It describes a little known event involving 4 of the game’s greatest players and how they fought it for the pure sport of it.
Written by the same author who wrote Greatest Game Ever Played, the story is riveting and raised my appreciation of the sport about 100-fold.
When I lived in Europe, I fell in love with soccer (er, football) and realized that just because I didn’t understand a sport didn’t mean there wasn’t something beautiful about it.
What this book showed me was how beautiful golf is.
One thing we’ve been working on with Paco is how to be a good sport.
He’s VERY competitive (wonder where that comes from!) and when he loses, he doesn’t always respond so well.
Now, he loves football and it so happens that his favorite team is the Green Bay Packers, so I took a clip from one of their games where a defender, Charles Woodson, (who has himself won a Heisman Trophy and a Super Bowl) acknowledges the great play of an opponent who beat him to score a touchdown.
The message was: if you give it your all and you still lose, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. And, if your opponent gives it his all and wins, you can respect that and not resent him or feel anger about it.
Well, not really learned, but I was inspired by him.
On Sunday, I flew out to Seattle. Got in bed around 11.30pm PST with a planned wake-up at 6.10.
For whatever reason, I got up at 2.15 and, try as I might (and I tried a LOT of things), I could not fall back asleep. It was brutal.
I knew I had a REALLY long day ahead of me and, for a moment, I started to panic (particularly since I had to be 'on' for most of the day).
Then, I said, "wait, I'm here...there's nothing I can do anymore to solve this problem, so like Dirk with his 101 fever in Game 4, I just had to do it and not complain about it."
The client doesn't care if I'm tired. They expect value for their money.
Paco and I were talking about the upcoming football season as he reviewed the schedule on the ESPN ScoreCenter app (I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the lockout).
He said, “I need to decide which team I am going to root for this year.”
Last year, I had given him a hard time because he seemed to change his mind about his “favorite team” every few weeks, depending on who was winning.
The ultimate “fair weather fan.”
Then, he shares his methodology with me.
“I am going to see which team wins by the most points on the first game of the season. Then, I will root for them.”
“But,” he went on, “if they lose 2 games in a row, I will find a new team the same way.”
At first, I thought, “this isn’t the way you are supposed to find your favorite team,” but then it occurred to me that his approach is how we look at many things in our lives.
If a stock is doing well, you stay with it. If it underperforms, you sell and move on.
He’s just bringing that same discipline to athletics.
We all know that corporate loyalty is dead in its traditional sense. Who says you have to stay loyal to a professional sports team?
It’s not like they love you back.
I think we might take this approach this year. Why not?
Besides, this way, we’ll have a team in the playoffs and a good chance that we’ll win the Super Bowl as well.
Then, out of NOWHERE, Jokinen says, “well, Jacksonville was named for Andrew Jackson and he was from Tennessee, so it’s kind of like they beat themselves.”
I couldn’t believe it.
Now, I know where Jackson is from, but I actually had to look up on Wikipedia to confirm that Jacksonville was named for Andrew Jackson (it was).
Oh, and he can't be Magic now. Or Bird. Or Michael. Or Isiah Thomas, Tim Duncan or Bill Russell or any other NBA supernova who stuck around long enough to win championships for a town and its people.
As a legacy guy, he needs to know: His decision to spurn the Cavaliers for more talent and hope in Miami forbids LeBron from ever being one of those all-time greats who persevered through coaching changes, roster changes and wrenching playoff losses to lift a trophy to the rafters for the team who drafted him.
The double standard that we put on athletes is ridiculous.
First, we say “it’s all about the money,” but then LeBron leaves $30mm on the table.
Then, we say “he needs to suffer to be recognized as a great one.”
Why?
Look at your own career.
You work for 7 years at one company and you accomplish a lot, but then along comes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with some of your best friends, to have fun with them, to express yourself creatively.
What do you do?
You take it, of course.
So, maybe he wins a few championships and he’s not “one of the all time greats,” but maybe LeBron doesn’t care.
Maybe he just loves playing basketball and loves to win and he wants that feeling of being a champion, not of being a legacy.
He’s playing the odds…he says, “sure, I could labor/suffer in Cleveland and, maybe, in a few years, I might win a championship and be one of the greats…or I might suffer and NEVER win a championship.”
But, he looks at his chances, says, “I’m 25 and I know that I have maybe 10 years at most to make this happen. I know that injury could end my career at any moment. Look at all the ‘supernovas’ who did stick around and never won a championship. Just because I’m a star, doesn’t mean I will win.
I also know that no matter where I go, the playoffs are hard and I still might not make it, but I know I want to win and I want to increase my odds of doing that.”
Speaking of sports, one of the things I find most inspiring and analogous to life is the lessons in mental toughness that it teaches us.
In life, there are days when things just don’t go our way. We lose a deal. Our boss is unhappy or demanding (mine always is!), we have a disagreement with a loved one….
but the key, it seems to me, is how you bounce back.
If you play a game and your team loses by 4 touchdowns or 30 points or whatever, you can naturally think “man, we’re a bad team.”
But, as they say, you can’t “let that get inside your helmet,” or it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The great athletes/teams recognize that these things happen, grieve about them appropriately and then just put it behind them.
A few weeks ago, Albert Pujols, one of the best baseball players in the world, hit 3 homeruns in one game at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
Prior to that, he had been “in a slump” for quite some time.
I wish I could find the video interview to share it, but I was so impressed with his attitude afterwards.
He said (paraphrased), “I don’t get upset when people make comments about my slump or how I am not performing. What upsets me is that I know what I am capable of and am not doing it.”
I thought…”wow, what a refreshing attitude!”
He wasn’t arrogant about it at all. He just knows what he can do and expects that from himself.
It seemed to me that this approach is all we can ask of our kids and ourselves. Do what we know we are capable of.
The other day, I blogged on my “work” blog about my growing disillusionment with the owner of the Washington Redskins, Dan Snyder, and the way the team has performed.
What that experience has done for me is opened the door to a deeper introspection into my relationship with the team.
I love the game of football, but now, as I think about my lack of passion for the team because of its mismanagement, I come face to face with the reality (which I, like many, have swept under the rug) that the name is truly offensive to Native Americans.
In no other area of life would we tolerate something as overt as this. And in the Nations Capital, no less.
Like most break-ups, it will be painful, there will be moments of nostalgia, and it won’t be easy, but I think the time has come.
Image by Adam Pieniazek via FlickrI got on the Nordic track last night at the top of the 7th inning and saw Tampa Bay go up on Boston, 7-0.
The announcers mentioned it and you saw it, "some fans are starting to head for the exits."
I thought back to a Redskins-Raiders game I went to in 1983.
The 'Skins were down 17 points with 6 minutes left. My brother and I were there with a high school kid to whom my parents had given the 3rd ticket and who was chaperoning us.
"This game is over," we said. "Let's leave..."
Joe Bardin, the chaperone, said, "let's just wait and see what happens. You never know."
Sure enough, the Redskins came back to win by one point.
Aren't the Olympics supposed to give each country a chance for its own people/culture, etc. to demonstrate its athletic prowess? Isn't the sports field suppose to replace the battlefield?
Are the Brazilians, in this case, nothing more than modern day Hessians?
So, what's happening here?
If Georgia can't produce beach volleyball players and has to import them, what purpose does the Olympics serve?
I suppose it is an opportunity for a country to coalesce around something. I mean, it's not like all of the Yankees are native New Yorkers, right?
So having a few people who agree to wear your flag and bring attention to your country (even if they aren't from there/born there/live there) may not be such a bad thing.
Besides, it's a win-win. The Brazilians couldn't make their own country's team, so this is right in line with the increased professionalism of the games.
The more I think about it, the more examples of it happening anyway, the more I am comfortable with it.
If Georgians (and granted they are in a unique situation these days) FEEL more close-knit because 2 brazilians are wearing a Georgian flag and competing in a medal game (which otherwise would not be the case), then maybe the investment in hiring these freelancers is worth it.
Gives me a new business idea www.olympianfreelancer.com You know, match up athletes willing to sell their talents with countries that need it.
Bela (who for those of you who don't know gained fame as coach of Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton) has shown his disappointment with the judging of the gymnastics throughout the Olympics.
With Shawn's victory (and the performance of Nastia Liukin), however, he said that "it was once again shown to the world that American gymnastics is the best there is."
That may be true, but while he was talking and then Shawn's coach, who was born in China, something dawned on me.
The gymnasts were all born in the US, but their coaches are all imports.
Karolyi (and his wife, Marta, who coaches the US team) came from Romania.
Chow is a native of China.
Valery Liukin (Nastia's father and coach) is from Russia.
America may be the home of great gymnasts, but great coaches are born elsewhere.
Hmmmm...I wonder if the protectionists will say that we should ban the import of Gymnastics coaches so we can keep the domestic market alive?
Image by Getty Images via DaylifeLike many, I love watching beach volleyball. Sure, the bikinis don't hurt, but as a former volleyball player in high school, I do really enjoy the game.
Watching May-Treanor and Walsh repeat as gold medalists was a great Olympic moment. Hard-fought match against worthy opponents, but I thought the real moment happened afterwards.
The NBC reporter basically asked "so, what are you going to do next?"
Neither of them said "I am going to Disneyland."
They both said, "I want to have a baby and start a family."
Call me a bit dramatic, but for me this was a watershed moment in the history of feminism. I am far from a student of the movement, but for years, my impression was that women were expected to forgo family to focus on career and that you would never raise the personal issue of family within a career context.
I think May-Treanor and Walsh are saying, "not anymore."
Like stuffing the ball of an opponents spike, they are saying, "we've done our career thing and now, we want to do our family thing, and that's more than ok!"
They love Volleyball and will come back to it, but for now, it's not their focus.
In other words, it is ok (at least in their mind) to step away from their careers. You can have it all, but since you can't do it all (at the same time), it makes sense to do things in more manageable chunks.
I think this is a great moment for women who wonder "can I afford to take the time off?"
From a skills perspective, it may take May/Walsh more time to get back into Volleyball shape, but from a societal perspective (and Dara Torres showed this as well) more and more people are going to say
"She took time off from her career to focus on her family!!"
Not, 'she took time off from her career to focus on her family :-( '
A big call out to Washington Nationals 'superfan' Dave Sobel of Evolve Technologies whose generosity led to my first visit to the new Nationals Park.
Baseball is not my favorite sport (bonus points if you guess what is), but from a 'hang out' perspective, there are few better than a lazy summer evening (not too humid), in a beautiful setting only 2 blocks from the Metro, with some good friends and highly overpriced beer.
The Nats, to no one's suprise, dropped the game to the Phillies, but I didn't really care.
Felt like a kid again, enjoyed seeing "Take me out to the ballgame" and visiting with Conrad and Jesse.
I grew up an Orioles' fan and I think that is where my allegiance lies, but between driving 50 minutes, parking and having to come back and sitting in an air conditioned Metro car w/no parking hassle, not much of a contest.
Go Nats!! PS (this guy on 2nd base by himself got caught overruning the basepath and essentially cost the Nats the game).
Long time blog readers know that there is a steadfast rule in my house that the kids can only eat in the den if we are watching football.
This builds the excitement and appreciation for my favorite sport.
Well, having lived in Europe for a year, I did develop an appreciation for “the beautiful game” (aka soccer) and was looking forward to watching the Euro 2008 Champioships today.
After swim lessons, visiting with our aunt, a birthday party, and taking 2 kids to Home Depot, I didn’t feel like I had ignored the kids.
Bottom line, if you ask Tonka (and possibly Paco): “what do they call soccer in other countries?” you will get the correct answer.
Hence, we were able to enjoy popsicles and snacks while watching Spain defeat Germany, 1-0.
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