Belly up to the bar, boys, we've got a sad tale to tell. Sadder than The Face on the Barroom Floor. Sadder than Casey's epic fanning at Mudville's biggest game. Sad enough to soak the hankies of every red-blooded bachelor who ever eyed a centerfold.
Patti McGuire went and got herself hitched.
That's right, the luscious C.B. lady from St. Louis was roped, thrown and hog-tied. Carried off under our very noses by some itinerant racket jockey. Jimmy Connors, the name is.
Steamed? You bet we are. Patti was the best. We'll never forget that first meeting. There she was in November of 1976, a dream of a woman, delectably draped on a vintage Wurlitzer in a roadside café. We could almost hear the music. It was Convoy or some equally romantic tune. We didn't care, it was our song.
We could tell just by looking at her parts that this was no ordinary woman. And when she batted those steel-gray eyes and whispered, "I like to keep the hammer down," we knew this girl couldn't get a speeding ticket if she laid rubber in the police-station parking lot.
Since then, we've kept a close watch on Patti. We watched her move from Missouri to California. We watched her on promotional tours for Playboy. We watched her on TV, fighting crime with Starsky and Hutch. And when she ran the Colorado rapids for a pictorial, we even watched her brush her teeth.
Despite such close scrutiny, we couldn't find a damn thing wrong with her. So in June of 1977, we made her Playmate of the Year in a televised ceremony that nearly everyone in America watched.
Somewhere along the way, she ran into the aforementioned tennis player (we couldn't watch her all the time!). Connors, of course, is known for a formidable forehand, a two-fisted backhand and a devastating fanny wiggle. In any event, he's good--good enough to have taken Wimbledon. And he picks up walking-around money on the weekends hustling the likes of Vilas, Ashe, Gottfried, McEnroe, Solomon, Nastase and, occasionally, Battlin' Borg. Some would say he's the best tennis player in the world. (Some would, Bjorn wouldn't.)
In spite of Connors' competitive experience, though, our Patti managed to take him in straight sets at an invitational variously rumored to have taken place in Japan, in her home town of St. Louis and in his, Belleville, Illinois. Only Patti and Jimmy knew for sure and they, as of this writing, were playing peekaboo with the press as they awaited the birth of a prospective Davis cupper, or Playmate.
The Connors-McGuire combination would seem to be a dynamite doubles team. And those of us who are still playing singles have ample reason to mourn.
Gentleman that we are, we wish them the best, albeit with tears in our beer and a lump in our throat.
Oh, somewhere there is laughter, Amidst our toil and strife, But there is no joy at Playboy, Pretty Patti ... is a wife.
