McEnroe and Gorbachev - 2 February 1990

To be here in San Francisco last Monday afternoon, was, on the surface, not unlike being in London on VE Day or in New York's Time Square on VJ Day. On a smaller scale of course, but the mood and the expression of it were much the same.

The people out on the streets in their many thousands celebrating a longed-for victory. The San Francisco 49ers are the world's champion football team and many, even old timers, say the best football team there has ever been, had flown home from a shattering victory at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. The preposterous score was a record 55-10.

And now, on a balmy, sunny afternoon, they were riding in a long motorcade of open cars and sitting there with their wives and babies, waving and giving the high sign to miles of happy faces stacked deep on the sidewalks.

For a night and a day at least, nobody could begrudge these San Franciscans of all ages, conditions, sexes, their hour of unalloyed joy. No Scrooge or deep thinker was in sight to shake a head and remind people, in this din of euphoria, of the revolutionary plight of whole nations on the other side of the world.

What struck me was the general geniality, orderliness, the total lack of rowdies, drunks, mischief-makers, picketers, grouches. I suppose, if I were a native American, this mass benevolence would never have crossed my mind. Americans always respond in dumb disbelief to those similar celebrations in Europe when they turn grizzly, when surging fans start destroying things, let alone stamping on each other.

And in the same way, in a bigger way, there were no reports of vast or small disorders in the Super Bowl itself on Sunday, where the 50, 60,000 of opposing loyalties – there was a huge contingent on hand from Denver – roared throughout the four hours or more they'd been sitting there and then poured out of the stadium in ecstasy or gloom, and on into the festival city where, by the way, the bars never close and the music never stops.

I don't mean to hand out any plaques to the Americans for what is characteristic behaviour. I'm simply puzzled. I have read several of the official reports on some of the disastrous riots that followed European football matches. But so far, nobody has satisfactorily explained to me why football matches should get tragically out of hand in one country and not in this country.

The one notable and noted difference that makes sense, that explains the loss of life when a pressing crowd has turned into a stampede, has to do with the design of the stadiums. In American stadiums, there are no fenced-off areas where people stand. Nobody stands. Everybody has a numbered seat, even the people up against the sky.

But apart from the difference in stadium construction, I can't think of a persuasive reason why European football crowds should tend to bloody violence and Americans to none at all. You'd think from the usual preconceptions about national character that the Americans would be the violent ones. As I say, I'm puzzled, and wish some thoughtful psychologist, sociologist, footballer, fan, would tell me, not what he/she thinks might be the reason, but what is.

Talking about drastic events, at the other end of the world, and while we're on games that are still dubiously called sports, it will not have escaped tennis fans anywhere that a revolutionary move has been made by the Australians who, too, are noted for their romping, boisterous view of life, and would, you might have thought, been the last people to arise after 10 or more years of outrageous behaviour and cry "Hold! Enough!"

Of course I'm talking about John McEnroe, the brilliant, bad boy of the game, whose beautiful talent has been marred throughout a decade by his sudden eruptions into shouted obscenities at the referees, umpires, tournament directors, fans, ball boys, linesmen and anyone in sight who seemed to agree with what he took to be the wrong call.

It seems an age ago since I took an old friend of mine to his first tennis match and he saw what had become a typical and wholly predictable explosion from the adorable imp from Long Island. McEnroe paused, swiped the air with his racket. Put his fists on his hips, meditated, and then marched over to the referee and cast the usual aspersion on his parentage.

My poor old innocent friend was shocked. "Can he do that?" he asked. "No", I said, "but he does." "He should be tossed out of the tournament." "But he won't be."

The television commentators love to show the offensive incidents on replays. They, too, were to blame. They never denounced the referees, the tournament organisers. They even came to accept the standard wretched excuse of McEnroe's father. He never expressed any surprise, let alone shame – he didn't know what we were talking about. But he'd say, "That’s the way John gets himself psyched up!"

I think the fateful period arrived, the time when it would've been almost foolhardy to impose the ultimate punishment, when the fans grew not only used to watching McEnroe's lapses, but came to enjoy them. By then the officials and the referees were truly cowed by the economic facts of life.

If they went beyond a warning and a fine and a penalty to the last act of disqualifying, the fans would have howled, they might have rioted. Cowardice had become an insurance policy.

So it went along until this year's Australian Open, just finished. An amazing development. McEnroe behaved like what used to be called a sportsman. He was suddenly, unbelievably Mr Nice Guy.

"How come?" they asked him. He said a sensible thing. He said, "I have two little boys. When they grow up, I don't want them to believe that their father was a jerk". Incredible. It might have come out of a Victorian boys' storybook, out of Tom Brown's Schooldays. Admirable, all the same.

And then came the match in which this sickness, you might say, got the better of him and he reverted to the usual McEnroe. The rule had not been changed, but tightened. He knew it. He first said no, but later admitted he knew there were now only three punitive stages – a warning, a penalty, expulsion. He protested. He insulted a linesman. He was warned. He hurled his racket. He was penalised.

Next call, he was over by the referee and in turn to him and the tournament director, McEnroe got off a string of obscenities, the like of which, they both said, they had never heard on a tennis court. Mr McEnroe, disqualified. He was thrown out of the tournament. The crowd booed and booed. The ruling stood.

The referee looked back to his book. This should have been done 10 years ago. But perhaps the action of one Australian will make courage fashionable.

Coming now to graver matters, last time I talked about the Americans' reputation as the big dispensers of foreign aid and the fact of their woeful backsliding. The fact, surprising to me, that whereas little Denmark charged the taxpayer $135 a year for foreign aid, and the Dutch $119 and the French, even, 92, the United States charged $40 per capita.

Now, a gentleman from Illinois cites a moderating factor that I should have mentioned. And one that softens the impeachment. I brought up the rather sorry current record in outright foreign aid because of Senator Dole's proposal to cut aid to five favoured nations, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philippines, Israel, in order to give more to the countries of Eastern Europe struggling to be free from the Soviet empire.

This gentleman makes the true point that the foreign aid, so defined, to all these allies and others is a pittance compared with our other expenditures. The other expenditures he has in mind are nothing less than the immense sums the United States pays out first to support its troops in Europe, $180billion, and the debt that the Third World owes to the American treasury and American banks. About 600 billions which, it is no secret, is not going to be repaid.

We have arrived in a fantasy world in which, if a foreign debtor is able to pay the interest on its unpayable debt, it's considered a healthy risk and we send it notes of congratulation, as well as hinting, as we do with a greatly indebted takeover tycoon who suddenly declares himself bankrupt, that – why, he's now eligible for a loan of several more millions to help pay off the creditors at 10 cents in the dollar.

These dizzy figures are quoted just when we're hearing that the Soviets are about to transfer to the western nations 40 years of their own debt and the debt of the Warsaw Pact nations. In all, these come to hundreds of billions. Some incoming members of the new Congress, I hesitate to call the new Isolationists, are looking hard at that figure of 180 billions which support the American armies in Europe. Sooner than later, they muse, it might be a good idea to fetch them home – 180 billions would wipe out the plaguey national deficit at a stroke.

Who else had the same idea? None other than Mr Gorbachev, who has just announced that he is prepared to withdraw all the Russian armies from all his eastern allies if Nato will do the same. The fact that Mr Gorbachev has a very urgent need to convert his huge military budget into a rescue fund for his drowning economy will not be stressed, or perhaps even noticed, in the glow of his brave speeches in favour of a continental peace settlement.

You have to hand it to Mr Gorbachev. He never ceases to demonstrate his gift for making a cry for help sound like an act of statesmanship.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC.

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.