It was a Friday afternoon in the fall of 1969.
San Diego was getting ready to watch Don Coryell’s San Diego State Aztecs wipe the stadium floor on Saturday night with the “slaughter” of the week. On Sunday afternoon the entire country would watch the San Diego Chargers play the Buffalo Bills and their great rookie running back O.J. Simpson.
He had been awarded the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player of the year eleven months before for his success as a running back at the University of Southern California. He would become the first running back in professional football to grind out 2,000 yards in a 14-game season.
It began as a normal weekend for me. I was the 27-year-old public relations director for the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana. I had to hit Interstate 5 by 4 p.m. to beat traffic to Tijuana. I would eat dinner before the dog races, watch them, buy drinks for customers, and assist in management. But this Friday was different.
The call came in around 3 p.m. On the line was an old friend, former Chargers defensive back Claude (Hoot) Gibson, now an assistant coach for Buffalo. I hadn’t spoken to him for three years. Could he bring a couple of coaches and a player or two down to the horse races on Saturday, he asked.
Of course. They would be my guests for lunch at the private turf club. I had the power of the pen. The van with the seven Buffalo coaches and players arrived at the border. The police escort I provided brought them to the track. Imagine my surprise when I greeted them at the track entrance — there was O.J. Simpson. I had seen him play in person at the Rose Bowl plus many times on television.
But there was more. He had been featured by the Los Angeles Times as Division 1 player of the week almost every week in the 1968 season. My brother — Loyola University quarterback Jerry Lowery — had been honored as the Division II player of the week several times with O.J. sitting next to him at the award luncheons. They became friends.
None of the 12,000 people at the track knew O.J. was there except those in the turf club. He sat at my table poring over the Racing Form before getting up to make his bets. He bet $20 to $30 dollars a race and managed to cash a few tickets. He knew what he was doing. He complimented the chef who prepared his Carne Asada lunch steak and gave him a $20 dollar tip.
I asked O.J. if he would help me crown the winner of the feature race. Sure, he replied. We walked down to the ground floor and made our way to a gate so we could walk across the track unnoticed before the race to take our places in the judges tower. The track announcer introduced O.J.
12,000 Americans and Mexicans cheered their heads off when we crowned the winner. We started back to the turf club. But this time thousands of people blocked our way, chanting O.J!, O.J! After all, he was already the greatest football running back of all time. It took us over 30 minutes to make it back to the turf club.
Then they left, led by the Tijuana Police escort. And I had earned my pay for the day.
The next day when the Bills were lining up to receive the game’s kick-off, O.J .was in the end zone when he spotted my brother Jerry on the sideline where he was wearing a “field pass” ticket provided by Coach Gibson that I couldn’t use because I had Sunday horse races to attend to.
The entire nation watched O.J. Simpson walk over to the sideline to shake hands with a 19-year-old kid who he hadn’t seen since they shared player of the week honors in Los Angeles.
Like everyone else in the universe I watched the murder trial. I cheered his lawyers, cheered the jury’s “not guilty” verdict, soured on the “lynching” by the all-White Santa Monica civil jury, and was shocked when a wild Nevada judge took out her dislike by sentencing him to 33 years in prison.
He died Wednesday. He knew my brother. My brother died last year. I wonder if they are catching up.
Raoul Lowery Contreras is a Marine Corps veteran, political consultant, prolific author and host of the Contreras Report on YouTube and Facebook.
