The First 150 Days

Five months ago today, I stopped watching sports. The Red Sox had won the World Series the day before and, true to the promise I had made some weeks earlier, I embarked on this one year "sports sabbatical" called The Off Season. I did it because I was inspired by friends of mine in the academic and tech worlds who had recently gone on their own sabbaticals. I did it because I wanted to force myself to write more often. I did it because I am a fan of big ideas, and it did it because I believe that if you truly love something, you have to set it free.

Prior to that day five months ago I enjoyed watching my favorite 5 teams win 10 championships between them in the previous dozen years. And, make no mistake, I loved it. I loved it so. It was an utter delight. Actually, it could have been better as just about every team in question had a year or two in there where they easily could have won it all, but didn't. It's hard for me to imagine that any fan could ever have it so good, before or since. They say the Boston fan has grown to be abrasive and insufferable amid all this success, and that may well be. It's hard to imagine anyone managing to keep a cool head when something like this is going on. At some point though, I realized I had to see what it was like to step out of it. And once you decide to do that, I'm sorry but there's no points for doing it after the teams aren't that good anymore. No, the only way to walk away was to do it at the top.

In the interim, I have learned how to juggle, how to play guitar and sing along with myself, and a fantastic and unique way of tying my shoes. I have been cooking more, and hitting the gym more often. I've read more books, and seen more plays and musical performances than I used to before. I have learned how to properly make a real old fashioned and how to mix a round of drinks for guests. In short, I've had some real fun. And I'm not even halfway through this little experiment.

It's not clear to me that many folks are reading this, but it is a true pleasure to know that a few of you are. Thanks for paying attention, and thanks for your encouragement. I hope I can keep this somewhat interesting for you for another seven months.

Ignorance and Bliss

The first set of games were probably just finishing up by the time I even realized March Madness had begun. A coworker came in around 2:30 and, after covering a couple of pending work topics, paused, smiled and asked me, "So, how are you doing today?" Without missing a beat I started to respond with something about how busy I was and how this person wasn't doing that, and that person needed this faster than we thought they would. Just as I was realizing what he was really talking about, he interrupted, saying, "No, I mean with the tournament!"

I was shocked to realize that, even though I was keenly aware of the buildup to the tournament over the previous several days, March 20th was sixty percent over and not a single thought about college basketball had entered my head. If I hadn't been reminded, who knows if I even would have thought about it the for the rest of the day? For the rest of the week?

To understand how big a moment this was for The Offseason, you have to understand the reverence I have always had for the Tournament. I wrote about the roots of this relationship in a previous post. Often, in the years following high school you could find me skipping class or arranging ahead of time to have the day off of work for at least the first couple of days. There's just nothing in the sports world quite like those first two days. The field of 64 (don't even talk to me about play-in games) is cut in half through a furious spree of 32 individual games. Essentially, from noon to midnight, there is a never-ending parade of frantic, fun action. Teams you've never heard of battling it out with the big fish. There's always a few amazing finishes and several results that NO ONE could have ever predicted. It's the one sporting event on the calendar that truly never disappoints. 

In later years, I wouldn't skip work, but I could always be counted on to be running the office pool. More than once I got in a bit of hot water for even suggesting the idea, as the legality of such activities remains somewhat dubious. Still, the folks who were interested always seemed to find their way to me. The buy-ins were small, and the pay-outs weren't much, but the bragging rights were well worth the effort. In recent years, we moved to a bracket system where each participant would draft a collection of teams and get points for each round a team would advance. It's a fun way to change it up, and I highly recommend it.

As a part of this process, every year during the tournament my office door would feature an oversized poster of the bracket. I would fill in each result as it happened (or thereabouts) and keep score, dolling out points to each team based on wins and seeding. Honestly, it was real work, but I loved it. I rarely did particularly well, though I also rarely finished last. I've been at my current job for almost 8 years and I've run a pool for the office every single spring. Occasionally former coworkers would participate from their new jobs in other towns. When I took on the challenge of abstaining from following sports for a year I knew this was going to be one of the toughest stretches for me (until I realized it was an Olympic year AND a World Cup as well, that is). 

But here I was, well beyond the time of gathering participants and researching teams. Here I was, days past creating the files to print out a bracket for my door and a couple to use for keeping track of scoring. In years past I would have already been scouting where my big upset potential games were and when my own favorite teams would be playing. Instead, I was simply living right through it, oblivious. This just two months after the excruciating NFL season ended with me doing everything I could just to avoid Patriots games and the Super Bowl.

I haven't been completely unaware of what's been going on, of course. There were headlines everywhere I looked over the weekend, and a good friend made sure I was aware of the (early) departure of Duke and the (as expected) end of my Tar Heels' season. But beyond that, I've been shocked at how easy it is to stay away from my old flame. It brings to mind the old saying, "You don't know what you've got til it's gone", but that's not quite right, is it? If it were, I'd be pining away. I suppose the real lesson here is that I never really "had" it in the first place. I was just watching.  

If You Want To Sing Out

I read somewhere recently that playing a musical instrument raises your IQ 5 points. This was very welcome news as so far my efforts to play guitar had only made me feel exceedingly stupid. I suppose it makes sense that overcoming that kind of wall can expand a mind, but for a time, I really didn't see anything like that happening. Which is not to say that I haven't gotten better at playing. I think there has been real progress there, and I am really enjoying the process of hearing a song, looking up the chords and sitting down to try and sound out the rhythms and changes. I've even gotten fairly good at recognizing songs that I might be able to play by ear, which is something I never really thought I'd be able to do. All this has been going quite well, I just haven't been able to combine it with my voice. At all.

Singing always came pretty easily to me. I could carry a tune well on my own, and when I worked at it I was able to take on some pretty challenging pieces, both alone and in groups. Throughout school, and even in to early adulthood, right on through to today, singing brings me as much pure joy as any activity I participate in. There is something spectacularly human about blending your voice with a group, and the thrill of singing out alone and having it sound good is something I've been hooked on for life. You'd be surprised to know how often my wife and I sing at home when talking would do just fine. Nothing makes me as nervous, and nothing feels quite as good to just get out and do as singing.

Because of all this, it's been thoroughly frustrating to be playing a rudimentary, but recognizable version of a song on the guitar, be able to hear the real version clearly in my head, come to the part where the vocals come in, and simply shut down. Full paralysis. Hands no longer fretting or strumming, and voice simply deactivated. Silent. I couldn't explain it, and I hated it. For this reason (and due to some frequent travel over the last few weeks where it didn't make sense to bring my new guitar) I haven't made much progress over the last few weeks.

This weekend, however, I picked up the guitar after a fairly prolonged absence. I keep it out in the dining room where I pass by it many times in a day. Over the past week I had had it in my head that I really needed to pick it up, and I kept making and breaking promises to myself to do so. Finally, I carved out an hour and told myself I wasn't going to put it down until I could put some voice together with some chords. I had had a little previous success with super plodding, slow tunes like Hey Joe or California Stars. Earlier in the day, for no discernible reason, No Rain by Blind Melon had jumped into my head and I had a good feeling I might be able to work it out. I looked up the chords and sure enough, they were all in my inventory. Most of them were real wheelhouse chords, like G, and D. Old friends. The changes, however, seemed a bit tough, so I took it extraordinarily slow. I sang it through a couple of times, then played it through once or twice. I have no clear sense of how I scaled the wall, but before I knew what was happening, there I was on the other side, and not looking back.

The changes were sloppy, the rhythm was spotty, and I did that thing you do where you hold a note with your voice while you wait for your fingers to catch up and form the chord, then drop back into the song. I'm a long way from an open mic, or even playing something for anyone not actually related to me, but I have cracked the code, and that feels great. To keep the momentum, I returned to the song that I have already designated as the first one I will ever "perform" for people (not that I have any idea when or what that performance will look like) and I was able to muddle through that one as well. 

I may have mentioned it before in this space, but there is a remarkable tide shift that I went through with guitar. It's something I also went through with juggling, and it is one of the most valuable things this whole project has taught me. At some point in both activities, my inability to do the thing changed from making me want to stop, and became the very thing that made me want to keep trying. Frustration and a lack of success has always felt more like a motivator to stop and try something else than a motivation to improve. Just isolating that muscle is a huge discovery for me, and something I want to continue to try and strengthen. For now. I'm content to take my 5 extra IQ points and run with them.  

The Value of a Good Coach

The first team I ever paid any real attention to ended up winning the Super Bowl that year. It was 1986, and the New York Giants came in to my consciousness thanks to my friend Sten. He had a jacket and a couple of painters caps with the Giants logo all over them. This was the newer logo with the word GIANTS in block white letters against a deep blue background. I thought it looked great, and I was very excited when he offered me one of the caps. Right then and there they became my team. Throughout the course of that year, I got to know Simms, Taylor, Morris, Banks, Bavaro, Carson, Johnson, Burt, McConkey, Marshall, Landetta (a series of names that even today I don't need to look up) and especially Bill Parcells. I liked them all, and I really liked Bill. It seemed like he was throwing a year long party, and we got to watch all the fun. Unaware of how many people follow teams for years and years without seeing a championship, I watched with delight and entitlement as my guys waltzed to the Super Bowl, and handled Elway and Denver there to take the title.

I really enjoyed that experience, but I don't remember it being a very social one. I watched the games alone, or maybe with my Dad (I was only 12 at the time...). Still, I could see how many other people wanted the same thing as me (for the Giants to win) and that felt good. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I began to see how much fun sports could be as a shared experience with friends. I learned this lesson in a place you might not expect - High School. 

At Weston High School, the administration must have been huge fans of college basketball because every March, during the tournament, they would wheel out a big TV from the A/V office to the front lobby and tune in CBS somehow so that we could watch the games. Students would gather there between classes or during free periods to catch as much action as they could. Word would spread like wildfire from class to class if an upset was brewing, and it must have seemed to teachers that we were drinking much more water and soda than usual, because bathroom trip requests were through the roof.

Living in Connecticut before the real rise of UConn, we had a wide range of fandom to choose from. Sure, many kids were faithful to the Big East and the New York schools like Syracuse, St. John's and Georgetown. But lots of us looked farther away for our hoops allegiances, and that really served to spice things up. Everyone knew who the fans of each school were, and your daily fate was tied to your team. Win, and you walked down the halls with respect. Blow a game, and the teasing would be merciless. It was a whole new kind of fun for me. I really fell for March Madness.

A little while after the Giants became my football team, I realized that I had a sweatshirt from UNC Chapel Hill that my aunt had given me when I went there to visit her. I remember thinking the place was lovely at the time, but it didn't have a huge impact on me. Now, I took a look at the then current state of the Tar Heels and their history, and on the grounds of my personal connection and in house paraphernalia, they quickly became my basketball team. It wasn't hard to like them what with Jordan, Worthy and so many others. The more I found out about them, the more I liked what I saw. Like the Giants, the Tar Heels had a leader, and he became one of my first heroes. Dean Smith is responsible for a lot of little things about the game of basketball that have become second nature. Smith was among the first to use multiple defenses in a game. He was the first to have his team huddle before free throws, he pioneered the use of a raised fist when a player needed to rest. He helped bring the dunk back to the college game after it was banned for several years. On a larger level, he even had a lot to do with bringing integration to the south.

Smith was responsible for an immense family of standout basketball players and coaches over the years. I've read accounts of how even the bench players from back in the beginning of Smith's 36 year career would get calls every year on birthdays and cards on their kids' birthdays. Dean Smith was a coach who knew that the real value of a player is in supporting his or her teammates. One of my favorite Dean Smith innovations was the act of pointing to the player who had passed you the ball after a score. It's a simple act, and it spread around the basketball world like wildfire at all levels. It spoke to the heart of the twisting, fluid improvisation that basketball is. It was polite, and it sent a clear message to the other guys. It said, "We're in this together. If you want to win, you'll have to beat all of us."

Seattle's Best

So as it turns out, they are still doing World's Fairs. I hadn't realized it, but they are happening all over the world, and with surprising regularity. There were only three in the 2000's, but there was one in 2012 in South Korea, and one in 2010 in Shanghai. The next one is planned for 2015 in Milan, and there are two more with set locations on the books before 2020. I find something so reassuring about a world that continues this odd tradition. Louie CK has a wonderful bit about how everything is amazing and nobody is happy, but if we are still stopping every couple of years to create some new buildings and celebrate the absolute wonder of the world we live in and the direction we are heading in, then maybe there is some hope for a global community after all.

I was thinking a lot about World's Fairs last week in Seattle. I was there for work, but my wife came along and we were able to really take in the city. There are tons of great things to do in Seattle (don't miss the Underground Tour, by the way) but I was really taken with the Space Needle and the area just around it. You may not know that the Space Needle along with the Monorails that run through downtown Seattle were built as part of the '62 World's Fair, or as it was then called, the Century 21 Exposition. The event ran from April 21, 1962 to October 21 of that same year and was credited to some extent with revitalizing Seattle culturally. Now, 52 years later, it's still a fun place to walk around in. You can still easily picture the massive crowds (about 10 million people visited the 62 Fair) and the excitement of the events and exhibits. 

I'd heard references to World's Fairs many times in my life, but I never really had a sense for what they were all about until reading Erik Larson's page-turner, Devil In The White City. Before that book, the only piece of World Fair history I knew of were the odd towers and the big globe near Shea Stadium (and the fact that my friend Dave's folks met Robert Kennedy there). Larson's book, however, took me deep inside the development and the execution of the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition on the waterfront in Chicago. I can't recommend the book highly enough, though if you have a weak stomach you may want to skip every other chapter or so. Among other great moments at this massive event were the debut of electric lighting (think about THAT for a moment) and the unveiling of the first ever Ferris Wheel. The wheel was America's answer to the Eiffel Tower, which had been created as the front door of its own World Fair four years prior. Despite the tower being the tallest structure in the world at the time (and for another 37 years thereafter) the Ferris Wheel was a massive success and thrilled riders like nothing before.

Seattle recently installed a Ferris Wheel that hangs over its shoreline much like the one that currently operates in Chicago. The view out over the water across to Bainbridge Island and the Olympic mountain range is stunning, but it wasn't as exciting for me as it was to walk through the 62 expo grounds. To be in the very future that the original attendees were trying to envision, while looking at some of the very same buildings they saw. The architecture is dated, but the optimism that the early 60's had for the future was so present in the way the place was sculpted that it is impossible to miss. They expected us to be the Jetsons! How sad that most of the movies we make these days that look ahead 50 or 100 years feature a post apocalyptic, dystopian landscape. Rather than working as our butlers and cooks, we expect robots to have risen up against us. 

The last Fair on American soil was way back in 1984 in New Orleans. In total, the have only been 20 of them in the US since back in 1851. I want more. I want to ponder the direction our culture is pointing us in. I want to gather with people from every corner of the world and marvel at what we are creating. I want to set a physical mark in time that the people of 2066 can visit and wonder right back at us about.

Who can I talk to about making this happen?