Mike Wallace, the famed 60 Minutes correspondent, played tennis matches with his good friend Buchwald almost every day of every summer they spent on the Vineyard. When asked what he learned from all the matches, Wallace answers with little hesitation: "How to cheat. Patience. And compassion."
For more than 30 years, Buchwald and Wallace spent as much of their summers in each other's company as their schedules allowed. "He loved to play tennis, and he drove everybody crazy with his lob. He was referred to as The Lobber," Wallace says with a chuckle. "The lob was basically his only stroke. Artie couldn't run very fast, so his lob gave him a chance to run from side to side. Naturally, we wanted to keep him running as much as possible. Once we got him running a little bit, he'd start to sweat and get exhausted. So we got rid of him that way. The games were short; we ran him into the ground."
Their third cohort was the late William Styron, an acclaimed author and walking-distance neighbor. "We were close, close friends," Wallace says. "No matter where I was, in the United States or abroad, when I was going through my depression, Artie called me every single night." Wallace says the trio all went through significant depressions and in turn offered each other support. They referred to themselves as the Blues Brothers.
But on the tennis court, it was every man for himself, and cheating was part and parcel of their matches. Wallace says Buchwald would call balls as in or out--depending on which was more to his advantage--with passionate assertion. "And I would do the same," Wallace happily confesses. He adds with a laugh, "He would claim that I was doing most of the cheating."
Wallace considered himself "a serious tennis player, and a damned good player." Buchwald, by contrast, was all but serious. "C'mon. It was impossible to take Artie's playing very seriously. Occasionally, he'd smoke his cigar while he was playing." Buchwald never observed tennis fashion conventions, Wallace says. "His costumes were hilarious." They always played on the middle court of the yacht club: the women in pastels or tennis whites, Wallace looking dapper in his tennis whites, and Buchwald in a raucous combination of patterns and colors--black knee socks, striped shirts, plaid shorts. "I don't think he owned whites," Wallace says. "He would wear baggy shorts. His dress had nothing to do with tennis, and no one ever saw anyone who dressed like him."
Wallace and Buchwald often played mixed doubles with Lucy Hackney, wife of Sheldon Hackney, former chairman of the National Endowments for the Humanities, and Styron's wife, Rose. Wallace recalls that depending on how the game was progressing, the men would often switch partners with the good-natured women. Their audiences were alternately amused and impatient. "People, particularly on the weekends when it was difficult to get on the court, were entertained at first," Wallace says. "But after a while, they'd seen enough. People around us got a little bored with our antics."
Wallace's tone and inflection reveal their matches were part of a thoroughly enjoyed routine. They were two competitive men, but, Wallace admits, this wasn't a game of competition. "It was a comical undertaking," he says. It was part of their celebration of the Vineyard summer--"a time out from the pressures we both worked under." Wallace's voice softens. "I had so much fun playing with him," he says. "He had a good time, and I had a good time."
C.K. Wolfson is a staff editor at the Martha's Vineyard Times and a freelance writer.