I never watched Donald Trump's "The Apprentice." I never appreciated anything that made light of one of life ultimate indignities ... getting terminated from your job.
To many of us, our jobs define us. They give us a good sense of who we are, what we've accomplished, and -- perhaps most importantly -- how well we can provide for ourselves and our families.
To lose that ... even if the reasons are valid and unavoidable ... is no laughing matter. So when I see a rodeo clown like Donald Trump (even if he is a rich rodeo clown) on TV blabbering that "you're fired," I want to scream. And it makes me think that it's reason No. 124 (or something) about why our economic system in in such terrible shape. There are many reasons, of course, but once of them could be that we just don't appreciate what people do ... the contributions they make.
Yes, it's true. They get paid. But anyone who thinks this is strictly due to the largesse of the employer is hoplessly naive. Maybe that happens once in a while, but by and large, we get paid for what we do because our expertise is needed to keep the business going.
And that means it's a two-way street ... that our employees deserve a little dignity and respect along with their money, and that if there's ever the perception in the work place that one or the other (or both) is lacking, you'll see some pretty poor attitudes bubble to the surface in a hurry.
I've been fired. It was back in 1987, and it was from a job that I probably never should have accepted in the first place. It wasn't for me. It was too young, and too immature, and too used to the sloppy informality of the newspaper environment to adapt to the corporate protocol of an august company like NYNEX (now Verizon).
I lasted a year. And I walked on eggshells for probably half that. And it occurred to me that just like there are horses for courses, there are people better suited for certain jobs. Or, as the managing editor of the paper that took me back after I was let go said, "some people just belong in certain places.
And some people don't, too.
Getting fired was devastating. It just burrowed through to the very core of who I was, and it also struck a deep nerve of failure. Even now, 23 years later, I can rationalize about it only so much. Yes, it was a personality conflict between my boss and me. Yes, it was a job that I just wasn't cut out to do. Yes, it was very much a case of bad karma gathering momentum until events overtook me. And yes, despite anything I might have been able to do, I was powerless to do it once all this negativity was set in motion.
It took me a long time to understand this wasn't a reflection on me, but, rather, a chain of events that spun out of control. By the time I was called into an office and given the news, it was almost a mercy killing.
This isn't to say I enjoyed it. And this isn't to say that, even today, I have extreme bitterness toward the boss who chose to make it so difficult for me to thrive there. There are good bosses, and there are bad bosses. This one was definitely in the latter category.
The problem, as I see it, is simple. You, as an employee, get the sense (whether it's real or not) that you have a bull's eye on your back. Right away, that affects how you do your job. You cannot work effectively when your boss has his foot on your throat.
And it just becomes an unbreakable cycle. The harder you press, the worse you do ... the more mistakes you make, the worse the mistakes are ... and it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even when you do something that you perceive to be the right thing, it'll often be looked at as wrong simply because your employer is more interested in building a case against you than he is judging your work objectively.
These are all feelings I had when I got fired from that job 23 years ago. As I said, I never should have taken it. But at the time, it looked too good to pass up. The money was tremendous, and I thought this was my ticket to bigger and better things.
As an aside, the experience taught me, perhaps more than anything else, that money cannot buy you happiness in your job. It helps, but if the job keeps you up at night, there's not enough money in the world to compensate for that.
So when the axe finally fell, it was almost a relief. It was a simple meeting, really ... just my boss and me.
"This is unfortunate," he said, turning his back on me as he spoke and handing me an evaluation he'd done that had more misspellings and typographical errors than a third-grader's book report. "I'm letting you go."
I actually made him say "fired." I knew what he meant, but I wanted him to say it. So I said, "what do you mean, letting me go?"
He had to say it. And that's all he said too. "Fired."
I guess that's the thing that always stuck to my crew. He couldn't even look me in the eye to tell me this. He turned his back on me. And judging from the amount of professional care he put into his evaluation of me, he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about either.
Once the shock of it all wore off, there was relief. Whatever else I had to deal with (and the timing couldn't have been worse, as we were in the middle of buying a house), I didn't have to deal with the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
Life got pretty dicey for a while. But I was fortunate. I had people at the newspaper where I'd previously worked who thought enough of me help me get back on my feet in the immediate aftermath; and hired me back full time a few months later.
So why do I write this today? Someone at my office was let go yesterday. I can't say it was a huge shock. Even he knew it was coming (if you're honest, you know). Still, though, it took me back to that day, August 11, 1987, a Tuesday morning, when I got the news that I was being terminated. And no matter how much you suspect it's coming, and even know it's coming, there's a finality to it that just leaves you weak, even if it's only for a second. You have to sit down.
The purpose here isn't to judge the justification of whether the person should have been fired. All I can ever hope is that the reasons are valid, and that there was no other alternative. I don't dispute the fact that some people are just not meant for certain jobs, and I also don't dispute the fact that even if they are, it can reach a point where the situation just becomes untenable, whether it's performance or personality related.
In this case (and in most cases), that's between the employer and employee.
But it doesn't stop you from feeling badly that whatever happened, it couldn't be resolved ... that things just couldn't be worked out. It's an awful thing to have happen to you.
And it's also difficult for the people left behind, too. We don't know what to think ... what's next ... or who's next ... or even if anybody's next. You just don't know.
All you're left with is confusion. And the feeling that you'd better step a little livelier around the office.
But your last image -- or, at least, my last image is of someone who's just had his whole life pulled out from under him. That's not a good feeling. And a pox on anyone who treats it as if it's some kind god damned joke.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Bruins bite; Celtics beat LeBron like a drum; Sox crack halos
I am, by trade, a sports writer. The reason I decided to do this blog is because while I make my living talking about sports, it's not the only thing on my mind on most days.
But once in a while, you just can't help it. And last night was a truly extraordinary one in Boston sports. We had three teams playing ...and three teams won. Two of them rather easily; the other in what is becoming, lately, thrilling fashion.
Choices are difficult. The Red Sox and Bruins started at 7; the Celtics at 8. Unless you were in one of those all-purpose sports bars, with six TVs split between the three stations broadcasting the game, your thumb got a workout.
As much as I love to watch sports, I find it difficult sometimes to watch them on television. First, there are the idiotic announcers who, rather than say nothing when nothing need be said, will the air with irrelevant drivel. In Boston, that is known as Jack Edwards, the Bruins play-by-play guy, who has a hyperbole for every occasion.
When the Bruins eliminated the Buffalo Sabres last week, Edwards cried out "Buffalo's hopes lie with the Edmund Fitzgerald, at the bottom of Gitche Gumee."
Uh, Jack, a couple of things. First, Gitche Gumee (however you choose to spell it) is actually Lake Superior, which is quite a ways away from the eastern shores of Lake Erie ... which is where one can find the city of Buffalo. Second, You'd think that in the 21st century, and with serious and heart wrenching tragedy all around us, we could refrain from using overblown, bombastic sports hyperbole.
Then again, what would you expect from a guy who, last year, compared the Bruins beating the Montreal Canadiens (sweeping them, actually), to the American Revolution. I didn't get that one at all. Other than the fact that the B's won the deciding game on Patriot's Day, there was no real connection.
We've already established (or I have, anyway) that Stanley Cup hockey is second to none. One of the reasons it's second to none is because emotions run so high that strange things happen in playoff games. Such as last night's episode where Marc Savard, fresh from a two-month layoff due to a concussion, was accused by Philly's Daniel Carcillo of biting him on the finger.
It wouldn't be the first time a Boston athlete got caught in a biting dustup. Back in '83, Tree Rollins (he didn't get the name because he was short) took a bite out of Boston's Danny Ainge (who, by NBA standards was short) in a playoff game. It was a case of Mutt biting Jeff. Instead of a "Man Bites Dog" headline, we got "Tree Bites Man."
It's tough to tell from the films whether anyone bit anybody. But Savard (and this is wonderful) said, in his version, that Carcillo tried to pull his teeth out, and his finger hit up against his choppers. Uh huh. Reminds me of the time I got sucker punched by the kid across the street and his mother actually told my mother, "well, Stephen's face got in the way of Jimmy's fist."
Myself? I think Savard was hungry and saw an opportunity to eat a chicken finger (do I need to elaborate on the pun?).
Anyway, Bite-gate happened early in an otherwise tense game where, much of the time, you had to cover your eyes and pray. The last time I was this nervous was during the 2004 playoffs when the Red Sox were busy coming from three down to beat the Yankees in seven games. I can remember, in one of those games, a co-worker literally covering her face with her jacket because she couldn't bear to watch. That's how I feel sometimes, too.
There were highlights -- at least from a viewing standpoint: No. 1 came at the end of the second period when the Flyers tied it after a sloppy line change by the Bruins. The goal wasn't so great (it was one of those times where you hope you have a soft, non-invasive object in your hands so when you throw it at the TV, the TV doesn't break), but coach Claude Julien's reaction was absolutely spectacular. He literally slammed his fist up against the boards and uttered clearly visible vulgarity.
I loved it, mainly because I was doing basically the same thing he was. Only I get paid a lot less to act that way, and my tantrums aren't broadcast all over Versus (thank God it was Versus, too, because they'd have had to scrape Edwards off the ice after that one).
The second, naturally, was Milan Lucic's game-winning goal with about two minutes left. Lucic's had a tough year. He was my favorite Broon at this time last year, but he couldn't keep himself healthy this season. It started almost immediatley, and he was in and out of sick bay for virtually the whole season.
He's had a stretch of decent health now, and he's starting to play like the Milan Lucic of a year ago.
The Gahhhhhhden just exploded. I remember when the TD Garden opened (it was the FleetCenter in those days), and people complained that there just wasn't any atmosphere there. It was too quiet.
Of course it was. The teams playing in it were awful. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were worthy of any emotion or atmosphere. Now, they are. And there was no lack of it last night. It was electric.
So now we had to Philly for two games, it would really be nice if they stole one down there. It's pretty obvious that the Philly fans, as well as the Flyers themselves, can't wait to sink their teeth into Da Broons, but that's OK. That's what makes hockey hockey. One can only hope, though, that the Flyers prove to be as pusillanimous toward the Bruins as the B's were to the Pittsburgh Penguins after Matt Cooke leveled Savard in March -- giving him the concussion that forced him to the sidelines for two months.
Somehow, I doubt it, though. The Flyers, even with all their injuries, haven't stopped being physical. They may not be the Broad Street Bullies of the 70s, but they don't have too many Lady Byng candidates either.
(Aside, in a rough, tough sport like hockey, does it strike you as odd that one of the NHL's major awards has the word "lady" in it?)
Expect at least one beat down in Game 3.
And speaking of which, what are we to say about the Celtics? They beat the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James like a drum. Take away that 15-0 fourth-quarter run by Cleveland (and you knew that was going to happen eventually) and the Celtics dominated the game.
I have to admit one thing: If either Boston team is fortunate enough to go all the way this spring, I'd prefer it to be the Bruins. But I won't complain if it's the Celtics.
My reasoning is simple: The Bruins haven't won the Cup since 1972, my freshman year of college. In '72, with Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, et al, Boston fans had every reason to expect that this team would just keep on winning.
Only it didn't. Things happened. Orr had major reconstructive knee surgery after that '72 season, and while even a half of an Orr was better than the whole of almost anyone else in the league at the time, the extensive surgery slowed him down a bit. Also, 1972 was the year the World Hockey Association pilfered many good players from the NHL with promises of piles and piles of Monopoly money, and several key members of Da Broons jumped (Ed Westfall, Derek Sanderson, Johnny McKenzie and and Gerry Cheevers among them).
They were never the same team. They got back to the Cup finals in '74, but became the first established, original NHL team to lose a final series to an expansion team (Philly, ironically), and then lost two straight finals to Montreal in '77 and '78. They were poised to beat the Habs -- finally -- in '79 and would have been favored to win the Cup, too, as the New York Rangers upset the Islanders in the other semifinal. But, alas, coach Don Cherry forgot how to count, and the Bruins caught caught with too many men on the ice. The Habs tied the game with about a minute to go, and won it in overtime.
The gaffe cost Cherry -- easily the most enjoyable coach in the history of Boston sports (well, my history anyway) -- his job. These days, "Grapes" is on Hockey Night in Canada, and is good for saying something totally outrageous, which he knows will piss people off royally, at least once a week. Good to see the man's still got it.
The Bruins made it to the Cup finals two other times -- in 1988, where they were swept by The Great Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers (that's the year the old Garden went dark during one of the games, and former Globie Leigh Montville wrote, famously, that "the gerbil -- the one who has to run the generator from a treadmill -- died"); and again, two years later, when they lost to the Oilers in five (a series that featured a triple overtime opener in which Glenn Wesley missed an open net ... a goal that would have won the game for the B's. Instead, Petr Klima scored for the Oilers and took all the starch out of the Bruins).
The Bruins have been plagued, for years, with an ownership that refused to spend money to bring talent into Boston. It got so bad that Ray Bourque, their best player since the days of the Big Bad Bruins, had to get himself traded to Colorado at the end of his career so he could win a Stanely Cup out there ... instead of here, where he should have been parading around Boston with several of them.
The Bruins also been plagued by awful luck. Orr isn't the only player to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when it comes to injuries. Other than Bourque, their best player since the Orr era was Cam Neely, and he had to retire early because of a hit he took at the hands of Ulf Samuelson. Another of their real good prospects, Normand Leveille, who was only 19, suffered a brain aneurysm and never played again.
And one of their top draft picks, Gord Kluzak, never saw his career get off the ground, as knee injuries cut it short.
Still, none of those guys died, the way Len Bias and Reggie Lewis did. Obviously, those were incredible tragedies in and of themselves. But, from a practical standpoint, they derailed the Celtics for a long, long time. Bias was going to be, to those 1980s Celtics, what John Havlicek was to the 60s and 70s team ... a transitional figure they could build around in their efforts to keep the dynasty going. Lewis was as pure a scorer as they had in many years, and he was truly coming into his own when he developed heart ailment, and collapsed and died while playing a pickup game in 1993.
The Celtics have certainly had their run, though. They won eight straight NBA titles in the 50s and 60s, and they've snagged 17 flags overall. Their last title was in 2008, and many of the guys who won it are still with the team -- albeit two years older.
I didn't expect the Celtics to make it out of the first round this year. They played horribly for the entire second half of the regular season (which reminds me, there has to be some kind of incentive for teams to stop screwing around from October through April. Judging from the way both the B's and C's are playing now, it's obvious they used the regular schedule as an extended exhibition season, and that's kind of insulting to the fans who plunk down valuable bucks to watch).
We need to work on that.
The Celtics handcuffed LeBron and his bad elbow until the game was pretty much over. Then, they let up and allowed the Cavaliers to pick up some steam. It may have made you squirm in your seat a little, just as the Miami Heat did in Game 5 of their series, but they were never in any real danger. It's an NBA axiom that teams that put it in overdrive for 15-0 runs generally lose some zip the first time something goes against them. So it was only matter of time before that run stopped.
The only thing about the Celtics I will say is this: Rajon Rondo, their point guard, is the marquee player on this team now. Maybe the older guys have been slow to realize that, but they'd better get with the program now. They are only going as far as Wajon Wondo (as Bob Cousy might say) will take them (oh, how I wish the Cooz was still doing games so I could hear him pronounce that name; reminds me of the time the C's had Rick Robey, and The Cooz said "ohhhh, fewocious webounding by Wick Wobey). The Cooz was/is our very own Babawa Wawters.
Acutally, Wondo reminds you little of The Cooz, because if there's a routine way and an, shall we say, artistic way of doing things, Wondo will do the latter. Nothing's ever routine with Wajon Wondo.
Last night, Rondo handed out 19 assists and scored 13 points. They don't do scoring in hoops like they do in hockey, where assists and goals have equal point value. But if they did, Rondo would go down in the box score as having scored 51 points. That's one helluva night's work!
Finally, and briefly, there were the Red Sox, fresh off an ignominious sweep at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles (who have won seven games this far this season; four of them against Boston). They took out their frustrations on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California, USA, North America, Planet Earth, to the tune of a 17-8 beatdown. Balls were flying out of Fenway Park like rockets.
For one night, anyway, they were the Red Sox, and not some feeble facsimile thereof.
Maybe they just got swept up in the surging tide of victory. If that's the case, then I approve!!
But once in a while, you just can't help it. And last night was a truly extraordinary one in Boston sports. We had three teams playing ...and three teams won. Two of them rather easily; the other in what is becoming, lately, thrilling fashion.
Choices are difficult. The Red Sox and Bruins started at 7; the Celtics at 8. Unless you were in one of those all-purpose sports bars, with six TVs split between the three stations broadcasting the game, your thumb got a workout.
As much as I love to watch sports, I find it difficult sometimes to watch them on television. First, there are the idiotic announcers who, rather than say nothing when nothing need be said, will the air with irrelevant drivel. In Boston, that is known as Jack Edwards, the Bruins play-by-play guy, who has a hyperbole for every occasion.
When the Bruins eliminated the Buffalo Sabres last week, Edwards cried out "Buffalo's hopes lie with the Edmund Fitzgerald, at the bottom of Gitche Gumee."
Uh, Jack, a couple of things. First, Gitche Gumee (however you choose to spell it) is actually Lake Superior, which is quite a ways away from the eastern shores of Lake Erie ... which is where one can find the city of Buffalo. Second, You'd think that in the 21st century, and with serious and heart wrenching tragedy all around us, we could refrain from using overblown, bombastic sports hyperbole.
Then again, what would you expect from a guy who, last year, compared the Bruins beating the Montreal Canadiens (sweeping them, actually), to the American Revolution. I didn't get that one at all. Other than the fact that the B's won the deciding game on Patriot's Day, there was no real connection.
We've already established (or I have, anyway) that Stanley Cup hockey is second to none. One of the reasons it's second to none is because emotions run so high that strange things happen in playoff games. Such as last night's episode where Marc Savard, fresh from a two-month layoff due to a concussion, was accused by Philly's Daniel Carcillo of biting him on the finger.
It wouldn't be the first time a Boston athlete got caught in a biting dustup. Back in '83, Tree Rollins (he didn't get the name because he was short) took a bite out of Boston's Danny Ainge (who, by NBA standards was short) in a playoff game. It was a case of Mutt biting Jeff. Instead of a "Man Bites Dog" headline, we got "Tree Bites Man."
It's tough to tell from the films whether anyone bit anybody. But Savard (and this is wonderful) said, in his version, that Carcillo tried to pull his teeth out, and his finger hit up against his choppers. Uh huh. Reminds me of the time I got sucker punched by the kid across the street and his mother actually told my mother, "well, Stephen's face got in the way of Jimmy's fist."
Myself? I think Savard was hungry and saw an opportunity to eat a chicken finger (do I need to elaborate on the pun?).
Anyway, Bite-gate happened early in an otherwise tense game where, much of the time, you had to cover your eyes and pray. The last time I was this nervous was during the 2004 playoffs when the Red Sox were busy coming from three down to beat the Yankees in seven games. I can remember, in one of those games, a co-worker literally covering her face with her jacket because she couldn't bear to watch. That's how I feel sometimes, too.
There were highlights -- at least from a viewing standpoint: No. 1 came at the end of the second period when the Flyers tied it after a sloppy line change by the Bruins. The goal wasn't so great (it was one of those times where you hope you have a soft, non-invasive object in your hands so when you throw it at the TV, the TV doesn't break), but coach Claude Julien's reaction was absolutely spectacular. He literally slammed his fist up against the boards and uttered clearly visible vulgarity.
I loved it, mainly because I was doing basically the same thing he was. Only I get paid a lot less to act that way, and my tantrums aren't broadcast all over Versus (thank God it was Versus, too, because they'd have had to scrape Edwards off the ice after that one).
The second, naturally, was Milan Lucic's game-winning goal with about two minutes left. Lucic's had a tough year. He was my favorite Broon at this time last year, but he couldn't keep himself healthy this season. It started almost immediatley, and he was in and out of sick bay for virtually the whole season.
He's had a stretch of decent health now, and he's starting to play like the Milan Lucic of a year ago.
The Gahhhhhhden just exploded. I remember when the TD Garden opened (it was the FleetCenter in those days), and people complained that there just wasn't any atmosphere there. It was too quiet.
Of course it was. The teams playing in it were awful. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were worthy of any emotion or atmosphere. Now, they are. And there was no lack of it last night. It was electric.
So now we had to Philly for two games, it would really be nice if they stole one down there. It's pretty obvious that the Philly fans, as well as the Flyers themselves, can't wait to sink their teeth into Da Broons, but that's OK. That's what makes hockey hockey. One can only hope, though, that the Flyers prove to be as pusillanimous toward the Bruins as the B's were to the Pittsburgh Penguins after Matt Cooke leveled Savard in March -- giving him the concussion that forced him to the sidelines for two months.
Somehow, I doubt it, though. The Flyers, even with all their injuries, haven't stopped being physical. They may not be the Broad Street Bullies of the 70s, but they don't have too many Lady Byng candidates either.
(Aside, in a rough, tough sport like hockey, does it strike you as odd that one of the NHL's major awards has the word "lady" in it?)
Expect at least one beat down in Game 3.
And speaking of which, what are we to say about the Celtics? They beat the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James like a drum. Take away that 15-0 fourth-quarter run by Cleveland (and you knew that was going to happen eventually) and the Celtics dominated the game.
I have to admit one thing: If either Boston team is fortunate enough to go all the way this spring, I'd prefer it to be the Bruins. But I won't complain if it's the Celtics.
My reasoning is simple: The Bruins haven't won the Cup since 1972, my freshman year of college. In '72, with Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, et al, Boston fans had every reason to expect that this team would just keep on winning.
Only it didn't. Things happened. Orr had major reconstructive knee surgery after that '72 season, and while even a half of an Orr was better than the whole of almost anyone else in the league at the time, the extensive surgery slowed him down a bit. Also, 1972 was the year the World Hockey Association pilfered many good players from the NHL with promises of piles and piles of Monopoly money, and several key members of Da Broons jumped (Ed Westfall, Derek Sanderson, Johnny McKenzie and and Gerry Cheevers among them).
They were never the same team. They got back to the Cup finals in '74, but became the first established, original NHL team to lose a final series to an expansion team (Philly, ironically), and then lost two straight finals to Montreal in '77 and '78. They were poised to beat the Habs -- finally -- in '79 and would have been favored to win the Cup, too, as the New York Rangers upset the Islanders in the other semifinal. But, alas, coach Don Cherry forgot how to count, and the Bruins caught caught with too many men on the ice. The Habs tied the game with about a minute to go, and won it in overtime.
The gaffe cost Cherry -- easily the most enjoyable coach in the history of Boston sports (well, my history anyway) -- his job. These days, "Grapes" is on Hockey Night in Canada, and is good for saying something totally outrageous, which he knows will piss people off royally, at least once a week. Good to see the man's still got it.
The Bruins made it to the Cup finals two other times -- in 1988, where they were swept by The Great Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers (that's the year the old Garden went dark during one of the games, and former Globie Leigh Montville wrote, famously, that "the gerbil -- the one who has to run the generator from a treadmill -- died"); and again, two years later, when they lost to the Oilers in five (a series that featured a triple overtime opener in which Glenn Wesley missed an open net ... a goal that would have won the game for the B's. Instead, Petr Klima scored for the Oilers and took all the starch out of the Bruins).
The Bruins have been plagued, for years, with an ownership that refused to spend money to bring talent into Boston. It got so bad that Ray Bourque, their best player since the days of the Big Bad Bruins, had to get himself traded to Colorado at the end of his career so he could win a Stanely Cup out there ... instead of here, where he should have been parading around Boston with several of them.
The Bruins also been plagued by awful luck. Orr isn't the only player to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when it comes to injuries. Other than Bourque, their best player since the Orr era was Cam Neely, and he had to retire early because of a hit he took at the hands of Ulf Samuelson. Another of their real good prospects, Normand Leveille, who was only 19, suffered a brain aneurysm and never played again.
And one of their top draft picks, Gord Kluzak, never saw his career get off the ground, as knee injuries cut it short.
Still, none of those guys died, the way Len Bias and Reggie Lewis did. Obviously, those were incredible tragedies in and of themselves. But, from a practical standpoint, they derailed the Celtics for a long, long time. Bias was going to be, to those 1980s Celtics, what John Havlicek was to the 60s and 70s team ... a transitional figure they could build around in their efforts to keep the dynasty going. Lewis was as pure a scorer as they had in many years, and he was truly coming into his own when he developed heart ailment, and collapsed and died while playing a pickup game in 1993.
The Celtics have certainly had their run, though. They won eight straight NBA titles in the 50s and 60s, and they've snagged 17 flags overall. Their last title was in 2008, and many of the guys who won it are still with the team -- albeit two years older.
I didn't expect the Celtics to make it out of the first round this year. They played horribly for the entire second half of the regular season (which reminds me, there has to be some kind of incentive for teams to stop screwing around from October through April. Judging from the way both the B's and C's are playing now, it's obvious they used the regular schedule as an extended exhibition season, and that's kind of insulting to the fans who plunk down valuable bucks to watch).
We need to work on that.
The Celtics handcuffed LeBron and his bad elbow until the game was pretty much over. Then, they let up and allowed the Cavaliers to pick up some steam. It may have made you squirm in your seat a little, just as the Miami Heat did in Game 5 of their series, but they were never in any real danger. It's an NBA axiom that teams that put it in overdrive for 15-0 runs generally lose some zip the first time something goes against them. So it was only matter of time before that run stopped.
The only thing about the Celtics I will say is this: Rajon Rondo, their point guard, is the marquee player on this team now. Maybe the older guys have been slow to realize that, but they'd better get with the program now. They are only going as far as Wajon Wondo (as Bob Cousy might say) will take them (oh, how I wish the Cooz was still doing games so I could hear him pronounce that name; reminds me of the time the C's had Rick Robey, and The Cooz said "ohhhh, fewocious webounding by Wick Wobey). The Cooz was/is our very own Babawa Wawters.
Acutally, Wondo reminds you little of The Cooz, because if there's a routine way and an, shall we say, artistic way of doing things, Wondo will do the latter. Nothing's ever routine with Wajon Wondo.
Last night, Rondo handed out 19 assists and scored 13 points. They don't do scoring in hoops like they do in hockey, where assists and goals have equal point value. But if they did, Rondo would go down in the box score as having scored 51 points. That's one helluva night's work!
Finally, and briefly, there were the Red Sox, fresh off an ignominious sweep at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles (who have won seven games this far this season; four of them against Boston). They took out their frustrations on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California, USA, North America, Planet Earth, to the tune of a 17-8 beatdown. Balls were flying out of Fenway Park like rockets.
For one night, anyway, they were the Red Sox, and not some feeble facsimile thereof.
Maybe they just got swept up in the surging tide of victory. If that's the case, then I approve!!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Internet is for Porn
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Internet is for Porn
Well, OK, not really (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
But apparently the folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission think it is.
I woke up this morning -- as I always do -- to the local news on our ABC affiliate. I do this for many reasons, not the least of which is that Channel 5 has, at the moment, my favorite weather babe ... J.C. Monahan ... and it's somewhat more palatable to hear that it's going to snow, or rain for three days and flood my basement, from J.C. than it is to hear it from, say, grizzled old weatherman.
Hey, if you're going to get bad news, you might as well get it from someone who looks good. Right?
But I digress. After today's two-hour local news cast (which features so many spots of J.C. and her weather map I don't even count anymore), Good Morning America had a spot about how the watchdogs at the SEC -- you know, the people who are supposed to be making sure corporate pigs like Goldman Sachs and AIG aren't fleecing is all blind -- spend, in some cases, up to eight hours a day surfing the web for porn.
My first reaction to this was that I thought only the death and the leftfield wall at Fenway Park were the great equalizers. Little did I know that porn falls into that category too.
No matter how important, or indigent, we are in life, death makes worm food out of us all. As one friend put it to me once, we're in that box, and in the ground, for eternity. Our lives here are tantamount to a mere blink of an eye.
As for Fenway, all you have to do is mention the name Bucky (Bleeping) Dent. If a guy like him can hit one out of the yard, then you know what I mean about that park being the great equalizer.
But porn? Actually, I should have known. We're all hard wired the same way in the end. We are all slaves to our sexual stimulations, even if some of us are more stimulated than others.
We all have sexual needs, desires and fantasies, and we all have aspects of each that we'd just as soon nobody knows about.
All of which is why porn is a natural for the internet. Back in the good old days, when we all hid Playboy and Penthouse under our mattresses, we lived in fear that our sexually explicit material would find itself in the wrong hands (such as snoopy mothers).
My mother was a snoopy mother. And unduly paranoid, too. She once took the cover to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band down the basement, and parsed every lyric of every song for drug references. She came back upstairs, convinced she'd uncovered the key to some nefarious plot by the Beatles to get every kid in America hooked on drugs ... and damn near banned us from listening to the album, or them, ever again.
(I should add, she bought me the record for my birthday).
So you can imagine how my mother would have reacted had Forum Magazine popped up between the mattresses while she was changing the sheets. And we won't even get into what she'd have said, had she seen one of those disgusting periodicals, about any undefined stains on those sheets.
For the record, I was way too smart to import pornographic material into the Krause House -- or even on the Krause property.
Most people, when they think of the internet and porn, undoubtedly have this visual of a bunch of schieves in their sleeveless T shirts, pleasuring themselves while sitting in front of a computer in their parents' basements. I know that's the image I have.
And while I'm sure there plenty of them, and that they're doing what they do even as we speak, I guess the SEC circle jerk proves that porn has no bounds. It knows no class distinction. Doesn't matter if you're a Harvard lawyer or a hard core voyeur (gee, can I make a poem about that??). If you're hooked, you're hooked.
I work at a place where one of our top executives got caught downloading porn on his computer. Of course, he was pretty stupid. He supervised an office of mainly women, and his computer screen was situated in such a way that they could see the images reflected through the window in his office.
Someone complained (well, obviously!) and next thing you know, our executive was shown the door. And as a result, the company drew up this list of rules and regulations governing use of the internet more explicit, in its own way, than any of those letters you used to read in the Penthouse Forum. Of course, we all named this document after the poor soul whose weakness for the internet flesh cost him his job.
We are nothing if not twisted people ourselves!
Anyway, back to the SEC. I wish some of these guys could get dragged into court someday (who knows, maybe they will). I would love to hear some crusading attorney get one of them on the stand, and ask, "what were you people doing while Bernie Madoff was making Ponzi look like a Boy Scout? What were you people doing while AIG and Bear Stearns were driving themselves -- and the rest of us -- straight through the ground and halfway to hell?
"Well, your honor, we were busy. One of the guy downloaded the latest episode of 'Alien Space Fembots,' and it was just too good to pass up."
I can just see one of these guys thumbing through the latest porn catalogue (with one hand, of course) and then going into a meeting where they're charting statistics, and having his chart look like a parabola.
(For the math-challenged, a parabola, on a Cartesian graph, charts all the possible solutions to quadratic equations. They can, in many cases, resemble a well-proportioned male member.)
Of course, now, the double entendres will just come pouring out. Today, on the ABC website, there's a sidebar to the main story that asks, "How Big is the SEC's Porn Problem." Sort of reminds me of the time the Buffalo Sabres had a hockey player named Michael Peca. The Bruins were about to face Buffalo in the playoffs, and one of its reporters -- a female, no less -- wrote a story about him. Some Globie, and I'm convinced it was meant for in-house purposes only, wrote a headline that said, "Buffalo's Peca really big."
Alas, it got through ... and got into the paper the next day.
It also reminds me of that Year from Hell, when I worked in public relations for the company that is now known as Verizon. There was a whole list of expressions we could not use when we wrote press releases, and one of them was "enter the market." I, in my naivete, thought that was pretty innocuous, until it the urban connotation of the word "enter" was pointed out to me. Now, I wouldn't call myself a rube when it comes to this stuff by any stretch. But even I thought that was a bit too paranoid.
all of his only proves that when it comes to porn, and and prurient interests, we are all teenagers whose hormones still rage out of control.
Well, at least now we know why the economy tanked as badly as it did. All this time, we were led to believe it was Bill Clinton's fault (man, don't even go there ... can you just imagine? ... no, never mind ... the thought of that is just too gross, even for me). Or Barney Frank's. Or the head of AIG. Or General Motors.
Turns out it was none of the above. It was Debbie Does Dallas. It was Larry Flynt's fault. Or Hugh Heffner's (though to be honest, that stuff's pretty tame compared to what you can find on line if you really care to look).
And here thought, all this time, that Monica Lewinsky's dress was the only article of clothing floating around the American power structure that also served as the host for someone's incriminating DNA.
Thank God for Net Nanny, though, and other inter-office internet tracking devices. I'm sure that's how all these Wall Street Wankers were found out. Otherwise, we'd have to get Bulah Balbricker from Porky's to feret them out. That would have been a hoot.
So, in closing, I leave you withthis ... perhaps the real theme song for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Enjoy it.
The Internet is for Porn
Well, OK, not really (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
But apparently the folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission think it is.
I woke up this morning -- as I always do -- to the local news on our ABC affiliate. I do this for many reasons, not the least of which is that Channel 5 has, at the moment, my favorite weather babe ... J.C. Monahan ... and it's somewhat more palatable to hear that it's going to snow, or rain for three days and flood my basement, from J.C. than it is to hear it from, say, grizzled old weatherman.
Hey, if you're going to get bad news, you might as well get it from someone who looks good. Right?
But I digress. After today's two-hour local news cast (which features so many spots of J.C. and her weather map I don't even count anymore), Good Morning America had a spot about how the watchdogs at the SEC -- you know, the people who are supposed to be making sure corporate pigs like Goldman Sachs and AIG aren't fleecing is all blind -- spend, in some cases, up to eight hours a day surfing the web for porn.
My first reaction to this was that I thought only the death and the leftfield wall at Fenway Park were the great equalizers. Little did I know that porn falls into that category too.
No matter how important, or indigent, we are in life, death makes worm food out of us all. As one friend put it to me once, we're in that box, and in the ground, for eternity. Our lives here are tantamount to a mere blink of an eye.
As for Fenway, all you have to do is mention the name Bucky (Bleeping) Dent. If a guy like him can hit one out of the yard, then you know what I mean about that park being the great equalizer.
But porn? Actually, I should have known. We're all hard wired the same way in the end. We are all slaves to our sexual stimulations, even if some of us are more stimulated than others.
We all have sexual needs, desires and fantasies, and we all have aspects of each that we'd just as soon nobody knows about.
All of which is why porn is a natural for the internet. Back in the good old days, when we all hid Playboy and Penthouse under our mattresses, we lived in fear that our sexually explicit material would find itself in the wrong hands (such as snoopy mothers).
My mother was a snoopy mother. And unduly paranoid, too. She once took the cover to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band down the basement, and parsed every lyric of every song for drug references. She came back upstairs, convinced she'd uncovered the key to some nefarious plot by the Beatles to get every kid in America hooked on drugs ... and damn near banned us from listening to the album, or them, ever again.
(I should add, she bought me the record for my birthday).
So you can imagine how my mother would have reacted had Forum Magazine popped up between the mattresses while she was changing the sheets. And we won't even get into what she'd have said, had she seen one of those disgusting periodicals, about any undefined stains on those sheets.
For the record, I was way too smart to import pornographic material into the Krause House -- or even on the Krause property.
Most people, when they think of the internet and porn, undoubtedly have this visual of a bunch of schieves in their sleeveless T shirts, pleasuring themselves while sitting in front of a computer in their parents' basements. I know that's the image I have.
And while I'm sure there plenty of them, and that they're doing what they do even as we speak, I guess the SEC circle jerk proves that porn has no bounds. It knows no class distinction. Doesn't matter if you're a Harvard lawyer or a hard core voyeur (gee, can I make a poem about that??). If you're hooked, you're hooked.
I work at a place where one of our top executives got caught downloading porn on his computer. Of course, he was pretty stupid. He supervised an office of mainly women, and his computer screen was situated in such a way that they could see the images reflected through the window in his office.
Someone complained (well, obviously!) and next thing you know, our executive was shown the door. And as a result, the company drew up this list of rules and regulations governing use of the internet more explicit, in its own way, than any of those letters you used to read in the Penthouse Forum. Of course, we all named this document after the poor soul whose weakness for the internet flesh cost him his job.
We are nothing if not twisted people ourselves!
Anyway, back to the SEC. I wish some of these guys could get dragged into court someday (who knows, maybe they will). I would love to hear some crusading attorney get one of them on the stand, and ask, "what were you people doing while Bernie Madoff was making Ponzi look like a Boy Scout? What were you people doing while AIG and Bear Stearns were driving themselves -- and the rest of us -- straight through the ground and halfway to hell?
"Well, your honor, we were busy. One of the guy downloaded the latest episode of 'Alien Space Fembots,' and it was just too good to pass up."
I can just see one of these guys thumbing through the latest porn catalogue (with one hand, of course) and then going into a meeting where they're charting statistics, and having his chart look like a parabola.
(For the math-challenged, a parabola, on a Cartesian graph, charts all the possible solutions to quadratic equations. They can, in many cases, resemble a well-proportioned male member.)
Of course, now, the double entendres will just come pouring out. Today, on the ABC website, there's a sidebar to the main story that asks, "How Big is the SEC's Porn Problem." Sort of reminds me of the time the Buffalo Sabres had a hockey player named Michael Peca. The Bruins were about to face Buffalo in the playoffs, and one of its reporters -- a female, no less -- wrote a story about him. Some Globie, and I'm convinced it was meant for in-house purposes only, wrote a headline that said, "Buffalo's Peca really big."
Alas, it got through ... and got into the paper the next day.
It also reminds me of that Year from Hell, when I worked in public relations for the company that is now known as Verizon. There was a whole list of expressions we could not use when we wrote press releases, and one of them was "enter the market." I, in my naivete, thought that was pretty innocuous, until it the urban connotation of the word "enter" was pointed out to me. Now, I wouldn't call myself a rube when it comes to this stuff by any stretch. But even I thought that was a bit too paranoid.
all of his only proves that when it comes to porn, and and prurient interests, we are all teenagers whose hormones still rage out of control.
Well, at least now we know why the economy tanked as badly as it did. All this time, we were led to believe it was Bill Clinton's fault (man, don't even go there ... can you just imagine? ... no, never mind ... the thought of that is just too gross, even for me). Or Barney Frank's. Or the head of AIG. Or General Motors.
Turns out it was none of the above. It was Debbie Does Dallas. It was Larry Flynt's fault. Or Hugh Heffner's (though to be honest, that stuff's pretty tame compared to what you can find on line if you really care to look).
And here thought, all this time, that Monica Lewinsky's dress was the only article of clothing floating around the American power structure that also served as the host for someone's incriminating DNA.
Thank God for Net Nanny, though, and other inter-office internet tracking devices. I'm sure that's how all these Wall Street Wankers were found out. Otherwise, we'd have to get Bulah Balbricker from Porky's to feret them out. That would have been a hoot.
So, in closing, I leave you withthis ... perhaps the real theme song for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Enjoy it.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Invasion of the Stick People
I cannot say I was always the biggest fan of the Boston Marathon. I've kind of had a love/hate relationship with it for my entire professional life.
It was barely on my radar through high school. I knew about it, but that was as far as it went. In those days, it was the BAA Marathon, and it was a race for amateurs who were (in my humble opinion) crazy enough to run 26 miles from the western suburbs to the Pru for the honor of throwing up the bowl of beef stew they got when they finished.
And that was, literally, my first experience covering the race, too. I was still 19 years old in 1973 when assigned by United Press International (my first professional job) to the bowels of the Prudential Center in Boston, where the post-race triage unit was set up. There, I saw enough digestive distress to turn me off from EATING (let alone running) forever.
And it caused me, for a time, to be as derisive about these runner as possible. I thought the whole thing was overrated. It permeated everything in its wake, including the Red Sox, who had to play early on Patriots Day. To me, that was simply a craven accommodation to a bunch of narcissistic freaks who thought that a 26-mile road race was an excuse to shut the whole city down.
Of course, I can say, now, that a lot of that ill-will was masqueraded envy. I had no idea, when I was 19, what it was like to work feverishly toward setting a difficult goal and then experience the euphoria of achieving it. That is the essence of the Boston Marathon. The story here isn't which African professional flew in here to win it. The story involves the rest of the pack ... the ones who began in this year's second wave. They are the reason this race remains an indelible civic institution.
Covering the Marathon for a wire service makes it difficult to see it from that perspective. You're there to report news ... and the news is who won, who almost won, and any other noteworthy events that take place along the way (and a lot of that involves celebrities who jet into Boston for a day to run). We never got to hang back and talk to the dedicated runners who do this to realize their OWN dreams.
Because in the end, it doesn't matter whether you're Robert "Swing Low, Sweet" Cheruiyot or some anonymous runner with a five-digit bib number. Everyone who runs, and who finishes, gets to cross that line. They all get to hear the cheers along the way. They've all trained, often alone, and often in unforgiving weather conditions. The course offers the same harsh realities to all, whether they're elite runners or plodding through for the first time.
And when it's over, they all have something extremely, wonderfully important in common: They've all conquered the 26.3 mile Boston Marathon course ... Natick and Wellesley, Heartbreak Hill, Cleveland Circle, Kenmore Square, Mass. Ave., Hereford Street, and Copley Square ... and they all deserve an equal amount of credit.
I rode the media bus in 1975 when Bill Rodgers won this race for the first time; and rode it again in 1976, when it was 95 degrees at the starting point in Hopkinton and in the low 60s at the finish line (the notoriously strong New England sea breeze having taken effect). I've seen the toll the elements can take on the runners, particularly when the race -- which begins well inland -- wends its say to the coast and the winds and temperatures can change wildly. I've seen runners so cramped up, and in such intense pain, that you wonder why on earth they put themselves through the ordeal. It just doesn't make any sense.
The answer comes with a very positive aspect of human nature ... and one that, I'm afraid, is lacking in more people with each generation: the desire to challenge ourselves ... to continually raise that bar to (to use another track analogy).
We've lost that desire, I'm afraid. I don't know if it's because we've just had too many things handed to us, or whether technology has made it unnecessary. Maybe we're just not conditioned anymore to accept challenges. You can see it everywhere you go.
Nobody has any desire anymore to embrace the tough challenges. In fact, if anything, we go out of our way to deny they even exist Problems that have left geniuses vexed for generations are now reduced to simplistic, easy solutions by today's pundits.
And I don't want to get overly political here, because there's an equal amount of guilt here. We all do it, whether we're liberal or conservative. We just don't have the patience anymore to sit down and work out complicated solutions. There's no glory in it.
You won't get elected to office if you admit you have no idea, for example, how to stop a recession from getting worse, and that, to you, the only solution is to try different things and see how the markets react to them. You can't do that because nobody wants to hear that there isn't an answer that cannot be found in the same time it used to take Ward Cleaver to solve The Beav's weekly dilemma.
I think if I were to profile my ideal political candidate, he or she would have to be a distance runner. I don't mean someone like Bill Clinton, or George W ... one who dabbled in it for show (though I suspect Bush was probably more dedicated, on the whole, to fitness than The Fantastic Billy C was). I mean someone who understands the commitment to keeping your eye on the prize, and who won't let a couple of setbacks along the way derail them. I mean someone who has trained patiently, in all kinds of elements, and understands that true achievement often comes after an extended period of great pain and frustration.
After all, wasn't it Thomas Edison who said, "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration?"
We do not have a government of long distance runners today. I don't think we even have a government of sprinters. Or hurdlers. We have a government of hucksters ... car salesmen ... people who will say anything to anyone to close the deal, and worry about the ramifications later.
Of course, all of this is contingent on an electorate who understands the same things, but that's just not the case either. Some of it has to do with the fact that our problems tend to reach such a critical stage (and that's because their complicated nature is counterproductive to them even being address by today's politicians) that people just cry out for easy answers. And there just aren't any.
But a lot of it is simple conditioning. We're not conditioned to think long-term anymore. Everything is "now," whether we're talking about stopping terrorism, losing weight, getting rich, building and maintaining our national infrastructure, curbing recessions, health care ... the focus seems to be to achieve the maximum results with the minimum output.
That is why you see these commercials for Bowflex home gyms, or Jenny Craig ... why there's Judge Judy on TV ... why we ever thought we could eradicate terrorism by killing every last terrorist (which is akin to trying to kill every last cockroach that lives in the walls of your house) ... why, for the longest time, we thought the solution to every social problem was to throw money at it.
We remain married to anything that allows us to get around life's complications ... that reduces the overly complicated to the overly simplistic ... and (and I hate to use this expression because it's become such a cliche) dumbs us down.
People often dismiss sports as being totally artificial and irrelevant ... and the exclusive domain of tremendously self-absorbed athletes who no longer have the slightest thing in common with the rest of us.
And a lot of ways, that is true, especially the major professional ones where even being an elite athlete isn't enough. This is why we have so many instances of cheating, whether it's steroids, growth hormones, blood doping, and the rest.
The last bastion, to me, of old-fashioned American perseverance and tenacity is distance running, because there is absolutely no way to get around anything. If you're going to succeed, you have to work. You have to take risks. You have to protect your body so that it can withstand those risks. And you have to know, going in, that even if you do everything right, things might not go your way ... and you have to prepare to accept whatever comes.
You compete not against Robert Cheruiyot, but against yourself. You answer only to the person on the other side of the mirror, and we all know that person is absolutely the toughest one of all to please.
Congratulations to those who dared, even if they didn't finish. For they have done something that nobody can take away from them ... and they've dedicated themselves to something much bigger, collectively, than they could ever be individually.
A few years ago, on the local sports radio talk station (a refugee for exactly the type of people on whom this entire screed would be totally lost), an angry caller got on there (aren't they all angry??) the day before the race and complained that the "stick people" were going to be clogging up his streets for the next couple of days. His streets. Stick people.
I thought the use of the term "stick people" was as humorous as it was pejorative, and in some of my more caustic moments, I've come to refer to the Boston Marathon as "The Invasion of the Stick People."
But I also know that running a Marathon requires dedication, discipline, a bit of fire in the belly, and a lot of patience and endurance ... all traits that, I'm afraid, we, as a people, could do well to learn a little better.
It was barely on my radar through high school. I knew about it, but that was as far as it went. In those days, it was the BAA Marathon, and it was a race for amateurs who were (in my humble opinion) crazy enough to run 26 miles from the western suburbs to the Pru for the honor of throwing up the bowl of beef stew they got when they finished.
And that was, literally, my first experience covering the race, too. I was still 19 years old in 1973 when assigned by United Press International (my first professional job) to the bowels of the Prudential Center in Boston, where the post-race triage unit was set up. There, I saw enough digestive distress to turn me off from EATING (let alone running) forever.
And it caused me, for a time, to be as derisive about these runner as possible. I thought the whole thing was overrated. It permeated everything in its wake, including the Red Sox, who had to play early on Patriots Day. To me, that was simply a craven accommodation to a bunch of narcissistic freaks who thought that a 26-mile road race was an excuse to shut the whole city down.
Of course, I can say, now, that a lot of that ill-will was masqueraded envy. I had no idea, when I was 19, what it was like to work feverishly toward setting a difficult goal and then experience the euphoria of achieving it. That is the essence of the Boston Marathon. The story here isn't which African professional flew in here to win it. The story involves the rest of the pack ... the ones who began in this year's second wave. They are the reason this race remains an indelible civic institution.
Covering the Marathon for a wire service makes it difficult to see it from that perspective. You're there to report news ... and the news is who won, who almost won, and any other noteworthy events that take place along the way (and a lot of that involves celebrities who jet into Boston for a day to run). We never got to hang back and talk to the dedicated runners who do this to realize their OWN dreams.
Because in the end, it doesn't matter whether you're Robert "Swing Low, Sweet" Cheruiyot or some anonymous runner with a five-digit bib number. Everyone who runs, and who finishes, gets to cross that line. They all get to hear the cheers along the way. They've all trained, often alone, and often in unforgiving weather conditions. The course offers the same harsh realities to all, whether they're elite runners or plodding through for the first time.
And when it's over, they all have something extremely, wonderfully important in common: They've all conquered the 26.3 mile Boston Marathon course ... Natick and Wellesley, Heartbreak Hill, Cleveland Circle, Kenmore Square, Mass. Ave., Hereford Street, and Copley Square ... and they all deserve an equal amount of credit.
I rode the media bus in 1975 when Bill Rodgers won this race for the first time; and rode it again in 1976, when it was 95 degrees at the starting point in Hopkinton and in the low 60s at the finish line (the notoriously strong New England sea breeze having taken effect). I've seen the toll the elements can take on the runners, particularly when the race -- which begins well inland -- wends its say to the coast and the winds and temperatures can change wildly. I've seen runners so cramped up, and in such intense pain, that you wonder why on earth they put themselves through the ordeal. It just doesn't make any sense.
The answer comes with a very positive aspect of human nature ... and one that, I'm afraid, is lacking in more people with each generation: the desire to challenge ourselves ... to continually raise that bar to (to use another track analogy).
We've lost that desire, I'm afraid. I don't know if it's because we've just had too many things handed to us, or whether technology has made it unnecessary. Maybe we're just not conditioned anymore to accept challenges. You can see it everywhere you go.
Nobody has any desire anymore to embrace the tough challenges. In fact, if anything, we go out of our way to deny they even exist Problems that have left geniuses vexed for generations are now reduced to simplistic, easy solutions by today's pundits.
And I don't want to get overly political here, because there's an equal amount of guilt here. We all do it, whether we're liberal or conservative. We just don't have the patience anymore to sit down and work out complicated solutions. There's no glory in it.
You won't get elected to office if you admit you have no idea, for example, how to stop a recession from getting worse, and that, to you, the only solution is to try different things and see how the markets react to them. You can't do that because nobody wants to hear that there isn't an answer that cannot be found in the same time it used to take Ward Cleaver to solve The Beav's weekly dilemma.
I think if I were to profile my ideal political candidate, he or she would have to be a distance runner. I don't mean someone like Bill Clinton, or George W ... one who dabbled in it for show (though I suspect Bush was probably more dedicated, on the whole, to fitness than The Fantastic Billy C was). I mean someone who understands the commitment to keeping your eye on the prize, and who won't let a couple of setbacks along the way derail them. I mean someone who has trained patiently, in all kinds of elements, and understands that true achievement often comes after an extended period of great pain and frustration.
After all, wasn't it Thomas Edison who said, "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration?"
We do not have a government of long distance runners today. I don't think we even have a government of sprinters. Or hurdlers. We have a government of hucksters ... car salesmen ... people who will say anything to anyone to close the deal, and worry about the ramifications later.
Of course, all of this is contingent on an electorate who understands the same things, but that's just not the case either. Some of it has to do with the fact that our problems tend to reach such a critical stage (and that's because their complicated nature is counterproductive to them even being address by today's politicians) that people just cry out for easy answers. And there just aren't any.
But a lot of it is simple conditioning. We're not conditioned to think long-term anymore. Everything is "now," whether we're talking about stopping terrorism, losing weight, getting rich, building and maintaining our national infrastructure, curbing recessions, health care ... the focus seems to be to achieve the maximum results with the minimum output.
That is why you see these commercials for Bowflex home gyms, or Jenny Craig ... why there's Judge Judy on TV ... why we ever thought we could eradicate terrorism by killing every last terrorist (which is akin to trying to kill every last cockroach that lives in the walls of your house) ... why, for the longest time, we thought the solution to every social problem was to throw money at it.
We remain married to anything that allows us to get around life's complications ... that reduces the overly complicated to the overly simplistic ... and (and I hate to use this expression because it's become such a cliche) dumbs us down.
People often dismiss sports as being totally artificial and irrelevant ... and the exclusive domain of tremendously self-absorbed athletes who no longer have the slightest thing in common with the rest of us.
And a lot of ways, that is true, especially the major professional ones where even being an elite athlete isn't enough. This is why we have so many instances of cheating, whether it's steroids, growth hormones, blood doping, and the rest.
The last bastion, to me, of old-fashioned American perseverance and tenacity is distance running, because there is absolutely no way to get around anything. If you're going to succeed, you have to work. You have to take risks. You have to protect your body so that it can withstand those risks. And you have to know, going in, that even if you do everything right, things might not go your way ... and you have to prepare to accept whatever comes.
You compete not against Robert Cheruiyot, but against yourself. You answer only to the person on the other side of the mirror, and we all know that person is absolutely the toughest one of all to please.
Congratulations to those who dared, even if they didn't finish. For they have done something that nobody can take away from them ... and they've dedicated themselves to something much bigger, collectively, than they could ever be individually.
A few years ago, on the local sports radio talk station (a refugee for exactly the type of people on whom this entire screed would be totally lost), an angry caller got on there (aren't they all angry??) the day before the race and complained that the "stick people" were going to be clogging up his streets for the next couple of days. His streets. Stick people.
I thought the use of the term "stick people" was as humorous as it was pejorative, and in some of my more caustic moments, I've come to refer to the Boston Marathon as "The Invasion of the Stick People."
But I also know that running a Marathon requires dedication, discipline, a bit of fire in the belly, and a lot of patience and endurance ... all traits that, I'm afraid, we, as a people, could do well to learn a little better.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Random Thoughts ...
Some random thoughts today as we anticipate -- with great relief -- the passing of January ... easily the longest month of the calendar year.
Scott Brown is the flavor of the month. How else do you explain a poll that says he'd be competitive with Barack Obama in 2012?
Let's give him his due. He ran an effective campaign -- not hard to accomplish, seeing that his opponent, Martha Coakley, barely showed up -- and captured the pulse of an electorate that was sick and tired of being taken for granted.
But let's not run too far afield with this. This was not some dramatic repudiation of Obama's agenda as much as it was a statewide election where people got a chance to tell the local leadership that they're not to be taken as rubes who will vote, like robots, for all candidates with a "D" next to their name.
Say what you will about Ted Kennedy (and I have), but the man never took anything for granted. Even when he was running against token competition (can you just IMAGINE how he'd have mopped the floor with Brown?), he worked.
Brown is a Mitt Romney clone (a point that was hammered home to me when it was Romney who introduced him when he gave his victory speech). Maybe he'll surprise me and be an effective advocate for Massachusetts, and I'll be the first to eat Humble Pie if that actually happens.
But it's far more likely that he'll play to the cheap seats, on behalf of the Republican leadership that -- despite his victory -- still sees our state as the People's Republic of Massachusetts.
############
I suppose if you asked 100 people what their idea of an effective leader is, you'd get 100 different answers. There's no right or wrong definition. And that's especially true if you examine just WHO it is that some people choose to follow.
So with that in mind, here are some of MY criteria for a leader:
-- Inherent decency. By that, I mean honest, accountable, moral and sober (in thought, please, not in temperance).
-- Dignity. This was my only knock against Bill Clinton, and it's one of the reasons why, even though I agreed with him politically, he left me cold in the long run. I can understand human weakness, even though I might not always like it. But getting it in the Oval Office? Tawdry.
-- Even-handed. So far, I think I've described George W. Bush as much as I've described Barack Obama. I had no doubts that Bush was a decent enough guy, even though I didn't agree with much of anything he said. And he was certainly dignified ... WAY more so than Clinton was. But where I part company, and start drifting to Obama's side, is in this category. I never liked the bellicose language that came out of the previous administration. "Bring it on," "Axis of Evil ..." All words like that did was stoke the fires rather than help put them out. I'm not naive enough to believe that there's never a place for that type of draconian language. But not as a matter of course.
-- Independent in thought. Again, my definition of this might differ than yours. I don't want people in high office who are bought and sold by unelected groups of people, whether they're corporations (HATE the latest Supreme Court ruling), unions, lobbyists or political power brokers. If you're a Democrat, and you vote along party lines the majority of the time, I can live with that. You are, after all, a Democrat. And it would be the same if you were a Republican.
But I always got the feeling, with Bush, that his thoughts and actions were almost directed, behind the scenes, by a cabal of -- for lack of a better term -- neocons, led, of course, by Dick Cheney. I know, I know ... I know ... it's almost a cliché. But I have the luxury of having thought that before he was even elected the first time. I also think that it took him almost seven years of an eight-year presidency to realize that these people led him down the wrong path in many respects. And that once he realized it, and fought to stamp his OWN identity on the presidency, he became much more likable.
It's too early to tell whether Obama will meet my expectations in this department. I get the feeling, behind the scenes, that he bucked some fierce opposition to the bank and auto industry bailouts, which leads me to think that -- MAYBE -- he honestly thought these actions were the best way to go (as opposed to the Iraq War, which -- I think -- was clearly the brainchild of unelected neocons whose idea of peace in the valley was more like imperialism).
I could end up being all wrong about this. Obama could end up being a worse hack than I could ever imagine. He could end up being a bigger tyrant than Idi Amin.
Or ... he could capitulate too much to his political opposition ... something Clinton also did when the GOP won the House and Senate in 1994. Right now, he's walking a fine line, and all I can say is that I wouldn't want to be him.
Or ... he could be what he appears to me to be like now ... an honest guy who leans a little too far to the left sometimes (farther than I do, that's for sure), but who seems to be staking out an agenda in which he truly believes. I'll give him that he's a whole lot smarter than I am, and privy to a lot more facts than I am, and that he -- like all our leaders -- has our best interests at heart.
I guess it just comes down to defining what those bests interests are.
###############
Sports are a pretty clear microcosm of the "build you up, tear you down" syndrome. We see it everywhere, but nowhere is it more prevalent than sports. And all you have to do is look at the Patriots to get a good dose of it.
From the time they won their first Super Bowl until they lost, earlier this month, to the Baltimore Ravens, they were the model NFL franchise. Everyone wanted to be like them.
That, of course, is because they were amazingly consistent, and because they won three Super Bowls. This doesn't make them all that special. The Steelers have won six. That's twice as many as three. Other teams, as well, have won more than three Super Bowls, such as the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers (four each).
Heck, even the New York Giants have won three Super Bowls.
But the Patriots won theirs in this decade, which means that they're the latest "model NFL franchise). And the way people went on and on and ON about them, you'd forget that they were, for the previous 40 years of their existence, basically one of the most inept franchises in NFL history .. a team of which it could have TRULY been said that everything they touched turned to shit. The Midas Touch in reverse!
All of this ended the day Bill Belichick signed on to coach them. Belichick is a curious creature. If you get him in a relaxed moment, he's actually an engaging person. He can talk endlessly about arcane matters of football ... and actually make it interesting. I can still remember the day, shortly before the Patriots' Super Bowl win over the Eagles, Belichick gave a wonderfully concise summation of all of Paul Brown's contributions to the modern NFL game.
Trouble is, he's also a churl, especially on game day, and even more especially when you ask him something he doesn't want to address.
For nine years, those who covered him -- and that includes me -- had to sit and chafe under the intense aura of Bill Belichick the genius. How could you prove any of that wrong? The Patriots were successful, and they seemed to have the whole salary cap issue -- a challenge even for the most brilliant economists -- completely knocked.
Then, they lost that famous Super Bowl to the Giants and you could see a little of that veneer of invulnerability starting to chip off. That game exposed some holes that the Pats had managed to keep hidden throughout that 16-0 season. For example, it's easy to hide a mediocre defense when you're scoring 35 points game. But if you can only manage 14 (the way they did against the Giants), that defense had better be a little more than mediocre. Sadly, it wasn't.
Belichick got a reprieve when Tom Brady was hurt in 2008. The Patriots still won 11 games with Matt Cassel calling signals. And even though the Patriots didn't make the playoffs, the season itself validated Belichick's genius once again. Hey, he won 11 games with a guy who'd never played a down in anger since he joined the NFL. He MUST be a genius.
But was that it? Or did the Patriots take advantage of an incredibly soft (by usual NFL standards) schedule? They played some terrible teams in 2008, and -- for the most part -- lost games to teams that matched their abilities ... or were better.
That trend continued in 2009 ... beating teams that they should have, and losing to teams as good as they were (and, it goes without saying, better). Can you recall a game in 2009 where you walked away saying, "I can't BELIEVE they beat that team?" I can't. What's worse, the only time I actually really felt that way was after they beat Carolina, because they played like shit (that was the Randy Moss game, if you know what I mean).
So it should have been no surprise that the Ravens came in and just pounded them. Anyone paying attention could just see the handwriting on the wall.
The point here, though, is that people reacted to it as if it had just happened ... as if someone had pressed a button and the entire bottom just FELL OUT ... just like that!
And now, Belichick may not be a genius as much as someone who has become overly affected by hubris. Now, the question isn't whether Belichick can coach (I think it's pretty clear he can), but whether he has anyone on his staff who doesn't genuflect at his mere presence.
The truth? These things happen in the NFL. It's set up that way. First, it's a copycat league. If everyone likes what you do, they do it too ... until, someday, the rest of the league catches up. Second, you don't just go out and buy Tedy Bruschis, Rodney Harrisons, Bradys, Mike Vrabels, Ted Johnsons, Willie McGinests and Troy Browns in the discount rack. They are special people, and you should consider yourself truly blessed when you have that many of them playing for you at the same time.
They bring more to the table than their abilities, and losing that many of them, in such a short period of time, is bound to affect what you do on the field.
It was a special era. But it's over. That's nobody's fault. That's the way it's supposed to be in the NFL. It's someone else's turn. Deal with it.
######################
Is Brett Favre going to retire? At this point, I don't care.
I also don't care that even at his age, he had a pretty good year, and that the Vikings most likely wouldn't have even had a sniff of a Super Bowl chance without him.
Because in the end, not even Favre, even with his ability to pull plays out of thin air, couldn't save a franchise that has been -- to these eyes -- a combination of the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs of the NFL. Every stinking time they get close, either the kicker who hasn't missed a field goal all year shanks one with time running out, or the future Hall of Fame quarterback throws a horrible interception at the worst possible time.
I know people from Minnesota who simply refuse to watch them anymore because they're tired of being let down (which is a feeling that I almost got myself a few times suffering through the famed "Curse of the Bambino.").
But this year, Favre proved everything everyone ever said about him -- good OR bad -- true.
Does he have guts? Absolutely. I thought his leg had fallen off last Sunday, but he never missed a beat. He came back onto the field, and you could clearly see he was hurt. But he soldiered on, completing improbable passes, and leading his team downfield ... so much so that you were SURE they were going to spring the upset and beat the New Orleans Saints.
THEN ...
And that's the trouble with Favre. For the nine things he does right, the one thing he does wrong cancels everything else out. Two years ago, he throws an interception -- horrible pass -- in overtime, and the Giants come back down and win the game.
(And, as an aside, did anyone NOT think the Patriots would have just eaten the Packers for lunch in a Super Bowl? Did anyone NOT think, "oh, oh, this Giants team is playing with house money, which means they're could be tough to beat?)
Sunday, all the Vikings have to do is get five more yards, by hook or by crook, and they win! And while it's true they'd have likely served as cannon fodder for the Colts, it's better to be cannon fodder for the Colts than home watching on your LCD.
Yet, in typical Red Sox/Cubs fashion, the most unlikely, inharmonic convergence of events happens. First, the Vikings call two of the worst, most unimaginative plays imaginable. One of them was so slow to develop they lost five yards.
Then, of all times, they get confused as to who's in and who's out (which begs the question: Hasn't ANYONE on that team heard that when you're in, you're in; and when you're out, you're out), and get knocked five MORE yards back because they had 12 men in the huddle.
That penalty just about knocked them out of field goal range (the Vikings announcer who complained that "all they had to do was take a knee and kick a field goal" was probably simplifying things just a little). They still could have used about five or six more yards. Favre went back to pass (which, at that point, seemed to be the best option), but there was nothing there ... and nothing but open space ahead of him for about 10 yards -- surely more than enough for a decent shot at a field goal, even given the extreme ineffectiveness of all post-season kickers this year.
Now, maybe he was too hobbled to run. Maybe he didn't see all this room he had. Maybe he was just being Brett Favre ... wanting to make "the big play," even though "the big play" was nowhere in sight.
Did I also mention there were about seven seconds left in regulation when the Saints picked him off?
Whatever ... running right and throwing across your body back to the middle? Nothing good ever comes out of that. You're asking for exactly what Favre got ... disaster. Throw the ball away and at least give your team the shot ... slim as it might have been ... to pull this one out. It would have been a 51-yard attempt ... certainly doable indoors, if not automatic.
Well, we know the rest of the story now. The Saints, helped immeasurably by Viking penalties, marched downfield and kicked the game-winning field goal. New Orleans is redeemed. Katrina never happened. The Saints are marching to Florida. And all the rest.
The remaining question is about Favre? Is this it? And this brings us back to the beginning. I don't care. Whatever he does, he does. In some ways, he's heroic. In other ways, he's pathetic. He wants one more shot at the brass ring ... that much is for certain. And if he feels he still has it in him, all I ask is that he say so, now, and not string everyone along the way he did the previous two seasons. THAT'S what makes him so pathetic.
#############################
Finally, some quick hits and a parting shot:
-- I wish there was a way to get Johnny Damon back on the Red Sox. He's the same type of "special player" Troy Brown was with the Patriots. Of all the miscalculations the management has made, the one allowing him to leave was the biggest.
-- I'm told Barack Obama used the word "I" 96 times in his State of the Union address. In order to know that, someone had to count. If that's all this obsessively anal retentive person has to worry about, I'd like to be Sean Hannity.
-- Are the Bruins still in the NHL?
-- I can't say I follow the NBA that closely. But come on .. Allan Iverson an all-star? What? You say Wilt the Stilt was dead, and therefore unable to make it? wonder if Iverson will attend practice (there was an incredibly funny bit on Comcast Sports counting all the times Iverson said "practice" in that now-famous rant ... but that's different than counting the "I's" in the president's State of the Union speech).
#####################################
Finally ... it's incredible what's going on with Toyota. This isn't just scary stuff (although it's plenty scary, since my son drives a Matrix -- which, thankfully, s too new to be on the recall list). It's could be a death blow to the concept that the Japanese make better cars.
That's all we've heard in the last decade or more ... that U.S. cars are inferior to the Japanese ... that the two countries' business models are different ... that the unions strangle the American manufacturers to the point where they can't produce decent cars ... blah, blah, blah.
Well how about now? I realize these cars were manufactured HERE ... but, face it, if your name's on it, it's yours. This MAY put an end to the myth that, somehow, foreign cars (and especially Japanese) are superior to their U.S. counterparts because -- as far as I can tell -- we've never heard of case of a GM car, or a Ford, being a moving death trap (OK, Ralph Nader, there WAS the Corvair, truly unsafe at any speed).
I won't say it's time to put the blinders on and "buy American," no questions asked. But right now, I feel pretty good about the fact that every car I've ever owned falls under the U.S. manufacturers' umbrella.
Scott Brown is the flavor of the month. How else do you explain a poll that says he'd be competitive with Barack Obama in 2012?
Let's give him his due. He ran an effective campaign -- not hard to accomplish, seeing that his opponent, Martha Coakley, barely showed up -- and captured the pulse of an electorate that was sick and tired of being taken for granted.
But let's not run too far afield with this. This was not some dramatic repudiation of Obama's agenda as much as it was a statewide election where people got a chance to tell the local leadership that they're not to be taken as rubes who will vote, like robots, for all candidates with a "D" next to their name.
Say what you will about Ted Kennedy (and I have), but the man never took anything for granted. Even when he was running against token competition (can you just IMAGINE how he'd have mopped the floor with Brown?), he worked.
Brown is a Mitt Romney clone (a point that was hammered home to me when it was Romney who introduced him when he gave his victory speech). Maybe he'll surprise me and be an effective advocate for Massachusetts, and I'll be the first to eat Humble Pie if that actually happens.
But it's far more likely that he'll play to the cheap seats, on behalf of the Republican leadership that -- despite his victory -- still sees our state as the People's Republic of Massachusetts.
############
I suppose if you asked 100 people what their idea of an effective leader is, you'd get 100 different answers. There's no right or wrong definition. And that's especially true if you examine just WHO it is that some people choose to follow.
So with that in mind, here are some of MY criteria for a leader:
-- Inherent decency. By that, I mean honest, accountable, moral and sober (in thought, please, not in temperance).
-- Dignity. This was my only knock against Bill Clinton, and it's one of the reasons why, even though I agreed with him politically, he left me cold in the long run. I can understand human weakness, even though I might not always like it. But getting it in the Oval Office? Tawdry.
-- Even-handed. So far, I think I've described George W. Bush as much as I've described Barack Obama. I had no doubts that Bush was a decent enough guy, even though I didn't agree with much of anything he said. And he was certainly dignified ... WAY more so than Clinton was. But where I part company, and start drifting to Obama's side, is in this category. I never liked the bellicose language that came out of the previous administration. "Bring it on," "Axis of Evil ..." All words like that did was stoke the fires rather than help put them out. I'm not naive enough to believe that there's never a place for that type of draconian language. But not as a matter of course.
-- Independent in thought. Again, my definition of this might differ than yours. I don't want people in high office who are bought and sold by unelected groups of people, whether they're corporations (HATE the latest Supreme Court ruling), unions, lobbyists or political power brokers. If you're a Democrat, and you vote along party lines the majority of the time, I can live with that. You are, after all, a Democrat. And it would be the same if you were a Republican.
But I always got the feeling, with Bush, that his thoughts and actions were almost directed, behind the scenes, by a cabal of -- for lack of a better term -- neocons, led, of course, by Dick Cheney. I know, I know ... I know ... it's almost a cliché. But I have the luxury of having thought that before he was even elected the first time. I also think that it took him almost seven years of an eight-year presidency to realize that these people led him down the wrong path in many respects. And that once he realized it, and fought to stamp his OWN identity on the presidency, he became much more likable.
It's too early to tell whether Obama will meet my expectations in this department. I get the feeling, behind the scenes, that he bucked some fierce opposition to the bank and auto industry bailouts, which leads me to think that -- MAYBE -- he honestly thought these actions were the best way to go (as opposed to the Iraq War, which -- I think -- was clearly the brainchild of unelected neocons whose idea of peace in the valley was more like imperialism).
I could end up being all wrong about this. Obama could end up being a worse hack than I could ever imagine. He could end up being a bigger tyrant than Idi Amin.
Or ... he could capitulate too much to his political opposition ... something Clinton also did when the GOP won the House and Senate in 1994. Right now, he's walking a fine line, and all I can say is that I wouldn't want to be him.
Or ... he could be what he appears to me to be like now ... an honest guy who leans a little too far to the left sometimes (farther than I do, that's for sure), but who seems to be staking out an agenda in which he truly believes. I'll give him that he's a whole lot smarter than I am, and privy to a lot more facts than I am, and that he -- like all our leaders -- has our best interests at heart.
I guess it just comes down to defining what those bests interests are.
###############
Sports are a pretty clear microcosm of the "build you up, tear you down" syndrome. We see it everywhere, but nowhere is it more prevalent than sports. And all you have to do is look at the Patriots to get a good dose of it.
From the time they won their first Super Bowl until they lost, earlier this month, to the Baltimore Ravens, they were the model NFL franchise. Everyone wanted to be like them.
That, of course, is because they were amazingly consistent, and because they won three Super Bowls. This doesn't make them all that special. The Steelers have won six. That's twice as many as three. Other teams, as well, have won more than three Super Bowls, such as the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers (four each).
Heck, even the New York Giants have won three Super Bowls.
But the Patriots won theirs in this decade, which means that they're the latest "model NFL franchise). And the way people went on and on and ON about them, you'd forget that they were, for the previous 40 years of their existence, basically one of the most inept franchises in NFL history .. a team of which it could have TRULY been said that everything they touched turned to shit. The Midas Touch in reverse!
All of this ended the day Bill Belichick signed on to coach them. Belichick is a curious creature. If you get him in a relaxed moment, he's actually an engaging person. He can talk endlessly about arcane matters of football ... and actually make it interesting. I can still remember the day, shortly before the Patriots' Super Bowl win over the Eagles, Belichick gave a wonderfully concise summation of all of Paul Brown's contributions to the modern NFL game.
Trouble is, he's also a churl, especially on game day, and even more especially when you ask him something he doesn't want to address.
For nine years, those who covered him -- and that includes me -- had to sit and chafe under the intense aura of Bill Belichick the genius. How could you prove any of that wrong? The Patriots were successful, and they seemed to have the whole salary cap issue -- a challenge even for the most brilliant economists -- completely knocked.
Then, they lost that famous Super Bowl to the Giants and you could see a little of that veneer of invulnerability starting to chip off. That game exposed some holes that the Pats had managed to keep hidden throughout that 16-0 season. For example, it's easy to hide a mediocre defense when you're scoring 35 points game. But if you can only manage 14 (the way they did against the Giants), that defense had better be a little more than mediocre. Sadly, it wasn't.
Belichick got a reprieve when Tom Brady was hurt in 2008. The Patriots still won 11 games with Matt Cassel calling signals. And even though the Patriots didn't make the playoffs, the season itself validated Belichick's genius once again. Hey, he won 11 games with a guy who'd never played a down in anger since he joined the NFL. He MUST be a genius.
But was that it? Or did the Patriots take advantage of an incredibly soft (by usual NFL standards) schedule? They played some terrible teams in 2008, and -- for the most part -- lost games to teams that matched their abilities ... or were better.
That trend continued in 2009 ... beating teams that they should have, and losing to teams as good as they were (and, it goes without saying, better). Can you recall a game in 2009 where you walked away saying, "I can't BELIEVE they beat that team?" I can't. What's worse, the only time I actually really felt that way was after they beat Carolina, because they played like shit (that was the Randy Moss game, if you know what I mean).
So it should have been no surprise that the Ravens came in and just pounded them. Anyone paying attention could just see the handwriting on the wall.
The point here, though, is that people reacted to it as if it had just happened ... as if someone had pressed a button and the entire bottom just FELL OUT ... just like that!
And now, Belichick may not be a genius as much as someone who has become overly affected by hubris. Now, the question isn't whether Belichick can coach (I think it's pretty clear he can), but whether he has anyone on his staff who doesn't genuflect at his mere presence.
The truth? These things happen in the NFL. It's set up that way. First, it's a copycat league. If everyone likes what you do, they do it too ... until, someday, the rest of the league catches up. Second, you don't just go out and buy Tedy Bruschis, Rodney Harrisons, Bradys, Mike Vrabels, Ted Johnsons, Willie McGinests and Troy Browns in the discount rack. They are special people, and you should consider yourself truly blessed when you have that many of them playing for you at the same time.
They bring more to the table than their abilities, and losing that many of them, in such a short period of time, is bound to affect what you do on the field.
It was a special era. But it's over. That's nobody's fault. That's the way it's supposed to be in the NFL. It's someone else's turn. Deal with it.
######################
Is Brett Favre going to retire? At this point, I don't care.
I also don't care that even at his age, he had a pretty good year, and that the Vikings most likely wouldn't have even had a sniff of a Super Bowl chance without him.
Because in the end, not even Favre, even with his ability to pull plays out of thin air, couldn't save a franchise that has been -- to these eyes -- a combination of the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs of the NFL. Every stinking time they get close, either the kicker who hasn't missed a field goal all year shanks one with time running out, or the future Hall of Fame quarterback throws a horrible interception at the worst possible time.
I know people from Minnesota who simply refuse to watch them anymore because they're tired of being let down (which is a feeling that I almost got myself a few times suffering through the famed "Curse of the Bambino.").
But this year, Favre proved everything everyone ever said about him -- good OR bad -- true.
Does he have guts? Absolutely. I thought his leg had fallen off last Sunday, but he never missed a beat. He came back onto the field, and you could clearly see he was hurt. But he soldiered on, completing improbable passes, and leading his team downfield ... so much so that you were SURE they were going to spring the upset and beat the New Orleans Saints.
THEN ...
And that's the trouble with Favre. For the nine things he does right, the one thing he does wrong cancels everything else out. Two years ago, he throws an interception -- horrible pass -- in overtime, and the Giants come back down and win the game.
(And, as an aside, did anyone NOT think the Patriots would have just eaten the Packers for lunch in a Super Bowl? Did anyone NOT think, "oh, oh, this Giants team is playing with house money, which means they're could be tough to beat?)
Sunday, all the Vikings have to do is get five more yards, by hook or by crook, and they win! And while it's true they'd have likely served as cannon fodder for the Colts, it's better to be cannon fodder for the Colts than home watching on your LCD.
Yet, in typical Red Sox/Cubs fashion, the most unlikely, inharmonic convergence of events happens. First, the Vikings call two of the worst, most unimaginative plays imaginable. One of them was so slow to develop they lost five yards.
Then, of all times, they get confused as to who's in and who's out (which begs the question: Hasn't ANYONE on that team heard that when you're in, you're in; and when you're out, you're out), and get knocked five MORE yards back because they had 12 men in the huddle.
That penalty just about knocked them out of field goal range (the Vikings announcer who complained that "all they had to do was take a knee and kick a field goal" was probably simplifying things just a little). They still could have used about five or six more yards. Favre went back to pass (which, at that point, seemed to be the best option), but there was nothing there ... and nothing but open space ahead of him for about 10 yards -- surely more than enough for a decent shot at a field goal, even given the extreme ineffectiveness of all post-season kickers this year.
Now, maybe he was too hobbled to run. Maybe he didn't see all this room he had. Maybe he was just being Brett Favre ... wanting to make "the big play," even though "the big play" was nowhere in sight.
Did I also mention there were about seven seconds left in regulation when the Saints picked him off?
Whatever ... running right and throwing across your body back to the middle? Nothing good ever comes out of that. You're asking for exactly what Favre got ... disaster. Throw the ball away and at least give your team the shot ... slim as it might have been ... to pull this one out. It would have been a 51-yard attempt ... certainly doable indoors, if not automatic.
Well, we know the rest of the story now. The Saints, helped immeasurably by Viking penalties, marched downfield and kicked the game-winning field goal. New Orleans is redeemed. Katrina never happened. The Saints are marching to Florida. And all the rest.
The remaining question is about Favre? Is this it? And this brings us back to the beginning. I don't care. Whatever he does, he does. In some ways, he's heroic. In other ways, he's pathetic. He wants one more shot at the brass ring ... that much is for certain. And if he feels he still has it in him, all I ask is that he say so, now, and not string everyone along the way he did the previous two seasons. THAT'S what makes him so pathetic.
#############################
Finally, some quick hits and a parting shot:
-- I wish there was a way to get Johnny Damon back on the Red Sox. He's the same type of "special player" Troy Brown was with the Patriots. Of all the miscalculations the management has made, the one allowing him to leave was the biggest.
-- I'm told Barack Obama used the word "I" 96 times in his State of the Union address. In order to know that, someone had to count. If that's all this obsessively anal retentive person has to worry about, I'd like to be Sean Hannity.
-- Are the Bruins still in the NHL?
-- I can't say I follow the NBA that closely. But come on .. Allan Iverson an all-star? What? You say Wilt the Stilt was dead, and therefore unable to make it? wonder if Iverson will attend practice (there was an incredibly funny bit on Comcast Sports counting all the times Iverson said "practice" in that now-famous rant ... but that's different than counting the "I's" in the president's State of the Union speech).
#####################################
Finally ... it's incredible what's going on with Toyota. This isn't just scary stuff (although it's plenty scary, since my son drives a Matrix -- which, thankfully, s too new to be on the recall list). It's could be a death blow to the concept that the Japanese make better cars.
That's all we've heard in the last decade or more ... that U.S. cars are inferior to the Japanese ... that the two countries' business models are different ... that the unions strangle the American manufacturers to the point where they can't produce decent cars ... blah, blah, blah.
Well how about now? I realize these cars were manufactured HERE ... but, face it, if your name's on it, it's yours. This MAY put an end to the myth that, somehow, foreign cars (and especially Japanese) are superior to their U.S. counterparts because -- as far as I can tell -- we've never heard of case of a GM car, or a Ford, being a moving death trap (OK, Ralph Nader, there WAS the Corvair, truly unsafe at any speed).
I won't say it's time to put the blinders on and "buy American," no questions asked. But right now, I feel pretty good about the fact that every car I've ever owned falls under the U.S. manufacturers' umbrella.
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