America's Pastime and her grand search for emotion

First appeared on August 4, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

When Wilmer Flores took the field before 50,000 screaming fans, he wept. He wasn’t a World Champion and he hadn’t just thrown a No Hitter and his wife hadn’t yelled “It’s a boy!” from the stands. The uncomfortable scene was begat by Social Media.

Twitter, Facebook, push notifications, text messages flying furiously through the air, invisible yet infinitely powerful. Word on the street was Flores had been traded, jettisoned like space trash from the only Major League team he’d ever played for.

A passing glance across a crowded room, a friendly wave, two people sharing a look that says far more than just hello. Emotion is glaring. It is unmistakable and powerful and can make you seem qualified for a job you have absolutely no business getting. It’s also noticeably missing from Baseball.

Like an image of a great mastodon stomping across the frozen tundra, his burly frame and impressive tusks the definition of raw power, we see a video of Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse at home plate and think “who would do such a thing?”

Today’s stars play hard, they play to win but despite some exciting young talent and the sudden rise of the greatest franchise in professional sports (we’re talking about the Cubs here in case your Google search returns something different), real emotion remains Baseball’s Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

Of course George Washington bears the brunt of the blame. With the size of today’s contracts, it doesn’t take a baseball insider to explain to we little people why playing with pure emotion and worrying over a career ending injury are by nature mutually exclusive.

Your scoutmaster said you wouldn’t get anywhere without a little emotion but you didn’t believe him because he smelled of stale beer and wore a really bad hair-hat your best friend said looked like the tail of a Pomeranian and he couldn’t even get the fire started for crissakes!

So you drifted after crossing that stage in High School and waited for the hand of fate to reach out and give you something to validate your existence, meanwhile that cousin, the one your mother always dotes on at Christmas, got that promotion in Milwaukee and there’s a lion loose in Milwaukee and a not so small part of you is rooting for that big cat to hunt your cousin down and gnaw his face off. That’s what emotion is. Sometimes it takes a successful cousin to give you a little kick in the pants.

In the end Flores wasn’t traded. Turns out 50,000 Woodward and Bernsteins could be wrong. But it's too late for Flores, thanks to our instant gratification-"hey look at this" world, Flores could hit a Grand Slam to win the World Series and pull a pregnant lady from a burning car on his way to home plate, and he will still always be the guy who cried at shortstop.

And while the real, not part-time-pretend media, is busy blasting the Mets for leaking a trade that hadn’t been fully consummated, we are once again missing the trees for the forest. Flores cares.

He’s not a machine powered by million dollar paychecks. He’s not a mindless robot detached from those dedicated to him most. He is a human being who loves his job and efforts to give something special to the fans every night. Something to the Construction Workers and Policemen, the Sailors and Cowboys and Indian Chiefs who pay their hard earned money to watch him. That’s why Flores cried.

And for that we should stand and applaud, for he is a great American, though your mother would probably argue not as great as your cousin from Milwaukee.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Nike can't sneak anything buy us

First appeared on August 30th, 2012
in the Lebanon Reporter

LeBron James is the best basketball player on the planet, a three time MVP, NBA Champion, Olympic Gold Medalist and yet remains largely a public relations disaster. When news broke recently that Nike would unveil James’ latest shoe (dubbed “Signature X”) for a retail price of $300 Shoeheads everywhere eagerly rubbed their hands together while the rest of us, you know those with real jobs who have bills to pay and kids to feed, were left scratching our heads.

The last thing LeBron needed was another reason for John Q. Public to loathe him. All this after he'd done so much to heal his reputation. He'd said and done all the right things since the "I'm taking my talents to South Beach" debacle left him flat on his back with two black eyes. He'd finally dominated the playoffs in the way so many deemed him incapable of. He captured his first NBA Title and won his third MVP trophy with humility. He even showed a measureable level of maturity after taking a backseat for much of the Olympics without complaint. And now this.

Aside from the 1930’s and Washington’s winter at Valley Forge, has there ever been a worse possible time to ask $300 for a shoe? With unemployment at 8.2% and an estimated 15 million American children living in poverty, how can Nike justify charging $300 for this shoe? It’s especially unnerving considering they were more than likely put together in some unventilated ramshackle aluminum shed by Vietnamese children being paid in McDonald’s coupons.

Perhaps the more pressing issue here is just who exactly is in the market for a $300 shoe anyway? Clearly Forbes Magazine said it best when they surmised wearing the right pair of sneakers can “make you look something else: rich.” And if you count yourself amongst the throngs of other twenty somethings trying to “look rich”, just remember layaway was originally meant to assist struggling families during the Great Depression, not for you to blow a month’s salary on a tennis shoe. Especially when that money could be used to keep the lights on your house; you know the same one your parents call the basement.

And if you count yourself amongst the famed 1% who actually have $300 to flush on a tennis shoe that will be cool only as long as it takes Nike to release someone else’s new shoe, then perhaps the Pintando Pasas by Converse is the more responsible choice. These are shipped to a rural Mexican village where kids decorate them before sending them back to the U.S. where they’re sold for around $300. And while you’ll probably get laughed off the court should you show up calling “next game” wearing them, the silver lining around the Pintando Pasas is that the shoe benefits a youth art program in Mexico.

Basic economics tells us there’s a market for this shoe or Nike wouldn’t be pricing it as if it were made from leather recovered from the Tomb of King Tut. Unfortunately it appears to be just another example of the continued misadventures of American priorities. Either way little has changed for LeBron James. He remains a guy America is trying so hard to fall in love with despite the unfortunate knack he has for finding ways to make himself look really bad.

The answer is simple. We launch a Facebook campaign to convince those in the market for new athletic footwear to boycott Nike in favor of a more sensible option (Kangaroos), or we round up everyone who buys the “Signature X” and demand to see their tax returns.


© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

R-E-G-G-I-E wasn't always popular

First appeared on April 5th, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

Donnie Walsh is a well dressed man. And whether he chooses his shirt and tie combos in the morning or some fashionista recently fired by the E! Network because numerous plastic surgeries have her face resembling a traditional Gabonese Fang mask does it for him remains a mystery. But in the summer of 1987 Donnie made a choice that was as public as the library or a Facebook rant against your boss.

The spring of ‘87 saw Steve Alford lead the Indiana Hoosiers to the National Championship. I know it to be true because I watched it sitting in the living room with my Dad sharing a bowl of popcorn and a coke (or an eighth of his coke that is; which was customary per our arrangement as father and son) and also because there is a giant red banner in Assembly Hall (which most Indiana fans generally are not slow to point out) which stands in remembrance of that monumental moment.

My Father said Alford would be a saint for leading Indiana to the Promised Land and, after he’d explained what a saint was, I fully agreed despite our not being Catholic. Alford was a dashing young man with perfect hair who had proposed to his wife by hanging the net during a private shoot around; she the beautiful girlfriend who hung around the gym to climb the ladder and pull the net down anytime her boyfriend wrapped it and was surely surprised the day she reached the top of the ladder and found an engagement ring box stuck on the back of the rim. Storybook indeed.

So it looked to be a match made in heaven. The Pacers were a professional franchise that was an ABA Title Machine turned Floundering NBA Failure. In the summer of 1987 they were desperately in need of direction. A hero; a face. And for the average Hoosier fan moonlighting as a casual Pacer fan, what better face than pretty boy Steve’s?

So it was the sharp dressed Donnie Walsh went to the 1987 Draft with Hoosiers one and all fully expecting to hear Alford’s name called as the 11th pick. But upon hearing the loudspeaker boom out “Reggie Miller” fans responded with a hailstorm of boos and cat-calls. Yes, even from the start Reggie was polarizing.

The first time I saw Reggie Miller in a Pacer uniform he was bald, looked like an untwisted pretzel and appeared to have the quickness of a newborn dairy calf. I didn’t see the player who would become the Pacers All Time Leading Scorer and the second best Three Point Shooter in League History; probably one strong indicator of why my front office days have been so slow to develop.
But from the day Pacer fans first booed the 6’7 wing out of UCLA until the day he played his last game in that same uniform 18 years later, all he did was prove people wrong. Despite a highly unorthodox release, Miller became one of the greatest sharpshooters in NBA history. He climbed many mountains including the aforementioned reservations of Pacer fans as well as Spike Lee, while leaving others unconquered (Michael Jordan and an NBA Title).

And if Manning brought a passion for professional football to Indiana then Miller was Manning before Manning was Manning. He built the following the Pacers enjoyed at their height and along the way, be it 8 points in 8 seconds or “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”, Reggie carved out a lasting place in Hoosier Hearts big enough for both himself and the Blue and Gold as well.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams