In 1974, I received a Christmas present from my dad: a football jersey.
This is the story about the man who once wore that jersey: Mickey McCarty, a multisport athlete from Texas Christian University, whose athletic body would betray him later in life.
And it’s also a story about the team he played for: the Detroit Wheels, a member of the old World Football League.
A team that was so inept, it went out of business before its first season ended – which is how that jersey wound up in my closet for more than 50 years.
Number 88
I got the jersey – number 88 – during my junior year of high school. My brother, Jim, got one, too: number 57.
I wore it when I played touch football and in intramural hockey games in college. But with my touch football days long behind me, I haven’t put it on since the mid-1990s.
My dad bought the jerseys from a dry cleaner in Detroit that did laundry for the Wheels. When the team folded and declared bankruptcy, it owed money to more than 100 creditors.
The dry cleaner was one of them, so the owner started selling the jerseys to make some of his money back.
There was a lot of that going on when World Football League teams folded.
“The Florida Blazers sold [their jerseys] in early ‘75 on the steps of City Hall,” said Mark Speck, an author and researcher who has written several books about the World Football League. “It was like a yard sale.”
The league was founded by Gary Davidson, who had previously started professional basketball and hockey leagues to compete against the NBA and NHL. His World Hockey Association began play in 1972.
“He started [the hockey league] up the first year, and they did fairly well,” Speck said. “And then he decided, ‘Well, I want to shoot for the … big duck in the pond, and I want to go after the NFL.’ ”
The 12-team World Football League began play in 1974 and included the Detroit Wheels. Among the team’s 33-member ownership group was Motown recording star Marvin Gaye.
But Speck said the team’s unwieldy leadership structure was a problem.
“It’s been a misconception about Detroit ownership … they had 33 owners,” he said. “Well, they didn't really; they had 33 investors. But they didn't have that strong central figure who could go in and make decisions, and had … the majority ownership.”
Problems plagued the team from the start. A deal to play in downtown Detroit at Tiger Stadium fell through.
So, the Wheels wound up at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, about 35 miles away from Detroit. More problems surfaced during the first home game when team officials discovered that a large hill overlooked the field.
“Well, people parked their bikes up there, walked up there, got their picnics up there, didn't pay to get in, of course, and they're sitting up there on this hill watching the game,” Speck said.
“So, it was that kind of situation ... just a lot of bad things happened.”
Detroit lost its first 10 games. Attendance was so low the team moved one of its home games to London – Ontario. Not England.
As the losses mounted, so did the team’s money woes.
It missed payroll, couldn’t afford to film games and didn’t pay the phone bill. The players refused to take the field one game when there weren’t athletic supplies to get their ankles taped.
The Wheels were 1-13 before folding, even though there were still six games left on the schedule. The league folded midway through the next season in 1975.
Despite its short history, Speck said he’s always had a soft spot for the World Football League.
“The thing that … struck me about the league was that these guys really loved the game,” he said. “They weren't getting paid, not only the Wheels but a lot of the teams were defaulting on payments. And so, you know, they were playing for the love of the game.
“It's just a tough thing to have to go in and play for free. But a lot of guys did it. They hung in there, to their credit … and Mickey was one of them. He hung in there with the Wheels.”
The pride of TCU
How Mickey McCarty wound up wearing that jersey from my closet is its own interesting story.
His basketball team won the first NCAA Tournament game in school history, beating Kansas State University 77-72 in a Sweet 16 game in what was then Levitt Arena in Wichita. Mickey had 17 points and 15 rebounds.
When he left school, he was drafted by the NBA, the rival American Basketball Association, Major League Baseball – and the Kansas City Chiefs. They selected him in the fourth round with the 90th pick overall.
“It was not uncommon for football teams to be looking for basketball players,” said Rick Wittenbraker, a basketball teammate of Mickey’s at TCU. “And clearly, Mickey had the right shape, the right physique to do that.
“He was 6 (foot) 5, 250-260 (pounds), something like that. So, he looked more like a football tight end than he did a basketball player, and he played that way. He played a very physical style.”
Mickey spent two seasons with the Chiefs, mostly on the practice squad. But he did get into three games in 1969, when the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl. He would remain a lifelong fan.
He was released by the team in 1970 and returned to Texas, where he spent some of his time coaching and working in the athletic department at TCU.
Then the World Football League started, and Speck said it attracted a lot of players like Mickey hoping for another shot at pro football.
“He … obviously thought, and rightfully so, ‘I've still got some gas left in the tank. I can still play,’” Speck said.
“And a lot of guys did that. They played in the minor leagues, or they had been cut, or they hadn't played for a few years. So there … were a lot of guys like that in the WFL.”
Mickey started the season in Chicago before joining Detroit, where in addition to playing tight end he also did some kicking after the starting kicker was hurt. When the Wheels folded, they owed Mickey $10,000, about $65,000 in today’s money.
Less than a decade after Mickey left the Wheels, his health problems began. He had a stroke in 1981 that paralyzed his left side. So, he taught himself to do everything right-handed.
He had a heart transplant in 1986 and another the next year. Mickey would have two hearts inside of him for the last 24 years of his life.
Wittenbraker, Mickey’s college teammate, said they reconnected after Mickey’s health problems began. He said many of the surgeries done on Mickey were experimental at the time.
He remembers Mickey’s response when his doctor, noted heart surgeon Bud Frazier, asked him what he thought about all the experimenting they were doing on him.
“And Mickey's answer was just so typical of him,” Wittenbraker said. “It's like, ‘Well, Bud, you know what? You can experiment on me all you want because if you hadn't been experimenting on me, I'd have been dead 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So, if you say I need to go to surgery, let's go.’
“Upbeat about it, even in the worst of circumstances,” Wittenbraker said.
Wittenbraker said Mickey never lifted weights, that he was born with a body that led one opposing coach to call him “an Adonis of an athlete.”
“So, he was naturally gifted,” said Wittenbraker, who had a successful career as a lawyer and is a member of the TCU Board of Trustees.
“And it is very ironic that a guy who's so physically gifted and so physically built, that his body would just give out in so many different ways, right?
“Instead of his strength, it becomes his nemesis.”
Mickey the dad and grandpa
Leyla McCarty got to know Mickey about 25 years ago.
She was dating his only child, Cody, whom she would later marry. They would have two daughters, Jaya and Laynee, Mickey’s granddaughters.
Mickey would come to watch his son play football on Friday nights at Bishop High School in south Texas.
“He just was always so down-to-earth, and the nicest man you would ever meet, a friend to everybody,” said Leyla, a fifth-grade teacher in the Fort Worth area.
“Everybody felt that they had a connection to him in some way.”
Leyla said said Mickey was especially close to Cody, a gifted athlete who was big and strong like his father. Cody became an all-conference tight end at TCU, the same school his dad attended.
“He just would support every single thing he did, was there for him every step of the way,” Leyla said of Mickey’s relationship with Cody.
“And I know he was super excited and thrilled when (Cody) did choose TCU in the end, but it was on Cody's terms, not with any push from his dad.”
While Mickey’s health continued to falter, his mood and outlook never did. Leyla remembers visiting him with Cody and their daughter, Jaya, shortly before he died.
Mickey was lying on the couch, weakened now by his losing battle with pancreatic cancer.
“And with all his strength, he got up, gave (Jaya) the biggest hug ever, kind of visited with her and things like that,” she said. “And then we go to San Antonio, and the next day or two, he had passed away. But you would have never known; he was in good spirits and things like that.
“And so that's kind of how he was the whole time we knew him … never complained, never ‘Why me?’ … None of those type of things.”
Mickey died in 2010 at the age of 63. A year later, Cody’s body would betray him as well. He died of a heart attack. He was 29 and working as a high school football coach.
Leyla said Mickey rarely talked about his athletic career, including his years touring with a slow pitch softball team or his induction into the TCU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984.
“When I first met him, I didn't know any of his athletic past or any of … the experiences that he had,” Leyla said, “and he was just always a super humble and kind person.
“Not until we were older and kind of at TCU and around more people … did I realize, ‘Oh, wow, he's done a lot of crazy things.’”
Leyla didn’t know Mickey played for the Detroit Wheels until I contacted her for this story.
She has a few mementos from his career, including a signed basketball from Mickey’s TCU days and his uniform.
And now she has a Detroit Wheels jersey. I sent Mickey’s old number 88 to her and her daughters last month.
Their home – rather than my closet – seemed like a more suitable place to remember one of the greatest athletes in Texas Christian University history.
“I've been to a lot of TCU basketball, football, baseball games, and I don't know of anybody that could have played all three of those sports and played them better than him,” Wittenbraker said of his teammate.
“I don't know of anyone.”
