Book Club: Coach, by Michael Lewis

At 91 double-spaced pages, Michael Lewis’ Coach is not much longer than an issue of Sports Illustrated. This little book overflows such tiny confines, though, as Lewis carefully interweaves a paean to Billy Fitzgerald with larger musings about the lessons we all (should) learn on the road to adulthood.

At its most basic level, Coach is a well-constructed tribute to the man who taught Michael Lewis to be more than just a ball player. Coach Fitz's story is not a unique one, and for that matter neither is Lewis'. And while I wouldn't go so far as to call Coach a vanity project, I'm not entirely convinced it would have been published had Lewis not found mainstream success with the publication of Moneyball in 2003. Nonetheless, Coach is eminently readable, and worthwhile not just for Lewis' nostalgia, but also for his thoughts on the over-protected atmosphere today's kids often grow up in. What struck me, though, was not the minutiae of Lewis’ personal experience, or his sky-is-falling concerns regarding modern youth. Coach, for me, was an unexpected reminder of how I got to be the person I am today.

In my sports-filled life, I have had too many coaches to count. As the years have passed, I find that I can clearly remember very few of them. Time has reduced some to mere names, and others are left with only faces. Many have been completely erased from my synapses. None of them, though, no matter how misremembered, had anywhere near as much impact on who I was then or who I am now as my own father. From watching M.A.S.H. on his knee as a small boy to our ongoing discussions about what is and isn't "important" in life or sports or family or whatever, I don't think any one person can claim a bigger role in the shaping of my personality.

My dad was a carpenter when I first arrived in this world, but a serious knee injury eventually left him without a job or much of a future. Ours wasn't a house for complaining, though, so while my mom waited tables at night to make ends meet, my dad set about reinventing himself. Before my young mind really knew what was happening or what was at stake, the man who never finished college was taking courses and soon found a job as an estimator for a structural steel company. He cooked dinner for my brother and me every night. He commandeered our 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and beat the holy hell out of the original Legend of Zelda before I even conquered the first boss. His hard work saved our family so completely that I was an adult before it even occurred to me we might have been in jeopardy. To the eight-year-old me, a new house wasn’t anything special. A new routine, some new friends and, hey, my own room, great. But to my father, it must have been…redemption.

Growing up, I never suspected that my parents were anything out of the ordinary. Surely every father got up before dawn on Saturdays to drive his sons to hockey practice along the dark corridors of highway 101 while they slept in the back seat? And what dad didn’t patiently instill the belief that anything was possible, even a cross-country pilgrimage to Woodstock, so long as it was planned and worked for? And didn’t all the neighborhood kids learn about patience, hard work and dedication by reassembling an old truck piece by piece alongside their old man?

I’m a little bit older now, and whether you consider it wisdom or a Michael-Lewis-in-Coach-style cynicism, I’m finally starting to realize that not everyone grew up like I did. And the more I learn about my father’s life, both before and after me, the more about me I realize he deserves credit for. My convictions and my stubbornness. My belief that I can do anything I want, so long as I get around to deciding just what that is. My loyalty to the people most important to me. The rocks glass full of M&Ms next to me as I write this, an eerie parallel of the cup next to my father’s armchair.

So whenever my mother calls to vent about his latest project or tic or obsession, I laugh, I sympathize, and I comfort. And when she finally runs out of steam, she lets out an exasperated sigh and says, “That’s your father.”

And I smile, and I think the myself, “You’re dammed right.”

Zito to the Bullpen

Last week I posted the Barry Zito Salary Calculator, and now the Giants are sending Zito and his 7.53 earned run average to the bullpen. I hope he loses his 0-6 record somewhere along the way.

The Giants didn't really have much of a choice. Not only are they paying Zito fourteen and a half million dollars this year, but a demotion to the minors would probably wreak havoc on the kid's (that's right, he's only 29) psyche. It was either send him to the 'pen or announce that he was "injured" and let him miss a few starts while he got his mind/arm/chakras right.

I can't sit here and pretend SF doesn't need their 156 million dollar man. Even if he was only 3-3 instead of 0-6, the Giants would be sitting at 14-12, in second place in the NL West. Maybe the change of scenery will do him some good.

Then again, if Francisco Liriano comes back from the minors throwing asprin tablets for Minnesota, we'll know the Giants made the wrong decision.

Follow Up: Skeletons in the Closet

After seeing the Max Kellerman rap video I posted recently, my good friend Firefly steered me over to the SI online archives, and a long, wonderful piece about Max's brother Sam, the other half of the music act.

I had been vaguely aware that Sam was dead, but the article was a real eye-opener not just about the circumstances surrounding his death, but about the details of his life. It is absolutely worth reading for anyone that has a brother, and anyone who has ever lost anyone they care about.

Gameday

Matt Cain takes the hill against the Cardinals today. No analysis right now, I just hope the Giants don't blow it for him again.

A Little Off the Top 04/17/2008

I've been neglecting my link dump lately, so let's get right to it:

Slate has an interesting look at game theory as it applies to dinner party guests. It turns out, ladies, that I'm getting more desirable with age. Better get me while you still can...

UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law has declined to fire John Yoo, best known for authoring a Justice Department memo justifying the US military's use of torture in Iraq. Though this isn't the place I'dve chosen to make a stand, in some ways it's nice to see the alma mater standing up to the left for once. When I was on campus, events featuring even marginally conservative speakers were often shut down due to protest and general liberal outrage.

Apparently Charlie Hustle wasn't a very good gambler. The Sports Economist provides a link to a break down of Pete Rose's bets.

Last but not least, California Golden Blogs has a mini-breakdown of some of the differences in academic standards between Cal and UCLA.

That should keep y'all busy for a while. A quick shout out to the Golden Bears Men's Baseball team, currently 23-9, and ranked 8th in this weeks Baseball America poll.

2008 NFL Schedule Released

Replace every instance of 'Seahawks' with '49ers', and I pretty much agree with Ufford's intro to the 2008 season. San Francisco will be terrible, no doubt, but hopefully not as crippled by the weight of every one's expectations as last year. I look forward to another season of not being able to watch them because I don't have Direct TV.

Skeletons in the Closet

This popped up on the interwebs sometime last week, and I figured I'd re-post it, if for no other reason than I listen to the Max Kellerman show at work every day:



Kellerman mentioned the video on his show this morning, and actually handled it pretty gracefully, I thought. Lord knows there's pictures of me out there that I'd rather not be in mass circulation.

I believe I first saw this on FanIQ, via Deadspin.

Timmy Lincecum, Hero

Absolutely awesome post over at Bay City Ball quantifying Tim Lincecum's bad-assedness. Print it out and read it again later bad-ass.

Full disclosure: I have the sweet smelling munchkin (seriously, dude is smaller than me) on both my fantasy teams, and he is putting in work. However, I was hanging out on Raising (Matt) Cain last night, and posted a comment about how well my boy was pitching. Needless to say, the baseball gods were not impressed.

Lincecum actually pitched really well in the game, but was denied the win. The Giants ended up winning thanks to the heroics of Benjie Molina, who hit not one, but two home runs in the game, including a walk-off in the 11th. That's right, the very same Benjie Molina I trashed in yesterday's post. So, for what it's worth Benjie, I'm sorry I suggested replacing you with a soccer playing Brazilian midget. Keep up the good work, and I promise to find good things to say about you soon.

Oh, the agony

Anyone who's been reading this site (is anyone?) knows that the San Francisco Giants are terrible this year. Even Matt Cain got lit up yesterday. Four runs is a pretty decent offensive day for this crew, but it doesn't do any good when they give up thirteen.

One of my coworkers, a Yankee fan, accurately pointed out that no team with Benjie Molina batting cleanup can even pretend to be decent. Grant over at McCovey Chronicles went so far as to list all the players (believe me, there's a lot of them) on the other National League teams more qualified to fill the four spot at AT&T Park (that is what they're calling it these days, right?). Every other team has at least four players who could bat cleanup on this team.

Honestly, we might be better off with someone from this Giants team, in Brazil.

Update: The Giants have gone up 1-0 on the Padres while I've been hammering out this whine-fest. Prepare yourself for more live Giants-bashing in future games in a sort of elaborate reverse-jinx effort. God I hope they win more than 60 games this year.

Memphis has left the building

I hate to say I told ya so, Memphis, but I told ya so.

They got a whole lot farther than I thought, obviously, but when all the chips were on the table (pointless poker metaphor alert!), the Tigers simply couldn't shoot free throws. With Leather summed it up nicely, and, no, I didn't win the pool (I had Kansas overall, but way too many underdogs that got knocked out early - I'm looking at you, Drake). You can probably find in-depth game summaries over at Deadspin or Storming the Floor, if you didn't watch the game for some reason.

It's a shame, Tiger fans. Y'all could have been kings.

Welcome Mike Montgomery!

Word on the street is that Cal has an agreement in place to hire Mike Montgomery to revive their struggling basketball program. Goodbye, ninth place; hello, top of the league!

I first heard about this on ESPN 1050 this morning, but screw them. Here's a link to Ragnarok over at California Golden Blogs.

Just a Little Off the Top 04/03/2008

Don't have much to say today, so a few links for your entertainment:

The inimitable Big Daddy Drew made me laugh today, with his metaphorical take on Davidson's recent March Madness adventures.

Slate has an entertaining story about the all-consuming nature of fantasy baseball. I still haven't told the girlfriend I'm actually in two leagues this year instead of one. Shh!

Speaking of, Sam Walker's Fantasyland is a fun fantasy baseball read (talk about phrases you never thought you'd hear). I mean, it's no Moneyball, but Amazon is selling the hardcover for seven bucks for some reason, so you can't go wrong.

I think that just about catches us up. I'm trying to arrange another guest post, and might have lined up a full time contributor to the site, so there's a pretty decent chance y'all will get a break from my frequent complaining about the Giants misadventures in the N.L. West.

Until I have something interesting to say...

A Litte Off the Top 04/02/2008

McCovey Chronicles nearly made me put my head through a wall. Then I noticed the date of the post.

Heartache begins anew

Even though it's still March, today is Opening Day (3.0). We had a couple of games in Japan, and the made-for-TV opening of the Nationals new stadium last night, but today, the season began in earnest.

And the Giants are already getting killed. They're currently down 0-4 in the bottom of the third inning, and have stranded multiple runners on base. At least they're getting on base, I suppose.

Expect more posts like this throughout the year.

#1 Seeds Un-busted

In perhaps the biggest upset of all - and for the first time in history - all four #1 seeds have advanced to the Final Four. Davidson (and the unreal Stephen Curry) were the only underdog to put up much of a fight over the weekend, but, alas, the dream died with their 57-59 defeat at the hands of Kansas. The remaining story lines, as far as I can tell:

Can Bill Self not beat himself for once?
Will the refs ever call a foul on UCLA again?
Do members of the MSM have pictures of Tyler Hansbrough tacked above their beds, or do they just write love letters to him in their secret personal diaries?
Was Memphis merely pretending to not be able to shoot free throws?

Personally, I just hope that having what are supposed to be the four best teams in the country going head to head means we'll get to see plenty of good basketball this weekend. It will help make up for not getting to see the chap-tastic Texas cheerleaders anymore.

The Bell Tolls for Thee, Ben Braun

After a second-round NIT loss to the Ohio State University, Cal finally dropped the axe on Ben Braun. Reactions are varied, from respectful to torn to jubilant, but I'll admit I don't know how I feel about the move. On the one hand, 219-154 seems like a pretty good record over the past 12 years (of course, I'm no mathematician). On the other hand, this is my most enduring memory of Cal basketball:

March 2002 was a pretty glorious time in my life. I was living about twenty minutes outside of Amsterdam, and making the most of it. My friends and I were planning a massive St. Patrick's Day bash, as if we suddenly needed a reason to get intoxicated. As a Cal fan, still stinging from a 1-10 football season (the only victory a 9/11-rescheduled cupcake game against Rutgers), I was elated to my Golden Bears reach the second round of the tournament. It really wasn't a difficult decision: I'd head into Amsterdam ahead of my friends to watch my sixth-seeded Bears take on the third-seeded Pitt Steelers Panthers.

Perhaps I should have been concerned when I couldn't round up any of my friends to go with me (None of them Cal students, hardly any Americans, but still). I definitely should have been worried when I realized the game was in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, I went happily into the city, with a pair of shamrock-shaped sunglasses, ready to celebrate Ireland and Cal's inevitable advancement to the Sweet Sixteen. The game started off pretty well. I befriended a few other Americans in the bar. The waitress was cute and, I thought, flirting with me with that Dutch-accented English I enjoyed so much. The halftime score: 25-26, bad guys. An upset was brewing, I could feel it. This was going to be the best St. Patrick's Day.

Three minutes into the second half, Cal's up 32-28. I'm sending drunken, random text messages across an ocean and a continent to my friends back in Berkeley, celebrating the Bears and arguing about the best way to pick up a waitress. (Full disclosure: I am a jerk.) My new friends in the bar are planning to come out drinking in the Dutch suburbs with me. Right about then, the wheels fall off:

The next time our waitress comes by, I get the 'are you sure you want another beer?' treatment. I do, and she is not impressed. And then:

Pittsburgh held California without a point for 9½ minutes during a decisive 16-0 run, which began with Cal leading 32-28 with 16:40 remaining and ended with Pitt up 44-32 with 7:08 left. The Golden Bears went more than 11 minutes without scoring a basket, and 15-plus minutes with only one basket.

(Thanks, ESPN.com archives, for ripping my heart out anew.)

Pitt went on to blow the Bears out of the water. Final score 63-50. My new friends offered feeble condolences; the waitress couldn't have ignored me more if I didn't exist. (By then, I was wishing I didn't exist.) I paid my tab in then-cheap Euros, and ventured out into the cold, Dutch night. I got lost on the way to the train station, and a walk that should have taken 15 minutes took 30. When I finally reached Amsterdam Centraal, only two of the 15 or so people were there, the rest having begged off for one reason or another.

After as much sympathy as an English girl and her disinterested American boyfriend could offer, we set off for an Irish bar, hoping to drown my sorrows in Guinness. We had all been to this bar before on several occasions, but tonight, for some reason, none of us could find it. After much wandering around, and not a few stops into other bars and coffee shops in the area, we were ultimately reduced to walking up and down the streets, vainly searching for an Irish pub that seemed to no longer exist. I walked up to an indescribable cast of skeevy hash dealers and generally crazy people, asking directions in the sort of horrendous faux-Irish accent that only a drunken, pissed off American can manage. Oh, and I was still wearing my giant shamrock sunglasses, courtesy of the good folks who make Killian's Irish Red. Needless to say, these people I was talking to were not anxious to help me.

We never did find the bar, and I'm pretty sure that's the night I lost my hat.

All of which begs the question: If this is what comes to mind when I think of Cal Basketball (Well, that and watching Tony Gonzalez push opponents around and saying to myself 'Hm, he should probably play football.'), can I possibly consider the departure of Ben Braun to be a bad thing?

OK, one last link: Goldenblogs has some thoughts of the future of Cal Basketball that are worth keeping in mind as this search goes forward.

Woe...

It's going to keep getting worse, 49er fans. At least Eddie DeBartolo cheated in a way that made the team better...

Words fail me. I'm going to attempt to take solace in my fantasy baseball drafts and hopefully not remember this come April.

Bracket Quick Hits

I'm far from an expert as far as college basketball goes, but let's take a quick tour through the brackets anyway, before you finalize your picks. Indulge me...

Congratulations, Mount St. Mary's, on winning the right to be pummelled by UNC and the gritty-white Tyler Hansbrough. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think it would have been a travesty to have a twenty-loss team in the tournament.

Beware repeat sleepers. Just because George Mason had a great run in 2006 doesn't mean they're the same team. Only two starters are left from their stint as cinderella. And Notre Dame is good...

Kansas is good. I know that's obvious, and I know it's lame to pick a number one seed to win it all, but they impressed me in the Big 12 championship game against Texas. I'm just saying.

Siena over Vanderbilt. I don't know why, I just feel it. The favorites can't win every time.

Gonzaga no longer qualifies as a sleeper, folks. Can we please move on?

I don't like Georgetown. Don't think they'll survive the first weekend (I have them beating UMBC and losing to Davidson).

I've already explained why Memphis isn't going anywhere. Out to a phyisical Mississippi State team. Thanks, Texas-Arlington, but no thanks.

Speaking of Miss St, Oregon is soft. So at least one 8-seed should make it to day two. Keep that in mind when you're flipping coins for the 8/9 games.

I'm not impressed with any of the Big-10 schools. You'd better have a really good reason for putting any school other than Wisconsin in the Sweet 16. Some ugly basketball in the Big-10.

Texas is really talented and athletic. When I watched the Kansas game, though, they fell apart as soon as their shooters went cold. It's a skill offesnse, not a system. If they're not hitting their shots, they're done.

UCLA is good. They impressed me by playing strong against Stanford in the Pac-10 final with what seemed like maybe 50% of Kevin Love. I technically have them out in the Elite Eight, but I just can't stand having too much chalk on my board. And I hate the Bruins.

I think San Diego's run ends against UConn. They had a nice run, but still.

It's not Duke's year. Again, just a feeling.

Anyway, that's my completely uninformed, completely arbitrary jaunt through the bracket. No offense if I didn't talk about your team - I probably couldn't think of a random stance to take on them. Good luck in your brackets - even though MidMajority.com says you shouldn't be filling them out.

Bill James Gets Around

Apparently, running the Boston Red Sox isn't enough of a challenge for Bill James (there's some baseless invective straight out of my mother's Albuquerque basement for you). Here in Slate, he's figured out when a basketball game is actually over. Since, you know, I guess it's not over when the clock says 00:00. Or something.

The formula:

Number of points team is ahead
- 3
+ .5 points if leading team has the ball or - .5 if trailing team has the ball (negative numbers become zero)
Square the result

If the resulting number is greater than the number of seconds left in the game, the lead is safe.

Ah, screw it - there's a widget embedded in the Slate article.

Don't mind me - I'm having a hard time caring about basketball after Cal's sorry excuse for a season (funny, I feel like I said something very similar during the bowl games). Besides, this will come in handy when I start placing my foolish, under-informed wagers on the games. And not to mention my brackets. Oh, Lord, my brackets.

Don't call it a guest post: Selection Sunday

Ed. note: In honor of Selection Sunday, I’m handing the reins over to a dear friend of We Have Hair, for what is hopefully the first of many contributions to this site. Not only is she one of the smarter people I know, but she also knows a whole lot more than I do about college sports. Take it away, Firefly:

I recently read Mystic River (I know, I know, an Oscar-winning motion picture from years ago—I'm behind the times). While the book itself was stunning in many ways, there was one specific passage that stuck with me. At the start of chapter four, Lehane uses a baseball game to bring us into the mind of one of his main characters:

"Dave found himself paying more attention to the lights and the fans an Anaheim Stadium itself than to the actual game.

He watched the faces in the bleachers most-the disgust and defeated fatigue, the fans looking like they were taking the loss more personally than the guys in the dugout. And maybe they were. For some of them, Dave figured, this was the only game they'd attend this year. They'd brought the kids, the wife, walked out of their homes into the early California evening with coolers for the tailgate party and five thirty dollar tickets so they could sit in the cheap seats and put twenty-five dollar caps on their kids heads, eat six-dollar rat burgers and $4.50 hot dogs and watered-down Pepsi and sticky ice cream bars that melted into the hair of their wrists. They came to be elated and uplifted, Dave knew, raised up out of their lives by the rare spectacle of victory. That's why arenas and ballparks felt like cathedrals--buzzing with light and murmured prayers and forty thousand hearts all beating the drum of the same collective hope.

Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back to out otherwise winless lives.

Win for me. Win. Win. Win.

But when your team lost, that collective hope crumbled into shards and any illusion of unity you'd felt with your fellow parishioners went with it. Your team had failed you and only served to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. And you sat there in the debris of the cellophane wrappers and popcorn and soft, soggy drink cups dumped back into the numb wreckage of your life, facing a long dark walk back through a long dark parking lot with hordes of drunk, angry strangers, a silent wife tallying up your latest failure, and three cranky kids. All so you could get into your car and drive back to your home, the very place from which this cathedral had promised to transport you."

I have seen many debates on what it means to be a sports "fan" these days, and they all make me feel guilty for not having a "team" and a closet full of jerseys. As if I'm somehow less of fan because I love sports for the game itself rather than who’s playing in it. I'm just as excited to watch Amherst play Williams as I am to watch Michigan State take on Michigan. (During the fall I've been known to watch nothing but college football from Thursday night until the wee hours of Sunday morning.) When I tell people I don’t have an allegiance to any one team, they always seem surprised. They’ll ask where I grew up (Chicago, and I can remember the 1985 Super Bowl-shuffling Bears, and Michael Jordan’s Bulls teams of the 1990s) or went to school—as if an allegiance should have arisen somewhere in there if I was truly a sports fan.

For me, my passion for sports comes from a deep-seated love of the process of the games. The hope of winning for any given team on any given day, rather than who in particular is playing, is what makes sports so compelling. If there is a chance for a surprising team to pull out a win, I'm all eyes and ears, even if it’s in a sport I don’t normally follow like NASCAR, lacrosse, or curling. And that is what Lehane nailed about sports that makes me a fan: it’s the immeasurable hope found in the playing of the game.

There is no better example of how this hope fills my soul and makes my life more bearable than the NCAA Basketball Tournament. It arrives just as spring is trying with all its might to break through the clouds, rain, and lashing winds. It arrives when teasing, 50-degree afternoons are weighted down by the last dregs of winter, and there isn't a three-day weekend in sight until Memorial Day. March is the long, fallow patch when I struggle hard, treading water corporate office-style, to keep my head above ground while waiting for the sun to stay out past 7pm.

And in these final spasms of chilliness, a field of 65 will battle it out, hope versus hope, first-timers and surprise winners against storied programs and national powerhouses. Over 2-hour periods, buzzer-beaters will abound, as will amazing plays by people whose names I'll forget as quickly as I learned them. Their battles on the court provide enough distraction from the mundane tasks of the day-to-day, so that when I look back outside there will be leaves on the trees and a new season will have begun.

So I say welcome to Cal State Fullerton, Cornell and Portland State, go get ‘em to Drake, Butler, and Davidson and hello again to the Longhorns, Bruins and Tar Heels alike. And a special thank you to the Georgia Bulldogs, for bringing their own hopes to this weekend with the moxie they’ve shown making it to the SEC conference championship game. And now, I’ll wait anxiously to see which one of them will don that glass slipper and let my hope spring eternal once again.

Ed.: That's a wrap of the inaugral edition of Don't Call it a Guest Post. For further discussion on the state of fandom, check out Leitch's book or this post by Dan Shanoff.