Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins

been trying to nail her.
    Harb says she had to run a whole lot better than I ever did against the Cardinals or Eagles to keep from getting blitzed by Burt over in Hawaii when we weren't around.
    He still tries, now and then. But Shake and me never get hot about it.
    I think everybody in New York has been in love with Barbara Jane at one time or another. She's had every known swipe taken at her, but of course she doesn't love anybody but Shake Tiller — and maybe me.
    Barb came up to New York when we did, just after we had signed with the Giants. We were all really happy to have been chosen by fate to wind up in the big city.
    The Giants had told me ahead of time that they were going to draft me. They had the second choice in the first round. I had said that I wouldn't sign unless they drafted Shake Tiller also. We were determined to play for the same team, even if we had to go to the Canadian League. I was taken first, of course, being a "white runner."
    The Giants worked it out that Dallas, which had the third choice in the first round, drafted Shake for them. I think they had to give up three or four players and some future draft choices to get Dallas to do that.
    Anyhow, that's how Shake and me became New York Giants.
    Barb hadn't given any thoughts at all to becoming a model when we moved to New York. She immediately got a job at CBS as a secretary. She just strolled into the CBS sports department one day and one of their producers saw her and said, "If you can make coffee, you're hired."
    She could have walked into any building in Rockefeller Center and done the same thing. Barb is just so pretty she sometimes frightens people.
    Her main job at CBS seemed to be going to lunch for about four hours every day, to places like Mike Manuche's on Fifty-second Street, which is a restaurant with a lot of sports paintings on the walls where Giant fans go to discuss trades.
    It was in Manuche's one day that Burt Danby saw Barb for the first time and decided she ought to be a model. I've heard her say that this was her introduction to the hip ways of New York. Burt spotted her, walked over to the table, unzipped his fly, looked down at his crotch , and said, "Now, sir. Would you please stand up, give us your name, and tell us what you do?"
    When Barb roared laughing, Burt knew he'd found a good chick. He turned her over to his creative department at DDD and F and said, "I want her to be big, big, big."
    In those days, even though Burt learned that Barb belonged to us, he high-played her all around town. He would always be thinking up reasons why the two of them had to have dinner or cocktails.
    I think he just likes to turn up at all of his joints with a winner on his arm. He likes to put on velvet jackets, hot - comb his hair, hang a bunch of gold shit around his neck dogtags and animal heads and the like — and prance into Elaine's up on Eighty-eighth and Second Avenue with a Hall of Famer in his company.
    Burt takes considerable pride in being able to get a table anywhere he wants one, even Elaine's, where movie stars and archdukes and shoe company presidents and a grand assortment of born-rich fools have been known to stand in line for hours.
    Barb doesn't mind going along occasionally, even now. Especially if me and Shake are out of town. It gives her something to do, and of course everybody likes front row center.
    "He's harmless," she says. "And he's actually kind of sweet."
    To which Shake says, "He wears Gucci underwear."
    Well, I can joke about my employer, but I'll tell you how strong he is. One night he took Barb and Shake and me up to Elaine's and the narrow front room up there was packed as usual with all of the semi-artists and spoiled rich pricks who sit there and stare at each other's dates and clothes.
    Seeing Burt was there and needed a table instantly, Elaine herself personally cleared out a bevy of brooding poets and eye-shadow junkies so we could sit down.
    Burt leaped for the chair with his back against the