Welcome to Next Year

First appeared on April 19, 2016
in The Lebanon Reporter

In case you haven’t checked the calendar recently, let me be the first to welcome you to next year. Sure your phone says it’s 2016, but history will remember this as ‘next year’. Archaeologists in the foothills of the Andes recently unearthed a scroll containing an original version of the Mayan calendar. In addition to calling for the end of the world in 2012, this new document includes a small asterisk next to a phrase loosely translated as: “And if life should somehow continue, a small bear will conquer the world in 2016”.

For over 100 years now, beleaguered Cub fans have found solace in the battle cry ‘wait till next year!’ Let me be the first to say this excuse has run its course. Gone the way of the dinosaur, Ivory Billed Woodpecker and any hope Donald Trump had of becoming our next president. Welcome to next year friends, the year your Chicago Cubs finally get it done.

Did I write this same column last year at roughly this exact date? Sure, but we in the part-time-pretend sports columnist business don’t dwell on the past. We look to the future, because the future is rife with fodder for columns, commentary and, thanks to the information age ushering in the age of short attention spans, ridiculous predictions nobody will remember in three months anyway.

So next year turned on the calendar and you decided action was necessary, considering you’ve spent the better part of 30 years waiting for it. In your haste to squeeze as much as possible into the only next year you’re ever going to see, you threw the kids in the car and headed north as the rest of humanity was thinking south. Your goal? To see all five Great Lakes in one week by car, and return home alive and un-divorced.

Fueled by your desire to provide an invaluable learning opportunity for the hatchlings, you made your way from the angry shores of Superior down to Lake Michigan only to have your four-year-old ask if people in Michigan always swim wearing mittens and scarves. Then it was on to Lake Erie where your eight-year-old had the epiphany that it doesn’t really matter where you go, all the Great Lakes are probably going to look pretty much the same.

Basking in the manufactured world of Shedd’s Aquarium, you failed as a father when trying to explain the importance of the Stinkpot Turtle’s role in the ecosystem. This was only compounded after you found yourself unloading on the twenty-something guide who wasted half your tour building a case for Abba’s inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Still, you somehow survived it all, undaunted and filled with the hope only a next year can bring.

The Cubs have great pitching and incredible offensive firepower. They have the brightest front office mind in baseball and a manager who boasts the perfect balance of baseball knowledge and weirdness. Of course baseball knowledge is a necessity for, you know, winning games. It’s the weirdness factor that is so undervalued in the search for managerial talent today. And it is Joe Maddon’s exponential weirdness that should help a young team navigate the minefield ahead. A minefield dotted with the pressures of a World Series, and the mental fatigue a 162 game season will undoubtedly bring.

The result of all of this is should be a fully loaded steam train barreling down the tracks come October. One doing so with so much force there isn’t a goat, cardinal or Kansas City Royal strong enough to derail it; for this is it, there are no more next years friend.

© 2016 Eric Walker Williams

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

Popovich is a Difference Maker

First appeared on June 19th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

Most NBA coaches are brainless troglodytes in $300 suits. Men who believe success lies in Xeroxing every move of a Champion. These are the same guys who stop eating oranges and start drinking 17 cups of coffee a day because one story on the Evening News told them of a very important “scientific” study just completed. Of course the story often leaves out the important fact these studies were funded by a rogue anti-orange fringe group and the coffee industry, but such is life.

This might be part of the reason there’ve been a record setting 12 NBA coaching changes made since the end of the regular season alone. These one-time titans of the game have been relegated to babysitters clad in Armani and armed with clipboards. In a word, the NBA coach has become expendable. San Antonio Head Coach Gregg Popovich is not one of these guys. He’s cut from a different, albeit largely unattractive and semi-abrasive, cloth.

It’s hard to argue with Pop. He’s piloted the Spurs to four World Championships and is one of two coaches to record 900 wins with one team. He’s twice been named NBA Coach of the Year and is the longest tenured Head Coach in the four major North American professional sports leagues.

As Hoosiers we can lay claim to Pop. Well, at least our claim is more legally binding than say Albuquerque, New Mexico or the country of Honduras. Born and raised in the Region, Popovich traces his roots to East Chicago and Merrillville High School. As Hoosiers we appreciate his team-oriented style. As Hoosiers we recognize the no-nonsense, hard-nosed disciplinarian Popovich is at times and understand this simply to be the product of a childhood spent in East Chicago. As cranky people we identify with his disdain for the media. Answering questions and providing explanations are not beneath Popovich, they’re simply an unnecessary byproduct of the popularity of his profession.

What separates Popovich from the average NBA coach is both extraordinary and revolutionary in that he actually coaches his players. He holds them accountable and calls them out when they’re not pulling their weight or are off-blueprint. He blushes at the power that comes with their million dollar lifestyles before telling them “that was a really dumb pass, now sit down!” He’s both fascinating and irascible, and he’s been the difference in these Finals to this point.

When was the last time you saw any NBA coach outside San Antonio get in the face of his players? NBA coaches who tell the media their teams played terrible are about as common as $3 gas or the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. The coach most owners favor today are those who call time outs to hint at what teams need to do and tell them they’re playing spectacular basketball despite being down 20.

This much seems recognizable from our distant perch yet there must remain a great equalizer. That unknown which Popovich labors so hard to conceal. In today’s world, no matter the results, the modern athlete seems incapable of tolerating constant berating and foul mouthed motivation. There must be a layer unseen by the public. A kinder, gentler Popovich that reaches out to his players and labors to establish meaningful relationships with them.

Perhaps this explains his notoriously abrasive behavior. It could be in providing a non-sensical explanation for how his team is defending the pick and roll, Popovich is simply masking his “Fun Uncle Pop” side. The side only those stranded in the trenches with him can see. Or it could be the product of just being a great coach.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams