Before Indianapolis saved the NCAA tournament, the city rescued the 1987 Pan Am Games

INDIANAPOLIS — This is not the first time Indianapolis has bailed out a sports organization in crisis. And this time there is no madness from Fidel Castro.

This is March Madness. With the exception of early games at Bloomington and West Lafayette, the pandemic prompted the NCAA to schedule the entire men’s national basketball tournament in the city of its headquarters. It will be a quasi-bubble for 68 teams and 67 games.

No worries, compared to what Indianapolis faced more than three decades ago. Indianapolis rescued the 1987 Pan American Games, an Aug. 8-23 event that forever changed the city and its image. Thereafter came more Final Fours, a Super Bowl, world championships and Olympic Trials.

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“It wasn’t 67 basketball games. It was over 1,000 sports events, and in venues all over the place,” said Ted Boehm, a retired Indiana Supreme Court justice who was chairman and CEO of the organizing committee, PAX-I.

Taking on big challenges

Jim Morris, vice chairman of Pacers Sports and Entertainment and a member of the executive committee for the Pan Am Games, said it “changed our reputation” and brought the community together.

Mark Miles, now president and CEO of Penske Entertainment, was president of PAX-I.

“I do think the Pan Am Games gave our community the confidence that we could outpunch our weight class,” Miles said. “We could take on big challenges.”

There was none bigger.

Santiago, Chile, was supposed to be the host but pulled out in 1983 because of political and financial problems. Quito, Ecuador, was chosen as the replacement but withdrew in late 1984. The Pan American Sports Organization needed another host, and quickly.

Because Indy was coming off of organization of the 1982 National Sports Festival, a U.S. Olympic Committee event, the city was encouraged to go for it.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Damn, we can do this,’ " said Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, then an attorney who became competition director at the Pan Am Games.

When the event was awarded in December 1984, they had to do this. Organizers did not know what they were getting into, even though leaders stayed mostly intact from the sports festival.

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'It felt like a spy movie'

The timeline was brutal. So were language barriers. There was a need for venues in more sports than contested in an Olympic Games, for nearly 40,000 unpaid volunteers, and for TV rights.

There was a Cold War. Cuba threatened to boycott. There were clandestine meetings with Castro in Havana.

Sandy Knapp, the first executive director of the Indiana Sports Corp., speculated all their hotel rooms were bugged, so they spoke into a lampshade and asked for more towels. The towels arrived.

 “It felt like a spy movie,” she said.

There had been tit-for-tat posturing, with the United States leading a Western boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Union responding with a boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. There would have been a “buzzkill,” as Miles put it, if Cuba had pulled out.

The event was such a priority that the White House had a Pan Am Games task force, chaired by Vice President George H.W. Bush. Federal agencies became involved.

You didn’t need to stand on a ladder to measure the height of the rim at Hinkle Fieldhouse to realize this was bigger than basketball.

In an attempt to influence Castro to change his mind, a PAX-I contingent traveled to Cuba to meet with him. Two days into the visit, they still had not done so. They saw baseball games, not Castro.

Finally, when it was nearly time to go home, they were summoned to a meeting around midnight. It was so abrupt that Knapp left her purse, holding her passport, hanging from a chair.

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They were transported in a Russian car to the Palace de la Revolución, where they sat in a holding room. Finally came the words, “Follow us.” Down a corridor, around a corner, into an office. Standing in front of his desk, wearing his customary military fatigues, was Castro.

The Cuban dictator commented on how young the 30-year-old Miles looked. Miles replied that Castro himself was 32 when he became prime minister in 1959.

Castro rambled for what Miles calculated as 3 hours and 20 minutes, barely taking a breath. Except Castro spoke about baseball, not boycotts.

It was all so surreal, “you were in sensory overload,” Knapp said.

Finally, and subtly, Castro laid out conditions that would allow Cubans to participate in Indianapolis, including selection of Havana for the 1991 Pan Am Games.

“At the end of it, I say, ‘So if we can do this, this, this and this, you’ll come?' ” Miles said.

Castro’s soliloquy had been entirely in Spanish. As far as the Hoosiers knew, that was the only language he understood. Then came Castro’s response:

“That’s absolutely right.”

Once the meeting concluded, a woman in the Hoosier delegation reached into her purse and pulled out three baseballs for Castro to autograph. He obliged.

Not that the Cuban resolution ended crises.

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Facing conflict

 At the time, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala were fighting civil wars. Governments in Honduras and Chile were killing dissidents. All those countries sent teams here.

During the opening ceremony at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the crowd approached 80,000, a plane chartered by anti-Castro activists flew a banner urging Cuban athletes to defect.

The next day, during a baseball game at Bush Stadium, Cuban-American protesters taunted Cuban players, tossing leaflets and offering cash to defect. A fight broke out, and Indianapolis police had to prevent Cuban players from going into the stands.

“That didn’t go over very well,” Miles said dryly.

Police were less successful in keeping Cuban boxers from going into the stands at the Indiana Convention Center and punching protesters. Cuba’s top sports official, Manuel Gonzalez Guerra, wanted the protesters jailed. Miles called the White House, which asked the Cuban-American activists to dial it down.

In a closing ceremony, it is customary to pass the Pan American Games flag from one host city to the next. Castro dropped hints he wanted to enter the United States for that. The Reagan administration was not going to sign off.

“That’s the one time it was a bridge too far,” Miles said.

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Headline act for the closing, held at the Hoosier Dome, was Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. Estefan’s family had fled during the Cuban revolution.

“We should have realized it was provocative and avoided it,” Miles said.

There was no avoiding other crises. The most urgent was housing. There was no room at the inn.

Figuring out the logistics

According to historical data, about 85% of delegations showed up on site at the Pan Am Games. Organizers planned for 90%. The number actually arriving in Indianapolis exceeded 100%. Everyone wanted to come to America.

That’s where Michael Browning came in. The Vietnam War veteran and Indy developer did not have a formal title in PAX-I but was “a utility infielder,” Boehm said. And there were a lot of batted balls hit to that side of the infield.

Browning “saved the Games,” as Boehm put it.

While Miles and Boehm were sequestered all day in meetings, Browning hunted for hotel rooms. The village was supposed to be confined to Fort Benjamin Harrison, but that was overflowing.

“We couldn’t leave them in the buses,” Browning said.

So he found hotels for several delegations, including that of the United States, and paid for it all with American Express. That was his own credit card, in fact. Browning said he thinks he was repaid but couldn’t remember.

“In retrospect, it was surprising we were able to find so many empty rooms on a moment’s notice,” he said.

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Leaders who already had full-time jobs effectively volunteered for an additional full-time job. In some respects, that was the strength of PAX-I. It was a nimble organization featuring people who solved problems on their own without awaiting approval.

“That is what made these games work,” Swarbrick said. “There are literally hundreds of those stories.”

Controversy builds

Another international dust-up occurred when the mother and widow of a man killed in Chile filed suit, charging that a member of the Chilean equestrian team was responsible for torturing and killing 72 people, including a relative of theirs.

Debate around the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) raged for two days with “people yelling and screaming,” Boehm said. Boehm said the Chileans claimed there was quasi-diplomatic immunity, but Hoosier organizers could not override the U.S. legal system.

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“We got the guy out of the country. And his horse,” Boehm said.

Before that, the State Department denied a visa request from a member of Chile’s shooting team, based on information that as a member of Chile’s intelligence agency, he was involved in murders and torture.

Where were the Pan Am Games held?

Venues ranged from equestrian at Hoosier Horse Park in Johnson County to yachting on Lake Michigan. A basketball cathedral, Hinkle Fieldhouse, held volleyball. Kuntz Stadium was built for soccer. It all required negotiations with international sports federations.

“Literally, we went around the world,” Swarbrick said.

To accommodate field hockey, there had to be an artificial surface without a crown that could be watered. So the carpet was moved from the Hoosier Dome to space at the Indiana Convention Center.

Swarbrick found himself on a boat in Eagle Creek Reservoir with the head of Swiss Timing, using a depth finder to make sure all eight lanes would be the same for rowing.

Notable participants, event moments

Team USA often sends a B-list of athletes to Pan American Games, but some of the biggest names in sports attended this one. Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, arguably the greatest U.S. Olympians ever, won the men’s and women’s long jumps. Greg Louganis won two diving gold medals at the Natatorium at IUPUI.

The United States won 370 medals, 169 of them gold. Cuba was second with 175 and 75, respectively.

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Not that the Americans won everything.  They didn’t even win gold in basketball, the sport Hoosiers hold most dear.

Led by Oscar Schmidt’s 46 points, Brazil overcame a 14-point halftime deficit to beat the United States 120-115 before a crowd of 16,408 at Market Square Arena. Schmidt threw himself to the floor as the buzzer sounded, rolling in the embrace of teammates. One player jumped onto a courtside table, waving a Brazilian flag. The New York Times published an account on the front page.

“Not on the sports page. It was a big deal,” Boehm said.

Yet it wouldn’t have been the Pan American Games without closing with more baseball, more Cuba and more drama.

The gold medal baseball  game was a rematch of a game in which Ty Griffin’s two-out, two-run homer lifted the United States to a 6-4 victory over Cuba, which hadn’t lost in the Pan Am Games in 20 years. Boehm sat with José Ramón Fernández, a brigadier general who commanded Cuban defenses at the Bay of Pigs. Fernandez’s presence was controversial to Cuban expatriates.

“He looked like the standard German officer: 6-2, square-shouldered, jut-jawed,” Boehm said.

The United States led 8-5 after four innings. Then the game was interrupted by a late-afternoon thunderstorm, followed by a loud boom. Fernandez and Boehm were sheltering under the stands.

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CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger announced, “There’s been an explosion at the baseball game.”

For five minutes, there was panic. Turns out lightning had struck a TV truck outside left field.

“For me, it was the one of the highlights of the games,” Boehm said. “Most people don’t even remember it.”

Oh, and Cuba came back to win the gold, scoring five unearned runs to beat the United States 13-9.

Knapp left Indianapolis in 1991 and now lives in Dripping Springs, Texas, outside Austin. It was all an adventure, she said, and being in the right place at the right time.

The Sports Festival, she said, was Indianapolis’ introduction to national governing bodies and the U.S. Olympic movement. The Pan American Games represented a world stage, even if the city didn’t have enough build-up, resources, TV money or corporate sponsorships.

“But we pulled it off,” she said.

A basketball tournament in the midst of a pandemic? Indianapolis is trying to pull it off.

Contact IndyStar reporter David Woods at david.woods@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.