June 23, 2023 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, just days before his death, the 40 year-old Maravich shared his story to a small audience about his life pursuing success and fame—until that pursuit brought him to his knees. This is the story of him coming to Christ.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is our American Stories. Pistol Pete Marivitch is widely
regarded as one of the greatest players in basketball history,
also one of my personal hoops heroes. Marrivich starred in
college with the LSU Tigers while playing for his father,
head coach Press Marivich. He's the all time leading NCAAA
Division One scorer still with thirty six hundred and sixty
(00:34):
seven points, and he averaged forty four point two points
per game. All of his accomplishments were achieved before the
adoption of the three point shot and the shot clock,
and despite being able to play varsity as a freshman
under the NCAA rules. That's crazy. Marrivig played ten years
in the NBA and is considered by many to be
the best ball handler of all time. Just days before
(00:58):
his death on January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, the forty
year old Pistol Pete spoke to guests who gathered near
the pool side of Jimmy Walker's house. An NBA All Star.
We'd like to thank Vision Video for giving us special
access to this rare, bonus footage you were about to
hear from their fantastic uplifting movie The pistol the birth
(01:18):
of a legend Gray to g And we're telling this
story because on this day in nineteen forty seven, basketball
legend pistol Pete Maravich was born. Here's Pete Marrivich looking
back on his life just days before his death.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I grew up in Clemson, South Carolina. When I was
four years old, the only thing I ever knew was basketball.
By the time I was five years old, I was
already playing organized basketball.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
My parents baited me into the game, that never forced
me in.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
When I was seven years old, my dad came to
me and he says, Pete, he says, I don't have
any money to send you to college. You're gonna have
to get a scholarship. And if you get a scholarship,
they'll pay your way. Only make twenty nine hundred dollars
a year, and that's she's not going to pay your way.
By you get there, and if you're good enough, Pete,
you might even make it to the pro basketball. That's
where the greatest players play, and there's so few. And
(02:08):
if you get there, you might play on a team
that wins a world championship and.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
You'll get a big diamond ring.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Pete so big, and it has on their world champions,
and you'll be declared as the rest of the team,
one of the greatest at that particular time. Not only that, Pete,
you'll be able to make money. They'll pay you for
doing it. They'll pay you for playing something that you
enjoy doing well. From that day, I decided to commit
my life totally to basketball. I was dedicated, possessed and
(02:35):
obsessed by I was so dedicated to it. I'll tell
you some of the things I used to do. We
lived two and a half miles outside of town in Clemson,
South Carolina, and I used to get the basketball and
I'd dribble in all the way. I would not accept
the ride.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I'd dribble in with my right hand and dribble.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Back home with my left hand, five miles a day
to the gym, where I'd play eight to ten hours
a day. When I finally got a bicycle when I
was about eleven years old ten eleven years old, I
learned to dribble the basketball on my bicycle all the way,
and it made a lot easier to get into town too,
and I got there quicker, and I dribbled the ball
by riding the bicycle. It got so bizarre that my
(03:09):
dad came to me one day and he says, Pete,
come on, get your basketball and let's go in the car.
So where are we going, he says, I'll tell you
when we get there. He went over and he went
on this specific highway and there weren't many cars there,
and he said, now, look, I want you to get
in the back. See stick yourself out that back window there,
and you start dribbling the ball. I'm gonna drive at
various seeds. I want to see if you can really
control this. And so I did that, and he'd go five, ten,
(03:37):
fifteen miles an hour.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
And twenty miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And of course, if you realize when you're trying to
drive a basketball of a car or on a bicycle,
you got to throw it away out in front because
he's going and it's coming back. It really comes back quick,
along with a lot of rocks. And to see the
faces on the people that just happened to be driving
by was.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Something in itself.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It really was. I used to take the basketball to
bed with me. I slept with a basketball till I
was about thirteen years old. I would get in bed
and I'd lay in the bed for one hour before
I ever went to sleep, and I would repeat three
things fingertip control, backspin, follow through, fingertip control, backspin, follow
through as I released it laying down.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I was completely possessed by the game.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I used to go around my house blindfolded, dribbling the
ball because I knewhere everything was, of course, through the
dismay of my mother.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Sometimes I didn't, and I knew how to drib the
ball very fast.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Out of the house, I used to get the basketball
and I would dribble out in thunderstorms, lightning, everything else
you couldn't even see. I used to sneak out of
my back window. I'd go to this little spot where
it was a mud hole. It was kind of a
real hard mud, and I'd start drilling the balls of
mud and everything splashed up on me and literally scared
to death because of the thunder and lightning. Because I
(04:48):
felt like if I could dribble in that mud and
that water and everything else control it, I could certainly
do it on a court when someone was guarding me.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
See, I was so committed to the game of basketball.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
In fact, from the time I was five years old,
I was seventeen years old, over twenty thousand.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Hours of basketball.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And the March Readers Digest, they had a story in
there about television and how it affects young people's minds
or any person. It wasn't four against television. It just
says how it affects one's mind. And it said that
the average person by the time he's twenty years old
sees twenty thousand hours of television. And I kind of
paralleled that with my life, twenty thousand hours of people
(05:22):
watching television. I've spent twenty thousand hours of hard sweat
playing the game of basketball. When I was twelve years old,
it was my first time I ever played in a
regular game for junior varsity. I made the junior varsity
when I was twelve, and I was at thirteen, I
started on my high school team and played five years
of high school basketball. I was four foot nine and
(05:43):
a half and at that time, at twelve, a reporter
came up to me after the game, and I used
to shoot the basketball from down here because I was
too weak to shoot it from up here, and so
I used to take the ball and take it and
release it like this, and this reporter saw him and
he says, what looks like this guy has drawing at
and he wrote that up and that name is stick Stuck.
Ever since I just threw that in, I know that
(06:05):
doesn't interest you at all, but I just wanted to
say that. But he asked me after the game, he
came up and interviewed me. I was my first interview
I ever had, and I wish it had been my last.
But he said, what are you going to do when
you grow up? Pistol Pete? And I said, well, I'm
gonna play pro basketball. I'm gonna be on a team
that wins a world championship and get a diamond ring
and make a million dollars. And he literally fell off
(06:27):
his chair with laughter, and I said, what are you
laughing about it? He said a million dollars. They don't
make that kind of money. This was in the fifties, and.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
He was right.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
But I just felt like at some point in my
life I would My early church life was absolutely probably zero.
I was not raised in a Christian home. I was
raised in a church home. I was raised with telling Pete,
you got to go to church. It's good to go
to church. You gotta you need church. But when I
got into church, I didn't never hear anything. I never
(06:56):
heard who Jesus Christ was when I was young, because
I didn't want to hear. See sit in there and
literally count ticks in my head one, two, three up
to a minute, and that would go for an hour
until I got out of there. I felt that if
I was in this church for an hour, or somebody
in Philadelphia, La Boston or New York was playing basketball,
and when it came down to get that scholarship, I
would not get it.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
See, and I.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Progressed on into my teenage years. When I was fourteen
years old, was the first time I ever had my
first taste of alcohol. I had a beer at fourteen
years of age on the steps of the Methodist church
in Clemson, South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And I liked it. I really did like it. I
liked it a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
If there's something I can tell you young people here tonight,
it's this, don't ever take that first drink, and don't
ever take that first drug, because it'll never be your
last and it'll lead to destruction. Because that's literally what
almost happened in my own life. Ninety eight percent of
all people in jails today started with that first drink.
Eighty five percent of over five hundred thousand people in
(08:00):
ectional institutions today committed their crimes, but only the influence
of a mind altering substance drugs or alcohol. And all
of a sudden, this tremendous commitment that I had and
everything else I kind of went down the drain.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I didn't have it anymore.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And I'd played so much up until that time when
I was fourteen fifteen going to sixteen seventeen, But all
of a sudden, I had time on the weekends to
do other things. I saw the opposite sex for the.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
First time in life.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
You see, I was completely obsessed with basketball. I didn't
do whatever other people did. My god was basketball. Their
god was sex, alcohol, and whatever else. But I didn't
see any of that until I was fourteen. And then
my eyes opened up and I enjoyed it, and I
started getting into it. And then that toe hold became
(08:48):
a foothold, and the foothold became a stronghold, and that
stronghold became.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
An entire possession.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I'm not scared to tell you here I was an alcoholic.
I can't get people to write that up because I've
never been to a clinic or anything. And all my
friends drank just like I did, and they were alcoholics too.
I enjoyed it a great deal because there's a great
pleasure and sin. There's a lot of pleasure in it
because there wasn't nobody would do it. When I was
eighteen years old, I was asked to go out to
Lake Arrowhead out in San Bernino, California, to a campus
(09:17):
crusade for christ. They asked me to come out there
and do what you just saw here what was called showtime.
They said, would you come out here and do your
clinic Pete. I said, well, sure, that'd be great. I'll
bring one of my friends and we'll just come out
there California.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I've never been there. It'll be fun. So we got
in the car and I was just.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Reaching my eighteenth birthday, literally right before what was to
be called the Pistol pe Era in Southeastern Conference basketball.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And you're listening to Pistol Pete Marrivitch reflecting on his
own life, his days before his tragic death and a
premature death at that. When we come back more of
it's remarkable talk by Pistol Pete. Here are our American stories,
(10:09):
and we're back with our American stories, and we're to
continue with pistol Pete Maravich, who was born on this
day in nineteen forty seven. One of the old time
greatest players and an idol of mine. I can't tell
you how many hours I spent watching him on television
the rare times he would come on, and then trying
to copy every single thing he did. Let's go back
(10:32):
to Pistol Pete.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And so I drove out there and we partied all
the way out and we had fun, and we chased girls,
and we just were in every bar we could find
and everything else.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Took us three or four days to get out there.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And as I drove up on this campus, I noticed
that there were people sitting around praying and holding hands
under trees and things of this nature.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
And I became very embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I didn't want any part of that, and I told
my friend, I said, hey, we got to go out
of here. I'm gonna do this clinic and get out
of these people are nuts, I mean, where are they smoking?
And put that beer down. We don't want to, you know,
we don't want to see him with this with this beer.
So I checked into this place and it was for
three days, and I asked, wh when am I supposed
to do my clinic? And they said, well, people, we're
(11:15):
not sure yet, but if you just bear with us,
we're gonna have you over here with this group.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
And I said, what do you mean. What am I
gonna do? Is it's well nothing, there's nothing to do.
We'll just put you here. Would you would be all right?
And I said okay.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So I stayed with this group and my friend went
with another group, and for three days I finally heard
who Jesus Christ was. I wasn't concerned about that. To me,
it was just a story. It was a story. It
was nice, that's nice. But after the end of three
days there there was no impact on my life. We
went out to the beach. Bill Battle, who was an
(11:46):
All American football player and with a bicep as large
as my thigh, said, we're going out to the beach.
I'm taking this group with me. We're going to witness
for Christ. And I said, what do you mean witness?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
What is this?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Bill? What do you mean witness? What were you talking about?
He's used to come along, Pete. We just want to
show what we do here. So I went along with him,
and we went out on the beaches out there in
California beaches and he he goes up to the worst
looking group. This is back during the sixties. This is
the most revolutionary time, the rebellious time in our history.
(12:19):
Probably that's led to so much of the rebellion today.
And yet he went up to the worst looking group.
Guy had tattoos, all of his own hair down here,
was smoking a joint, drinking. There was about four or
five of them. They were mean looking, ugly, they didn't
smell very good everything, and I stayed wait in the background.
But you know, the Lord has a way to use people.
You see, he went up to this guy who was
(12:40):
the meanest looking guy right behind his head. He says,
you know something, I would really like to share something
with you folks. And this guy was literally going to
turn around and punch him. I know, because he turned around.
He said, look, go right ahead, because that ad by
said was right in his face. Now, if anything impressed
it was that that did impress me. I said, Wow,
(13:04):
how God gets people's attention. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
So they witnessed, and.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I don't remember I think some of them left right away.
They said, oh, you Jesus freaks and all this kind
of stuff, and I just kind of turned my head.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I don't want to know part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
At the end of three days, there was a There
was a thousand kids, and I was.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And Bill Bright, who's founder of the Camp Scrusade, gave
a message much like Billy Graham had an invitation for
people to come receive Christ. Then he had him to
come publicly and receive him. Lo and Behold. My friend
was sitting next to me.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
He got up.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I said, what are you doing? She says, Pete, I don't
know what to tell you. I really don't know what
to tell you. I just received Christ, end of my life.
I said, ken, hey man, ken' you something you ate
or something something? And I grabbed him by the arm.
I literally tried to steal away his salvation. I said,
don't go up to the embarrassing Then I remember saying that,
(13:54):
and he pulled away and he went up there. He says,
you don't understand. I said, no, I don't. And he
walked up there. And I remember sitting there and say,
when you're not gonna get me God, I'm gonna play
pro basketball. Being a world championship team and make a
million dollars. Boy asks what I want in life. But
you know, as I've reflected over that time, how many
times I've cried and wish that I'd received Christ in
(14:15):
my life. Then you know why, because God had sent
me there for a purpose, not to do a clinic.
I never did one. Nobody even asked me. But He
put me there for one reason. Pete, come home now,
Come home now, because you're about to embark on a
tremendous amount of personal tragedy and destruction in your life.
(14:37):
And it doesn't have to be that way, but you
can choose that way, and you don't have to. And
I want to on into college, and I did a
lot of things in college. I've set something like around
fifty basketball records from high school, college, and pro The
amount of trophies and awards and plaques that I have,
the amount of honorary mayorships and keys the cities that
(15:02):
I have, except the time when I go to those
cities and try to get the keys, they don't ever
give them to me. It could literally, really, I could
go around this entire pool area. Now I have a
trophy from nineteen seventy two in a box.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
It's never been opening.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Six foot five inches and six foot five one quarter
inch tall, the exact height of me. I've never seen it.
I've never opened the box. But they're all stored away.
They they don't really do.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Anything for me.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
But I've had all those trophies, awards, I've had popularity,
I've had fame. I had a tremendous amount of fame
back in the sixties, tremendous amount of popularity everywhere when
we played before over right at a million people in
college in three years, and that's pretty good. And I
had all this adulation and people wrote me. I got
thousands of letters a week from fans. We idolize you,
(15:50):
Pete Merriwich, You're my idol. You're this, You're that. And
I wasn't a role model at all, not at all.
I wasn't a role model for young people at all.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
None. Zero.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
And then after my college and I was all American
and I was I'm the leading scorer of all time
in college basketball. It'll be broken someday, but I'm the
leading scorer averaged over forty four points a game for
a three year period. Just hold just all kinds of records.
(16:24):
My high school records are still hell. I still hold
the record for the All Star game. I scored forty
seven points in the East West High School All Star
Game back in nineteen sixty five. But still there. It
hasn't been broken, and some great players have come through there.
And then I went into pros, you see. And I
had a lot of fun in college, a lot of fun,
too much fun. In fact, I was in nine accidents
(16:45):
in college and walked away from every.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
One of them. Not only that.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
One time I was coming home from putting on a
clinic in Pennsylvania and I drove seven hundred miles and
I stopped for the night.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It was a halfway point. I went down to a
local pub, local little ball.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Sat in there and had about two beers, and a
young lady came over to me. I said, how are you, sweetie?
I said, I'm just fine. He said, you mind if
I sit down here? I said, well, suit yourself. So
I was sitting there. I wasn't there at two minutes
when a guy came up to me, about six foot five,
(17:22):
about two hundred and seventy pounds, said what are you
doing with my girl? He said, I'm not doing anything
with her. Sir, I'm just sitting here. I'm just having
this cold beer here. I don't want any trouble. I didn't,
you know. And he started pushing me. He started hitting
me in the shoulder. And I grew up a kid,
knowing that you never backed down from anybody. I don't
(17:42):
care what the odds. I wasn't going back down. And
I told him to get his hands off of me
and all this, and before long, one thing led to
another and they said, y'all get out of here.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
If you're gonna fight. He said, yeah, come on, So
I said fine.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So I got up and I went out quickly, and
I made myself through the crowd and I got outside
and I stood stayed behind the door, and I was
really gonna get this guy when he came out.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
But he never came. Of course. I didn't wait there
about two minutes, and he didn't come, you.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
See, And so I said, I better get out of here,
and I left, and I walked out in the parking lot.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
As I was walking in the back of the parking lot,
I tore it up.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I saw a telephone booth where I was gonna call
a taxi to go to a holiday in where I
was staying. As I was walking out, I heard this
guy came out and he yelled to me, and little
did I know that another guy had gone around the
other side and they both had blackjacks, which I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And the guy.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
The old story is that the guy just literally they
just hit me from behind and beat me up pretty good.
As I laid there on that parking lot that night,
that girl came up and I was all blood, and
she took a twenty five automatic pistol and she put
it in my mouth and cocked it and she said,
you're a dead man, Pistol Pete, how about that? And
(19:00):
I remember laying there and from the depths of my heart,
I said, yeah, kiln, because then I'll have peace.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And you've been listening to Pistol Pete Marrivich and he
gave this speech not long before his death, indeed, just
days more of Pistol Pete Marrivitch's life story, his last
story that he told in front of a large audience
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our
(19:41):
American stories and with Pistol Pete Marrivitch's story, one of
the last ones he told in his life, this one
just days before he passed.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But you know something.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
There's a god up there that overruled Satan that night too.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
You overruled him. And I know that.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And I went into the pros and I signed the
largest contract in the history of sports, not basketball sports
at the time, it made the Guinness Book of Records.
It lasted thirty days. They started pouring out a lot
of big money back then. And I searched all through
the nineteen seventies for what meaning there was to life.
(20:25):
I had to know the meaning, what was the meaning?
And I got involved in all kinds of different things.
I was involved in yoga and TM, I was involved
very heavily in uithology, philosophy.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I was involved in.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Different religions, Hinduism especially. I was involved in everything. But
the thing about it is, none of it really satisfied me.
They were just all brief interludes of satisfaction, much like
my life was brief interludes of just ego, gratification, satisfaction,
and all through that time. In fact, in nineteen seventy six,
I decided I was going to live to be one
(20:58):
hundred and fifty years old. And I got very heavily
and the nutrition because I was into Hinduism, and I
was into the karma and all these other types of situations.
And I became a vegetarian and then a fruitarian, and
a macrobotic and a mini dose and a MAXI dosed
on vitamins and I fasted twenty five days, and I
sat in all kinds of different positions, and I was
(21:18):
searching for life, for friends. I was really searching for
life because my life had no meaning at all. My
life had absolutely no meaning at all. And in each
one of these stops, each one of these stops, I
had to have something else. They just didn't satisfy me.
In nineteen eighty I quit basketball.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I just quit.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I walked away from it because of immaturity and because
of the fact that I.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Just got tired of it all. I just got tired
of it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I got tired of my life, and I became a recluse.
For about two years, I sat in my home. We
had our first son, Jason. He was only one and
a half years old, and I was set there for
hours at a time trying to teach him seven and
eight year old puzzles. Because I wanted my son Jason
to have what I didn't. I wanted him to have
a high intellect. See, I want him to be an
intelligent person. I want him to be able to go
(22:05):
to the right parties and say the right things. I
thought that was important. I really thought that was important.
And so my wife used to come to me and
she says, Pete, you really need to go see someone,
because you're really flipping out. I said, what do you mean.
She says, you haven't left his house in two weeks.
I said, yeah, I know. I brought to the garage
and so, but I was really lost. And in nineteen
(22:29):
eighty two, I went to bed one night. It was
like any other night, Pete marriviage had all the material
things you could want. I used to carry around five
thousand dollars in my pocket and cash in twenties. I
never cared any change. But I had all that stuff,
(22:54):
and none of it ever satisfied.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I mean, not the money, not the wealth, not the success.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And I laid there in vain and I couldn't sleep,
and I didn't understand it, and all of a sudden,
everything started coming up in my life, all the sin,
every sin I'd ever committed, and I've committed many. Let
me tell you many sins. In my life and there's
nothing hidden. And I'm not airing all my dirty laundry here.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I'm not trying to.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
I don't want to give Satan any credit, but I
can tell you this.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
It all came up.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
And it also came up when I was eighteen, when
I could have received Christ.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
And it was five thirty in the morning now.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I laid there crying with two pillars back up
in my back, with an unsaved wife next to me.
And I was sitting there crying, and I said, God,
I've punched you, I've kicked you, I've cursed you, I've
used your name in vain, I've mocked you, I've embarrassed you.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I've done all those things.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And yet do you really, I mean, will you really
forgive me the things that I've done? And I was
about to get over on the side of my bed.
And what happened to me doesn't happen everybody. And what
happened to me happened to me. And that's why I'm
(24:12):
talking out of my shoes. Many people don't believe it.
Manythingl Odians don't believe it. Many people, many Fieldians don't
believe in God. God spoke to me audibly right there
in the room, and he said be strong and left
thine own heart literally audibly. I looked around the room.
I was in total shock. I'd never heard anything like
(24:34):
that before. And I was so shocked that I reached
over and I awoke my wife, just shaking her like crazy.
I said, Jackie, did you Jackie, did you hear what
the Lord said to me?
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Did you hear that?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
You must understand Jackie had seen me go through all
kinds of trips in my life. And she just kind
of looked at me in a dark haze that it
was at five thirty in the morning and said, Pete,
you really have gun nuts having you and she just
went back to sleep.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I was sitting there and all of a sudden, about
a year and a half ago, Uh, my wife and
I went through a terrible tragedy. I was restoring an
old Victorian home and I had just gotten back from China.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Some friends came over and when we were showing them the.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
House, uh, we'd gone upstairs with them and there was
no banish, so we told our kids to, you know, stay.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Away from the stairs, just gonna be here.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Second we were showing them and as careful as we
are with our children.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I'd forgotten that there, didn't even really think about it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I'd built in a little closet and upstairs room, and
in that closet was an air conditioning vent, an old
one that had been stuffed up with insulation. And uh
uh it really happened very quickly.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Uh. They both kind of ran in there.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We didn't see him, and all of a sudden, it
it was like that my wife heard a a very
loud thumped and when she uh went back there, Uh, Joshua,
my little two year old at the time, wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Uh. I just kind of knew what happened, and I
dashed down the floor and I went in there, and
I saw my little son lying there in a pool
of blood.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
He had landed an impact had hit him directly in
the eye is where he hit on this part of
his head. He was in a semiconscious state, taken CPR
in the past, and my wife never did see him.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I'm glad you didn't, because it's something I'll live with
on my life.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
But anyway, I picked him up and he was just
a lifeless little body.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
His heartbeat was so faint that.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I didn't know whether he was going to make it
or not, but I rushed him to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I got him there.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And there wasn't even any doctors there at this particular
hospital that the guy that was supposed to be there
was off who was in lunch or something like that,
and it.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Just so happened.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I had a Christian painter there and a Christian carpenter.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
And they started praying.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
They found a doctor and he came in and checked
him out, and I was in prayer in.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
The other room.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
My wife was literally away with uh, just had lost
it completely, and we didn't know what was gonna happen
to Joshua. About ten minutes later, the doctor came out.
He happened to be an eye surgeon, and he says, Pete, Uh,
Joshua's gonna make it.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And I said, thank God for that. I said, that's
just great.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
He says, but, uh, we've looked in his eye just
very quickly, and it looks like all the muscles of
his eyes have been of his eye have been torn away.
So I'm going back in there and check him out,
and you just uh waiting here, and I said, find
I just went back in prayer and my prayer wasn't
that uh josh be healed. My prayer was according to
(27:41):
God's plan in Joshua's life, that it just be worked out.
And so about fifteen minutes later, the doctor came back
to me and he says, Pete, He says, I really
can't uh believe what happened.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
And I said, what's that? Doctor?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And he says, we look in Joshua's eye just now,
and it's as clear as a bell. There's no contusions,
there's no there's no broken bones, his neck is there's nothing.
I mean, it's just absolutely clear. Plus the fact he's
just gonna be perfect. There's nothing wrong with him except
(28:15):
this massive swelling that has taken place. Well, that was
just a little miracle of my life. And as I
thought about this, I started reflecting back on.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
My own life.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
And it's been that way in my life hundreds upon
hundreds of times that I've literally reflected back at the
times that I really shouldn't be here, but I am here,
and I'm here for one purpose. Jesus Christ changed my life.
Money didn't do it. Women didn't do it. Friends didn't
do it. Pastors didn't do it. Wealth didn't do it.
(28:46):
Success President of being a company, owning your own business,
having your own boat. I don't have much time left,
and the time that I have I'm giving to the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And you've been listening to pistol. Pete marriage in one
of the last talks he ever gave here on this earth.
He suffered a heart attack, and he died on Tuesday,
January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, after playing a pickup basketball
game at a Pasadena, California church. He was only forty.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
We were on a break and he walked up to me, said,
focus on the family's James Dobson. I asked him how
he was feeling. He said, I feel great. He took
one step and fell, and Dobson continued, quote. I tried
to do what I could, but he'd had a seizure.
That was easy to see. He was jaundice and his
(29:45):
eyes rolled back in his head. His body was rigid.
It was clear he was leaving. I called out to him,
asked him not to go, but it was much too late.
Pete Marrivich died in doctor Dobson's arms. The story of
Pete Maravich in his home words, who was born on
this day in nineteen forty seven. Here on our American
(30:08):
stories
This is our American Stories. Pistol Pete Marivitch is widely
regarded as one of the greatest players in basketball history,
also one of my personal hoops heroes. Marrivich starred in
college with the LSU Tigers while playing for his father,
head coach Press Marivich. He's the all time leading NCAAA
Division One scorer still with thirty six hundred and sixty
(00:34):
seven points, and he averaged forty four point two points
per game. All of his accomplishments were achieved before the
adoption of the three point shot and the shot clock,
and despite being able to play varsity as a freshman
under the NCAA rules. That's crazy. Marrivig played ten years
in the NBA and is considered by many to be
the best ball handler of all time. Just days before
(00:58):
his death on January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, the forty
year old Pistol Pete spoke to guests who gathered near
the pool side of Jimmy Walker's house. An NBA All Star.
We'd like to thank Vision Video for giving us special
access to this rare, bonus footage you were about to
hear from their fantastic uplifting movie The pistol the birth
(01:18):
of a legend Gray to g And we're telling this
story because on this day in nineteen forty seven, basketball
legend pistol Pete Maravich was born. Here's Pete Marrivich looking
back on his life just days before his death.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I grew up in Clemson, South Carolina. When I was
four years old, the only thing I ever knew was basketball.
By the time I was five years old, I was
already playing organized basketball.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
My parents baited me into the game, that never forced
me in.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
When I was seven years old, my dad came to
me and he says, Pete, he says, I don't have
any money to send you to college. You're gonna have
to get a scholarship. And if you get a scholarship,
they'll pay your way. Only make twenty nine hundred dollars
a year, and that's she's not going to pay your way.
By you get there, and if you're good enough, Pete,
you might even make it to the pro basketball. That's
where the greatest players play, and there's so few. And
(02:08):
if you get there, you might play on a team
that wins a world championship and.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
You'll get a big diamond ring.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Pete so big, and it has on their world champions,
and you'll be declared as the rest of the team,
one of the greatest at that particular time. Not only that, Pete,
you'll be able to make money. They'll pay you for
doing it. They'll pay you for playing something that you
enjoy doing well. From that day, I decided to commit
my life totally to basketball. I was dedicated, possessed and
(02:35):
obsessed by I was so dedicated to it. I'll tell
you some of the things I used to do. We
lived two and a half miles outside of town in Clemson,
South Carolina, and I used to get the basketball and
I'd dribble in all the way. I would not accept
the ride.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I'd dribble in with my right hand and dribble.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Back home with my left hand, five miles a day
to the gym, where I'd play eight to ten hours
a day. When I finally got a bicycle when I
was about eleven years old ten eleven years old, I
learned to dribble the basketball on my bicycle all the way,
and it made a lot easier to get into town too,
and I got there quicker, and I dribbled the ball
by riding the bicycle. It got so bizarre that my
(03:09):
dad came to me one day and he says, Pete,
come on, get your basketball and let's go in the car.
So where are we going, he says, I'll tell you
when we get there. He went over and he went
on this specific highway and there weren't many cars there,
and he said, now, look, I want you to get
in the back. See stick yourself out that back window there,
and you start dribbling the ball. I'm gonna drive at
various seeds. I want to see if you can really
control this. And so I did that, and he'd go five, ten,
(03:37):
fifteen miles an hour.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
And twenty miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And of course, if you realize when you're trying to
drive a basketball of a car or on a bicycle,
you got to throw it away out in front because
he's going and it's coming back. It really comes back quick,
along with a lot of rocks. And to see the
faces on the people that just happened to be driving
by was.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Something in itself.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It really was. I used to take the basketball to
bed with me. I slept with a basketball till I
was about thirteen years old. I would get in bed
and I'd lay in the bed for one hour before
I ever went to sleep, and I would repeat three
things fingertip control, backspin, follow through, fingertip control, backspin, follow
through as I released it laying down.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I was completely possessed by the game.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I used to go around my house blindfolded, dribbling the
ball because I knewhere everything was, of course, through the
dismay of my mother.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Sometimes I didn't, and I knew how to drib the
ball very fast.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Out of the house, I used to get the basketball
and I would dribble out in thunderstorms, lightning, everything else
you couldn't even see. I used to sneak out of
my back window. I'd go to this little spot where
it was a mud hole. It was kind of a
real hard mud, and I'd start drilling the balls of
mud and everything splashed up on me and literally scared
to death because of the thunder and lightning. Because I
(04:48):
felt like if I could dribble in that mud and
that water and everything else control it, I could certainly
do it on a court when someone was guarding me.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
See, I was so committed to the game of basketball.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
In fact, from the time I was five years old,
I was seventeen years old, over twenty thousand.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Hours of basketball.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And the March Readers Digest, they had a story in
there about television and how it affects young people's minds
or any person. It wasn't four against television. It just
says how it affects one's mind. And it said that
the average person by the time he's twenty years old
sees twenty thousand hours of television. And I kind of
paralleled that with my life, twenty thousand hours of people
(05:22):
watching television. I've spent twenty thousand hours of hard sweat
playing the game of basketball. When I was twelve years old,
it was my first time I ever played in a
regular game for junior varsity. I made the junior varsity
when I was twelve, and I was at thirteen, I
started on my high school team and played five years
of high school basketball. I was four foot nine and
(05:43):
a half and at that time, at twelve, a reporter
came up to me after the game, and I used
to shoot the basketball from down here because I was
too weak to shoot it from up here, and so
I used to take the ball and take it and
release it like this, and this reporter saw him and
he says, what looks like this guy has drawing at
and he wrote that up and that name is stick Stuck.
Ever since I just threw that in, I know that
(06:05):
doesn't interest you at all, but I just wanted to
say that. But he asked me after the game, he
came up and interviewed me. I was my first interview
I ever had, and I wish it had been my last.
But he said, what are you going to do when
you grow up? Pistol Pete? And I said, well, I'm
gonna play pro basketball. I'm gonna be on a team
that wins a world championship and get a diamond ring
and make a million dollars. And he literally fell off
(06:27):
his chair with laughter, and I said, what are you
laughing about it? He said a million dollars. They don't
make that kind of money. This was in the fifties, and.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
He was right.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
But I just felt like at some point in my
life I would My early church life was absolutely probably zero.
I was not raised in a Christian home. I was
raised in a church home. I was raised with telling Pete,
you got to go to church. It's good to go
to church. You gotta you need church. But when I
got into church, I didn't never hear anything. I never
(06:56):
heard who Jesus Christ was when I was young, because
I didn't want to hear. See sit in there and
literally count ticks in my head one, two, three up
to a minute, and that would go for an hour
until I got out of there. I felt that if
I was in this church for an hour, or somebody
in Philadelphia, La Boston or New York was playing basketball,
and when it came down to get that scholarship, I
would not get it.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
See, and I.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Progressed on into my teenage years. When I was fourteen
years old, was the first time I ever had my
first taste of alcohol. I had a beer at fourteen
years of age on the steps of the Methodist church
in Clemson, South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And I liked it. I really did like it. I
liked it a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
If there's something I can tell you young people here tonight,
it's this, don't ever take that first drink, and don't
ever take that first drug, because it'll never be your
last and it'll lead to destruction. Because that's literally what
almost happened in my own life. Ninety eight percent of
all people in jails today started with that first drink.
Eighty five percent of over five hundred thousand people in
(08:00):
ectional institutions today committed their crimes, but only the influence
of a mind altering substance drugs or alcohol. And all
of a sudden, this tremendous commitment that I had and
everything else I kind of went down the drain.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I didn't have it anymore.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And I'd played so much up until that time when
I was fourteen fifteen going to sixteen seventeen, But all
of a sudden, I had time on the weekends to
do other things. I saw the opposite sex for the.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
First time in life.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
You see, I was completely obsessed with basketball. I didn't
do whatever other people did. My god was basketball. Their
god was sex, alcohol, and whatever else. But I didn't
see any of that until I was fourteen. And then
my eyes opened up and I enjoyed it, and I
started getting into it. And then that toe hold became
(08:48):
a foothold, and the foothold became a stronghold, and that
stronghold became.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
An entire possession.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I'm not scared to tell you here I was an alcoholic.
I can't get people to write that up because I've
never been to a clinic or anything. And all my
friends drank just like I did, and they were alcoholics too.
I enjoyed it a great deal because there's a great
pleasure and sin. There's a lot of pleasure in it
because there wasn't nobody would do it. When I was
eighteen years old, I was asked to go out to
Lake Arrowhead out in San Bernino, California, to a campus
(09:17):
crusade for christ. They asked me to come out there
and do what you just saw here what was called showtime.
They said, would you come out here and do your
clinic Pete. I said, well, sure, that'd be great. I'll
bring one of my friends and we'll just come out
there California.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I've never been there. It'll be fun. So we got
in the car and I was just.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Reaching my eighteenth birthday, literally right before what was to
be called the Pistol pe Era in Southeastern Conference basketball.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And you're listening to Pistol Pete Marrivitch reflecting on his
own life, his days before his tragic death and a
premature death at that. When we come back more of
it's remarkable talk by Pistol Pete. Here are our American stories,
(10:09):
and we're back with our American stories, and we're to
continue with pistol Pete Maravich, who was born on this
day in nineteen forty seven. One of the old time
greatest players and an idol of mine. I can't tell
you how many hours I spent watching him on television
the rare times he would come on, and then trying
to copy every single thing he did. Let's go back
(10:32):
to Pistol Pete.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And so I drove out there and we partied all
the way out and we had fun, and we chased girls,
and we just were in every bar we could find
and everything else.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Took us three or four days to get out there.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And as I drove up on this campus, I noticed
that there were people sitting around praying and holding hands
under trees and things of this nature.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
And I became very embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I didn't want any part of that, and I told
my friend, I said, hey, we got to go out
of here. I'm gonna do this clinic and get out
of these people are nuts, I mean, where are they smoking?
And put that beer down. We don't want to, you know,
we don't want to see him with this with this beer.
So I checked into this place and it was for
three days, and I asked, wh when am I supposed
to do my clinic? And they said, well, people, we're
(11:15):
not sure yet, but if you just bear with us,
we're gonna have you over here with this group.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
And I said, what do you mean. What am I
gonna do? Is it's well nothing, there's nothing to do.
We'll just put you here. Would you would be all right?
And I said okay.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So I stayed with this group and my friend went
with another group, and for three days I finally heard
who Jesus Christ was. I wasn't concerned about that. To me,
it was just a story. It was a story. It
was nice, that's nice. But after the end of three
days there there was no impact on my life. We
went out to the beach. Bill Battle, who was an
(11:46):
All American football player and with a bicep as large
as my thigh, said, we're going out to the beach.
I'm taking this group with me. We're going to witness
for Christ. And I said, what do you mean witness?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
What is this?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Bill? What do you mean witness? What were you talking about?
He's used to come along, Pete. We just want to
show what we do here. So I went along with him,
and we went out on the beaches out there in
California beaches and he he goes up to the worst
looking group. This is back during the sixties. This is
the most revolutionary time, the rebellious time in our history.
(12:19):
Probably that's led to so much of the rebellion today.
And yet he went up to the worst looking group.
Guy had tattoos, all of his own hair down here,
was smoking a joint, drinking. There was about four or
five of them. They were mean looking, ugly, they didn't
smell very good everything, and I stayed wait in the background.
But you know, the Lord has a way to use people.
You see, he went up to this guy who was
(12:40):
the meanest looking guy right behind his head. He says,
you know something, I would really like to share something
with you folks. And this guy was literally going to
turn around and punch him. I know, because he turned around.
He said, look, go right ahead, because that ad by
said was right in his face. Now, if anything impressed
it was that that did impress me. I said, Wow,
(13:04):
how God gets people's attention. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
So they witnessed, and.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I don't remember I think some of them left right away.
They said, oh, you Jesus freaks and all this kind
of stuff, and I just kind of turned my head.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I don't want to know part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
At the end of three days, there was a There
was a thousand kids, and I was.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And Bill Bright, who's founder of the Camp Scrusade, gave
a message much like Billy Graham had an invitation for
people to come receive Christ. Then he had him to
come publicly and receive him. Lo and Behold. My friend
was sitting next to me.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
He got up.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I said, what are you doing? She says, Pete, I don't
know what to tell you. I really don't know what
to tell you. I just received Christ, end of my life.
I said, ken, hey man, ken' you something you ate
or something something? And I grabbed him by the arm.
I literally tried to steal away his salvation. I said,
don't go up to the embarrassing Then I remember saying that,
(13:54):
and he pulled away and he went up there. He says,
you don't understand. I said, no, I don't. And he
walked up there. And I remember sitting there and say,
when you're not gonna get me God, I'm gonna play
pro basketball. Being a world championship team and make a
million dollars. Boy asks what I want in life. But
you know, as I've reflected over that time, how many
times I've cried and wish that I'd received Christ in
(14:15):
my life. Then you know why, because God had sent
me there for a purpose, not to do a clinic.
I never did one. Nobody even asked me. But He
put me there for one reason. Pete, come home now,
Come home now, because you're about to embark on a
tremendous amount of personal tragedy and destruction in your life.
(14:37):
And it doesn't have to be that way, but you
can choose that way, and you don't have to. And
I want to on into college, and I did a
lot of things in college. I've set something like around
fifty basketball records from high school, college, and pro The
amount of trophies and awards and plaques that I have,
the amount of honorary mayorships and keys the cities that
(15:02):
I have, except the time when I go to those
cities and try to get the keys, they don't ever
give them to me. It could literally, really, I could
go around this entire pool area. Now I have a
trophy from nineteen seventy two in a box.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
It's never been opening.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Six foot five inches and six foot five one quarter
inch tall, the exact height of me. I've never seen it.
I've never opened the box. But they're all stored away.
They they don't really do.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Anything for me.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
But I've had all those trophies, awards, I've had popularity,
I've had fame. I had a tremendous amount of fame
back in the sixties, tremendous amount of popularity everywhere when
we played before over right at a million people in
college in three years, and that's pretty good. And I
had all this adulation and people wrote me. I got
thousands of letters a week from fans. We idolize you,
(15:50):
Pete Merriwich, You're my idol. You're this, You're that. And
I wasn't a role model at all, not at all.
I wasn't a role model for young people at all.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
None. Zero.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
And then after my college and I was all American
and I was I'm the leading scorer of all time
in college basketball. It'll be broken someday, but I'm the
leading scorer averaged over forty four points a game for
a three year period. Just hold just all kinds of records.
(16:24):
My high school records are still hell. I still hold
the record for the All Star game. I scored forty
seven points in the East West High School All Star
Game back in nineteen sixty five. But still there. It
hasn't been broken, and some great players have come through there.
And then I went into pros, you see. And I
had a lot of fun in college, a lot of fun,
too much fun. In fact, I was in nine accidents
(16:45):
in college and walked away from every.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
One of them. Not only that.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
One time I was coming home from putting on a
clinic in Pennsylvania and I drove seven hundred miles and
I stopped for the night.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It was a halfway point. I went down to a
local pub, local little ball.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Sat in there and had about two beers, and a
young lady came over to me. I said, how are you, sweetie?
I said, I'm just fine. He said, you mind if
I sit down here? I said, well, suit yourself. So
I was sitting there. I wasn't there at two minutes
when a guy came up to me, about six foot five,
(17:22):
about two hundred and seventy pounds, said what are you
doing with my girl? He said, I'm not doing anything
with her. Sir, I'm just sitting here. I'm just having
this cold beer here. I don't want any trouble. I didn't,
you know. And he started pushing me. He started hitting
me in the shoulder. And I grew up a kid,
knowing that you never backed down from anybody. I don't
(17:42):
care what the odds. I wasn't going back down. And
I told him to get his hands off of me
and all this, and before long, one thing led to
another and they said, y'all get out of here.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
If you're gonna fight. He said, yeah, come on, So
I said fine.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So I got up and I went out quickly, and
I made myself through the crowd and I got outside
and I stood stayed behind the door, and I was
really gonna get this guy when he came out.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
But he never came. Of course. I didn't wait there
about two minutes, and he didn't come, you.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
See, And so I said, I better get out of here,
and I left, and I walked out in the parking lot.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
As I was walking in the back of the parking lot,
I tore it up.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I saw a telephone booth where I was gonna call
a taxi to go to a holiday in where I
was staying. As I was walking out, I heard this
guy came out and he yelled to me, and little
did I know that another guy had gone around the
other side and they both had blackjacks, which I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And the guy.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
The old story is that the guy just literally they
just hit me from behind and beat me up pretty good.
As I laid there on that parking lot that night,
that girl came up and I was all blood, and
she took a twenty five automatic pistol and she put
it in my mouth and cocked it and she said,
you're a dead man, Pistol Pete, how about that? And
(19:00):
I remember laying there and from the depths of my heart,
I said, yeah, kiln, because then I'll have peace.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And you've been listening to Pistol Pete Marrivich and he
gave this speech not long before his death, indeed, just
days more of Pistol Pete Marrivitch's life story, his last
story that he told in front of a large audience
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our
(19:41):
American stories and with Pistol Pete Marrivitch's story, one of
the last ones he told in his life, this one
just days before he passed.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But you know something.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
There's a god up there that overruled Satan that night too.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
You overruled him. And I know that.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And I went into the pros and I signed the
largest contract in the history of sports, not basketball sports
at the time, it made the Guinness Book of Records.
It lasted thirty days. They started pouring out a lot
of big money back then. And I searched all through
the nineteen seventies for what meaning there was to life.
(20:25):
I had to know the meaning, what was the meaning?
And I got involved in all kinds of different things.
I was involved in yoga and TM, I was involved
very heavily in uithology, philosophy.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I was involved in.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Different religions, Hinduism especially. I was involved in everything. But
the thing about it is, none of it really satisfied me.
They were just all brief interludes of satisfaction, much like
my life was brief interludes of just ego, gratification, satisfaction,
and all through that time. In fact, in nineteen seventy six,
I decided I was going to live to be one
(20:58):
hundred and fifty years old. And I got very heavily
and the nutrition because I was into Hinduism, and I
was into the karma and all these other types of situations.
And I became a vegetarian and then a fruitarian, and
a macrobotic and a mini dose and a MAXI dosed
on vitamins and I fasted twenty five days, and I
sat in all kinds of different positions, and I was
(21:18):
searching for life, for friends. I was really searching for
life because my life had no meaning at all. My
life had absolutely no meaning at all. And in each
one of these stops, each one of these stops, I
had to have something else. They just didn't satisfy me.
In nineteen eighty I quit basketball.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I just quit.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I walked away from it because of immaturity and because
of the fact that I.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Just got tired of it all. I just got tired
of it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I got tired of my life, and I became a recluse.
For about two years, I sat in my home. We
had our first son, Jason. He was only one and
a half years old, and I was set there for
hours at a time trying to teach him seven and
eight year old puzzles. Because I wanted my son Jason
to have what I didn't. I wanted him to have
a high intellect. See, I want him to be an
intelligent person. I want him to be able to go
(22:05):
to the right parties and say the right things. I
thought that was important. I really thought that was important.
And so my wife used to come to me and
she says, Pete, you really need to go see someone,
because you're really flipping out. I said, what do you mean.
She says, you haven't left his house in two weeks.
I said, yeah, I know. I brought to the garage
and so, but I was really lost. And in nineteen
(22:29):
eighty two, I went to bed one night. It was
like any other night, Pete marriviage had all the material
things you could want. I used to carry around five
thousand dollars in my pocket and cash in twenties. I
never cared any change. But I had all that stuff,
(22:54):
and none of it ever satisfied.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I mean, not the money, not the wealth, not the success.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And I laid there in vain and I couldn't sleep,
and I didn't understand it, and all of a sudden,
everything started coming up in my life, all the sin,
every sin I'd ever committed, and I've committed many. Let
me tell you many sins. In my life and there's
nothing hidden. And I'm not airing all my dirty laundry here.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I'm not trying to.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
I don't want to give Satan any credit, but I
can tell you this.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
It all came up.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
And it also came up when I was eighteen, when
I could have received Christ.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
And it was five thirty in the morning now.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I laid there crying with two pillars back up
in my back, with an unsaved wife next to me.
And I was sitting there crying, and I said, God,
I've punched you, I've kicked you, I've cursed you, I've
used your name in vain, I've mocked you, I've embarrassed you.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I've done all those things.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And yet do you really, I mean, will you really
forgive me the things that I've done? And I was
about to get over on the side of my bed.
And what happened to me doesn't happen everybody. And what
happened to me happened to me. And that's why I'm
(24:12):
talking out of my shoes. Many people don't believe it.
Manythingl Odians don't believe it. Many people, many Fieldians don't
believe in God. God spoke to me audibly right there
in the room, and he said be strong and left
thine own heart literally audibly. I looked around the room.
I was in total shock. I'd never heard anything like
(24:34):
that before. And I was so shocked that I reached
over and I awoke my wife, just shaking her like crazy.
I said, Jackie, did you Jackie, did you hear what
the Lord said to me?
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Did you hear that?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
You must understand Jackie had seen me go through all
kinds of trips in my life. And she just kind
of looked at me in a dark haze that it
was at five thirty in the morning and said, Pete,
you really have gun nuts having you and she just
went back to sleep.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I was sitting there and all of a sudden, about
a year and a half ago, Uh, my wife and
I went through a terrible tragedy. I was restoring an
old Victorian home and I had just gotten back from China.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Some friends came over and when we were showing them the.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
House, uh, we'd gone upstairs with them and there was
no banish, so we told our kids to, you know, stay.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Away from the stairs, just gonna be here.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Second we were showing them and as careful as we
are with our children.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I'd forgotten that there, didn't even really think about it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I'd built in a little closet and upstairs room, and
in that closet was an air conditioning vent, an old
one that had been stuffed up with insulation. And uh
uh it really happened very quickly.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Uh. They both kind of ran in there.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We didn't see him, and all of a sudden, it
it was like that my wife heard a a very
loud thumped and when she uh went back there, Uh, Joshua,
my little two year old at the time, wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Uh. I just kind of knew what happened, and I
dashed down the floor and I went in there, and
I saw my little son lying there in a pool
of blood.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
He had landed an impact had hit him directly in
the eye is where he hit on this part of
his head. He was in a semiconscious state, taken CPR
in the past, and my wife never did see him.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I'm glad you didn't, because it's something I'll live with
on my life.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
But anyway, I picked him up and he was just
a lifeless little body.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
His heartbeat was so faint that.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I didn't know whether he was going to make it
or not, but I rushed him to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I got him there.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And there wasn't even any doctors there at this particular
hospital that the guy that was supposed to be there
was off who was in lunch or something like that,
and it.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Just so happened.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I had a Christian painter there and a Christian carpenter.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
And they started praying.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
They found a doctor and he came in and checked
him out, and I was in prayer in.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
The other room.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
My wife was literally away with uh, just had lost
it completely, and we didn't know what was gonna happen
to Joshua. About ten minutes later, the doctor came out.
He happened to be an eye surgeon, and he says, Pete, Uh,
Joshua's gonna make it.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And I said, thank God for that. I said, that's
just great.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
He says, but, uh, we've looked in his eye just
very quickly, and it looks like all the muscles of
his eyes have been of his eye have been torn away.
So I'm going back in there and check him out,
and you just uh waiting here, and I said, find
I just went back in prayer and my prayer wasn't
that uh josh be healed. My prayer was according to
(27:41):
God's plan in Joshua's life, that it just be worked out.
And so about fifteen minutes later, the doctor came back
to me and he says, Pete, He says, I really
can't uh believe what happened.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
And I said, what's that? Doctor?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And he says, we look in Joshua's eye just now,
and it's as clear as a bell. There's no contusions,
there's no there's no broken bones, his neck is there's nothing.
I mean, it's just absolutely clear. Plus the fact he's
just gonna be perfect. There's nothing wrong with him except
(28:15):
this massive swelling that has taken place. Well, that was
just a little miracle of my life. And as I
thought about this, I started reflecting back on.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
My own life.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
And it's been that way in my life hundreds upon
hundreds of times that I've literally reflected back at the
times that I really shouldn't be here, but I am here,
and I'm here for one purpose. Jesus Christ changed my life.
Money didn't do it. Women didn't do it. Friends didn't
do it. Pastors didn't do it. Wealth didn't do it.
(28:46):
Success President of being a company, owning your own business,
having your own boat. I don't have much time left,
and the time that I have I'm giving to the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And you've been listening to pistol. Pete marriage in one
of the last talks he ever gave here on this earth.
He suffered a heart attack, and he died on Tuesday,
January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, after playing a pickup basketball
game at a Pasadena, California church. He was only forty.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
We were on a break and he walked up to me, said,
focus on the family's James Dobson. I asked him how
he was feeling. He said, I feel great. He took
one step and fell, and Dobson continued, quote. I tried
to do what I could, but he'd had a seizure.
That was easy to see. He was jaundice and his
(29:45):
eyes rolled back in his head. His body was rigid.
It was clear he was leaving. I called out to him,
asked him not to go, but it was much too late.
Pete Marrivich died in doctor Dobson's arms. The story of
Pete Maravich in his home words, who was born on
this day in nineteen forty seven. Here on our American
(30:08):
stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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