Starting Five

1. There’s No “Jerk” In Team

 

My friend and former colleague, Jeff Pearlman, wrote an essay for The Wall Street Journal yesterday titled “Why I Don’t Want My Kids To Play Team Sports.” Now, Jeff is an established and respected writer, successful author and college journalism professor, and so maybe that is why no editor at WSJ had the cojones to say, “Hey, Jeff? Yeah, in your final paragraph you completely negate the argument you first attempted to make.”

Read the article. Now allow me to address a few of Jeff’s points.

1) That boisterous fireman who was the coach? He was volunteering his time. Like all youth sports coaches do. If you really want to loathe someone, loathe the parent who is NOT participating in an activity that helps children both learn and acclimate to social situations.

2. “Why do we place so much emphasis on winning?” I don’t know, Jeff. Darwinism? Why do you tweet about the imminent release of your next book? Don’t you want to sell it? Don’t you want it to be successful?

3) At the end Jeff discusses playing on an SI intramural team back in the 1990s. I was also on that team, as was GMA anchor Josh Elliott, SI soccer writer Grant Wahl, World’s Greatest Sportswriter Steve Rushin, John O’Keefe (you’ve never heard of him, but he was our best player), future ESPN managing editor Chad Millman, and a few others. Jeff, as did all of us, had a great time. And he’s right, we would go out for beers –usually either at The Corner Bistro or MacAleer’s— and discuss the game. I remember a mailroom employee from a law firm promising to “put a cap in my ass” after the game, for example.

The point is, that was a team sport and Jeff was in his late twenties, and he enjoyed it. Oh, and maybe just maybe it wasn’t that coach’s fault, maybe it was Jeff’s parents’ fault for placing their son in a situation he clearly had no desire to be part of. I played team sports all the time growing up –I’m an avid solo sport person at this stage of my life — and what stands out most for me is that I wanted to play them. Maybe Jeff’s older brother did not.

That’s the crux of the problem here, no? If my parents had forced me –or my older brother –to take violin lessons, and we’d have floundered, would I have written a WSJ essay ripping school philharmonics?

When I was in 7th grade our family moved from New Jersey to the Phoenix area (I was a thinner Richie Incognito). The “cool kids” at my junior high were Hispanic and African-American and I was the clean-cut white boy whose parents did not quite get the dress code. So, for my first two months at Our Lady Of Mount Carmel in Tempe, my nickname was “Slacks.”

Then basketball tryouts happened. And I was pretty good. And when our starting five took the court for a team that would eventually play for the city championship, it was Daniel Aguilar, Jeff Cano, Tony Ruelas (all Hispanic), Scott Payne (African-American), and I. Now, I’m not saying that it takes being decent in athletics to be socially accepted –though it definitely does not hurt. What I am saying is that all of us broke down social barriers because we spent two hours every afternoon working together with one purpose in mind. That’s where being part of a team can be a valuable experience.

And I imagine every one of you reading this has a similar experience.

Last summer, at the cookoutateria, we hosted a season-ending party for a Little League team. The head coach was a dad in his late thirties who looked as if he’d be equally comfortable on a wave in Maui. He was funny, charismatic, and he took the time during the ceremony to acknowledge each player and to discuss what made that kid special. Imagine being 10 years old and having a man you respect say something positive about you in front of everyone. It is why, 35 years later, I still remember Ted Lovick (my grade school basketball coach) and Ken Baer (my first Pop Warner football coach). I’ve met some of the very biggest names in the world of sports, but those two men had a greater impact on my life.

Again, I imagine you have a similar coach who impacted yours.

One more thing: I’ve known Jeff for awhile and one of the things that I’ve always liked about him is that he is an original thinker. Often, a contrarian thinker. Just as often, I believe, he presents a contrarian idea not because he truly believes it but because he likes standing apart from the madding crowd. If Jeff truly hated team sports, why have most of his books made sports teams the subject?

Finally, and a better argument than any I might make, is this clip from CBS News. Before you simply dismiss it as another cliché “Hey, The Disabled Kid Scored a Touchdown/Basket” video, stick around until the end. Stick around for the interview with Justice Miller (It may get dusty when you watch, I’m just warning you.).

I don’t want to spoil it, but I will. Here’s what Justice says near the end, and this is what being a rugged individualist will never do for you: “I kind of went from mostly caring about myself and my friends to caring about everyone and trying to make everyone’s day and everyone’s life.”

Dusty, right? And you know why? Because in a place so far down you sometimes don’t even realize it exists, you know that the secret to joy is exactly what Miller just said. There’s no greater feeling. Justice Miller’s tears are the best rebuttal to Jeff Pearlman’s essay one could ever find.

2. Ode To Joy

You cannot go out much better than this. Joy Johnson, 86, runs her 25th New York City Marathon on Sunday (finishing in just over 7 hours). On Monday morning, as the San Jose, Calif., resident has done for years after traversing the 26.2 miles across five boroughs, Johnson visits the set of Today to show Al Roker her medal. Then she returns to her hotel in midtown Manhattan to take a nap.

Except that Johnson never woke up.

Credit the New York Daily News for a perfect lede on Tuesday morning: “Her race is run.”

3. Putting Stock in the Twitter IPO?

By the time you read this, Twitter will be a publicly traded company. Which means that I am not only a serial abuser of the internet tool, I’m also an owner. Should you buy? There’s an excellent chance that the stock will be overvalued TODAY, that whatever price you try to purchase it at between 10 a.m. and whenever today will NOT be a bargain in the next week or so.

Long haul, though? I don’t see a way in the world that Twitter’s stock price will be lower one year from now, five years from now, than it is today.

You can talk about its profitability, or whether an imitator could come along and usurp market share. Here’s my line: there was never anything like Twitter before Twitter and it is SO SIMPLE –in fact, that’s the key to its enormous popularity –that I don’t think you can improve upon it. Kind of like…water.

Twitter, as one CNBC guest earlier this morning said, has changed human behavior. Precisely. Any product that can do that — cars, airplanes, phones –is worth investing in.

One reason, and not the only reason, that I believe Twitter will succeed: it’s the best complement to watching televised sports since beer. I don’t even know how –or why–you’d watch a game anymore without being on Twitter. I want to share the conversation about the game with the pithiest minds I know.

Last thing from me: Fortune favors the bold. Yesterday I wrote about Ryan Riess, the WSOP Main Event champ who took $1,675 of his life savings of $2,000 to enter a poker tourney in October of 2012. He finished second and won $239,000, which allowed him to have the means to turn pro (after graduating from Michigan State last December) and now he just won $8.4 million.

At my lowest ebb, just after NBC Sports laid me off in February of 2009 (Stay classy, Tom) and the market was even lower, I told a friend that I should just take what was left of my savings and go all in on Sirius (then, 9 cents per share) or Las Vegas Sands (then, $3 per share). But I did not.

SIRI is now at $3.70 and LVS is at $70.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do is to not follow your own advice. Your gut. Just a thought…

4. Half-Beatlemania

Yes, Paul McCartney, 71, is on the cover of the Rolling Stone, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about Paul George and the Indiana Pacers, the NBA’s last unbeaten team. Indiana topped Chicago and Derrick Rose last night, 97-80, outscoring the Bulls by 16 in the fourth quarter. George, who is third in the NBA scoring in this opening fortnight with 25.3 ppg, scored a game-high 21 for the 5-0 Pacers, who are setting the pace in the league.

A more entertaining game? Up-and-comers Golden State and Minnesota, led by Stephen Curry and Kevin Love Spit Love (arcane ’90s’s band reference). The Warriors won 106-93, as Klay Thompson (you may recall that THIS GUY) tweeted at the time that he’s the first player he’d draft) drained a game-high 30 points for the Warriors Come Out and Play-ay.”

 5. Brad & Carrie: How Long Until They Get a Variety Show?

CMA hosts extraordinaire Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood ripped Obamacare last night in the world’s greatest ever example of playing to your audience. They were their typically funny and charming selves, though, crooning a parody to George Strait’s “Amarillo By Morning” that they titled “Obamacare by Morning.” Here’s the script that set it up.

Reserves

My piece in Newsweek on WSOP champion Ryan Riess. Congrats!

*****

I often reference the “Zen Master” scene from “Charlie Wilson’s War” (Philip Seymour Hofman and Tom Hanks, and the wisdom of not looking just two feet in front of you, which becomes increasingly difficult on a Twitter/text/24-hour news cycle planet), and that’s sound advice for the Dolphins fiasco. As the days go by, people start to wonder just how jocular Incognito’s voice mail, as profane and obscene as it was, might have been. And whether Martin may be “a little soft.”

Recalling a friend who worked on Wall Street and a prank they used to pull on any colleague who was going straight from the office to a business trip. They’d hide a dildo in his carry-on and then wrap it in aluminum foil to alert the TSA. So that was always an interesting moment for the victim. But in alpha-dog ecosystems such as the NFL and Wall Street, such pranks are common.

Who’s the villain here? Incognito? Joe Philbin? Martin? We’ll see…

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USA Today’s annual list of college football coaches’ salaries. That sounds like a lot of fun to compile. Paul Pasqualoni at UConn is earning $1.7 million per year to win as many games this season as you and I have. Beats working for a living.

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Stop! The Love You Save May Be Your Own…

This is Dante De Blasio, the 16 year-old son of New York City’s new mayor. I am SO down with this kid. Rock that ‘fro.

Remote Patrol

College Football Doubleheader

No. 10 Oklahoma at No. 6 Baylor

Fox Sports 1 7:30 p.m.

No. 3 Oregon at No. 5 Stanford

ESPN 9 p.m.

Our guest on The Grotto today, Andy Staples, calls this the “greatest Thursday night in the history of college football since the night I met my wife.” It’s a college football playoff, people, as two teams will probably be eliminated tonight. And jump over to TNT at 9:30 p.m., as the Lakers visit Houston and the Dwight Howards.