A while back, I was laying poolside in Las Vegas when I spotted former Manchester United star Roy Keane.
He was wading through the shallows, looking for an excuse. No one recognized him. Nonetheless, all the sleek, shiny Americans knew instinctively to get out of his way. Though a slight man, Keane has the look of an irritable serial killer.
He began to walk out of the pool. I put down my book and started to rise. Sensing danger, he stopped. He swivelled suddenly – just his head – and caught me in a stare. Then I knew fear. I slowly lay back down. Keane waited until I was flat out before continuing on. This is the closest I've ever come to experiencing mind control.
It's hard to imagine what it must have been like to play against him. I saw him years after it was over. The eyes alone were enough to make you go rubbery.
One of his former teammates, Barcelona defender Gerard Pique, recently told FourFourTwo that he was terrified of Keane when he played with him, and still is.
"Before we beat Celtic 1-0 last season, I noticed him by the side of the pitch as a pundit when we went out to warm up. I hid my face with my hand because he still scares me. I was 26 years old, and I was [expletive] myself."
This was someone Keane liked. Imagine being his enemy.
He famously waited four years to revenge himself on hapless Norwegian Alfe-Inge Haaland. Haaland made the mistake of taunting Keane after a serious injury. Keane let the furor died down, and then ended Haaland's career with a surgical, knee-high lunge.
Keane being Keane, he couldn't help but crow about it later. In his first autobiography, Keane wrote, "I'd waited long enough. I [expletive] hit him hard. The ball was there [I think] …" – ed. Note: It sure wasn't – "… Take that, you [expletive]."
Though he'd spent the better part of a decade trolling the pitch like a shark in search of chum, no one could bear that he'd referenced the matter out loud. Keane was retroactively suspended for what amounts to thought crime.
Keane being even Keaner, he's taken it back now. In a second memoir released this week, Keane says he didn't mean to cripple Haaland. Well, sort of.
"I did want to nail him and let him know what was happening. I wanted to hurt him and stand over him and go, 'Take that, you [same unutterable expletive]'. I don't regret that. But I had no wish to injure him."
It's a fine point. 'Fine' meaning heavy enough to beat a man to death with.
Whether or not you care about football, the book – The Second Half, written with Booker Prize-winner Roddy Doyle – is a ridiculously juicy romp through one demented athlete's mind. It fully captures what we all suspect about the very best competitors – that they are more than a little unhinged.
Keane blithely recounts fistfights with teammates, attacking opposing managers, benders that lasted for days. In what may be the darkest thought ever spoken aloud in sports, he recalls feeling "glad" that footballer Clive Clarke had a heart attack on the pitch, because the sensation would distract from his own team's poor performance.
Who thinks these sorts of things? Plenty of people, and a huge percentage of highly successful, alpha types. Who says them? Nobody except Roy.
In between, there are laugh-out-loud episodes, all of them resulting from Keane's satirically Spartan inability to compromise.
He lashes his own team when he walks in on them listening to ABBA in the pregame.
"They were going out to play a match, men versus men, testosterone levels were high … [expletive] Dancing Queen."
As a manager, he gives up on flamboyant pro Robbie Savage after getting his voicemail.
"'Hi, its Robbie – whazzup!' like the Budweiser ad. I never called him back. I thought, 'I can't be [expletive] signing that'."
He recalls his first match for Celtic – a loss – after talking his way out of United.
"After the game – the disappointment … When I got on the bus, John Hartson, a really good guy, was already sitting there and he was eating a packet of crisps with a fizzy drink. I said to myself, 'Welcome to Hell'."
Or my personal favourite, an exchange with doughy TV host Adrian Chiles after Keane retires to the broadcast booth: "Once we were at Juventus – they were playing Chelsea. We were standing at the corner flag and Adrian was next to me. He goes, 'This is great, isn't it?' I went, 'I used to play in these games, Adrian'."
Shades of Marilyn Monroe ("You've never heard such cheering, Joe.") and DiMaggio ("Yes. I have.")
The gossip is great, but Keane is most compelling when he writes about his urge to implosion, one that constantly undid a generational talent. Every arrival began his countdown to departure. That's still his way. He's forever leaving people and places.
"I like home comforts, but then I want to be this hell-raiser – but I want my porridge in the morning. I want my wife and kids around me. I've dipped into this madness, and I don't like it that much. Maybe I'm like every man on the planet – I don't know; I want a bit more than what's on offer."
You will occasionally – exceedingly occasionally – run into a pro who will speak this way to you off-off-off-the-record. It's always the thinkers in the room. They have a tendency to be tortured. They don't like talking to their contemporaries about it. A sympathetic beat writer will sometimes become a guy's rabbi for a week or a month or even a whole career.
We don't often think of it as such, but these men and women are artists. Their art is kinetic; their genius is physical. The rewards are greater, but they suffer for it, too.
Keane clearly has, and is now publicly sorting out what it means for his legacy.
He will be remembered for, in order, his temper, his on-field charisma, walking out on Ireland ahead of the 2002 World Cup, the 1999 Champions League semi-final and his fearless introspection.
Only one of those things is truly resonant.