Basketball legend Earl "The Pearl" Monroe's long-awaited autobiography, Earl The Pearl, drops tomorrow. Deadspin's got a great excerpt of the book up today:
Monroe, of course, is one of the truly iconic basketball superstars of the late 1960s and 70s, a key piece in the 1973 Knicks championship puzzle. But this book contains way more than just a bunch of boring basketball stories.
For instance, did you know:
• That Earl lost his virginity at the age of 9 while standing upright in a vestibule? • That as a child, Earl witnessed a grisly murder first-hand? • That the first time Earl heard anyone refer to him as “Black Jesus,” he was being held at gunpoint? • That Earl was once chased through rural Virginia by a carful of hooded Klansmen? • That Earl insists he was left off the U.S. Pan-American Games team in 1967 because the coach was a racist? • That Earl impregnated 3 different women in a 4 year span from 1967-1970? • That Earl once unwittingly smoked angel dust at a party at Bubba Smith’s house? • That Earl was once arrested for his participation in a violent riot at a high school basketball game? • That Earl once received a fan letter from Woody Allen and kicked it with both Miles Davis and Linda Lovelace at an uptown jazz club? • That Earl held up the Knicks' plane to LA after Game 4 of the 1973 NBA Finals because he was looking (with a gun) for two men who had assaulted him on the street near The Garden? • That Earl swears he was once attacked by a ghost in his girlfriend’s Brooklyn apartment?
Those are just a few of the crazy-ass stories recounted in this sprawling 432-page book, which was co-written by Quincy Troupe, the collaborator both on Miles Davis’s autobiography, Miles, and Chris Gardner’s memoir, The Pursuit of Happyness.
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