What I’ve Learned So Far

Read them here:

Write your own duty statement and see who buys it.

By the way, Chiang has already had a fascinating career. Read more about it here.

Go, Lynette!

My gentle advice: You shouldn’t vote for Giuliani, either.

It’s easy to say that a candidate will be bad for the economy, bad for the environment, bad for business interests, or whatever else. It’s something else to say that a candidate’s own words and actions suggest pretty clearly that he will be a threat to the Republic. But reasonable people are concluding exactly that about Giuliani, who seems to take the worst elements of the Bush Administration’s foreign policies and then amplify them.

• Ezra Klein: Against Giuliani
• Teresa Nielsen Hayden: Much too comfortable in heels

Fear of terrorism is a far-from-adequate reason to entrust someone of Giuliani’s outlook with the Presidency.

Just doing some thinking-out-loud here, trying to decide whether I should burden (or bless?) my work blog with even more “business of sports” thoughts today.

I don’t know if you care about football, much less follow the exploits of the New England Patriots — but exploits they are. There was a stew in the first week of the season, when the Patriots were fined for videotaping the defensive signals of their opponent, the New York Jets. (There’s an interpersonal subtext here, because the Jets’ head coach is a protege of the Patriots’ head coach.) For a bit, Patriot-haters crowed about how this discovery of (very mild) cheating “tainted” the Patriots’ three Superbowl victories from the early years of this decade. Which is, you know, total hogwash, but it was a slow week in sports news.

Now the Patriots are 8-0 and headed into the biggest game of the year. They’re traveling this week to Indianapolis to play the Colts, who are a mere 7-0 and who are, pretty clearly, the second-best team in the league. In fact the excellence of these two teams throws the rest of the NFL into pretty stark relief. It stacks up something like this:

• Patriots
• (daylight)
• Colts
• (more daylight)
• everybody else

The Colts have been tested a time or two, but the Patriots have been beating up on the rest of the league without ever being put in much of a pickle themselves. They’re scoring 40+ points per game, which is just crazy, and they’re routinely beating opponents by several touchdowns. On Sunday I watched them beat the Redskins, a team that was 4-2 coming into the game — a team that had scored 220 points in its previous six games — a team with legitimate playoff pretensions. The Patriots dismantled them in every phase of the game. I cannot overstate how total the dominance was. And it wasn’t a fluke — that’s just how this Patriots team plays.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Pats are awesome. So what? Well, the so what is that they’re doing it in a league built for parity. NFL teams operate under a salary cap and a revenue-sharing agreement that allows the Packers from teeny, tiny Green Bay to compete eye to eye with the New York Giants or the Miami Dolphins or the Chicago Bears or anybody else. Within the framework of the league, teams can’t get ahead by disparities in spending power. In other words, this isn’t like baseball, where the Yankees or Red Sox can open up the vault to stock their rosters with stars. In the NFL, teams must get ahead through the heroic efforts of individual athletes, or by building a better system, or both. The Patriots have done both, and in fact they have built a system that makes it far more likely for them to get the best from their best athletes.

Without going into exhausting detail, the key individuals in this system are (1) head coach Bill Belichick, who by now is commonly regarded as one of a handful of the most brilliant football coaches in the game’s history, and (2) quarterback Tom Brady, who is the Joe Montana of this era. Without Brady, the Pats would have a much harder time executing their offense, which this year relies primarily on Brady taking his pick from among several outstanding receivers. (The team is on pace to break the single-season NFL record for scoring, and Brady himself is on pace to demolish Peyton Manning’s single-season record for touchdowns.) But without Belichick, the Patriots’ dominance would simply be unimaginable. He is the brain and the beating heart of that organization, and he has stocked the club from top to bottom with players who are happy to take his lead in crushing the opposition.

One key about that corps of players: they are all smart. Troy Aikman, himself a Hall of Fame quarterback who is, if anything, even better as a game commentator, said as much when he was covering the Patriots-Redskins game on Sunday. The first thing that the team looks for when acquiring players is whether they’re smart. The players need to be smart, because part of the beauty of the Patriots’ system is how they mix and match personnel play by play, which allows them to confront their opponents with unusual formations. In the context of the NFL, where copious study of game films is standard practice for every coaching staff, “unusual” means “hard to prepare for”. If you’ve got an average cross-section of NFL athletes on your team, chances are good that some of them won’t be quick enough on the uptake to line up out of position on a given play and then know what to do from there. But the Patriots avoid this problem by stocking their larder with flexible-minded players who can go seemingly anywhere and do just about anything. This leads to spectacles like Brady’s first touchdown pass of Sunday, when he connected with Mike Vrabel, who normally plays linebacker — and who had three sacks from the linebacker position against the Redskins — but who lined up at tight end for that play.

As I’ve touched on before, Belichick has an endless curiosity for the game of football, and so he has studied it as deeply as anyone ever.* That, combined with his desire to win and his suppleness of mind, leads him to experiment with combinations never before seen, as when he offered Peyton Manning the unprecedented sight of two down linemen and nine defenders falling back into pass protection. (Anything more than six pass defenders is a rarity.) Belichick knows all of the orthodoxies of the game — knows them as well as anyone could — but, even better, he has taken the time and the mental energy to pull those orthodoxies apart to get at the truths underlying them. The ones that work, he keeps, and indeed the Patriots are as fundamentally sound in the nuts and bolts of the game as any team could be. But then Belichick is willing to reach far beyond the orthodoxies, to wherever his mind takes him. If that means taking a linebacker with good hands and putting him at tight end, so be it. If it means dropping nine men into pass protection to frustrate a great passer like Manning, so be it. If it means going to a three-four defensive alignment (three down linemen and four linebackers) when the vogue around the league is a four-three alignment, so be it. He knows he has players on hand who are smart enough and disciplined enough to execute even his most imaginative schemes — because he went and acquired those players on purpose. And he has the confidence in himself and in his team to call the most imaginative plays within the flow of the game.

Troy Aikman made another point during the game the other day that’s worth mentioning here. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Eddie DeBartolo built the San Francisco 49ers — these were the Niners of Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, and Jerry Rice — into the league’s most respected franchise. Aikman pointed out that players wanted to play for the Niners in those days. It wasn’t just another team to play for, it was a preferred destination. Over time, that meant that some players were even willing to play for a little less so that the team could maintain its excellence within the league’s salary-cap structure. And the same thing is happening now with the Patriots. They have a very good chance of winning the Superbowl every year. They have one of the greatest coaches in league history. They have a Hall of Fame quarterback leading a roster stocked with pure-gold winners. They have a devoted owner and a fanatical fan base. If you were a smart NFL player who could succeed in the Belichick system, why wouldn’t you want to play in that environment?

Talked about in this abstract way, it all seems so easy: brilliant executive leadership (Belichick), physically and mentally superior field leadership (Brady), smart, capable players all over the field, and a financial model that works for the long haul. Simple, right? Of course it’s not so simple. Belichick didn’t enjoy nearly so much success in his previous head-coaching gigs, because the environment wasn’t right, and he hadn’t quite figured out his own best style of play. Brady was a good, but not a great, college quarterback. Mike Vrabel is hardly Lawrence Taylor. And so on. But the Patriots have done the hard work — for about a decade now — to build a system unlike any other and to stock that system with the right kind of talent. The result isn’t merely that they are quantitatively superior to other teams in statistical terms, but that they are qualitatively different from all other teams. And that’s a competitive advantage that’s very, very hard to beat.

Which is why the Patriots are so awesome.

~

* This reminds me of something John McEnroe said about Roger Federer during this year’s U.S. Open: he said that the Swiss champion is just fascinated by tennis — continues to be fascinated by every aspect of it even after winning so many titles. This fascination drives him not merely to maintain his game, but to keep improving it.

A couple of things happened over the weekend which, while not so important in themselves, add up to something important for my own modus operandi:

1. My garage achieved a state of un-clutter it hasn’t seen since . . . well, maybe ever in the time we’ve owned this house.
2. The Red Sox, as you may have heard by now, wrapped up the World Series in four games.

Item #1 allowed me to gather up a lot of the draftwork that has been scattered across my files in the garage for lo these many years gone. Item #2 frees up some of my time because I can now stop reading baseball stories every single day. (And yes, the post before this one was about baseball, even though the season is over. What’s your point?) Putting the two together, I now have the chance to work systematically through this draftwork to see how much of it can be salvaged.

Fear not, even now I can hear your questions humming to me over this grand series of tubes we call the Intarweebs!

• How much draftwork are you talking about, Tim? Well, I’m loath to hazard a guess because doing a legit estimate on the number of pages looks suspiciously like work. It may also be like that thing they do in weight clinics with some very heavy people, when they don’t weigh them at first but just get them exercising and eating better. When the problem is as bad as that, you don’t need to put hard numbers on it — you just need to start taking positive steps. But the thumbnail estimate of pages is . . . a few linear feet.
• What, pray tell, are you planning to do with all of that draftwork? The short answer: “subtract”. The longer answer: Go through the whole lot of it, bit by bit, discarding the obvious rubbish and reworking anything that seems like it could turn into a good piece.
• What does this mean for me, your devoted blog reader? Starting sometime soon, you will see a series of posts under the heading “Storytime”. (Look — it’s even in the list of categories in the sidebar! It’s official!) These will be stories developed from this draftwork, or else, you know, off the top of my head, when I can manage that.

Let me emphasize that I am not going to subject you to just any old rantings from my high school- and college-era juvenilia.* To put it another way, I will not simply be keyboarding the essays, stories, and (shudder) poems of bygone years. Rather, I will be taking the ideas from those stories — central themes, plot devices, even just likely-sounding hunks of dialogue — and reworking them into something new and, I hope, interesting.

Since I don’t have so much spare time on my hands these days, many of these pieces are sure to be quite short. (Soem of the longer ones may appear first in serial installments.) Don’t be surprised to see experiments with short forms such as palm-of-the-hand stories and Fibonacci sonnets.

At the same time, though, I want this exercise to be worthwhile to myself as a writer and to all of you as readers. (Listen to my bravado, as though addressing an audience of thousands!) So I’ll be making each peace as good as I can make it in a short timeframe. I’m thinking of these pieces like hard scrimmages, meant to help me get my chops up while cutting down on the ginormous backlog of paper ephemera that now afflicts my files. And, hey, who knows? Maybe this will even increase my fame and fortune!

So, watch this space — and please warm up your typing fingers to give feedback when the time comes.

~

* Yes, there have been writers from Chatterton to Mann who have written mature works of literature at the age of modern college undergraduates. Let me assure you that, at the same age, I did not belong in their literary company.

When he was making his name as a bodybuilder and action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger was well-known for showing up just about anywhere he was asked to be — at a Rotary club luncheon, the opening of a new supermarket, a groundbreaking ceremony for a neighborhood clinic, you name it. Part of this was because he was (is) an attention hound. But he also understood the value of good public relations for himself. The more people he talked to, the more that people thought of him as something other than a Teutonic strongman toting machine guns in B movies.

Alex Rodriguez may simply not have Arnold’s human touch (the third baseman certainly lacks the bodybuilder’s sense of humor), but he’s every bit as smart, and just as dominant in his sport. Whatever the case, A-Rod should take a lesson from Arnold and pay more attention to the fine p.r. skill of showing up. Mind you, I’m not expecting A-Rod to be the publicity whore that young Arnold was, showing up at the opening of a new Costco in Teaneck or whatever. But when Hank Aaron himself is going to hand you the Hank Aaron Award for being the best hitter of the year in the American League, and when this is going to happen before Game 4 of the World Series, you go. Period. You just go.

Rodriguez, or his reps, have claimed that he had a family obligation. And okay, if his mother is in the hospital or something, then fine — but nothing like that has been reported. And if it’s a family event that’s important for Alex to attend — a big reunion or a cousin’s wedding or a vacation with his kids or whatever — the chances that it was scheduled for the week of the World Series . . . well, no, it just wasn’t, because the odds were pretty good that Alex would be starring in the World Series, not just picking up some hardware in a ceremony timed to coincide with it.

A-Rod has not gotten a fair shake over the years from fans in Seattle or New York. With the first group, it’s because he left the Mariners to take the giant contract given to him by the Rangers.  (You know, like most people are quick to turn down huge raises to do what they love to do.)  With the second group, it’s because he somehow hasn’t made himself into an amalgam of Lou Gehrig, Brooks Robinson, Reggie Jackson, and Superman. Meanwhile, he’s only the best player in his league — every single year — and worth every penny he’s been paid.

But Alex, here’s a free tip:  if you want to be better liked, you don’t stiff Hank Aaron. You rearrange your schedule to be able to shake hands with Hank. Arnold certainly would have. Heck, Hank would have, if it had been Jimmie Foxx handing him a trophy. You’re the superlative baseball player of this era, but it’s time to learn from your betters when it comes to handling yourself off the field.

“I’ve been meaning to.”

We get trapped in this, huh? “I’ve been meaning to . . .

• . . . get the car fixed.”
• . . . find a significant other.”
• . . . save some money.”
• . . . lose some weight.”
• . . . start my own business.”
• . . . find a better job.”
• . . . clean out my closet.”
• . . . finish my degree.”
• . . . write that novel.”
• . . . change the world.”

“Meaning to” accomplishes nothing, though. All the good will in the world doesn’t get the thing done — or, alternately, make the decision that Good Thing X just isn’t going to be something you accomplish in this life.

My advice to myself, which you’re welcome to share in. Review all aspects of your life — go ahead and think about the whole thing — and list every single unmet obligation that falls under the heading of “I’ve been meaning to . . .” List them all on a sheet (or a ream) of paper. Figure that half of what’s there probably isn’t worth of your time and energy (i.e. these things aren’t legitimate COYoTEs). Strike those from the main list and put them on a separate list titled “Things I No Longer Mean to Do”. That way, you’ll have a reminder of the erstwhile obligations from which you’ve now freed yourself.

Now go back to the main list. Anything on this list that would take you less than ten minutes to just DO — do it. Do it instead of watching television. Do it instead of reading blogs (even this one!). Do it instead of whatever it is that you do to avoid reviewing your “shoulds”. The ones that will take longer than ten minutes, figure out exactly when you’re going to get them done, or at least when you’re going to start getting them done. Take them out of the realm of the nebulous and bring them into the realm of the actual, thus: “Wednesday night I’m going to clean out all the junk in my car. Thursday afternoon I’m going to use the coupon I have to get a hand-detailed car wash.”

As you review the big list, you’ll find still more things that, upon further review, you no longer mean to do. Add them to the list of “Things I No Longer Mean to Do”.

Proceed without guilt. Do it, or don’t do it, but don’t mess with Mr. In-Between, who often goes by the name of “Meaning To”. Life is too short.

–Three old pieces of furniture and a bag of tiny-tots’ books off to Goodwill.

–More magazines and papers into the recycling bin.

–More garage detritus into the contractor bag.

If this process of lightening the load keeps up, I’m going to be walking with my feet a few inches off the ground soon.

Now for some subtraction-by-getting-things-done . . .

The current issue of Runner’s World includes an article on John L. Parker, author of the cult-classic novel Once a Runner. After more than 30 years, Parker is now publishing a sequel called Again to Carthage. I’ve never read any of Parker’s work, but after reading Benjamin Cheever’s profile on him, Parker’s now on my list of “gotta read this someday”.

The article is worth a read, but I was particularly interested in this snippet:

Parker said that in order to write fiction, he needed “big blocks of time. Time to be bored. Liquori said you need to be bored to train well, so that your workout becomes the most interesting part of your day.”

Wow, yes. To my mind, this fits beautifully with the concept of “workiness” that we’ve just been discussing here. Workiness fills up your time so that there’s no boredom — indeed, no slack time — but it also ensures that you won’t give a dedicated investment of time and energy to your most important projects, whether that means your novel or your athletic training or your music or your entrepreneurship or whatever.

Not everybody would describe this as boredom, but I certainly could do with — no, strike that, I am pursuing actively — a lot less freneticism in my days, and a lot more “boring” stretches of time in which nothing but my most central activities draw my attention.

“He that plants a tree loves others besides himself.”
–Thomas Fuller

~~~

Besides its direct application to trees, and its broader application to stewardship of the land, this quotation touches on a vital theme in my own outlook on life: the need to love others besides yourself. I was raised in this ethos in church and within my family, and still today one of the things that most turns my stomach is the selfishness of those who love none but themselves. My own sense of self-interest is keen, and I begrudge no one for tending to their own well-being. But when people cannot see beyond their own self-interest . . . they are inevitably stunted and inferior as human beings.

Following up on yesterday’s progress . . .

–Took even more journals to cold-storage in the garage, freeing up shelf space in the living room for . . .

– . . . books weeded out from my nightstand, which is now not overwhelmed by excess stuff to read.

–Made a trip to Goodwill to drop off a humongous sack of old kids’ clothes (culled by my lovely wife) and a couple of old toys.

–Dropped off a bunch of empty cardboard six-pack holders at my favorite shop for libations.

Baby steps all the way, if that’s what it takes.