Jack’s Blog

The New York Yankees won this year’s World Series and did it with help from everybody in their organization (with the possible exception of George Costanza).  Included in that group are Alex Rodriguez and Joe Girardi, probably the two most popular pinatas in the Big Apple, if not the entire sports nation.

A-Rod finally buried his past postseason woes and Girardi, possibly the most criticized manager ever - who won it all, can now go to bed knowing, whether or not he was leading the highest paid, most talented baseball team in history, that no one else could have done any better than he did. 

Critics, from the broadcasters and color commentators to the journalists (both electronic and print) to the average schmuck on the street (if there’s any way for a schmuck to be average) have to now find another player and manager (or coach, depending on the sport) to berate for doing well (even great) but not winning the Big One.

The first guy I ever heard wear this crown (since my background is in college hoops) was Dean Smith who made numerous trips to the Final Four before finally winning one.  Wilt wore the player’s version for a while until he finally got one (even though there’s never been an athlete who’s caused so many rules changes in his game).  Count John Elway and Brett Favre in that group too.  Throw in Kevin Garnett too - a guy who might just win another one this year.

The title of “Best Coach to Never Have Won The Big One” (until each of them did) is a pretty exclusive group - considering that each of the following is a member.  It’s not bad company to keep: Tony LaRussa (started managing in 1979, hailed as a genius, yet didn’t win a World Championship until ten years later, Jim Leyland (started in 1986, won a title in 1997), Bill Cowher (went from 1992 until 2005 before he won a Super Bowl and retired a year later - it probably took a year for it to sink in that he’d actually won one).  Let’s also not forget Joe Torre, who, believe it or not, was in jeopardy of having the crown named after him for a while. 

On the college basketball level: Mike Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino, Gary Williams, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams and Bill Self are all members, one succeeding the other once his predecessor took home a National Championship.

The moral of this story comes from a recorded postgame tirade (unbeknownst to him) by Tommy Lasorda after losing a game and having his strategy questioned by sportswriters:

“This (bleepin’) job’s not that (bleepin’) easy!” Â

Those of us old enough to remember the glory days of Notre Dame - maybe not as far back as Rockne & Leahy, but certainly during the tenures of Ara & Devine - wonder, every so often, . . . what happened?

If you grew up in New Jersey, you either rooted for ND or against them.  I have to admit I’ve always been an underdog type of guy.  My mother’s side of the family was from Brooklyn & I was a Dodgers fan from the time I was four - which meant simultaneously rooting for dem Bums while despising (a sentiment which was looked at as healthy during my childhood) the Yankees.  Somehow, I always thought that the main reason Notre Dame had a football team was so Yankee-haters would have a team to intensely dislike when the baseball season ended.  Ditto for the Boston Celtics once football season was over.

Each one of them would not only win but absolutely dominate.  As a card-carrying member of the “Wait ’til next year” club, it used to sting so badly when the Big Three would win & win & win.  Next to playing sports, arguing about them came in a close second and if you had to pick the side opposite the Yanks, the Irish or the Celts, you were a decided underdog.  Much of the basis of your counter to their greatness was it always seemed that luck was always on the side of the Yankees, Notre Dame and Boston.

Eventually, all three “franchises” (the Fighting Irish belong in that category) hit the skids, much to the delight of what seemed to be half the nation.  Now, however, two-thirds of the triumverate have returned to prestige status.  Only ND remains in the doldrums. 

As far as my personal preferences, once I hit the working world, I gave up being a fan of any specific team, choosing instead to cheer for individuals I either coached in one of the nine college stops I made (basketball) or who went to those schools (and whom I got to know, usually through our guys - since it seems basketball and football players, especially, tend to befriend each other). 

Now, I’ve found I actually like the three groups who were my archenemies.  The reason for the Yankees, at first, was Joe Torre, whom I admired as a player (along with his brother, Frank, and the tender story of their bond when Frank was on his deathbed won me over).  Then, when they acquired A-Rod whom everybody seemed to dislike, mainly because of the megadeal he signed in Texas (that everyone of us would have signed - only quicker - had we been in his shoes), and subsequently blamed for all the Yankees’ postseason failures, I found myself pulling for him.  And, of course, how can anyone who’s ever coached a day not love Derek Jeter?  Note: Now that Joe Torre is managing the Dodgers, all bets are off & I’m back on the Big Blue bandwagon - but if they get knocked out, I’m with the pinstripes.

A decade or so ago, I got to know Doc Rivers (a blog I’ll be sharing when I disclose the history behind the “Fertig Notes” - something the reader can see on this website by clicking the “Jack’s Notes” tab) and I’ve been a big fan of his ever since.  In addition, I roomed with his assistant, Kevin Eastman, for several years at the Michael Jordan Flight School (a summer basketball camp).  So, now, the Celtics are one of the teams I hope win.

As far as Notre Dame, when they hired a Jersey guy, Charlie Weis, I decided it was time to “convert” - especially, when during his 60 Minutes interview, Weis’wife was asked, “What do think of all the cursing Charlie does?” & she responded with, “Hey, he’s from New Jersey.”  That line alone won me over.  When they took their lumps the past couple years, and Weis was blamed for everything short of the economy and the war in Afghanistan, I started rooting for him to turn it around.

But the famous “Luck of the Irish” has escaped ol’ Charlie and did so again yesterday - on two particularly crucial plays.  Both were on the Irish’s final drive.  The first came on a tipped pass in the end zone that the Notre Dame receiver wound up catching with one hand - with his foot inbounds in the end zone.  Touchdown, right?  The ensuing PAT would send the game into OT.  No!  The referee made the call that he either was out-of-bounds before having possession or that he was in bounds when he caught it, but didn’t have possession. 

No one made much of it at the time, so maybe it’s just me, but replays showed (to me anyway) that it definitely looked like the Irish receiver had caught the ball, and then, as he was going down, he put his other hand on it, but it did not look like he ever bobbled it, rather that he has possession all along.  Had the referee ruled a catch (and a touchdown), I think that ruling as well would have stood - under the irrefutable evidence part of the rule.

The other bit of “bad luck” which, when I was a kid (and in my “hatin’ stage“) seemed to go Notre Dame’s way every damn (sorry) time, was on the game’s final play when the right play was called but the ND receiver slipped on the grass/turf.  In my early years, it was always the Irish’s opponents who did the slipping.  Actually, one SC defensive back did slip, but it didn’t hurt the Trojans as his man was not the chosen target (even though he was open).  Back in my childhood, that would have been a TD and, somehow, Notre Dame would have wound up winning.  More Irish luck!   

Over the course of my lifetime, I realize what Earl Wilson said so many years ago still rings true:

“Success is simply a matter of luck.  Ask any failure.”Â

Although I was a diehard (Brooklyn) Dodgers fan in my (very) early years, I always admired Joe Torre for not only his skill, but for the way he carried himself on the baseball diamond.  When he was fired a couple of times (Mets & Braves), I always thought he was done wrong and, after just finishing Ted Turner’s new book, he even admits firing Joe was a mistake.  Then came the heart warming story of his brother, Frank, and his transplant surgery (coming just in time to save his life) and it seemed like everybody was in Joe’s corner.

The final straw for me, the one that made me an unabashed Joe Torre fan, was when he became manager of the hated Yankees and I started pulling (however slightly) for the Bronx Bombers.  By that time, I’d pretty much become a non-fan (actually that change occurred around 1964, my junior year in high school, when I was playing on organized teams and had only enough “fan” in me to root for the teams I played for - or later, teams our sons play[ed] for).  So, seeing a Yankees score on the “crawl,” I would hope they’d win - because this classy guy was the manager and he had to put up with the New York media (the most sarcastic writers anywhere) and, even worse, had as his boss, George Steinbrenner, a man who, no matter what he paid you, it wasn’t enough.  Joe’s Yankee teams won big (6 World Series appearances/championships in 12 years), but anyone could tell that a job working for Steinbrenner was like tip-toeing through a field with hidden mines, i.e. one wrong step and your (business) life was over.  I read with enthusiasm his book, Ground Rules for Winners, highlighted the parts I especially liked and it was one of the selections of what’s referred to as “Fertig Notes” see the “Jack’s Notes” tab on this website’s home page.  A mailout to a limited number of friends and guys I’ve known from the (mainly college) coaching community.

I was thrilled, admittedly not to the point of immersing myself into the Dodger lore the way I did when I was nine or ten years old, when Joe was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers.  It seemed to be his destiny.  No wonder I liked him so much all those years ago.  Somehow, I must have had that gut feel that he was made to wear Dodger Blue.

Then, of all things, I discovered, about the same time as the rest of America did, i.e. a few dys ago, that Joe Torre had written a book about his Yankee years and that it was one of those “tell-all” kinds - the type a person writes to make money or get things off his chest - or both.  I figured that the former is what it had to be because I searched for another reason - any other reason - he ‘d have penned such a manuscript.  It couldn’t have been the money.  He’d been making millions for many years and was now heavy into the endorsement deals.  He’s no lunkhead athlete who spent his money as fast as he got it, assuming there would be no end to this kind of Monoply cash, nor was he the type who would put all his dough with someone like Bernie Madoff.  Tough Italian kids from Brooklyn just don’t do stupid stuff like that.  So I ruled out that he did it for the money - unless his co-author, Tom Verducci needed the income and sweet talked Joe into the project.  When someone asked if the proceeds were going toward his charity, Safe at Home, which deals with the subject of domestic violence, Joe stammered and never did say how much of it would be earmarked for his charity.

Why else?  I’ve already mentioned his leadership book, Ground Rules, so it couldn’t have been to see his name on a book cover.  It sure appeared like a type of catharsis.  Write it all down, all the crazy goings-on in the clubhouse, the expectations being so high to begin with, and then, bringing in Alex Rodriguez, one of the greatest baseball players of all-time, an experiment which did not produce the results everyone in New York expected (although in NY, results never match expectations: “Oh yeah, you guys won, but you didn’t cover!) and it looked more and more like he had to get rid of some feeling that was eating away at him.

As I get older, I find the need to set alarms to remember appointments or something important and when the alarm on my watch goes off, I usually have to look at it to see why I had it set.  (Yes, it’s as sad as it sounds).  This happened last night when it went off and I looked at it to see what the memo said.  “Larry King” was the message and it was then I remembered Joe would be interviewed shortly by the King himself.  The King of asking a difficult question but making it sound like he lobbed another softball up there, and that’s what the guest feels like, until he tries to formulate an answer.  First off, was the money question and Joe said, not that convincingly, that it was not the case, that he’d been making $7 million this past year (and when you admit you made that kind of number on national TV, you can bet that was the low end - those IRS people have been known to watch television). 

True, he’d been hurt by their response to his request for a two-year contract (probably for the same $7 mil he’d made in the past) so he could manage without the look of a lame duck (something, for all of you who go into coaching, which needs to be avoided pretty much, at all costs).  He knew that situation would only lead to constant probing and the chart of “how many days are left for Joey T?”  They countered with $5 mil, but with incentives to get it up to $7 large.  One reason for this was that the brass thought, after a particularly uncharacteristically bad season, maybe what Joe needed was a few incentives - you know, to get him to work harder.  People who’ve never been coaches (many owners and general managers fall into this category) have no idea that coaches are among the most competitive, self-motivated people on the planet.  Joe took their offer as an insult (as many coaches would have).  When a guy as old as Joe is insulted (especially with the Italian blood boiling inside of him), negotiations usually break off and the employer-employee is terminated.

Joe tried to make light of the situation in the book where he says members of the ball club would refer to A-Rod as A-Fraud, relating a story where, one day after a poor performance, one of the coaches was going to hit ground balls to Rodriguez and the coach said, “What’s it going to be today, A-Rod or A-Fraud?”  Other remarks, some of them negative, were pooh-pooh’d by Joe, saying that nothing that was in the book wasn’t “out there” already.

Joe claimed he didn’t burn any bridges but he knows all too well the grudge New Yorkers carry toward people whom they feel have disrespected them.  Another extremely intriguing question was asked of Joe.  “Do you think this book will affect your current players’ attitudes and feelings toward you?”  Amazingly - then again, not so amazingly, -Joe said, “No.”

C’mon, Joe, this just doesn’t pass the smell test.  Yet, for all of it, I still can’t bring myself to dislike Joe Torre.  To me, in an era of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys, Joe’s still one of the Good group.  As clever a guy as he is, however, he might want to heed the humorist Elbert Hubbard’s advice:

“An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.” 

  Â

Polls are in vogue at the current time, so you must have seen the one which states the average guy in the US (and not “Joe, the Plumber”) favored a World Series made up of the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers?  Although market size made at least a minor difference, it was the storyline of Manny Ramirez against his old club (in which they had a less than harmonius parting), the Red Sox, and even, to a lesser, but still interesting degree, the battle between Boston and LA’s manager, Joe Torre, formerly the skipper of its hated nemesis, the New York Yankees. 

All this is totally understandable - and probably would have made for a much more exciting and enticing Series than what we have now - a worst to first club (Tampa Bay, who had the worst record in the league last year, but are the only American league club still standing) and Philadelphia, a team that’s won a total of one World Series championship in its history (against Kansas City in 1980).  Yet how ludicrous is it when a reporter asks one of the members of either the Rays or the Phils, “How do you feel when nearly everyone wanted the other guys?” or “Do you feel slighted that you’re the second choice of most of America?”

And people wonder why those in the world of sports get agitated when speaking to the media?  Of course, that asinine query doesn’t represent the majority of the media, but stop, just for a second and think, “Is that the best question that media member could have come up with?”

I don’t think for a minute that anyone in their right (or left or central) mind would, for a second, believe that an athlete or coach wouldn’t be going all-out for his club, nor would it ever even cross his mind, “You know, if we were to lose, it would sure make the country a whole lot happier - and with all that’s going on now, why not do my part to bring a little bit of sunshine to my country?”  Especially in this case - when the goal is what everyone in baseball strives for!

Maybe it was something of that nature that drove Adlai Stevenson to make the comment:

“An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff - and then prints the chaff.”Â

For the “every-eth” season in a row that he’s put on an NBA uniform, Tracy McGrady’s team was bounced from the playoffs in the first round.  In the game in which his squad was eliminated this year, he had this meager stat line: 40 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists.  Since 28 of those points came in the first half, what will be heard by the McGrady critics will be that he can’t come up big “at crunch time.”  If he had matched the 28 in the second half, then the cry would be, “Yeah, but he didn’t make the clutch buckets.”

The fact that Yao Ming didn’t play (taking seven and a half feet of a pretty good scoring threat away from the offense) and Rafer Alston (who played brilliantly during their regular season 22 straight win streak) missed the first two playoff games with an injury and most of the elimination game with a severely spained ankle (all losses) is swept aside because it would cast a negative light on a great story - that a megastar can’t get his team (operative word: team) through the first round.

This year, Kobe Bryant’s team is doing much better and, although he is the best player in this or any other galaxy, the fact Kobe has quite a bit more help has more to do with the team’s deeper run in the playoffs (which doesn’t look like it may end for quite a while) than any self-improvement program he adopted during the off-season.  They possibly could make a run to the Finals (which they last did when a guy named Shaq wore the same jersey as Kobe, providing more than a marginal amount of assistance).

Yet, we are a nation of “strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.”  So it’s always a good thing when the Rockets (or whatever team T-Mac’s played for) loses early that we can be united in placing blame.  Then the fact that our own personal “numbers” are down (for whatever field in which we’re employed) makes us feel better, like there’s a Tracy McGrady in our company/organization who can be blamed (as long as it’s not us - or at least, not me).

This is on-going in the world of professional sports, but usually it’s the head coach whose head gets chopped off.  The next up on the “scapegoat” list will in all likelihood be the Phoenix Suns’ leader, Mike D’Antoni, who not too long ago was being hailed as an innovative genius.  Actually, he still is as it’s also the rumor that once Phoenix lets him go, the Chicago Bulls and Dallas Mavericks will battle over who gets to pay him millions to coach its franchise.  Even though his termination is imminent (and Phoenix knows it’s about to put one of the most desirable coaches on the market), they’ll claim that the Suns just “needed a new voice” to guide them.  Heck, if all these other teams are salivating for him to become available, why doesn’t Phoenix just keep D’Antoni and hire a ventriloquist?  Don’t they realize they have a better chance of becoming a worse team by replacing this guy?  Do they think they can hire someone to make their roster younger?

The sports world has so many stories of discarded coaches who hooked on elsewhere and became champions: Chuck Daly (fired by the Cavs, won a couple of championships with the Pistons), Joe Torre (fired by the Mets, Braves and Cardinals yet did OK with the Yankees and has rings to prove it), Bill Belichick (pink slipped by the Browns before beginning nothing short of a dynasty with the New England Patriots) to name a few.  

Although there’s absolutely no comparison in jobs between the gentleman who said the following and those discussed in this blog, the quote Harry S Truman said nonetheless applies to each and every one of them:

“Any man who has had the job I’ve had and didn’t have a sense of humor wouldn’t still be here.”Â

When I was four years old, my father took me to a Brooklyn Dodgers (yeah, I’m that old) baseball game - which was remarkable in itself because he was a big fan of the New York Yankees.  The reason I was such a Dodgers fan was that my mother’s side of the family was from Brooklyn and they, as my dad was fond of saying at reunions, brainwashed me at an early age.

The three boys who lived next door (one my age and his two older brothers) were HUGE Yankees fans and, as kids tend to do, we had some great “who’s better?” arguments through the late ’50s and early ’60s.  The Yankees were the Evil Empire before the Evil Empire. 

So, this may come as a shock, but, nowadays, I actually root for the Yankees.  How could this be!  One reason: I have the utmost respect for Joe Torre.  I remember Joe as a player.  He was very good, but that has nothing to do with why I currently think so much of him.

I think it started when I read his book, Joe Torre’s Ground Rules for Winners.  There were some terrific leadership ideas in it, many dealing with how to deal with a difficult boss - and there’s little debate his boss is difficult.

However, the main reason I am so impressed with him is the way he’s handled his troubles so well, from the medical problems his brother, Frank, went through, to Steinbrenner, to the New York media and its fans, to the up-and-down seasons the Yanks have had.  Joe Torre lives up to words of another author I’ve never met but find fascinating, John Maxwell.  If you’ve read this blog, you’ve seen many “the difference between” quotes.  The following one from Maxwell  fits Torre to a T is:

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”