Jack’s Blog

There was a time when the opening of the NBA season held about as much importance to me as the opening of deer season - and I don’t even own a gun - or a bow and arrow.  Now, however, two things in my life have drastically changed.  One is that I am no longer in the field of coaching and the second is that one of my closest friends recently got hired by an NBA team.

When you have a team you’re involved with (as head, assistant, or even graduate assistant), that job alone keeps you plenty busy.  Throw in the fact that the opening of the NBA season coincides with the opening of actual practice for your team, and there simply aren’t enough hours to include something as dissimilar to what you do as the NBA (teams I was involved with were on the high school and college levels).

Even after I got out of coaching basketball, I was still more interested in college football (many of the institutions where I worked had high-powered football programs and we’d use football games as big recruiting weekends).  Also, the NFL was in midseason by then and many of the coaches - mostly assistants - were guys who moved on to the pro level but had been peers whom I’d spoken with at fund raisers and booster club meetings. In addition, many of the NFL players had gone to schools where I coached and you’d be surprised at the bond college football and basketball players, in fact, all intercollegiate athletes have, so I’d get to know many of these student-athletes as well.  And, the NBA played an 82-game schedule - followed by 16 teams making the playoffs!  What was the rush?

Yet, it was the hiring of a close friend of mine (a blog you’ll be reading very shortly) and believe me, it’s one of the greatest feel-good, justice-is-finally-served stories you’ll ever read in your … well, you’ll just have to trust me.  I guarantee it’s worth waiting for.

My buddy and I speak on a daily basis (for the most part, occasionnally more often) and to hear the inner workings and goings on first hand of an NBA squad is fascinating.  If anyone had ever told me I’d be enraptured by the NBA pre-season, I’d tell them they were on some of the medication I’m on (but they weren’t using it for the medicinal reasons I’m forced to).  But this is a whole new experience for me and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

The quote for this blog doesn’t completely apply because I don’t consider myself in any way successful for having become a total NBA fan, but I am a firm believer in the second half of the statement.  The advice is from leadership guru and retired head of the Leadership Institute at USC, Warren Bennis:  

“Most successful people reinvent themselves through continuous learning.”   Â

Our younger son, Alex, is a freshman at Buchanan (CA) High School and while I’m a somewhat typical father, I also coached in the college ranks for 30 years.  Many people I respect in coaching have told me, after watching Alex play, that he is quite gifted for his age (turns 15 shortly) and has a very mature feel for the game for someone who’s so young.  The fact that he’s 6′2″ and nearly 180 works in his favor as well.

He’s always played with older kids (one or two years on the AAU circuit) due to his size and ability level, but last year, on weekends, he really ramped it up by competing against 30-, 40- and even 50-year old men in pick up games.  Early on, he was sincerely humbled as he learned that “old men” might not be as quick as the guys you see on television, nor do they still have that vertical game they once did, but when it comes to knowing how to play, no one takes a back seat to former collegiate or professional players, no matter how long ago they may have played.

He learned that when you turn your head defensively, you immediately get backdoor’d; that blind screens are the toughest to defend and that’s why all his coaches throughout the years have stressed talking on defense, and that when you’re there to get up a good sweat and the loser sits out the next game, how competitive older guys can be, because they’re taking time out from their schedule and families, and it’s not to sit and watch others play.  On a negative note, from a parental point of view, he increased his vocabulary, but I told him that part of his game was not to be incorporated until a much later date.

His older brother, Andy, a gritty competitor and someone whose work ethic drove him to play up to his maximum potential during his “career” (which ended two years ago but has been resurrected by playing for the SAE’s in the University of California-Irvine’s intramural league) found an obscure high school basketball tournament website somewhere on the internet that Buchanan is playing in.  One of the players mentioned was none other than his younger bro.

This is what I’ve been mentioning to Alex.  Once the word gets out, you’re a marked man, so heed the advice from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“We judge ourselves by what we feel we’re capable of doing, while others judge us by what we’ve actually done.” 

Before someone asks, “How can pain be helpful,” think about a time you were in pain and what you learned from it.  You don’t have to be an athlete to have a painful (and I’m referring to physical pain to your body, not an emotional pain, like the loss of a loved one) experience.  Pain happens daily in life - for a variety of reasons.

What can’t be overlooked is the educational factor a person gains from being in pain.  Usually, especially if it’s a serious enough injury or condition, you find out things you probably never would have known otherwise.  As the doctor or whoever’s treating you is explaining what happened (or trying to gather information from you as to what is the source of the pain), even the least observant person is attentive, if for no other reason than wanting to avoid this ever happening again!  You end up learning more about that part of your body that’s in pain than you would have in ten classroom sessions, because the subject is your number one interest - you.

Other ways pain or injuries help (and this does deal more with the athletic world) is it often shows you how far your body can be pushed and when to say “enough.”  That said, the tolerance level for different people varies; sometimes the circumstances can cause the variance within the same person.  Most people over thirty remember Michael Jordan and his bout with the flu (or food poisoning as some have claimed) in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Playoffs against the Jazz.   Love him or hate him (and I can’t imagine anyone hating MJ), no one could have faked looking as bad as he looked that night in Salt Lake City.  Teammate Scottie Pippen had to nearly drag Jordan off the floor at times out, yet the (arguably, although not to me) greatest basketball player of all-time still managed to play 44 minutes.  Oh yeah, and he put up 38 points to keep the Jazz from sweeping the middle three games of the series (all in SLC).  Jordan has said many times since, he wasn’t sure how he did what he did, but one thing he learned from that episode was - and he has repeated this many times over - when your body is that much out of synch, it takes all the concentration you have to just try and compete - to do what it is you’re out there to do. When you’re in good health, you often can get distracted, but when the body is in such a dreadful state, it takes everything you’ve got to function, so it’s actually easier to completely focus on the task at hand. 

Ditto for Tiger Woods in the last tourney in which he competed - and, of course, won - naturally, it being a major, the U.S. Open.

Do not get me wrong for one instant.  I am in no way, shape or form, comparing myself to Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods.  I am, however, going through a stage - as I bang on this keyboard right this second - where I am in serious pain.  And I’ve faced pain on several occasions in my 60 years (yet nowhere near what some people have and don’t think for a moment I don’t empathize with anyone in such a condition). 

Athletically, although I’m not so old that I played football in the “no helmet” days, I did play in the era of the one bar face mask and, although I was a fullback and DB, I also was a place kicker, so anything more than a single bar was a distraction when kicking.  During one game, I got into position to tackle a running back from Carteret (NJ) HS.  I considered myself a student of the game (probably why I got into coaching - it’s what guys do who can’t play anymore) and I knew every coach in America told their backs not to jump because, then, you had no control of your body and could cause yourself a great deal of harm.  Up until this, his senior year, however, this particular running back had only been a sprinter who the football coaches had finally talked into going out for their sport.  It proved they were right, as he became an All-Central Jersey selection, but apparently he wasn’t one to listen very well to coaches’ instructions.  As I bent, he jumped and kicked me squarely in the nose, the point of his shoe hitting me right in between my one bar and the top of my helmet.  That moment, I can easily say, was the most painful I’d ever experienced.  And as anyone who’s had his or her nose broken, that one time leads to others, in my case, five altogether.

When I finally left the field, (our home jerseys were red with white numbers), you could barely see the bottom of my “38″ and when I got to the sideline, I looked up and saw a cheerleader make such a face that it was obvious she was seeing something very nasty.  Luckily, it was a girl I knew or else I might have lost as much of my self-esteem as I did blood.

In 1987, I had the first of eight back surgeries and currently have implanted both a spinal cord stimulator (left side of my abdomen) and a morphine pump (right side of my abdomen), and neither are working as they should.  The former was a mistake to have done, but shows the lengths people will go to when they’re in pain.  The latter was implanted a few months after the former and was a life saver in terms of keeping the pain at a tolerable level - until about a month ago.

Then, for some yet to be discovered reason, the pain returned - worse than ever.  The reason I say worse is that I coached a high school team from 2002-05 in constant daily pain and, thinking about those days, realize I couldn’t do so now.  Maybe I was tougher then, maybe more committed, or maybe should have been committed.

All those years in between the nose and the back, I performed in pain or while I was under the weather (be it competitively playing or coaching) and I’ve learned the difference.  I continue to teach, in between my (what’s becoming weekly trips to the Stanford Pain Clinic) and can tell how much less effective I am.  Why do I keep doing it?  One reason is that while laying bed is a major relief physically, from an emotional and mental aspect, it’s eventually gets to be more draining.  Another is that I have a commitment to the kids I’m paid to teach - and I really enjoy doing it.  Not necessarily every last one of the little cherubs, but, then again, I imagine I’m not their favorite either.

Mainly, I think it comes down to a line attributed to Bishop Richard Cumberland:

“It’s better to wear out than rust out.”

Some of today’s athletes have taken showboating to such an extreme, that rules have had to be passed making “excessive celebration” a penalty of some sort (yards, technical foul, even ejection).  Then again, every once in a while, a player will be interviewed and displays such genuine humility that you want to root for him or her the rest of his or her career - and you might not even follow that team!   Over the weekend, I was jolted by an interview I saw, and it brought me back to something that happened to me over 40 years ago.

It had such a profound effect on me I included it in my book, Life’s A Joke, yet the story is anything but funny.  Here it is:

“During my sophomore year in high school, I was on the varsity football team but didn’t see much playing time.  I was also the backup place kicker and one game after we scored our 42nd point, the coach put me in to kick the extra point.  I was successful, which made the final score, 43-7.

“On Sundays, all of us would go down to the local sweet shop and reminisce about the game and wait for the paper to arrive so we could read the game story.  Other than reading about the story, there was never anything personal that I actually had to wait for until a year or so later when I got some significant playing time.  However, on this morning I got there especially early because I wanted to see in the agate (small print), after that last touchdown, where it said (Fertig PAT).

“As one of the guys opened up the sports section, one of our offensive lineman, a gentle guy but a terrific tackle named “Moose” Carlen, said, “Wait, let me take a look at that.”  All of a sudden he said, “Yeah, there it is.  That’s it! That’s what I was waiting for.”  We read the article and it said, “Halfback Joe Pancza scampered over right tackle 22 yards for a touchdown.”  Moose kept saying, “There, I got it, finally got it in there.”  He was so excited, not because his name was in print, but simply because it said “over right tackle,” his position.  I can’t tell you how small I felt looking for my name when here was a guy who was in the trenches working and sweating every practice and he was elated because it said “over right tackle.” 

“Tragically, Moose was killed in a car accident just a few years later.  Sometimes justice doesn’t seem to prevail.”    

Further proof, it seems, of Gandhi’s philosophy:

“Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you were going to live forever.”

It’s not uncommon to hear a coach back up a player having a tough go of it and, realistically, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  If not for the players, all the coaching wisdom in the universe won’t win a coach a game.  On some occasions, it’s the compassionate thing to do, e.g. a player makes a mistake which apparently costs the team the game (apparently, because there were several other plays throughout the game that, had they been executed properly - or even just better - might have negated the play in question).  The coach knows how bad the kid feels and wants to show support, if for nothing else, all the practice time and loyalty the player’s put into the program.

Then there are other occasions where the coach really has to bite his or her lip because the blunder made by the player was something he or she was warned of (prior to leaving the huddle after a timeout or in a scouting report or something that was gone over during the halftime adjustments in the locker room), yet loyalty usually wins out.

Although infrequent, there’s the time that a beleguered player does something during the course of the season that is of a redeeming nature, e.g. makes a play to win a game. On the high school or collegiate level (and possibly, the pros as well), most of the players are too humble to want instant payback with a “How do you like me now?!” response. The coach can be of assistance here, but needs to be careful not to cross the line of loyalty versus driving a wedge between the media/fans who berated the former scapegoat.

This past Saturday, Fresno State played a game against Utah State which was eerily similar to one a couple of years ago in which they led by three, were mounting a drive, but had to settle for a field goal.  The Aggies marched down the field, scored the tying TD and kicked the PAT to win at the final gun.  Flash forward to last Saturday and the identical game was taking place.  The Dogs up three, can’t get the six so they kick a field goal, only to watch the home matriculate the ball all the way into the end zone, go up one with the point after, and all of this with only 38 seconds to go.

All Fresno State can do is move the ball close enough for a field goal try with two ticks on the clock.  And it was to be from 58-yards out!  No one in Fresno State football history (which is a long and storied one) had ever made one beyond 55 yards.  The place kicker, Kevin Goessling, happens to be 1) in his first year of kicking for the team (he redshirted last year, meaning they thought the guy they had was better than he was), 2) had earlier in the season, missed three out of four field goal tries in a three-point loss to powerful Wisconsin (at home, in front of a packed house of his “supporters”), 3) had missed a field goal in a home overtime loss to WAC opponent Hawaii (not too hard to figure out the ramifications of a missed FG in OT) and, 4) oh yeah, had earlier in this game missed a 22-yarder.

Naturally, he absolutely crushed this one - right down Broadway - and made it with probably five yards to spare.

Fresno State’s coach is Pat Hill, a former FSU and professional assistant, who runs the program exactly the way he wants it run.  He was undaunted taking over for a legend (his former boss, Jim Sweeney, after whom the field is named) after Sweeney’s health (and the program’s) had deteriorated in Jim’s final few years.  His philosophy of “We’ll play anyone, anytime, any place” and “Our goal is to go to a BCS Bowl” is embraced by the fans at Fresno State - until they lose a game or two.  Then, they have to extend the call-in shows to give all the naysayers a chance to say what ought to be done.  

Criticism isn’t easy for people to take, although some have thicker skin and hold up better than others.  This is true within the coaching ranks as well.  I remember hearing of one head coach who had his wife tape record the call-in shows so he could tell who was still supporting him and who wasn’t.  Hill’s as tough a guy as they come, but nobody is so hardened that harsh words just roll off their back - especially with the amount of time coaches dedicate in putting out their product.

But, when asked about how he felt for his kicker who’d been maligned (more than once), Pat said he knew Kevin was a good kicker, had a strong leg and was going to win more games for the Dogs before it was all over.  Then he capped it off perfectly with:

“He’s a lot stronger person than the people who are yelling at him.” Â

In another blog, I relived part of my childhood when I talked about teachers who would bring radios or small television sets to school so we could listen to or watch the World Series. 

Although I’m from a long ago era -and I think it’s bad enough that they will soon be called “The Men of October/November,” but are night games on weekends really necessary?  I understand college football rules the programming on Saturday afternoons, as the NFL does on Sunday afternoons (or late mornings and evenings for that matter), but when a World Series game is played in an East Coast (or even a Midwestern) city, it’s looks so out of place to see the abundance of batting gloves (even on non-batters) and thermals under uniforms - in a baseball game.  Then, of course, in those locales, the weather can be a problem for more than simply the temperature, as it was in Game 1 of this year’s Series.

Would it really be that much of a fiscal hit to televise The World Series in the afternoons on the weekends?  I’m not so naive that I don’t realize it’s all about the money (especially in light of the past month), but, without waxing too nostalgic, Albert Einstein once observed:

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” 

The reason high school rivalries surpass their college counterparts is, although they, like the schools themselves, live on forever, in high school, each player, student and fan actually live in the same part of town (something that was more the case when I was growing up than it is today).

These games will be relived for decades when people come home for holidays - or just to visit - and it’s not unusual for the intensity and fierceness of the competition to grow in proportion to the distance in years from the actual game.  Careers have been known to vastly improve as time moves on.

Many times, there is a symbol of some kind associated with the game - a trophy, a bucket, a sledgehammer or some other useless, nonsensical item - except for the meaning it holds to those players, coaches, students, fans and all others involved. 

As with most rivalries, there will be a period of dominance held by one team, followed by either a blip (a one year upset of magnificent proportions) or a complete turnaround where the loser starts a streak of its own.  Seldom does a series go one year, one squad wins, the next year, the next one wins and so on for a period of time.  That’s one reason the rivalry is so “hateful,” because of one team’s superiority  (and don’t think there’s no gloating going on - on a year-round basis) over the other’s seeming inability (no matter how well they perform in the other games on their schedule) to get over the hump.

Finally, that day, that upset, comes along and the shoe is now on the other foot - and it’s often on so tightly, it doesn’t come off for, maybe, an entire class (from a player’s freshman year all the way through his senior season).  There are often pranks pulled, many dealing with the other’s mascot, others which are absolutely shocking.  One in particular that I was involved in I even included in my book (Life’s A Joke).  What made the story so incredible was that my first job out of college was teaching and coaching at my alma mater (with all the same coaches who had coached me).  It was a moment in my life I’ll never forget and is the cause for many laughs now when I reminisce with people from back home.

Every once in a while, things get out of hand (as seems to happen with every good experience in life when egos and mouths get out of control) and the “trash talking” escalates, which is what Phyllis Bottome probably had in mind when she said:

“Anger is like milk; it should not be kept too long.”

Seldom does a politician get accused of brevity (maybe that’s why people have mentioned I’d be a good candidate for office).  But I just recently came across a quotation attributed to a man who many feel was the “consummate politician,” although certainly a controversial one.  That man is former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

When faced with the statement that a president simply needs to do what is right, LBJ countered briefly and perfectly: 

“A president’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.”  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

The main story line for the upcoming World Series reads something like “Losers No More.”  This is in reference to the Phillies’ and Rays’ organizations and their collective futile past years decades of losing baseball.  Right now, however, they are the only two franchises in all of baseball that have a chance of winning this year’s Big Prize.

The players are in the midst of having the time of their lives.  They’re back to referring to their jobs as men playing a kids’ game - and being thankful for it.  But, as happens every year, somebody will walk away broken-hearted at the end.  To come this far, and be denied achieving the ultimate goal is a bitter pill no matter how great a season you’ve had up to that point.

So, I guess the line, “Enjoy it while you can” is great advice for both teams.  Or as I heard a speaker say at the end of a presentation:

“Live each day as though it were your last - and one day, you’ll be right!”