Exhaustion and Bruce

Posted: August 25th, 2008 | Filed under: Bruce, International | 72 Comments »

You know the Mel Brooks quote about the difference between comedy and tragedy. At its simplest: Tragedy is me hurting my finger. Comedy is you falling in a manhole — what do I care? I think you can use the same technique to describe the difference between interesting and boring.

Interesting is my fantasy football team. Boring is YOUR fantasy football team.

Interesting is my best golf round ever. Boring is YOUR best golf round ever.

Interesting is my minor celebrity sighting. Boring is YOUR story of seeing Alan Thicke.

Interesting is my crazy cab ride to the Beijing airport at the end of the Olympics. And boring is … me telling you all about my crazy cab ride to the Beijing airport at the end of the Olymipcs. But it’s where my longest day began, my 37-hour day that took me to four airports, four time zones, three airlines, six near death experiences (all on the one cab ride), three beautiful hugs and one long blur that was snapped into focus by a song I’ve been waiting to hear all my life.

Understand, I’ve been on crazy cab rides before, lots of them, in any number of cities. I like them — there’s a county fair kind of thrill to scary cab rides. You know how at a county fair, you ride the Ferris wheel, and close to the top you notice that the bolts are rusted through and you suspect that they weren’t tightened with much enthusiasm that morning, and you realize that this near-bankrupt traveling fair probably doesn’t have the same quality control standards as, say, Disney World, and, you COULD die — you probably will not die, but you really could. That’s the same thrill I feel in a swerving cab*.

*I’ve only been in one taxi cab accident, it was in Indianapolis, and it’s a moment I now remember for the astonishing fury which my cabbie unleashed on the other driver (even though it was entirely the cab drivers fault) and for the way my meter rolled like the Jerry Lewis Telethon toteboard while he berated the poor driver for having the gall to be in the left lane at that precise instant when the cab swerved into him.

But Indianapolis — you would expect cab rides to be priced-to-move there. But no, I’ve thought the cab prices there are ludicrous, way, way, way above the city’s grandeur factor. There is no secondary benefits to paying an obscene amount of money for a cab ride in Indianapolis. This is like getting pick-pocketed in Des Moines — it sucks AND it’s no fun to talk about. Denver also has an astonishingly high CRPE.

Still, I had never been on a cab ride that really had me scared enough to consider saving my own life by jumping out. Well, I have now. Five times on my trip to the Beijing airport, we were on a four-lane road and my cab driver felt it necessary to pass between two cars driving along in their individual lanes. Twice he realized that the only way he could get around a car in the right lane was to duck down into the shoulder and the grass and then wildly weave back once he had 1.3 millimeters of clearance. My cab driver spoke precisely no English, so I had to learn how to read his body language, which actually wasn’t that hard:

– When he hit the car horn, this meant he was a bit frustrated by the pace of traffic. This happened ever .3 seconds.
– When he shrugged, this meant “Don’t worry, it’s all under control,” even as I sat quivering under the glove compartment.
– When he groaned, this meant he was running into some trouble calculating how he would pull off his next stunt. This was always followed by the “Well, here goes nothing” look and that was followed, improbably, by Steve McQueen’s car being right in front of us*.

*I’ve always been fascinated by the bad-guy movie cars that smash through bridge guard rails or end up blowing up in mid air in, say, a Jason Bourne car chase or a James Bond thing or whatever. What do you think is going through the head of those henchman drivers? I keep imagine them going, “Um, I’m driving a tad fast here. Hello. I might want to slow down a bit. I mean, sure, I really want to catch this guy, but you know I’m really a pretty safe driver, you know, like I have no points on my license, and also I’ve never really seen any of these high-speed car chases work. And I don’t really want to do a 2 1/2 somersault with a twist off a cliff. Plus, you know what? I haven’t exactly been trained for this — I kept asking the boss to enroll us in that stunt driving course, but no, that guy’s SO cheap, he’s stolen like a billion dollars but he doesn’t think it’s worth it to let me take one weekend class at the Richard Petty School of Driving — I mean, just the weekend, I wasn’t even asking for the whole course. Screw this, I’m stopping at this stop light, I don’t care.”

After almost dying in a cab, after dealing with the inevitable “Where is ticket” confrontation at the Beijing airport, after getting a choice middle seat roughly the width of a trade paperback to Tokyo, after paying 59 bajillion yen again for faltering Internet at Narita Airport — this is the third time in a year, so apparently they PURPOSELY have a fading Internet connection there — after getting woken up on the plane ride to LA by an overzealous flight attendant who felt sure I both wanted and needed a hot towel, after the joy of landing in Los Angeles where my cell phone worked again after three weeks (“You have 48 new messages!”), after going to a sports bar and having a stale quesadilla that tasted like the best thing ever made in Mexico City (I like Mexican food fine, but I have to tell you that for whatever reason I was DYING for something remotely Mexican tasting after my three weeks in Beijing), after getting on the plane home and falling into sleep so fast and deep I did not even remember putting away my carry-on bag (and as such had a hard time finding them), after all that, I made it home to my beautiful wife and beautiful kids. There was the expected hugging, the expected “You were gone too long,” anger, the expected gift joy, the expected chattering, the expected, “OK, now you’re home, can we go to Wendy’s?” return to normalcy.

And then … well, every so often, if you are lucky, you will have a moment that makes you realize all over again that you married the right person. When I got home after all that flying, it was made very clear by my wife (and the babysitter she had hired) that we were going to see Bruce Springsteen. The reason wasn’t the poll or my own feelings about Bruce or anything like that. No, the reason was much simpler and much closer to the heart. Margo wanted to go.

* * *

I’ve written here a lot of words about my feelings about Bruce Springsteen. Well, lots of people have written a lot of words about Bruce. At some point, like with all great things, words fail. Words must fail. If I could REALLY tell you what it’s like to walk on top of the Great Wall of China — if I could really find words that captured the feeling of awe, the sense of wonder, the ghosts of history, if I could tell you the story in such a way so you could see the the depth of green beyond the walls, if I could find the words that would make your feet hurt. make your skin burn, make your sweaty shirt stick to your back, fill your lungs with the hazy air, if I could get you to feel the old woman who grabs your hand and shouts “Cold water!” as she touches the lukewarm bottle to your arm, if I could get it down so precisely that you could experience even the tiniest sensation … then, why would you go?

So, I will not be able to explain well enough what it was like to hear Springsteen begin his Kansas City show with “Ricky Wants A Man of Her Own.” This is such an obscure Bruce Springsteen song that I could not precisely place it until the chorus. It isn’t on any of his studio albums. It’s on “Tracks,” — his collection of B-sides, unreleased music, remakes and such. I have probably only heard it once or twice, and even then only to hear the songs around it. As far as I know, Springsteen has not played it in concert in … well, I don’t keep up with this stuff like many of my friends do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t played it in 20 years or more*.

*As an update: BruceSpringsteen.net suggests this may have been the first time he ever played the song live.

It’s a good song … I’ve since listened to it again. But it wasn’t the song that made the moment. It was the realization that Springsteen wanted to make this night different and special. Of course, he wants to make every night special, I think that’s at the heart of why he still tours the world even though he’s almost 58 years old and richer than Gates and more famous than perhaps any other rock star in America. What could inspire the man to keep singing “Dancing in the Dark” in dark arenas and muggy football stadiums almost 30 years after he wrote those words, “They say you gotta stay hungry/hey baby, I’m just about starving tonight” so many years after those words found new meaning. I’ve spent a lot of time guessing at the reason Springsteen keeps going, too much time probably, and the closest I can get is that for the people who love him and his music, he can still take us to that higher place. Maybe that’s the only way he can get there himself.*

*I felt this again on Sunday night when he went into a long soliloquy before singing “Mary’s Place.” In it, he talked about how sometimes he needs convincing, how it takes a connection between the music and the fans, the singer and the sprit, to make the night explode. And I thought that was as close as we can get — there’s something a Springsteen show and those who want to be a part of it that makes nitroglycerine.

Even so, there was something different about this night in Kansas City. It was his last night on the Magic Tour. And there was an overwhelming feeling of “last night” — Danny Federici is gone, the Big Man Clarence Clemons looks tired and in pain, and sooner or later the music ends. I have little doubt that the E-Street Band will play together again, many times you would hope, but there was still something in the air, something that said it would never be like THIS again. We wondered if Bruce felt it too. Then he opened up with “Ricky Wants A Man of Her Own.” And we knew. He did feel it. He understood.

He ran around the stage like he was 25 again. He did a somersault. He spun around the microphone like a child at recess. He preached and he screeched and he blew kisses. He sat over the edge of the stage and let people smother him. He stuck out his guitar and let fans fingers run over his strings during the long guitar blast before “The highway’s jammed with broken heroes,” in “Born to Run.” He ran across the stage and did his slide, something I had only seen him do on vintage video from those long ago years. He did the “lightning bolt” pose that Usain Bolt did after he ran faster than any human who ever lived. Max Weinberg sang. Little Steven challenged Bruce to a guitar duel. Springsteen himself leaned over his fans, let them hold him up … that’s the blurry photograph I took. It’s so blurry that it’s hard to tell where Bruce ends and the fans begin, hard to tell even that there are people in the picture. That’s why I like it. That’s how it looked to me.

He sang “Cynthia,” for the first time in a long time, he broke into a remake of the Chuck Berry song “It’s All Over Now.” He sang “Hungry Heart,” though he really didn’t sing it, he merely held up the microphone and listened as the crowd sang. He brought out a little politics and broke into a haunting version of “Devils and Dust.” He took requests and played “Working on the Highway” and “Cadillac Ranch” and “Candy’s Room.” He sang a song I don’t believe I’ve ever heard before, a song called “Boys,” and he broke into an awesome solo of “Save the Last Dance for Me” before jumping into one more stirring “Dancing in the Dark.”

It really was magical — a word I would rather not use, but it’s one that all the people around me kept saying (“Isn’t this magical?”). I’m sure it was a great, great concert for anyone, even someone who had never seen Springsteen before and was unfamiliar with his music. But for all those people who marked at least a part of their lives by the man — and I have to say that I was surrounded by those people — it was something even better than a great concert, it was that feeling that, for one moment anyway, you are in the right place, and there’s no place else to be.

Bruce played for more than three hours, which is insane enough, and there weren’t any breaks, weren’t many soft songs, it was a stand-up concert, it was a participation concert, it was a throw your arms up concert, and by the end of it everyone was exhausted. It’s possible that I was more tired than most, having slept about three airplane hours the previous two and a half days and about 20 hours the previous three weeks. The Olympics … whew. When he came out for the encore, he began with “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” which is a great song, but it is slow, and in that instant I felt so tired, so drained, it hit me in eyes, and I thought, “If I close my eyes right now, I will hibernate for the next two months.” I pried my eyes open, and I looked at Bruce singing, and he became blurry, like I was looking at him through my phone camera, and I started to drift …

And then they played Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, and the Big Man walked out to the middle of the stage for his moment. And I was back up again.

And then they played “Born To Run,” with the lights on so that everyone could see everything.

And then … the song. I really don’t know how to sum up my feelings about Springsteen — I just like to be around Springsteen fans who understand. But it’s like this: If asked to list my 10 favorite Springsteen songs, Rosalita would not be on my list. There are, for me, just too many other great songs. Rosalita might not even be Top 20.

But If I was asked to list off the 10 songs I would like to hear Bruce Springsteen (or anyone else) perform live, Rosalita would be first, second, third and sixth. It’s the ultimate live song, the ultimate personal experience, because it isn’t about the words, and it isn’t about the rhythm, and it isn’t about the instruments, and it isn’t about anything except the exuberance of music, the intensity of young love, the joy of first success, the ecstasy of crossing the line … in other words, all those things that Rock n’ Roll means. I had never seen the Mighty E-Street Band do Rosalita. I had only lived it through recordings and memories of friends.

And then … they did it. And it was wild and alive and beautiful and silly, and I leaned over and hugged my wife who had told me to come, and the Big Man himself sang those words that wrap it all up: “Someday we’ll look back on this and it’ll all seem funny.” And that was it. That was the best it could ever be for me.

The concert went on after that — Updike wrote that every true story has an anticlimax. The band wrapped up with “Rockin’ All Over the World,” a John Fogerty song, and it was good, but it wasn’t life altering, and you wished they would have played one more. Then again, maybe that made it just right. Maybe we should always want one more. Otherwise, what’s left?

Pozterisks from Beijing

Posted: August 22nd, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, International | 56 Comments »

A lot of people seem to think the Olympics are over. I say this because I’ve been getting a bunch of emails the last couple of days with subject lines like “Welcome home!” and “Finally, you’re back!” and “Go back to China” and “Business proposition from Uganda, PLEASE RESPOND.” I can only guess that many people figured the Olympics ended precisely when Michael Phelps touched the wall for the last time. That’s when it would have ended had the Olympics been a movie … unless that movie happened to be AI*

*OK, did you ever see AI, that Steven Spielberg movie inspired by Stanley Kubrick, one where Haley Joel Osmont plays a Pinocchio-influenced robot that wants to be a real boy? I saw it years ago, and to be honest I don’t remember a lot about it except that it was longer than the Great Wall (Olympic reference!) and it had this haunting ending where Haley Joel Osmont finds the blue fairy and says, “I see dead people.”

In fact, there was really only one problem with this … the movie DID NOT actually end there, it went on for another 43 hours, and brought in futuristic beings and some sort of crazy “If you could have one more day with the one you love,” moment, and it also had dinosaurs and a couple trying to fix up a hopeless house and a man from a vague country getting stuck in an airport and face melting and Robin Williams playing Peter Pan and, well, I can’t remember it all. I just know that I had a dentist appointment just before I went, and when I got out I was already due for my next one.

The Olympics, though, are not a movie, and so they have gone on, and on, and also on, and I’m still here, I’m actually about to watch some boxing (Update: I watched boxing. The American lost. We stink at boxing now). I will be here for a couple more days until Sunday morning when I fly to Tokyo to Los Angeles to Kansas City to long hugs from wife and daughters to their bedtime story to, perhaps, a Bruce Springsteen show*. The last part is still very much up in the air, though I am fully aware of the polling numbers.

*I really, really want to take a minute and thank the two dozen people have contacted me with Springsteen ticket offers. You’re the best. I don’t know if Margo and I will make it to the show — I don’t even now if my plane will make it to Kansas City — but if we do please walk on over and accept my appreciation.

In any case, when you’re at the Olympics you tend to pretty much block out everything that is happening in the world. Someone the other day asked if I had any thoughts about Obama and who he will pick as his Veep candidate, and I remember thinking: “Obama. Obama. That name definitely rings a bell but I cannot quite place it.” This is because at this very moment my mind is overflowing with Cat Osterman, Michael Phelps, Deontay Wilder, the five events of the modern pentathlon*, Michael Phelps, the amazing Asain Bolt, the pomposity of the IOC, how to say thank you in Chinese (Yee-ha — which took some getting used to), Michael Phelps, Redeem Team, the math it takes to convert yuan to dollars, the history of the Great Wall, the scoring system for synchronized diving, Roger Federer, the five kinds of Olympic mascots, the one song they keep playing over and over here (which is sort of a Chinese version of a Celine Dion song) amd Michael Phelps.

*Air pistol, epee, 200-meter freestyle, show jumping, 3,000 meter run. Those are the modern pentathlon events. In order. I didn’t have to look that up. I’m optimistic that as soon as I get back home and settle back into an NFL preseason and the pennant race and lots and lots of Big Red Machine (did I mention that I’m writing this book) that this useless modern pentathlon information will be purged from mind, much in the same way that I do not remember the number of the hotel room where I stayed at last month or the time I asked Sarah Eisen out for a date to the extreme laughter of everyone around. It’s gone. Really.

I am not keeping up with hardly anything back home except for Elizabeth’s first week of school, Katie’s fascination with the time difference between home and China and the various quirky news items that manage to pierce through the five-foot thick wall of Olympic density that surrounds us at every turn — like I heard a couple of guys found Big Foot or something and that Brett Favre got traded somewhere and that John Edwards turned out to be a not-so-great guy. You know, the big guy might want take this down now right about now.

I’ve tried to keep up with baseball and other sporting news, but to be honest I’ve only managed to notice, in a very general way, the Royals really suck. Wow. Really suck. And I guess my guy Banny’s been having a terrible time. We’ll try to get him back on track. Anyway the Internet here is so temperamental, and the time difference so baffling that I haven’t seen much more than that.*

*I did post the other day the stunning comparison between Emil Brown and Jose Guilen. To remind you, the Royals released Emil Brown. The Royals signed Jose Guillen to a three-year, $36 million deal. I hope people ALWAYS keep that part in mind. Here are the updated numbers:

And it just reminds me again: It’s a very long season. Sure, the guy’s got a quick bat. But he also has a 32-year-old body, a chip on his shoulder, a guaranteed contract and a going-nowhere team around him. Over a long season, more often than not, the numbers will win out. Moneyball wins again.

OK, now I’m going to finally get to a point here. I have not really been able to keep up with stuff, but on Friday morning I did get to read what has to be one of the ten most amazing baseball quotes I have ever seen. It’s so incredible that I cannot even believe it. This, of course, involves Royals shortstop Tony Pena, the Bobblehead Kid, who is having a year for the ages. Yes, he’s hitting .161. Yes, I have personally seen him blow four sacrifice bunt attempts which means he has to be in double digits in that category. Well, on Thursday — to add to the Tony joy — he apparently dropped a routine pop-up that ended up being a big factor in the loss. I really do like Tony personally, but I’ve got to say that he probably has had more “Would you send that guy down to the minors” moments than any player in the last decade.*

*Or at least since the great Neifi.

A dropped pop-up. Sheesh. It was a day game, so apparently he lost it in the sun. Hey, it happens. The thing is, Tony Pena was not wearing sunglasses at the time. I’m pretty agnostic about sunglasses, to be honest. I’ve actually had baseball players tell me that sunglasses are overrated, that in reality they don’t do much for helping you deal with a sun field. Still, you want to wear them, even if it’s only so you don’t look stupid when you lose a pop-up in the sun. This leads to the quote … someone asked Tony Pena why he wasn’t wearing sunglasses.

And here’s what he told our own Bob Dutton: “I ordered some. But we never got them in.”

That’s the quote. I want you to read that thing again. And again. And again. The Kansas CIty Royals have been battling Pittsburgh for the title of worst team in baseball for more than a decade now. I can, even in my Olympic stupor, tell you about the time Ken Harvey got hit in the back with a relay throw, the time two outfielders started jogging back to the dugout while a pop-up dropped behind them, the time Desi Relaford literally fell off first base, the time the Royals brought in a professional softball pitcher, the time an outfielder ran to the wall and climbed only to watch a fly ball bounce on the warning track in front of him, the time a an outfielder had a pop up hit him in the face when he wasn’t wearing sunglasses then wore sunglasses on the plane ride home, the time Tony Pena Sr. jumped into the shower with his clothes on to inspire the team, the time Tony Muser talked about how the Royals needed to be drinking tequila, the time Buddy Bell batted someone out of order, the time Neifi refused to go into a game and then said he was joking, the time the Royals decided to do away with their tradition of wearing Negro Leagues uniforms for a game because they didn’t want to pay for them … I’m telling you I could go on like this all day and all night and all the next day.

BUT … this might just be the topper. A shortstop for a Major League Baseball team played a day game without sunglasses. Why? Because the sunglasses he ordered never arrived. You have to figure that rock bottom is somewhere around here.

Ben Folds and the Big Blog News

Posted: August 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Cleveland, Essays, International | 132 Comments »

I’ve written this before, but let me say it again: The following post is personal and, I imagine, of absolutely no interest to anyone except immediate family — and even a couple of them probably don’t have interest. I’m just warning you in advance. You can skip this one. We’ll get back to sports, I promise.

I write often about Cleveland here because, at heart, I see myself as a Cleveland guy. I was born in Cleveland, raised in Cleveland, saw my first ballgame in Cleveland, had my paper route money stolen in Cleveland, pushed my first car out of the snow in Cleveland, cut open my chin playing tackle football on concrete in Cleveland, had my first crush in Cleveland, got my first kite tangled on a telephone wire in Cleveland. When I go back, I feel at home in a different and wordless way.

But, in fact, I became a writer in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was thinking a little bit about this today while riding on a bus through Beijing. The big reason: I was listening to Ben Folds on the iPod, and his music always takes me back to Charlotte — especially one of my favorite songs, Jesusland. The connection doesn’t make any sense, really, because the lyrics of Jesusland don’t have much (or really anything) to do with Charlotte — the song is really about Jesus and how he would view America. But when I hear it, I feel like I’m driving along Pineville-Matthews Road in Charlotte, past the trees and manicured lawns and huge churches and expensive homes and upscale shopping stores and parks and wondering how the heck someone gets there.

This is one thing I love about music — songs can sear through you in entirely unexpected ways. It’s like the old argument about colors — how do you know that red looks the same to you, to me, to Duane Kuiper? You don’t. Wen I hear Ben Folds’ voice and the music and the piano and the phrases and the irony and joy and cynicism and wonder, it turns different tumblers in my mind than it probably does for you. The music takes me back to Charlotte when I was 17 or 18 years old, a high school senior, a college freshman, utterly confused, unsure, certain only that I would end up working some dead end job because I wasn’t good at anything. It really doesn’t matter which song either, there’s something familiar and wistful about all of it for me. I hear the beginning of Underground (I was never cool in school/I’m sure you don’t remember me) or the awesome groove in “Uncle Walter” (Your Uncle Walter’s going on and on/Where did you go that you were gone so long) or the heartbreaking piano string in “Landed” (Treading the sea of a troubled mind/I had to leave myself behind), and for reasons that go deeper than recognition, I feel like I’m back, that age, all the energy and fear and loneliness and hope and bafflement that goes along with not knowing where the hell you’re going.

Down the tracks/Beautiful McMansions on the hill/that overlook the highway.

Anyway I was listening to “Jesusland,” and I was looking out the window at the other side of the world, and I had Charlotte on my mind, and I got to thinking about things. Well also, not incidentally, I went to the Great Wall of China today, and that’s one of those moments that will get you thinking, one of those bigger-than-now moments, not only because of the history of the wall and the unimaginable size and the extraordinary number of steps you have to climb and (I lost count at a billion shmillion) but simply because up on the wall you realize that you made it, you are here, somehow the events in your life locked and clicked together in such a way that on a sunny Tuesday afternoon in August you traveled around the globe, to that imaginary place you saw in elementary school history books, and you walked on the Great Wall, that amazing thing that you can see from the moon.*

*A couple of colleagues here in Beijing have already read this post, and they wanted to be sure to say that the whole “You can see the Great Wall from the moon” thing is, in fact, an urban myth. Yeah. Right. Next they’ll say that oil doesn’t come from dinosaurs and that Mikey didn’t really die after eating Pop Rocks and Coca Cola. Whatever.

How the heck did I get here anyway? Now we’re getting to the story — it’s one I’ve told before, I’m sure, but I want to tell it again. When I was 19 years old, I felt lost. I have never been one to worry about things — a skill which has helped me in surprising ways throughout my life — but it also meant that I woke up one day in 1986 and realized that I absolutely had no plan. I had no unique skills, no particular talents, I wasn’t good enough to play second base in the big leagues nor smart enough to get a Rhodes Scholarship nor quick enough to win a lot of money on Jeopardy. I really was scared. I had a dreadful job then. I worked for a photo studio, and I would call people up and try to get them to schedule a photo appointment, and I hated every minute of it. I became convinced that this would be the job for the rest of my life.

*The prospective customers did get a free 3 x 5 photograph just for coming in, so it was not a total loss.

I can’t even tell you how the idea of writing for a living began. I had never been told by anyone that I had any particular talent for writing. I did not have any writers in my family, I did not know any writers, I did not have any conception of how someone would become a writer. The only real writing I had ever done, aside from school assignments that inevitably earned Cs, was in my high school accounting classes, when I was so bored I would write things like Cleveland Indians previews. This habit might have been a good hint that I would not, in fact, ever become an accountant. But I was not very good at picking up hints in those and so accounting was my first major in college. Then it was Business Administration. It might as well have been nuclear physics. I would sit dazed in my college classes. I would write more things like Cleveland Indians previews.

That year, because I had nothing better to do, I sent in an unsolicited story to the baseball card magazine “Beckett Monthly.” I cannot imagine where that gall came from, that loony idea that I could write a story that a magazine would actually publish. I think I was looking at the magazine, and I saw something about submissions and I thought … well, I really don’t know what I thought. I do know that I wrote something about the Hall of Fame (I think) and I typed it very neatly, and I sent it in. A couple of months later a letter arrived in the mail. Inside was a check for $33.00 — my first sportswriter paycheck (3 cents per word!). I don’t know if I was more stunned or hooked, but I was both, and it wasn’t long after that that I lucked into my job as a correspondent for The Charlotte Observer.

Still, that’s not the moment that changed my life — that’s not the moment that got me to The Great Wall of China. No, even after I wrote a few stories for the newspaper I still had no real sense that I could be a professional sportswriter. I am a first generation American — both my parents were born in the former Soviet Union — and I was raised to believe that success meant becoming a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a professor maybe, and sportswriter wasn’t in the discussion. I remember my Grandfather, a brilliant man, used to show me how he read a newspaper. The first thing he would do was take the sports section out and throw it in the garbage. I don’t mean to say that my parents in any way discouraged me from writing — it wasn’t that at all. No, they just wanted me to be realistic. And becoming a sportswriter — like becoming an astronaut or a zoologist or the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil — did not seem realistic.

No, the moment came a few months later, and i today while listening to Ben Folds I remembered it so clearly. I was in my room, and I was reading Frank Deford’s collection, “The World’s Tallest Midget.” I vaguely knew who Frank Deford was from my lifelong subscription to Sports Illustrated, but I couldn’t tell you what inspired me to buy his book. I think I was in the bookstore reading his introduction about sportswriting, and it intrigued me. That was probably the first impulse book I ever bought.*

*I have since bought 243 million impulse books, by the way.

Anyway, I was reading a story Deford wrote for Sports Illustrated called “The Boxer and the Blonde,” about the boxer Billy Conn. I did not know then that the story is considered one of the greatest magazine stories ever written. I did not know that Deford was viewed by many as the greatest living sportswriter. I did not know anything at all. I started reading the story, and I was mesmerized. I mean Billy Conn’s story was good, really good, but what mesmerized me was the way Deford used the words. I was not exactly a voracious reader growing up — I pretty much only read sports books by Alfred Slote — so I probably never had quite the feeling I was having, this feeling of, “How does the guy do that? How does he get me to read this sentence fast and this sentence slow? How does he move me from one paragraph to the next until I lose time? How does he have me caring SO much when I know what’s going to happen, when I know that Joe Louis will knock out Billy Conn*?

*I knew all about Billy Conn. My father was an enormous boxing fan in those days; I grew up with it.

It felt so magical to me. I know that’s trite and corny, but that’s precisely how I felt, trite and corny, I really felt like something was changing, like a world was opening, and then — I will never forget it — I read this paragraph.

”Louis was slumped in his corner. Jack Blackburn, his trainer, shook his head and rubbed him hard. “Chappie,” he said, using his nickname for the champ, “you’re losing. You gotta knock him out.” Louis didn’t have to be told. Everyone understood. Everyone in the Polo Grounds. Everyone listening through the magic of radio. Everyone. There was bedlam. It was wonderful. Men had been slugging it out for eons, and there had been 220 years of prizefighting, and there would yet be Marciano and the two Sugar Rays and Ali, but this was it. This was the best it had ever been and ever would be, the 12th and 13th rounds of Louis and Conn on a warm night in New York just before the world went to hell. The people were standing and cheering for Conn, but it was really for the sport and for the moment and for themselves that they cheered. They could be a part of it, and every now and then, for an instant, that is it, and it can’t ever get any better. This was such a time in the history of games.“

And I stopped. I read that paragraph again. And again. And again. Everyone understood. It was wonderful. Men had been slugging it out for eons. There would yet be Marciano and the two Sugar Rays. A warm night in New York just before the world went to hell. It was really for the sport and for the moment. It can’t get any better. Such a time in the history of games.

I stopped reading, and I closed the book for a moment, and I looked out the window. I thought — the clearest thought I have ever had in my entire life — ”THAT is what I want to do.“ And that was the moment when my life changed, when I suddenly knew where I was going, and a few months later I would read Gary Smith’s brilliant piece about Muhammad Ali and his one-time entourage (”He was staring at the slowly swishing trees, listening to the breeze sift leaves and make a lulling sound like water running over the rocks of a distant stream. He didn’t seem to hear. … And I said again, “What happened to the circus?”) and I felt the same way. I read Rick Reilly’s amazing story about a wrestling priest in Mexico (“He is tired. He longs to be a rock in the bed. He unlaces the mask from the back and pulls it slowly over his head to reveal his weary face./ There’s no mystery. If He were here today, trying to keep 86 children warm and fed and out of the streets, would the face of Jesus look very different?”) and felt it again.

For the first time in my life I started to read Sports Illustrated, not for the stories themselves, but for the words, for the inspiration they gave me, for a sense of who I was and what I hoped to be.

That’s why I’m really excited about the big blog news that I’ve been teasing for the last few weeks. Starting next week, Sportsllustrated.com — si.com, for short — will be reprinting this blog. Don’t even ask how that happened. And, even more thrilling, starting next week I will write one column a week for the Sports Illustrated dot-com — I believe it will appear on Wednesdays.

There are any number of cool things about this. For one, this blog should not change at all. SI just wants to reprint it. Also, I’m still writing columns for The Kansas City Star, which has been home and family for a dozen years now. And finally, I will be writing for Sports Illustrated, which is where it all began for me. I know that the world keeps changing, and these days there are brilliant and hilarious and all-heart writers at ESPN and Fox and CBS Sportsline and Yahoo! and all these other other places that have only gotten into the sportswriting game in the last few years. I have great friends at all those places. There’s something in my own heart for Sports Illustrated. Today, I saw the Great Wall of China. Next week, I start writing for Sports Illustrated. It’s beyond my imagination.

And it’s like Ben Folds sings.

I don’t get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here.

A Cab Ride and Nadal

Posted: August 14th, 2008 | Filed under: International, Other Sports | 45 Comments »

Let me tell you a story about Manesh. He was a kid on our high school tennis team. Sometimes in my memory, events tend to get exaggerated but I’m pretty certain that Manesh was 4-foot 3, and he weighed 47 pounds. It was a physical test for him to actually pick up a tennis racket. Now, this is not to say I was some sort of physical specimen — back then I probably weighed no more than 120 pounds myself. But I think it’s important, for reference, to say that I was Shaq compared to Manesh.

The coach decided to match me up against Manesh in a key knockout match for a higher spot on our team. It’s worth noting that our coach did not know anything about tennis — I’m sure he just got stuck with the sport in one of those backroom coach negotiations (“OK, I’ll take tennis, but you have to teach American history, I’m tired of the Incas”). And so the only thing he would ever do is have us run around the tennis courts a few laps in a pointless bit of long-distance conditioning and match us up in key knockout matches. Because the coach did not know anything about tennis, he liked my game. I had, if I do say so myself, a stunningly powerful serve for a preposterously skinny kid with thick glasses. Of course, the serve never went in. Never. But, as mentioned, the coach did not have an appreciation for the finer points of the game, and anyway I could really whack that serve.

So he matched me up with Manesh and made it clear to me that once I dispatched of him I was on the fast road to tennis glory. Anyway, that’s what I heard. I looked across the net and at the time Manesh was struggling mightily to unzip the cover of his tennis racket. I saw Wimbledon in my future.

I served first, and first ball I unleashed a rocket serve that was out by a mere 12 or 13 feet, but the ball skipped off the ground and satisfyingly stuck in the fence behind Manesh. I felt good. I looked to see how this show of power affected Manesh — his face did not seem to register much intimidation. I then hit my second serve, and Manesh, with all the physical effort he could muster, managed to bloop the ball back just an inch over the net. I rushed up and pounded a forehand into the open court. Manesh, now calling on reserves of strength untapped in his life, lunged and blooped a lob over my head. I raced back and hit my forehand down the line. Manesh, now appearing on the brink of exhaustion, reached out and blooped the ball just over the net. I rushed up and using all the power that had been handed down to me from generation to generation, I absolutely crushed a ferocious backhand into the middle of the net.

Yeah. You could say that match was pretty much over after that.

Actually, over is not the right word. “Over” somehow indicated that my chances for beating Manesh had ended. But that’s not quite right. After that first point, my mission had dramatically changed. My original mission had been to knock off Manesh and begin my climb to the top of the tennis team and, from there, to the Tour. My slightly adjusted mission after that first point was to hit Manesh with the tennis ball. For one long superset, Manesh blooped and blooped, shot after shot, each one either just clearing the net or just floating over my head when I was at the net. Dropshots and lobs. That’s all he had. It’s a worthwhile point to add that’s all he needed. I was roughly zero-for-348 on overhead smash attempts. He wasn’t just in my head, he had a condo up there where he rested in a recliner and watched all the fuses pop.

After the drubbing was done, I came to a fairly startling realization: I was probably not going to win the French Open if I could not beat a 15-year-old kid who needed someone a little stronger to help him tie his shoes so they would be tight enough. Anyway, that’s my little story. I’ve lived with that latent disappointment for a long time … and then on Wednesday in Beijing, I watched Raffy Nadal play Olympic tennis and I finally figured out why I have a violent reaction to that guy. Nadal is just a grown-up Manesh.

The reason I had never figured this out before is, of course, because Nadal is nothing at all like the Manesh I described here. Nadal is a physical beast, an overpowering force who wears his sleeves rolled up like the old Reds player Ted Kluszewski used to … and for the same reason, because when you see those python arms, you bow in respect. And Nadal absolutely crushes his shots, mashes them, every one, from every angle, from every position, he will pound backhands from his knees, hammer forehands while doing cartwheels, he will lunge and trip and fall and slide but no matter what he does the ball will come rocketing back at you faster than you imagines.

No, the connection is something much more subtle than that. Put it this way: I’ve always been a Roger Federer guy rather than a Rafael Nadal guy (if you care even slightly about tennis, you really have to pick one), and I always assumed it’s because I like Federer’s game better, I appreciate the artistic way this guy controls points, I love watching him find angles that Euclid of Alexandria didn’t discover, I love the way he speeds the game up and slows it down and speeds it up again, he’s like Greg Maddux for tennis, and I’ve told you how much I love Maddux. Yes, I’ve always thought that Federer resembled the sort of tennis player that, in my dreams, I would have become.

But, no, that’s not it. I watched Nadal play at the Olympics; he was facing off against the Russian Federation’s Igor Andreev, who I guess is a good player, one of the 25 or 30 best in the world, thought I had never heard of him. I don’t keep up with tennis much anymore. In any case, Andreev has the reputation of having a spectacular forehand and a reasonable all-around game, and for much of the first set he was holding his own with Nadal. That is to say that Nadal was making enough mistakes that the match was close.

Then came this key point — it’s one I wrote about in my Kansas City Star column — where Andreev and Nadal got into a long and fierce rally. They were pounding shots at each other, and at some point in rallies like that I think the point is not the point, it is to find out which player is willing to stand out there the longest, which player is more willing to endure the exhaustion and pain of hitting savage shots and chasing them down. Of course, Nadal won the point. He always does.

When I saw the look on Andreev’s face, that’s when it hit me. I’d seen that look before. I’d FELT that look before. See, Nadal doesn’t beat opponents. He suffocates them. He leaves them empty and alone. The feeling I cannot shake from my seminal match with Manesh was that after the first point I realized that I simply did not have the necessary tools to beat him. I apparently could not overpower him. I could not get a shot by him. I could not tire him out. I could not outlast him. It was clear that he was going to just keep blooping shots back at me forever, until we were old men, until my grandkids entered college, until the polar ice caps melted, until the Royals made the playoffs, I mean, I just could not beat him. And when I crossed that mental line, I realized the ultimate loser’s lament: “What’s the point?”

That’s the look I saw on Andreev’s face. To me, it looked like — OK, I cannot hit a shot past this guy. I cannot endure long rallies with him. I do not have enough talent to make him miss. I’m not fast enough to run down the wicked shots this guy hits. And, dammit, I do not want to win as much as he does. … The rest of the match went quickly and predictably. Nadal won in straight sets. And he left another opponent all crumpled up and muttering. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that. Nadal is my personal tennis nightmare come to life. It’s no wonder I find myself rooting against him. It is, really, the ultimate sign of respect.

* * *

The story would end there, but I would like t give you a taste of Beijing, so let me tell you about a cab ride I had here at the Olympics. If you’ve been following along, you might note that I have not had great experiences with cabs here in Beijing. They are preposterously inexpensive, but really is there a price cheap enough to make it worthwhile to drive aimlessly around the city or get dropped off miles away from your destination point?

Well, you decide: I gave the cab driver the card that shows exactly where my hotel is located. My hotel is roughly a 10-minute cab ride from the Main Press Center, depending on the number of crazed drivers who decide to cut you off at the last possible second. The time also depends on how quickly the driver figures out where the hotel is located — this time has fluctuated anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. Usually about 10 minutes into the drive I will hear a loud and oddly satisfying “Ohhhhhhh!” as if the driver just figured out my hotel location, and from that point on it’s usually just a a few minutes away.

Well, my cab driver this time made no pretenses about it — he had absolutely no idea where my hotel was located, and he was not going to have any “Ohhhhhh!” moments. He called the hotel twice, which did not seem to either improve his knowledge of the situation or build his geographical confidence.

Instead, he drove around and around the same five or six street loop for about 45 minutes. If anything like this would happen in New York or Chicago or whatever American city, I would pretty quickly suspect that the cabbie was taking me for a ride. But this cab driver was clearly lost, clearly embarrassed, clearly frightened that he would never ever find this hotel and would be stuck with an American baseball fan in his back seat for the remainder of his life.

Finally, in a breakthrough of some sort, the driver turned left at a corner where he had been turning right — I had made this suggestion before, but I was entirely unable to get any sort of communication through.*

*The stunning thing to me as a traveler is precisely how little English many people here speak. I say that with all respect — it’s my fault, there is absolutely no reason for people here to know English, and I blame myself for coming to China without knowing more than three Chinese words. But my point is that I’ve been in many places where people don’t speak English, but even so a few words will creep through … probably because of Hollywood movies and television shows like Baywatch and all that. I was in a cab in rural Spain, and the cabbie spoke NO English, but even so he could vaguely pick up on words like “yes” and “no” and “OK” and I could pick up “Uno” and “gracias” and “bambino” and “Gabriella Sabatini.” It could not lead to a deep conversation, but it was a pleasant one.

Finally someone came up, someone who did not speak much more English than this guy, but she seemed to get the drift and she said something in Chinese, and he quickly left, and I have never seen him again.

Anyway, this new cab turn opened a whole new series of opportunities to get lost. He took many of these, got lost about four more times, and I got to see parts of Beijing that aren’t in any guide books. After about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, the car arrived at the hotel. The cabbie pointed to the meter which, of course, had been running the whole time.

The cab ride cost a grand total of $1.43.

I like the way it makes me feel

Posted: August 13th, 2008 | Filed under: Bruce, International | 113 Comments »

OK, so here’s the deal. My flight is scheduled to land in Kansas City at 6:10 p.m. on Sunday. If it does actually land on time, no given, I will land after about 23 hours of flying and layovers. That will be after three unsteady weeks of the Olympics — the insane schedules, the constant writing, the short nights on a hard bed, the sporadic dizzy spells, the constant fog of smog, the fatherly despair of missing my daughter’s first day of first grade and the general letdown that inevitably follows an Olympic Games.

Bruce Springsteen plays at the Sprint Center in Kansas City that same Sunday night at 8 p.m.

So, the question is: Do I try to find tickets and go?

I don’t think this question is quite as easy as it first appears. On the one hand: Yeah, it’s Bruce. How can I miss Bruce Springsteen in my own hometown? On the other hand, should I really find tickets (assuming I even CAN find tickets) when I might not even make it back in time? And if I do make it back, would I even enjoy the show in the state of utter exhaustion I would be in? Plus, I mean, the first thing I’m going to want to do when I get home is see my family, be with my kids, I mean I love Springsteen and all but here’s a picture of my daughter Elizabeth on her first day of first grade while I’m running around China. You don’t think this breaks my heart?

Of course, the girls will have to go to sleep about the time the concert starts …

This Springsteen question is especially poignant to me because once again, I’m in Asia and Bruce Springsteen helped me through a lonely and pained moment. You might remember how “Girls in Their Summer Clothes” saved my life when I had some sort of crazy back spasms in the middle of the night in Japan. Well, here in China, I went dizzy, the room was spinning, spinning, spinning, into the future, and when I finally could not take it anymore, I pulled out my iPod and listened to my “Slow Springsteen” playlist — a collection of 11 slow-to-medium Springsteen songs that I I love. They are, in order:

1. Leah.
2. Girls in Their Summer Clothes
3. Waitin’ on a Sunny Day
4. Walk Like a Man
5. You’re Missing
6. The River
7. New York City Serenade
8. Youngstown
9. Land of Hope and Dreams
10. Terry’s Song
11. The Promise

I love this playlist because, even though there are no rocking songs on the list, you have a wide variety of Bruce there, you have happy Bruce, you have melancholy Bruce, you have angry Bruce, and the whole thing finishes with probably my current favorite Springsteen song, The Promise, which is like the bittersweet second half of “Thunder Road.” I listened to that song five or six times during my dizzy spell, something about it brought me home. The Promise has two of my absolute favorite Springsteen lyrics:

“Well now I built that Challenger by myself
But I needed money and so I sold it
I lived a secret I should’a kept to myself
But I got drunk one night and I told it.”

And …

“When the promise is broken you go on living
But it steals something from down in your soul
Like when the truth is spoken and it don’t make no difference
Something in your heart goes cold.“

There is something in those two lyrics that, for me, get to the heart of the American experience. People keep on living even after their dreams have died, even after realizing they are not going to pull out of their town full of losers, even when they understand they will not get to the place where they really wanted to go, will not walk in the sun. I mean that’s most of us, right? In some ways, it’s all of us. Does anyone really get to live the life they wanted to live at 18, when the screen door slams and Mary’s dress waves? And even if you’re one of the lucky ones that gets to live the promise for a short while, well, sooner or later you get older, and the promise still gets broken, and you still go on living.

I listened to that song again and again, and then I started feeling better. It’s strange, it’s obviously a not a happy song, not really an uplifting song, and yet it never fails to lift me up. I guess it’s because I think, in the end, Springsteen marvels at the human capacity to keep going, and I believe in that too.

Not long after I listened to The Promise and got over my dizziness, I heard the big news: Apparently Springsteen will be playing halftime of the Super Bowl in Tampa. How amazing is that? You know, they always have a press conference with the Super Bowl halftime artists a couple of days before the Super Bowl … I will have to get you all to send in your questions and we’ll see if I can get any of them asked.

Anyway, I saw an interview he did with the New York Post where he explained why will not retire and stop touring. He said it was because he had a big ego and that his son called him an ”attention whore.“ But here was my favorite quote:

“When it comes down to it, I like the way it makes me feel. And the way that I can make you feel when I do it … It thrills me, it excites me, it gives me meaning, it gives me purpose.”

See, that’s how Springsteen goes on living. He stays on tour. He performs. He likes the way he makes us feel.

I can’t miss Springsteen in Kansas City, can I?

Baseball Talk From China

Posted: August 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, International, New Words | 93 Comments »

News from America comes in slowly and hazily, in part because of the time difference, but also because of the irritable and ever-changing nature of the Chinese Internet. It’s funny now, you will click on a Web site. Say Fire Joe Morgan. Well, at first, when we first arrived, the Fire Joe Morgan Internet page would immediately crash because, of course, the Chinese government famously loves Joe Morgan. Big Red Machine indeed.

Well, now it’s different. Now, you will type in the Web address, and the browser will indicate that it is “Loading.” And it will be loading for about 90 seconds. If I was the paranoid type, I would say that all Internet requests immediately transmit to the Chinese Office To Clear Internet Requests, where a bureaucrat of some kind types in the requested Web site on his browser to check whether or not it’s OK for viewing. I base this theory on the fact that SOMETIMES if you click on Fire Joe Morgan, you will get the page. And sometimes, you won’t. I suspect this is based on the particular bureaucrat who is on duty back at headquarters and whether or not he is a Bill Plaschke fan, whether or not he likes the sacrifice bunt.

These bizarre Internet quirks emerge in the craziest ways. For instance, there’s no problem going on SI.com. But the Internet people sometimes will not let you go on the baseball scores page. At first I found all of this kind of annoying, but now I see my Internet surfing in China sort of the way I saw opening birthday presents when I was nine. Hey, you never know what’s in the box. Might be a Gnip Gnop. Might be legos. Might be clothes (ugh). Might be another game of Yahtzee since I probably got Yahtzee 23 different times when I was a boy.*

*More hints about the bloggy big news in this paragraph! Something’s coming … I don’t know … what it is … but it is … gonna be great!

Anyway sometimes, the portal opens to this Web site. Sometimes it does not. I’m guessing this posting will not be easily accessible. Anyway, to get to the point, this page opened up for a brief time over the weekend, which allowed me to view a few of your comments. This included the comments from someone — I wish I could name the brilliant reader but I can’t get on the site now — who was saying basically that Pujols’ numbers don’t look all that special this year.

I had to read that comment a couple of times to make sure that I wasn’t just reading something that had been planted there by the Chinese government. Pujols’ numbers aren’t special? What? Unless my Baseball Reference page is not loading properly, the guy is hitting .350/.462/.617 this year. His slugging percentage is the HIGHEST IN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE. His OPS+ is a ridiculous 183. He’s walking twice as often as he is striking out. The guy is a beast — better than ever.

But the thing that really stuck out about the comment is the suggestion the Pujols, in fact, padded his statistics by driving in runs when the game was out of hand. This is something I would like to explore — the concept of “Pribbies.” A pribbie is a fun word I just made up based on the three hours and 42 minutes of sleep I have gotten the last two nights. It stands for “Padded RBIs.” Or “Pointless RBIs,” if you prefer. And it’s one of the concepts that drive me absolutely nuts as a baseball fan.

It seems like every time a fan doesn’t like a player, they will say, “Yeah, he only drives in runs when it doesn’t count.” The charge is that certain players pad their statistics with an overwhelming number of cheap hits and homers and RBIs, doing it when games are out of reach and lousy pitchers are on the mound and so on. I believe the first player to be smacked around for being a pribbie hound was Ted Williams — many members of the Boston media seemed to think that the Kid’s sick statistics were, in fact, mirages, and that you could always count on him to choke when nothing mattered but to hit a three-run homer when the Sox were up five or crack a two-out double into the gap in the late innings of an 8-3 loss.

I thought John Updike, in his seminal “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” slammed this concept pretty well and with a lot of fancy words when he wrote: “ The correspondence columns of the Boston papers now and then suffer a sharp flurry of arithmetic on this score; indeed, for Williams to have distributed all his hits so they did nobody else any good would constitute a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness.”

But the slamming did not end with Williams, not hardly. Countless players through the years have had their eye-popping statistics marginalized by haters who said they only cared about numbers and only came through when it did not help the team. I remember hearing this a lot about Wade Boggs when he was getting busy hitting .365 every year with 45 doubles and 100 walks. How can you knock those numbers? Well, people did — he was not driving in enough runs, he was too selective, he was the master of the meaningless, average-cushioning, base hit. Not too much later, it was Danny Tartabull padding his stats. Then it was Albert Belle padding his stats. And of course, king of them all, y’all, nobody has taken more abuse for supposedly padding stats than A-Rod. You can retire the trophy.

And those are just the big guys. I think, on a local level, every team has at least one player the fans are convinced drive in only meaningless runs. In Kansas City, for instance, people would say that CONSTANTLY about Mike Sweeney. They would say, “Oh, he only comes through when it doesn’t matter.” And I used to think, “They’re the freaking Kansas City Royals. When DOES it matter?”

There are two reasons this whole thing bugs the heck out of me. First, the big one: To me, there are no meaningless moments for a hitter in a baseball game. This is at the very core of my baseball love. I have read many wonderful essays about how soccer is like life because it is about disappointment more than triumph, because it is about the vagaries of luck and bad bounces, because, like life, there are many rainy nil-nil draws. I love reading that stuff. And I think that’s true.

But I tend to think baseball is more like the American life I grew up with. I’m not talking about the money the players make or the smell of the freshly cut grass poetry or any of that. I’m talking about the game. Baseball to me is about the daily grind, about getting up every morning and slogging to work in a rusted car and knowing that, yes, you went 0-for-4 yesterday but today you’re going to crack three hits, work a walk, maybe drive in a couple of runs. Baseball is understanding that sometimes you will smack the seams off the baseball and the third baseman will drive and steal your double, but it’s also appreciating that sometimes you will check swing and the ball will dribble down the first base line and it will somehow die in fair territory, a cheap single. Baseball to me is about never giving up an at-bat, never passing on your moment, because even Babe Ruth made outs most of the time, and the next time you come up the pitcher might throw you three unhittable sliders or the umpire might ring you up on a fastball at the ankles.

For me, baseball and life is about playing with joy on those days you can manage it, and giving a professional effort when your girlfriend dumped you or you walked out to a flat tire or you can’t get the song “Sussudio” out of your mind*.

*You’re welcome. Su-Su-Sudio!

Because that’s what I believe, I’m just not drawn to the player who comes through only when it matters. First of all, I don’t believe that person even exists. But, let’s say he does: What’s admirable about that? I admire the people who brings it every day, people who still answer their phone at 4:59, people who call you back two days after they finished the job to be sure, home builders who put in added touches because they’re proud of their work, waiters and waitresses who make heartfelt recommendations, doctors who really care about how you’re feeling, mechanics who work a little late so that it is fixed in the morning. I don’t have great admiration for a guy who, to stick with batting average for simplicity, hits .232 in non-pressure situations and .368 with runners in scoring position … I admire the guy who hits .300 in both.

And so, no, I don’t have much use for a guy who gives up at-bats when his team’s up or down eight runs. I appreciate that others disagree. I know that there are those in society who think those guys who give everything when it matters most but dial it down the rest of the time should be worshipped for their unselfishness or competitive spirit or something. But I look at it this way: Let’s say I walk into a Jaguar dealership. Now, I can’t afford a Jaguar. I would imagine that the salesman there — let’s say it’s a man — would realize this pretty quickly. So what will he do? Will he ignore me because the score is 11-1? Will he give me a cursory sales routine while looking at the door every two seconds to see if anyone else is walking in? Or will he give me some passion, will he express how much he loves Jaguars, will he try to SELL me that car because while he knows that I can’t buy it today and I can’t buy it tomorrow, I might someday make millions off this blog (not likely but … something’s coming), I might sell 10 million copies off this book (did I mention that I’m writing …), I might someday be viable, and anyway, you should play hard every moment and every day because, I think, that’s at the heart of what matters.

OK, that’s first — that’s my opinion. Here’s the second thing, and this is not just my opinion: Pretty much every time someone tells you, “Oh, all that guy does is rack up meaningless RBIs,” they are 100 percent wrong. Take Albert Pujols. Someone throws out there that he only gets hits and drives in runs when the score is out of hand, and in the old days when you got your box scores from the weekly Sporting News it would be hard to argue with that. But these days we have, you know, “facts,” and “statistics,” and those can paint a pretty clear picture.

Albert Pujols’ numbers in a tie game: .317/.418/.607.
Albert Pujols’ numbers within one run: .335/.430/.639
Albert Pujols’ numbers within two runs: .335/.432/.630
Albert Pujols’ numbers within three runs: .333/.427/.624
Albert Pujols’ numbers without four runs: .333/.426/.622

And finally …

Albert Pujols numbers when either team has a four run lead or more: .332/.408/.607.

OK, do you see that? The guy is precisely the same player in every single situation. Precisely. Frighteningly so. Of course, you can say the same thing about a lot of other guys, including this guy, the Godfather of Pribbies:

Alex Rodriguez
Score within 1 run: .304/.398/.584
Margin greater than 4: .310/.384/.573.

You see that? He’s not better in blowouts. He’s just not. It’s right there, plain to see, he’s NOT BETTER, so you can STOP saying it (though there is a little more to the story … I’ll get to that in a second). So here’s what I’m thinking here in China on no sleep: We need a statistic — I nominate my new word “pribbie” — that measures padded RBIs so that we can get people to stop indiscriminately and inappropriately ripping players for padding their statistics.

Now, to start with, I’m not suggesting anything too fancy. ;I think it’ easy enough to just count the RBIs players get when the margin is greater than four runs. Of course, it’s is true that a grand slam with when you’re trailing by five runs is hardly pointless, it’s hardly padding the numbers, but you know what? I’m in China. I don’t really have the access to more detailed statistics. If you would like to improve upon the Pribbie, go right ahead.

Here are a few interesting players’ pribbies from 2008. This is not a complete list, by any means. For instance, Tony Pena Jr.* is not on it.

Pribbies
Bobby Abreu, 23
Ryan Howard, 22
Josh Hamilton, 22
Matt Holliday, 18
Xavier Nady, 15
A-Rod, 15
Miggy Cabrera, 14
Raul Ibanez, 13
Ryan Ludwick, 12
Carlos Quentin, 12
Chase Utley, 12
Kevin Youkilis, 12
Ryan Braun, 11
Jermaine Dye, 9
Derek Jeter, 9
Milton Bradley, 9
David Wright, 9
Albert Pujos, 9
Oh-wee-oh Magglio, 8
Justin Morneau, 8
Troy Glaus, 7
Pat Burrell, 6
Chipper Jones, 6
Carlos Lee, 6
Jose Guillen, 5
Adrian Gonzalez, 5
Lance Berkman, 5
Ryan Theriot, 2
MannyBManny, 2

There are a couple of things worth noting on this list. One, this year, A-Rod is actually living up to his previously unfair reputation — he’s hitting .404/.466/.904 in pribbie situations. I don’t blame him one bit. All these years people are ripping him for turning into King Kong after the game is decided, he might as well go ahead and do it. At least that way he can post even better numbers.

Two, MannyBManny has been terrible in pribbie situations this year — that can’t surprise you.

Three, I know this is a promising statistic because if someone had said to me — “Who do you think has had the most pribbiies this year,” my absolute first guess would have been Bobby Abreu.

*OK, so obviously I did not see this because I’m in China with a stuttering Internet connection … but if I’m reading this right, it seems that Tony Pena — serving as the designated hitter, no less — got TWO hits in extra innings Sunday in a Royals victory over Minnesota. I’m really not sure what to say about that. I just watched synchronized diving, and I was under the assumption that would be the strangest thing I’d see today.

Here’s the weirder part: He got two hits which means he is now hitting 1.000 as a designated hitter in his career. So, I would suggest that Tony Pena is the worst designated hitter in baseball history and the best all at the same time.

The Air in China

Posted: August 7th, 2008 | Filed under: International | 42 Comments »

So, here’s what happened: We went to Tiananmen Square. We took a cab there, a winding 40-minute drive with plenty of fun near-death experiences, a thrill-ride that cost us 34 yuan, or five bucks, or roughly one-sixth of what it normally will cost you to take a cab from the terminal at the Denver Airport to the exit of the Denver Airport. We had to go through a security line to get through to the Square, a line that offered an interesting look at Chinese culture: If Tiananmen is any indication, people here do not seem to respect the integrity of lines*. It’s odd because in so many ways this seems like an ordered and disciplined nation, a country of rules. And yet the law of the land seems to be: Praise to the aggressor who ignores the line and goes hard to the basket.

*I have a new theory based on my traveling that we Americans — and I think this probably goes against conventional thinking — are actually among the most respectful people in the world when it comes to the concept of lines. I say this fully admitting that I have not waited in lines in Russia — and from what I remember seeing in black and white footage growing up, the Russians are champion line waiters. Still, based on my own experience, lines are mere suggestions in Europe, they are scrums in the Middle East, they are tests of will in Latin America. It’s funny, but I think there is something that makes us fundamentally angry in the United States when we see people cut in line — and this includes people in cars who rush down the construction lane and and try to cut you off at the blinking arrow.

Security guard: “Excuse me. This is a line for a cab. People have been waiting a long time. You will have to come back here with me.”
Woman in cocktail dress: “Oh, this is a line? I didn’t reali …”
New York woman: “Oh yeah, I know honey, you just figured all these people had been standing here for fun.”
Woman in cocktail dress: “No, I just …”
New York woman: “Yes, I know, it’s very confusing, I know, all these people just standing there, ha ha, get your ass to the back of the line.”
Woman in cocktail dress: “Well, that was uncalled …”
New York woman: “Next time you’ll know not to cut in front of a New Yorker.”

ANYWAY, we made it through security and went to Tiananmen Square, walked into the Forbidden City, were offered countless opportunities to buy crumpled postcards, and then I saw something that I have never seen and, I suspect, nobody else has ever seen in the long history of China. I saw my buddy Vac stand in front of the 600-year-old Tiananmen Gate and record a video log about Brett Favre getting traded to the New York Jets. I suspect that no one did this during the Ming Dynasty. The best part of this scene was that after a little while many Chinese people gathered around Vac, and watched his commentary with curiosity and confusion, it was quite the scene, and while my Chinese is a bit rusty I’m almost certain that I heard a few people, while walking away, say to each other in what I believe was the Northeastern dialect of Mandarin: “This man’s crazy, Favre is going to be an absolute disaster in New York, he has nothing left. His New York experience will be quite a circus. Does this man not remember Joe Namath with the Rams?”

After a while, we headed back in separate cabs to our work — Vac and the video-log cameraman in one cab, me and the venerable Detroit columnist Michael Rosenberg in another. Vac’s cabbie, apparently, found his way back to the Main Press Center, where we are based. Our cabbie, I can tell you, did not. I think we knew we were in trouble when the cabbie pulled over to the side of the road and started yelling in Chinese at a woman. She yelled back. He yelled back. And then the woman looked at us in the back of the cab and gave us the most sincere “Oh man, you two are totally screwed” smile I have ever seen. A few minutes later the Cabbie stopped at some place, turned off the meter, turned around and gave a thumbs up sign that seemed to indicate, “OK, you two get out now.”

We looked around and using that keen geographical sense we had honed in about 36 hours of jet-lagged Chinese awareness, thought, “OK, this kind of looks familiar.” We would find that it was not, in fact, familiar. We would find, in time, that we were several miles from our destination point. We would find that Chinese soldiers protecting the Olympic circle are not necessarily willing to let you through gates. We would find several very helpful people who, unsurprisingly, did not help at all.

Two things stood out during that long walk. One happened while we were waiting as an especially helpful-but-not-helping young woman tried to talk a guard into letting us walk through a gate, a shortcut that would have cut roughly a mile off our walk. The guard was having no part of it even though Rosey and I were practically puddles of mush at this point and his gate did not appear to be an especially important strategic entry point. I couldn’t blame him, though; I’m sure he had been told that he was to not let anyone through his gate and based on where his gate was, he probably would not get another chance to turn people away. The thing I remember though is that while we waited, we noticed a few people in a nearby parking lot — there was a old married couple, a mother and her daughter, a couple of kids. They were just talking , looking out over the horizon. And then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they started playing what appeared to be entirely impromptu and informal badminton matches. Apparently, this is what happens in China — badminton will just break out. I had not seen spontaneous badminton since, I guess, a backyard birthday party when I was like 9. It was quite the thing.

The second thing was the haze. It was all around us, closing in, not unlike the dry ice fog you see at rock concerts. There has been a lot of talk about the poor air quality here in China, and it’s very real. You probably heard that four U.S. cyclers caused a bit of a stir here when they walked off their planes wearing masks, like they were about to go into surgery. It was a goofy and disrespectful thing to do — hey, if you want to wear a mask here, knock yourself out, but if you’re representing your nation in a foreign land you probably don’t WALK OFF THE PLANE with a mask like you just landed in the middle of a nuclear accident. Still, the smog here is thick, and it’s palpable, and it’s everywhere — the sky is bright white, buildings maybe four or five football fields away are shrouded in what looks like a gray mist.

We walked and walked and walked through the smog, occasionally stopping to get turned around by another soldier. And we both thought that this might not be too healthy, two out of shape sportswriters walking several miles in Chinese smog. I have a touch of asthma as well, which only adds to the joy. … We finally made it back. My feet hurt, and my back ached, and I was sweating like the old Martin Short lawyer from Saturday Night Live*.

*”I knew that. I can’t believe you think I didn’t know that. I knew that.”

But, I was breathing fine. In fact, knock on wood, I’ve been breathing fine ever since I got here. So far. I know it’s a long Olympics. Anyway, here is the odd part: After the walk I had this overwhelming feeling that everything here seems oddly familiar. It’s weird because nothing at all is familiar — not the food, not the language, not the customs, not the hardness of of my bed, which is apparently used as a bowling lane in non-Olympic years. Still … that’s what I was thinking while we walked. I had no idea where we were or where we were going or how we we were going to get there, but something about it felt like home. It took me a long walk to figure it out, but finally I did. I’d seen that white sky before, many times. I grew up under that sky. In a weird way, I loved that sky. I grew up in Cleveland.

Banned!

Posted: August 5th, 2008 | Filed under: International | 41 Comments »

Sure, I had heard the news that the subversive Web site firejoemorgan.com was banned here in China. I understood that. I mean, seriously, you cannot openly inflame the minds and hearts of more than a billion people by just allowing them free and clear access to Dusty Baker’s strategic mind and also various sportswriter slanders. The situation here is too volatile, the stakes too high to take any chances. The idle brain is the devil’s playground!

What I did not know until I arrived, however, is that my own blog is banned as well. I mean, seriously, what is the world coming to? I keep hearing about this one-world thing, but how can we be one world if more than a billion people are denied the basic human right to name their Pixifood and express how they feel about Derek Jeter? We have so much more we must do as mankind. Miles and miles before we sleep.

Anyway … I am here in China now after my 895 hour flight during, which I was able to see about 27 different movies that I never wanted to see in the first place. Saw that movie “21″ about blackjack and Kate Bosworth, and it reminded me that unless your card movie has John Malkovich with a terrible Russian accent or Kenny Rogers in any role, it has no chance. Also saw “Made of Honor” while sitting next to a prominent member of the Canadian softball team, which did not really make the movie any better. I’m actually fine with harmless date movies — especially when the clear and present goal is to fall asleep — but I’ve never liked movies where it seems quite apparent that the lovable man and woman who find it so hard to express their feelings for each other will, within five years of the movie ending, get divorced.

Finally, I did finally see both parts of Martin Scorcese’s epic documentary about Bob Dylan, and it is remarkable, I’m only a passing Dylan fans, so while I’d always known, in general terms, about Dylan shaking everyone up by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, I did not really know the details (for instance, I did not know that he went back up AFTER the electric set and played an acoustic set while Pete Seeger freaked out backstage and talked about getting an ax). Scorcese found this incredible footage of Newport (the boos are clear) and even better footage of people in England screaming “Judas!” at Dylan. He also found great stuff reporters asking the dumbest questions. In one case, a reporter asked Dylan how many of his friends were involved in the protest song movement. Dylan looked at him funny and asked back, “How many?” The guy said, “Yes,” and Dylan said, “Uh, I guess about 127.” And the goofball didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t give any indication that he realized there was a joke going on. Instead, he barked back, “About 127? Or exactly 127?” And Dylan said, “Well, it’s either 127 or 142.” And it was clear the guy STILL didn’t get it.

And I cringed, because I’ve been to enough press conferences to know it’s not so different now.

In any case, the plane finally did land in China, and so I’m here, on the other side of the hole you dug in your backyard. I can’t give you too many details yet because I have spent most of my early time here unconscious on a bed that is moderately softer than my front driveway, though not as level.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the point of view) I cannot see my blog and cannot post directly to it from here for those political reasons, so my lovely wife, Margo, will be posting anything I send back. I obviously will not be able to see your comments and make any necessary adjustments. If you see errors that must be fixed or have a comment to make that simply cannot wait three weeks, you can email me soon.

And I’ll get this Albert Pujols post up when I can.