Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [62]
Unlike most American sportsmen, the cockfighting fan has an overwhelming tendency to become an active participant. There is no such thing as a passive interest in cockfighting. Beginning as a casual onlooker, a man soon finds the action of two game-cocks battling to the death a fascinating spectacle. He either likes it or he doesn't. If he doesn't like it, he doesn't return to watch another fight. If he does like it, he accepts, sooner or later, everything about the sport—the good with the bad.
As the fan gradually learns to tell one game strain from another, he admires the vain beauty of a game rooster. Admiration leads to the desire to possess one of these beautiful creatures for his very own, and pride of ownership leads to the pitting of his pet against another gamecock. Whether he wins or loses, once the fan has got as far as pitting, he is as hooked as a ghetto mainliner.
Of course, not every beginner embraces the sport like Omar Baradinsky—to the point of quitting a thirty-five-thousand dollar-a-year position, and leaving wife, family and friends to raise and fight gamecocks in Florida. The majority of fans are content to participate on a smaller scale—as a handler, perhaps, or as an owner of one or two gamecocks, or as a lowly assistant holding a bird for a handler while he lashes on the heels. Many spectators, unfortunately, are interested in the gambling aspects of cockfighting to the exclusion of everything else. But even gamblers must learn a lot of information about game fowl to win consistently. Whether he wins or loses, the gambler still has the satisfaction of knowing that a cockfight cannot be fixed, and not another sport in the United States will give him as fair a chance for his money.
Omar Baradinsky, however, had gone all the way, caught up in the sport at the dangerous age of fifty, the age when a man begins to wonder just what in the hell has he got out of his life so far, anyway? Omar was still as bewildered by his decision to enter full-time cockfighting now as he had been when he started.
“I can't really explain it, Frank,” he had told me one idle morning, after we got to know each other fairly well, right after he had first moved to Florida. “I had done a better than average job on one of my smaller advertising accounts, and the owner invited me to his home in Saratoga Springs for a weekend. Smelling a little bonus money in the deal, you see, something my firm wouldn't know anything about, I accepted and drove to this fellow's place early on a Saturday morning.
“Just as I anticipated, he presented me with a bonus check for a thousand clams. And we sat around his swimming pool all afternoon—which was empty by the way— drinking Scotch and water and talking business. Out of nothing, he asked me if I'd like to see a cockfight that night.
“'Cockfight!' I said. 'They're illegal, aren't they?' 'Sure, they are!' he laughed. 'But so was sleeping with that blonde you fixed me up with in New York. If you've never seen a cockfight, I think you might get a kick out of it.'
“So I went to my first cockfight. I'll never forget it, Frank. The sight of those beautiful roosters fighting to the death, the gameness, even when mortally wounded, was an exciting, unforgettable experience. Before the evening was over, I knew that that's what I wanted to do with my life: breed and fight game fowl. It was infantile, crazy maybe, I don't know. My wife thought I'd lost my mind and wouldn't even listen to my reasons. Probably because I couldn't give her any, not valid reasons. I wanted to do it and that was my sole reason!
“I was fed up to the teeth with advertising, and I had saved enough money to quit. I was only fifty, and although my future still glimmered on Madison Avenue, I didn't really need any more money than I already had. Still, I played it pretty cagy with the firm. I made a secret deal with one of the other vice-presidents to feed him my accounts in return for supporting my resignation on the grounds of ill health. That way, I picked up twenty-five