George Kimball America at LargeThis morning's trivia question: which of the following does not own a 2005 Super Bowl ring? (a) Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (b) Patriots owner Robert Kraft (c) Patriots coach Bill Belichick (d) Russian president Vladimir Putin. If you answered (b), then you must be a faithful reader of Kommersant ("the New Russia's first independent newspaper") which first broke the news of the $50,000 misunderstanding at Konstantinovsky Palace last weekend.
Kraft is walking around Wimbledon bare-handed this week. In the lexicon of the National Football League, the ring is the thing. Players don't speak of winning Super Bowls or World Championships, they talk about winning rings. And, since they are extremely valuable, Super Bowl rings have become a currency unto themselves on the memorabilia black market.
Sometimes they are taken at gunpoint. Hookers have been known to slip a client a mickey and walk off with a Super Bowl ring. Eugene Morris left his in a hotel earlier this year and never saw it again. A few rings have been hocked to support drug habits.
And sometimes, apparently, there is a reasonable explanation, such as the one Kraft no doubt offered when his wife Myra noticed the missing ring last Saturday night: "Well, honey, the president of Russia stuffed it in his pocket and walked off with it." In a private ceremony at his Brookline mansion two weeks ago, the Patriots owner handed out several dozen Super Bowl rings to the members of his team.
Although the NFL ponies up $5,000 apiece for the rings, owners frequently augment the cost of more expensive bling, and Kraft must have figured the team's unprecedented feat in winning its third world championship in four years warranted the creation of the gaudiest momento in the history of team sport.
The rings, weighing better than four ounces apiece, were made of 14-carat white gold, and were encrusted with 124 diamonds, including three marquises depicting a trio of Vince Lombardi Trophies. Each included the player's uniform number and name. The reported cost exceeded $20,000 per ring.
With training camp still more than a month away, the ring recipients scattered to the four corners of the earth. In Kraft's case, he preceded his annual Wimbledon visit by joining a delegation of American businessmen on a trade mission to Moscow. The group met the Russian president last Saturday. It should probably be noted here Kraft's previous contribution to East-West diplomacy came three decades ago, when he helped engineer the defection of Martina Navratilova from Czechoslovakia to the United States.
Although Kraft was present in Moscow in his role as CEO of the Kraft Group, whose holdings include extensive investments in the paper and packaging industries, his role as an NFL owner added a certain cachet - at least in the minds of some of his fellow moguls. It was Sanford Weil, the chairman of CitiCorp, who reportedly encouraged Kraft to show his ring to Putin. Kraft slipped the bauble off his finger so the Russian president could get a closer look, but Putin, aware the TV cameras were rolling, quickly jammed what he perceived as a contraband gift into his jacket pocket and walked out the door.
The caption accompanying a photograph of the exchange in a Moscow newspaper read: "After the energetic meeting with American entrepreneurs, Vladimir Putin added a highest sport award from the American Football League to his prizes for judo and mountain skis competition." It seems plain enough Kraft wasn't trying to bribe a Russian president with a Super Bowl ring. "It's a Super Bowl ring," Kraft told the former KGB official as he proffered the trophy. "It's a very good ring." The NFL owner stood flabbergasted as the ring disappeared into the Moscow streets. At the risk of creating an international incident, Kraft kept his counsel.
At least that's our understanding of what happened. The interpretation from the Russian side paints a decidedly different picture. Kommersant's man on the scene reported Kraft "shyly stuffed something into the hand of Mr Putin. Putin nodded and quickly looked around. But no, he didn't see anybody watching," wrote Andrey Kolesnikov. "Then the curiosity took hold over the president of Russia and he started to look at the present. There was a massive silver ring in his hands. Putin even carefully tried it on, but when he noticed that photo and video cameras were pointing at him, quickly took it off and held it in the fist."
At this point in his analysis, Kolesnikov's imagination appears to have gotten the better of him. "Only sometime after did I realise the true meaning of this event. Of course an American billionaire would not give the Russian president a cheap ring that the winners of the Super Bowl are being rewarded. If he wanted to, Kraft could give Putin such a ring that after putting it on the finger that no personal security service could guarantee security. But the American probably decided the very expensive ring will immediately end up in the State treasury because of existing agreement between the Kremlin and White House. And he thought the only chance to leave a good souvenir for the Russian president is to give him a really kitchy thing."
It's hard to know whether Kraft was more insulted by having his ring appropriated or by having his prized momento described in the Russian press as "a really kitchy thing". It seems plain Kolesnikov shared Putin's belief that the Patriots' owner intended the ring to be a present.
"However, Kraft's manoeuvre didn't turn out as he expected," reported Kommersant's man. "Some high-placed source in the Kremlin, on the condition of confidentiality, told me the very next day, the ring was already given not straight to the treasury, but to the Kremlin library."
