PBS高端访谈:走进网球伟人亚瑟·阿什的世界（在线收听）

JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. Open tennis tournament continues this week for its 50th anniversary and the, and the Open arrow, which marked the beginning of players winning prize money. Sorry about this. I'm having trouble reading. Jeffrey Brown looks at the legacy of the first men's champion there, Arthur Ashe, and the lessons his career in his life still offer.

JEFFREY BROWN: When the world's greatest tennis players compete at the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, New York, this is the Mecca, the huge stadium where championships are won and lost. It's named for a tennis great who transcended the court and sport itself, Arthur Ashe.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT, Author, Arthur Ashe: A Life: He said it over and over again. If the tennis champions were all that I leave, I have left nothing, that he wanted to leave a legacy and he wanted other athletes to that take it as an example.

JEFFREY BROWN: The story is now told in a new biography, Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: I know how difficult it was, frankly, to do justice to him, because his life is so complicated, so many layers.

JEFFREY BROWN: Arsenault, a historian at the University of South Florida and author of numerous books on the American South, joined us at this year's Open, with reminders of Ashe all around, from a photographic exhibit to a virtual reality film and display about his rich life.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: It's my first sports book.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: I have been a sports nut all my life.

JEFFREY BROWN: A sports nut?

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: But a historian, why is this a good subject for a historian?

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Well, for me, it was the connection between race and sports. I had always been struck by that. Race was always at the center, I think, of his, his sense that he had, he really had to change the world.

JEFFREY BROWN: Born in 1943, Ashe grew up in segregated Richmond, Virginia, next to the city's largest blacks-only park, which was managed by his father, Arthur Sr. It was here the young Arthur first hit tennis balls.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: He never, for example, could play at Byrd Park, which was the major white part where the good tennis courts were. He was not a man to have a grudge or to get angry. But he said the thing that really stuck in his craw is, he'd be somewhere in the world later in his life when he was famous, and someone from Richmond would come up to him and say: Oh, Arthur, we're so proud of you. And back in Richmond, I can remember seeing you play at Byrd Park when you were a boy. And, of course, he knew he never played at Byrd Park.

JEFFREY BROWN: The pencil-thin young Ashe was accepted and tutored by Robert Johnson, whose tennis camp in Lynchburg, Virginia, helped open the sport to many African-Americans. But, there, the lessons in race relations continued.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Johnson always said: If you see the ball, your opponent hits it, and it's just out, you call it in. We don't want...

JEFFREY BROWN: You call it in?

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: You call it in, right. We cannot afford an incident. You're the first black to play in these mixed-race tournaments. If you screw it up, there will probably never be another. And so he grew up with that. But I think it was his way. He was a paragon of sportsmanship, of civility. However, as I did my research, I discovered over and over again that there was a kind of tumultuous inside, that, in many ways, he was a driven man.

JEFFREY BROWN: He would win a tennis scholarship to attend UCLA and became the first African-American to represent the U.S. on the Davis Cup team, an international tennis competition. In 1968, at age 25, and still in the U.S. Army as a 2nd lieutenant, Ashe won the first U.S. Open, and he was the first and still only African-American man to win the tournament. It would change his life forever.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: As he said, it gave him a platform. People now will listen to me. And so a week after...

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean he realized that then?

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Oh, absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: A week after he won, he was the first athlete ever invited on Face the Nation. So there he is, little Arthur Ashe, 25 years old, holding forth on questions of education and race. And he was very poised.

ARTHUR ASHE, Professional Tennis Player: If you happen to be black, in these times, maybe not 50, 30 years ago, but in these times, 1968, there's really a mandate that you do something. You must. And there are other athletes and other black leaders, period, who are using their, their positions of power and influence to the wield some practical progress. So it's just simply saying to myself, Arthur, you must do something. You just cannot sit by and let the world go by.

JEFFREY BROWN: He did write and you go into this, how he, feeling shame, really, that while others were fighting injustice and social causes, he was playing tennis.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Yes. He said: As my fame increased, so did my anguish. And I think a lot of what he did, why he was so driven, it's making up for lost time.

JEFFREY BROWN: Two other Grand Slam titles followed, the Australian Open in 1970, and a 1975 upset over Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon. But now it was Ashe, the civil rights act activist and public intellectual, who more and more galvanized the public's attention, and fully took over when heart disease and quadruple bypass surgery forced him to retire at age 36. He was active in the fight against apartheid in South Africa and in this country worked to bring better athletic facilities to black youth and protested on behalf of Haitian immigrants trying to enter the U.S. He was criticized at times by some African-American leaders for not being more militant and aggressive enough in his stance, but, says Arsenault:

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: He took the weight of the world on his shoulders, even though he knew there were certain things he couldn't do. He had to do it his way, kind of this calm, deliberative style, never losing his cool, never raising his voice. That was who he was.

JEFFREY BROWN: Ashe would also write a three-volume history of African-American athletes titled A Hard Road to Glory, plus regular newspaper columns and memoirs of his own experience. In 1988, Ashe was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, a result of blood transfusions during one of his heart operations. He and his wife, Jeanne, chose to keep it quiet, not speaking publicly until 1992, to head off a news report.

ARTHUR ASHE: It put me in the unenviable position of having to lie if I wanted to protect our privacy. No one should have to make that choice.

JEFFREY BROWN: Ashe became an ambassador for AIDS awareness and compassion.

ARTHUR ASHE: There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done with the public to assure them that ordinary contact with people like myself poses absolutely no danger to them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Arthur Ashe died in 1993 at 49 of AIDS-related pneumonia. Ray Arsenault has no trouble imagining the man who would be 75 today.

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Today, obviously, he'd be taking a knee for justice with Colin Kaepernick and the others, because he felt so...

EFFREY BROWN: You think he would be?

RAYMOND ARSENAULT: Oh, I have no doubt whatsoever. He never complained about much of anything. But one thing he did complain about was the way that athletes were treated as sort of court jesters, that they were entertainers. And he resented that. I mean, he had a mind. He wanted to be taken seriously as a citizen, kind of active citizenship. His favorite T-shirt was Citizen of the World. That's what he was, from this little parochial boy in Jim Crow Richmond to the quintessential citizen of the world.

JEFFREY BROWN: For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown at the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, New York.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What a great memory.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：本周，第50届美网公开赛依然如火如荼地进行着，也是从那时起，球员开始获取奖金。抱歉，我有阅读障碍。杰弗里·布朗将带我们了解首位男子冠军的故事。这位冠军就是亚瑟·阿什，我们将进一步了解他的闪光点、职业生涯能带给我们的财富。

杰弗里·布朗：当世界上最伟大的网球选手们在纽约法拉盛草地公园进行美网公开赛的比拼时，这里就是圣地一般的存在。这巨型体育馆内见证了人们获得奖杯的喜悦和与奖杯擦肩而过的遗憾。这里是以一位网球巨匠的名字来命名了，他的功绩超过了赛场和体育比赛本身，他就是亚瑟·阿什。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺，作家，《亚瑟·阿什：只此一生》：这句话他说过很多次。如果我只有奖杯值得回忆，那我可以说是一无所有了。我想留下的是财富，能让其他运动员作为榜样来效仿的财富。

杰弗里·布朗：现在出了一本新书，是关于他的传记，名为《亚瑟·阿什：只此一生》，作者是雷蒙德·阿瑟诺。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：说实话，我知道要公正地对待亚瑟很难，因为他的人生错综复杂，有过太多不同的时期。

杰弗里·布朗：阿瑟诺是南佛罗里达大学的历史学家，曾写过多本有关美国南部的书籍。今天他也参与了我们关于今年美网公开赛的报道。到处都是有关阿什的东西，提醒着我们他曾是一条鲜活的生命。这里既有摄影展，也有虚拟现实的影片，都是展现他丰富的一生的。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：这是我第一本有关体育运动的书。

杰弗里·布朗：真的啊。

杰弗里·布朗：我这一辈子都是体育白痴。

杰弗里·布朗：体育白痴？

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：没错。

杰弗里·布朗：但体育题材对于历史学家来说为什么是不错的主题呢？

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：就我个人而言，这是因为竞赛与体育之间的关系所在。我一直对此深深着迷。竞赛一直对阿什来说很重要，因为通过这件事，他可以改变世界。

杰弗里·布朗：1943年，阿什出生在弗吉尼亚州的里士满，那里的种族隔离现象十分严重。这座城市紧挨着最大的全黑人公园，这座公园是由阿什的父亲老亚瑟管理的。

小亚瑟也是在这里第一次打网球的。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：小亚瑟从来没有机会在伯德公园打球，因为伯德公园是白人的主要场地，但这里有建造精良的网球场。亚瑟不是会心怀怨恨之人，也不会随意发怒。但亚瑟说，有一件事一直敲击着他的心：以后的额某一天，他去往某个地方的时候自己已经成名。而来自雷德蒙的老乡会走过来对他说：哦亚瑟，你是我们的骄傲。在雷德蒙的时候，我记得就看你在伯德公园打过球，那时候你还是个小孩子。当然了，只有亚瑟自己心里知道他从未在伯德公园打过球。

杰弗里·布朗：瘦削的阿什得到了恩师罗伯特·约翰逊的认可。后者在弗吉尼亚州的林奇堡开办了一个网球营，让更多非洲裔美国人可以接触到这项运动。但那里依然有种族关系不和的情况

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：约翰逊总说一句话：如果你看见对手击打那枚网球，网球就要出界了，你要接住这个球。我们不希望……

杰弗里·布朗：这句话是什么意思呢？

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：没错，可以这样做。我们经不起意外事件的发生，毕竟你是第一个在非单一种族锦标赛中的黑人选手。如果你搞砸了这次比赛，很可能就不会有下次了。阿什就是在这样的环境里长大的，所以他也养成了这样的做事习惯。他是运动员中的典范。不过，我在研究他事迹的过程中发现，他的内心总是有一种波涛汹涌的感觉，他做事总是有一种动力在的。

杰弗里·布朗：他曾因网球而获得奖学金，来到加州大学洛杉矶分校读书，成为首位代表美国出征戴维斯杯比赛的非洲裔美国人。戴维斯杯是国际性的网球比赛。1968年，25岁的阿什还在美军担任少尉期间就获得了第一次美网公开赛的胜利。他是首位也是唯一一位获得美网公开赛的非洲裔美国人。这次比赛的胜利永远地改变了他的一生。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：正如阿什所说，这次比赛的胜利给了他一个平台。大家会倾听我的意见。就在比赛获胜的一周后……

杰弗里·布朗：您是说阿什后来实现了自己的梦想是吗？

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：哦，当然如此。

杰弗里·布朗：好的。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：他获胜一周后，就成为《面向全国》节目首次邀请的运动员。所以，当时年仅25岁的阿什就开始对答如流地回应有关教育和种族的问题，他镇定自若。

亚瑟·阿什，专业网球运动员：如果您恰好生而为黑人，在1968年这样的时代里，而非在三五十年前，那么您觉得有什么是三五十年前做不到的事情呢？假定就在这样的场景里，这个不同于其他运动员和黑人领袖的时代，大家都在通过自己的权力和影响力来推动实质性的进步。所以这就相当于在对我自己说：亚瑟，你必须要有所行动。

你不能袖手旁边，任凭事态发展。

杰弗里·布朗：他确实写过这样的话，您也了解到，他会感到羞耻，因为其他人都在反抗不公和社会根源，而他却在打网球。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：是的，他说：我的名气越大，我就越痛苦。我觉得他做的很多事都是因为他有动力——弥补错过的时间。

杰弗里·布朗：另外两项大满贯接踵而至，一个是1970年的澳网公开赛，另一个是1975年在温布尔顿战胜了吉米·康诺尔斯。但现在的阿什是一位民权法案活动家，也是一位公众知识分子。他得到了公众的重视，并彻底投身于此，虽然36岁的他就因心脏病和四次绕道手术而被迫退役。阿什积极参加了南非和自己的祖国中的反对种族隔离运动，他努力为黑人少年带来更好的运动设备，他为海地移民抗议，让他们能移民到美国。有时候，一些非裔美国领导人会谴责阿什，说阿什的立场太过激进，但阿瑟诺则表示：

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：他将世界的责任都扛在自己肩上，虽然他知道有些事情他力不能及。他必须用自己的方式来做事，就是那种镇静审慎的方式。他从不会情绪失控，从来不会大喊大叫。他就是这样的人。

杰弗里·布朗：阿什还写了一份三卷的非裔美国运动员历史，名为《光辉之路》。此外还写了一些常规的报纸专栏，以及个人经历的回忆录。1988年，阿什被确诊为艾滋病患者，这是他做心脏手术期间输血造成的。他和妻子珍妮选择将这件事保密，1992年才对外公开，避免媒体大肆报道。

亚瑟·阿什：这件事让我处于两难的境地，我只能撒谎，因为我要保护个人隐私。做这样的决定对任何人来说都太过残忍。

杰弗里·布朗：阿什成为艾滋病意识与同理心的大使。

亚瑟·阿什：对于公众，我们还有很多事要做，确保他们在日常跟我这样的艾滋病人接触中不会面临威胁。

杰弗里·布朗：1993年，阿什去世，享年49岁。病逝原因是与艾滋病相关的肺炎。雷蒙德·阿瑟诺完全想象的到今天75岁的阿什会是什么样子。

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：今天的话，显然，他如果跟四分卫卡布尼或者其他人对决，一定是会单膝下跪的，因为他感觉如此的……

杰弗里·布朗：您觉得他会怎样？

雷蒙德·阿瑟诺：哦，我是毫无疑问的。阿什从来不会过多地抱怨什么。但阿什却抱怨过一件事，那就是人们对待运动员就像对待小丑一样，就好像运动员是他们娱乐的工具。他很讨厌这一点。我想说，他有自己的想法。他想别人把自己当做一位市民来看待，一位参与社会活动积极的市民。阿什最喜欢“世界公民”的T恤。这就是他，一个曾经从小地方里士满走出来的黑人，后来成为了真正的世界公民。

杰弗里·布朗：这里是杰弗里·布朗：为您从纽约法拉盛草地公园美网公开赛现场发回的PBS《新闻一小时》报道。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：亚瑟·阿什将永远在我们心中。