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#816 – 2009 WSOP #74 – Seen & Heard #21- Marlon Shirley is a Foot Ahead and Pulling Away
Marlon Shirley is one of the fastest humans on the planet. He was the first amputee to run 100 meters in less than 11 seconds, holds numerous world records, and owns two Paralympic gold medals. This story has nothing to do with physical disability: Marlon Shirley can kick your ass with one leg or two. My story is about how a singularly-talented athlete and exemplary person finds his way to the World Series of Poker, where he came from, and where he’s going.
The history of athletes gravitating to poker is long and illustrious. Doyle Brunson and Jack Straus, two of the legends of the Texas “rounders” circuit and tournaments and huge money games in Las Vegas, were college basketball players. T.J. Cloutier, one of the World Series of Poker’s most prolific performers, played professional football. Fast-forwarding decades past innumerable additional examples, former professional hockey player Greg Mueller won a pair of bracelets in the ‘09 Series.
When I finished runner-up in Razz less than two weeks ago, my assistant Shauna told her hundreds of friends and I was soon awash in congratulatory texts and e-mails. I also received a phone call from Cody Ross, the star outfielder for the Florida Marlins. Cody and his family are close friends of Shauna and, though I hadn’t met Cody, he wanted to offer his congratulations. We both keep talking, through Shauna, about getting together to talk poker because Cody is playing well in games with his teammates and wants to gauge where he’s at ….
None of this is hard to believe. Elite athletes tend to (a) be competitive, and (b) have a lot of time to kill travelling or on the road. Combine competitiveness, time, a deck of cards, and Darwinism, and some fine and enthusiastic poker players are a likely result.
But that’s not how it started with Marlon Shirley. In fact, his first exposure to poker came when he was on the road with his friend and chief competitor Brian Frasure. Frasure was watching the 2004 World Series of Poker on television and Shirley said, “How in the world can you watch poker?”
In 2005, while competing in Finland, Shirley started playing poker with Frasure and other athletes. Four years later he says, “I’m a big fan of poker, I watch poker, and I absolutely love the game.”
How much has Marlon learned in four years? In an interview an hour before he played his first Main Event on Saturday, it was clear he understood the strategic implications of deep-stack poker. “I’m pretty solid when it comes to poker. I’m the guy that makes pretty big laydowns … I’m looking for situations where I can see flops with J-Ts, T-9s, medium pairs, hands like that, and collect when I hit a really big hand.”
So many players, especially in their first World Series, don’t understand those principles that I asked if he had received any instruction. “The only instruction I’ve gotten is from guys that were collecting my chips.” I’m sure some of those were expensive lessons but if you hear Marlon talk about any subject – whether it’s training, sprinting, motivational speaking, mentoring children from disadvantaged backgrounds, or business – it’s clear that he’s way too fast to be a donkey.
In contrast to the oft-trodden path Marlon Shirley took from athletics to poker, his journey to the athletic summit was incomprehensibly difficult. A famous Sports Illustrated article in 2005 documented his life story eloquently, so I won’t repeat every detail, but let me start by saying that losing the lower portion of his left leg and his left foot was not, BY FAR, the biggest obstacle Shirley had to overcome to become a world-class sprinter.
His real-life story reads like Dickens. His birth mother was a heroin-addicted prostitute. His biological father was her pimp, who broke her hands when she tried to escape him. When Marlon was found wandering the Las Vegas streets as a four year-old, the authorities contacted his grandparents but, because his father was black, his racist grandfather wanted nothing to do with him. This led to Marlon living in a series of institutional and foster homes. In addition to a lawn-mower accident as a five year-old and amputation of his left foot, in some of these homes he was physically abused.
At nine, he was adopted by Kerry and Marlene Shirley, a Mormon couple with three children in Utah. The Shirleys provided Marlon with care and stability, but with that background, he was still a troubled youth in every sense of the term.
From this, he rebounded to become a world-famous athlete. After superb showings throughout 1998 and 1999 in international high-jump, long-jump, and sprinting (up to 400 meters) competitions, Marlon set a world record for the 100 meters and won the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games. He also won the silver medal in the high jump and was named U.S. Olympic Committee Track & Field Athlete of the Year. The United Nations named him as a Role Model of the 21st Century.
Since 2000, he has won so many competitions and awards that their repetition risks minimizing their meaning – ESPY Awards, Spirit Awards, gold medals and records in national and international competitions. Most notably, he successfully defended his gold medal in the 100 meters at the 2004 Athens Paralympics.
In 2008, as a 30 year-old recovering from multiple knee surgeries and a staph infection, Marlon Shirley tried for a third consecutive gold medal in Beijing. He fell short when he tore his Achilles tendon during the final. He recognizes that his athletic career is approaching its conclusion and has spent years on the transition. His Athletes For Education program, Champions in Life, mentors displaced and foster children. He is – obviously – in demand as a motivational speaker and could do that full time. He is also in negotiations with a list of corporate partners and sponsors – including Full Tilt – for a variety of ventures. He is hoping poker has a place in all this, but it’s a long list.
Marlon made it clear during our meeting, however, that bowing to the inevitability of age didn’t mean he would leave the track without a fight. “I planned on retiring after Beijing but there’s no way I’m ending my career face-down on the track. That’s not going to happen.” Noting the winning times in Beijing and other recent meets and his training times, he believes with his technique and skill, “I still have the edge.” So he continues training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, with his sights set on London 2012.
Even if I didn’t imagine all the money I could make writing and selling his amazing story – his manager Antonio Stone has already titled my fantasy, “The Sprinter, the Banker, and the Suicide King” – I’d still find myself rooting for him. Marlon Shirley is a real-life hero, someone who has achieved awesome things, overcome unbelievable obstacles, and comes off as someone simultaneously able to talk about it all and recognize he’s not above occasionally losing, screwing up, or making mistakes.
Chances are he won’t go far in the 2009 Main Event. But Marlon’s very existence proves that you can’t count him out of anything.
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