possible I’ll have two kids and no job.

AFTER TURNING OUT the light next to Matthew’s bed, I’d usually go and sit in the living room with Penny. We’d talk about the day. Which meant the looming trial. Growing up, Penny had watched several of her father’s trials, and it gave her an avid fondness for courtroom drama. She never missed a legal show on TV. Perry Mason was her favorite, and I sometimes called her Della Street, after Mason’s intrepid secretary. I kidded her about her enthusiasm, but I also fed off it.

The final act of every evening was my phone call to my father. Time for my own bedtime story. By then he’d left the newspaper, and in his retirement he had loads of time to research old cases and precedents, to spin out arguments that might be useful to Cousin Houser. His involvement, plus his sense of fair play, plus his bedrock belief in the rightness of Blue Ribbon’s cause, was restorative.

It was always the same. My father would ask about Matthew and Penny, and then I’d ask about Mom, and then he’d tell me what he’d found in the law books. I’d take careful notes on a yellow legal pad. Before signing off he’d always say that he liked our chances. We’re going to win, Buck. That magical pronoun, “we”—he’d always use it, and it would always make me feel better. It’s possible that we were never closer, maybe because our relationship had been reduced to its primal essence. He was my dad, I was his son, and I was in the fight of my life.

Looking back, I see that something else was going on. My trial was providing my father with a healthier outlet for his inner chaos. My legal troubles, my nightly phone calls, were keeping him on high alert, and at home. There were fewer late nights at the bar of the club.

“I’M BRINGING SOMEONE else onto the team,” Cousin Houser told me one day. “Young lawyer. Rob Strasser. You’ll like him.”

He was fresh out of UC Berkeley School of Law, Cousin Houser said, and he didn’t know a damn thing. Yet. But Cousin Houser had an instinct about the kid. Thought he showed tremendous promise. Plus, Strasser had a personality that was sure to mesh with our company. “The moment Strasser read our brief,” Cousin Houser told me, “he saw this case as a holy crusade.”

Well, I liked the sound of that. So the next time I was at Cousin Houser’s firm I walked down the hall and poked my head into the office of this Strasser fellow. He wasn’t there. The office was pitch-dark. Shades drawn, lights off. I turned to leave. Then I heard . . . Hello? I turned back. Somewhere within the darkness, behind a big walnut desk, a shape moved. The shape grew, a mountain rising from a dark sea.

It slid toward me. Now I saw the rough contours of a man. Six-three, 280 pounds, with an extra helping of shoulders. And fire-log arms. This was one part Sasquatch, one part Snuffleupagus, though somehow light on his feet. He minced toward me and thrust one of his fire logs in my direction. I reached, we shook.

Now I could make out the face—brick red, covered by a full strawberry-blond beard—and glazed with sweat. (Hence the darkness. He required dimly lit, cool spaces. He also couldn’t bear wearing a suit.) Everything about this man was different from me, from everyone I knew, and yet I felt a strange, instant kinship.

He said that he was thrilled to be working on my case. Honored. He believed that Blue Ribbon had been the victim of a terrible injustice. Kinship became love. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, we have.”

DAYS LATER STRASSER came out to Tigard for a meeting. Penny was in the office at the time and when Strasser glimpsed her walking down a hall his eyes bulged. He tugged on his beard. “My God!” he said. “Was that Penny Parks?!”

“She’s Penny Knight now,” I said.

“She dated my best friend!”

“Small world.”

“Smaller when you’re my size.”

Over the coming days and weeks Strasser and I discovered more and more ways our lives and psyches intersected. He was a native Oregonian, and proud of it, in that typical, truculent way. He’d grown up with a bug about Seattle, and San Francisco, and all the nearby places that outsiders saw as our betters. His geographical inferiority complex was exacerbated by his ungainly size, and homeliness. He’d always feared that he wouldn’t find his place in the world, that he was doomed to be an outcast. I got that. He compensated, at times, by being loud, and profane, but mostly he kept his mouth shut and downplayed his intelligence, rather than risk alienating people. I got that, too.

Intelligence like Strasser’s, however, couldn’t be hidden for long. He was one of the greatest thinkers I ever met. Debater, negotiator, talker, seeker—his mind was always whirring, trying to understand. And to conquer. He saw life as a battle and found confirmation for this view in books. Like me, he read compulsively about war.

Also, like me, he lived and died with the local teams. Especially the Ducks. We had a huge laugh over the fact that Oregon’s basketball coach that year was Dick Harter, while the football coach was still Dick Enright. The popular cheer at Oregon State games was: “If you can’t get your Dick Enright, get your Dick Harter!” After we stopped laughing, Strasser started up again. I was amazed by the pitch of his laughter. High, giggly, twee, it was startling from a man his size.

More than anything else we bonded over fathers. Strasser was the son of a successful businessman, and he, too, feared that he’d never live up to his old man’s expectations. His father, however, was an exceptionally hard case. Strasser told me many stories. One stayed with me. When Strasser was seventeen his parents went away for the weekend, and Strasser seized the moment to throw a party. It turned into a riot. Neighbors called the police, and just as the patrol cars arrived, so did Strasser’s parents. They’d come home early from their trip. Strasser told me that his father looked around—house in shambles, son in handcuffs—and coldly told the cops, “Take him away.”

I asked Strasser early on how he gauged our chances against Onitsuka. He said we were going to win. He said it straight out, no hesitation, as if I’d asked him what he’d had for breakfast. He said it the way a sports fan would talk about “next year,” with uncompromising faith. He said it the way my father said it every night, and there and then I decided that Strasser was one of the chosen, one of the brethren. Like Johnson and Woodell and Hayes. Like Bowerman and Hollister and Pre. He was Blue Ribbon, through and through.

WHEN I WASN’T obsessing about the trial, I was fixated on sales. Every day I’d get a telex from our warehouses with a “pair count,” meaning the exact number of pairs shipped that day to all customers—­schools, retailers, coaches, individual mail-order clients. On general accounting principles, a pair shipped was a pair sold, so the daily pair count determined my mood, my digestion, my blood pressure, because it largely determined the fate of Blue Ribbon. If we didn’t “sell through,” sell all the shoes in our most recent order, and quickly convert that product into cash, we’d be in big trouble. The daily pair count told me if we were on our way to selling through.

“So,” I’d say to Woodell on a typical morning, “Massachusetts is good, Eugene looks good—what happened in Memphis?”

“Ice storm,” he might say. Or: “Truck broke down.”

He had a superb talent for underplaying the bad, and underplaying the good, for simply being in the moment. For instance, after the dummy reversal, Woodell occupied an office that was hardly deluxe. It sat on the top floor of an old shoe factory, and a water tower directly overhead was caked with a century’s worth of pigeon poop. Plus, the ceiling beams were gapped, and the building shook every time the die cutters stamped out the uppers. In other words, throughout the day a steady rain of pigeon poop would fall on Woodell’s hair, shoulders, desktop. But Woodell would simply dust himself off, casually clear his desk with the side of his hand, and continue with his work.

He also kept a piece of company stationery carefully draped over his coffee cup at all times, to ensure it was only cream in his joe.

I tried often to copy Woodell’s Zen monk demeanor. Most days, however, it was beyond me. I boiled with frustration, knowing that our pair count could have been so much higher if not for our constant problems with supply. People were crying out for our shoes, but we just couldn’t get them out on time. We’d traded Onitsuka’s capricious delays for a new set of delays, caused by demand. The factories and Nissho were doing their jobs, we were now getting what we ordered, on time and intact, but the booming marketplace created new pressures, making it harder and harder to correctly allocate what we got.

Supply and demand is always the root problem in business. It’s been true since Phoenician traders raced to bring Rome the coveted purple dye that colored the clothing of royals and rich people; there was never enough purple to go around. It’s hard enough to invent and manufacture and market a product, but then the logistics, the mechanics, the hydraulics of getting it to the people who want it, when they want it—this is how companies die, how ulcers are born.

In 1973 the supply-and-demand problems facing the running-­shoe industry were unusually knotty, seemingly insoluble. The whole world was suddenly demanding running shoes, and the supply wasn’t simply inconsistent, it was slowing to a sputter. There were never enough shoes in the pipeline.

We had many smart people working on the problem, but no one could figure out how to significantly boost supply without taking on huge inventory risks. There was some consolation in the fact that Adidas and Puma were having the same problems—but not much. Our problems could tip us into bankruptcy. We were leveraged to the hilt, and like most people who live from paycheck to paycheck, we were walking the edge of a precipice. When a shipment of shoes was late, our pair count plummeted. When our pair count plummeted, we weren’t able to generate enough revenue to repay Nissho and the Bank of California on time. When we couldn’t repay Nissho and the Bank of California on time, we couldn’t borrow more. When we couldn’t borrow more we were late placing our next order.

Round and round it went.

Then came the last thing we needed. A dockworkers’ strike. Our man went down to Boston Harbor to pick up a shipment of shoes and found it locked tight. He could see it through the locked fence: boxes and boxes of what the world was clamoring for. And no way to get at it.

We scrambled and arranged for Nippon to send a new shipment—110,000 pairs, on a chartered 707. We split the cost of jet fuel with them. Anything was preferable to not bringing product to market on time.

Our sales for 1973 rose 50 percent, to $4.8 million, a number that staggered me the first time I saw it on a piece of paper. Wasn’t it only yesterday that we’d done $8,000? And yet there was no celebration. Between our legal troubles and our supply woes, we might be out of business any minute. Late at night I’d sit with Penny and she’d ask, for the umpteenth time, what we were going to do if Blue Ribbon went under. What was the plan? And for the umpteenth time I’d reassure her with optimistic words that I didn’t wholly believe.

Then, that fall, I had an idea. Why not go to all of our biggest retailers and tell them that if they’d sign ironclad commitments, if they’d give us large and nonrefundable orders, six months in advance, we’d give them hefty discounts, up to 7 percent? This way we’d have longer lead times, and fewer shipments, and more certainty, and therefore a better chance of keeping cash balances in the bank. Also, we could use these long-term commitments from heavyweights like Nordstrom, Kinney, Athlete’s Foot, United Sporting Goods, and others, to squeeze more credit out of Nissho and the Bank of California. Especially Nissho.

The retailers were skeptical, of course. But I begged. And when that didn’t work I made bold predictions. I told them that this program, which we were calling “Futures,” was the future, for us and everyone else, so they’d better get on board. Sooner rather than later.

I was persuasive because I was desperate. If we could just take the lid off our annual growth limits. But retailers continued to resist. Over and over we heard: “You newbies at Nike don’t understand the shoe industry. This new idea will never fly.”

My bargaining position was suddenly improved when we rolled out several eye-popping new shoes, which customers were sure to demand. The Bruin was already popular, with its outsoles and uppers cooked together to give a more stable ride. Now we debuted an enhanced version, with bright green suede uppers. (Paul Silas of the Boston Celtics had agreed to wear a pair.) Plus, two new Cortezes, a Leather and a Nylon, both of which figured to be our bestselling shoes yet.

At last, a few retailers signed on. The program started to gain traction. Before long, the stragglers and holdouts were desperate to be included.

SEPTEMBER 13, 1973. My fifth wedding anniversary. Once again Penny woke me in the middle of the night to say she wasn’t feeling well. But this time, on the drive to the hospital, I had more on my mind than just the baby. Futures program. Pair count. Pending trial. So of course I got lost.

I circled back, retraced my steps. My brow beginning to bead with sweat, I turned down a street and saw the hospital up ahead. Thank goodness.

Once again they wheeled Penny away, and once again I waited, and wilted, in the bullpen. This time I tried to do some paperwork, and when the doctor came and found me, and told me I had another son, I thought: Two sons. A pair of sons.

The ultimate pair count.

I went to Penny’s room and met my new boy, whom we named Travis. Then I did a bad thing.

Smiling, Penny said the doctors told her she could go home after two days, instead of the three they’d required after Matthew. Whoa, I said, hold on there, the insurance is willing to pay for another day in the hospital—what’s your hurry? Might as well kick back, relax. Take advantage.

She lowered her head, cocked an eyebrow. “Who’s playing and where is it?” she said.

“Oregon,” I whispered. “Arizona State.”

She sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Phil. Go.”