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Thursday, July 10, 2003

Two lives were borne of troubled streets, one in Pittsburgh, the other in Brooklyn. Two radically divergent paths were taken.

Curtis Martin.

And Mike Tyson.

Somehow, Fox Sports Net's "Beyond the Glory" brings to the small screen within 72 hours of one another the unexpurgated, occasionally uncensored and often unsavory, tales of two modern-day athletes once relatively connected but now light years apart.

Martin's story airs at 8 p.m. Sunday, and the network details better than ever the story of how he arose from rubble to find football, religion and peace, in that order.

Tyson's life figuratively unravels before your eyes at 8 p.m. Wednesday, in a two-hour masterpiece produced by David Michaels -- Al's brother and a journalist who had four interviews totaling 12 hours with the heavily weighted boxer.

Before we get to the world champion, let's start with the homegrown hero.

Perhaps the portrayal of Martin's childhood comes off a bit heavy-handed. "Unforgiving streets of Pittsburgh," the special calls it, through the narration of actor D.B. Sweeney. "Violent crime was unavoidable on Pittsburgh's tough inner-city streets." Yet Martin does nothing to contradict such a view.

In the show, he admits that his mother, Rochella, left him home alone as young as age 5. He talks about beatings she gave him. He speaks about how, when he was 10, grandmother Eleanora Johnson was robbed and stabbed to death. None of it would deter him from straying, however. "I was a bad guy. I did bad things," he says. "I've done some things that it would be unlawful for me to talk about on this camera. ... I didn't think I'd live past 21."

His mother says she talked him into playing football his senior season at Allderdice, which led to a dynamic Pitt career, which led to an early exit with a season of eligibility left. Bitterness remains over how he was treated after that departure, how talk shows spewed venom about his decision to turn pro, how Pitt fans and others turned against him. Amid the sleepless nights and the creeping paranoia and the disdain for a game that would provide him a millionaire living, Martin ultimately found solace in faith and then football.

The Tyson piece is, at two hours, double the ordinary length of the show that in this instance should be entitled "Beyond the Gory." The former ring champion, convicted rapist and ear-chomper probably displays his most foul-mouthed, most psychotic, most pitiful, most confused self seen to date in compilation form. Don't just take my word for it -- take his words.

Viewer discretion is advised.

"People should try being me. The world I've come from, I've been abused and used every way a person could be abused and used.

"You haven't seen me when I'm homicidal, suicidal or totally [expletive] off my rocker.

"I hate Mike Tyson. I mostly wish the worst for Mike Tyson. That's probably why I don't like my friends and family.

"They see how [messed] up I am for all these years. and nobody considers helping out. ... Can't they please get somebody to help? Can't they put me in an insane asylum or a mental ward, [expletive], or whatever place I need to be -- a hospital, a psychiatrist?

"I want to, but I don't have love for anybody. ... Isn't that crazy?"

And all this in the special's opening 12 minutes.

Ice-T narrates a beautifully photographed program, with Tyson's free-floating pigeons as recurring a theme as his brutality. Michaels the producer not only was given unfettered access to Tyson around the Lennox Lewis and Clifford Etienne fights, but he also might well be the first TV type to additionally land interviews with people left at Tyson's wayside: ex-wives Robin Givens and Dr. Monica Turner, not to mention former trainer Teddy Atlas.

In moments as dichotomous as Tyson's life, Atlas talks about once putting a gun to the predatory boxer's head and is seen in a 20-year-old piece of footage in which a frightened, teen-age Tyson cries on his shoulder in fear of a Junior Olympic fight.

It is in those interviews with Michaels that Tyson roams from one corner of his psyche to the other.

Mostly, though, he seems to be crying for help.

"I have nothing. I lost my soul as a human being. I lost my self-respect.

"I'm a great manipulator. In order to be the greatest fighter in the world, you have to be the greatest liar in the world. I'm an actor, an entertainer crying out in the ring: Ahhhhh. I don't know what the hell I am. I'm a nut.

"I saw a bunch of psychiatrists. It made me more [messed] up than when I first went in there."

Watching this special is akin to rubbernecking at a crash scene.

No matter how tired you are of Tyson, you are riveted while he comes undone before your very eyes -- the deaths of father figures Cus D'Amato and Jimmy Jacobs, the puppet-mastering of Don King, the rape conviction and constant street scrapes, the outpourings in Michaels' interviews. You want to see him not in another heavyweight's grasp but in a therapist's hold. Or an asylum, as he suggests.

"I'm a real angry and bitter man," he says, punctuating with a smile. "I'm going to live until they kill me."

Those are the very last words of the show.

Remote notes

Some purportedly objective journalists have become defensive and apologetic and opinionated over this Kobe Bryant case, starting with ESPN's Jim Gray. Chill, people. Remember we're dealing with the judicial system and the presumption of innocence and a human being first, not a superstar athlete.

Pirate Report's Steve Novotney offers an all-star extravaganza on a special, live-from-Chicago "Talkin' Bucco Baseball" from 1-3 p.m. Saturday on WEAE-AM with Bill Mazeroski, Al Oliver, broadcaster Bob Walk and Pirates representative Mike Williams -- who could be the National League's ace in the hole when it comes to breaking a late-inning tie.