Important Stuff

By Ronald N. Guy Jr

The workday is done.  Dinner is consumed and cleaned up.  Other daily audulting (yes, it’s a verb) nonsense - paying bills, ironing clothes, making lunches for the next day – is complete.  An aging domestic warrior saunters upstairs, grabs the remote and flips on the television.

Countless channels are available (the spoils of a modern world enabling sedentation), but only a few are needed – i.e. the ones broadcasting live sports.  Every night over these last few fabulous weeks has offered NBA and NHL playoff showdowns in New York, Raleigh, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and several cities north of the 49^th parallel (Canada!).  “Waiter, I’ll take one of everything, please!”

An ancillary routine has emerged in my household during execution of the ritual described above.  The games beamed from across the hinterland into my man-loft inevitably produce a fantastic shot or sick goal that prompts a loud guttural sound from my loins that would make my hairy, meat-eating, cave-dwelling ancestors proud.  On cue, my son, whose bedroom is adjacent to the man-loft, will run in to survey the scene.  He’s likely been watching the same event and takes the primal reaction next door as evidence of my presence upstairs and an invitation to watch the rest of this night’s fantastic competition with his old man.

As east cost dwellers, we stay up past our bedtimes to watch to conclusion.  I neither have nor want the discipline to turn off epic games in crunch time.  I certainly don’t want my kid thinking he should.  This is important stuff! 

Important stuff.  The games?  Yes, of course.  These are the greatest athletes in the world battling for their sports’ biggest prize and team and individual immortality.  But something more important is happening.

An admission: Sometimes I don’t watch the games.  My mind wanders.  My vision drifts from the television.  And I just watch my kid, the one-time little fellow who is now entering quasi-adulthood.  He jumps.  He laughs.  He produces similar caveman noises.  Most importantly, though, he’s present, with me, in this moment.  Age and life experience have provided me the wisdom to recognize the preciousness of these daily gatherings and this moment in time.  This will not hold.  It will not last.  There’s a clock on this experience, just like the one governing the games we watch.  The countdown to zero is inevitable. 

My son is a high school senior.  He’s off to college this fall and our lives will never be the same.  The life that we’ve both known since he arrived as we all did – naked and screaming gloriously – is about to change forever.  I know this because I’ve lived it as a younger man and as a father (with his older sister).  I think he does too, as much as he can.  We’ve never actually talked about it, but it is what draws us together at night.  I’ll admit that I embellish my reactions during these games, ensuring he can hear me.  I smile wide when I hear his door open seconds later, indicating he’s in-bound.  Do my eyes sometimes swell with tears as he darts into the room?  Every time.  Why?  Because next year he won’t be down the hall for the NBA and NHL playoffs.  He’ll be in a dorm room.  I’ll be in my man-loft - alone.  Sure, we can text and FaceTime, but it won’t be like this.  Not next year.  Not the year after.  Probably never again.

During this graduation season, many families are facing this same inflection point.  The emotional roller coaster is real – a combination of sentimentality and excitement for the present and future.  What I tell myself: I have to be okay with my son’s departure for college.  This is how it’s supposed to be.  He’s worked hard and created this opportunity; this is the first step in building his life, not existing in the life his mother and I built for him.  Like a lot of parents, I’ll get to this point eventually.  For now, it’s elusive and I’m just grateful for sports, the daily games and the treasured memories they are creating for this dad and his son.

Hockey Pucks and Fried Eggs

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

Imagine the innocent hockey puck.  It’s held firmly in a warm hand, unsuspecting of the future it was designed to endure.  The calm ends with an abrupt slam to a hard, cold surface, followed milliseconds later by a violent beating from competing weapons.  The subsequent 60 minutes are a demolition derby, as the poor little puck is slapped, kicked, slammed against boards and deflected off metal posts.  Some die heroes (souvenirs for fans).  Others find the briefest of reprieves – a soft landing in a comfy net – but even this well-earned rest can prompt a chorus of displeased boos (an opponent’s goal).

Pondering the life of a hockey puck of course led to a memory from the 1980s.  Remember that anti-drug commercial with the egg and the frying pan?  A blazing hot pan is shown on the screen while a disembodied voice proclaims, “This is drugs”.  A cracked egg then lands in the pan and immediately begins to sizzle while the chilling voice from the beyond declares, “This is your brain on drugs…any questions?”

Forty years later, I have one.  Actually, it’s a statement.  Conferring recently with a dear friend of similar vintage and trusted source of wisdom, we concluded that our brains are frying on the daily in a new, well-oiled pan: The consistent onslaught of information-age stimuli.  First it was email.  Then social media.  Then smart phones brought 24/7 connectivity to all things and produced crispy-fried brains – i.e. agitated, over-stimulated and wounded - worldwide.  Now 30 years in to what is clearly a never-ending adaptation cycle, we both acknowledged fatigue - our original curiosity and determination to keep pace with technology being replaced with a palpable dose of “I just don’t give a damn anymore.”      

It is two days later and I’m typing this piece while watching games in a quad box and monitoring text messages from other sports degenerates.  Glorious?  In some over-indulgent fantastic way, yes.  In others this method of modern sports consumption, which is metaphorical for our daily lives, is in a dimension all its own.  In an effort to be everywhere, are we really present anywhere?  It is a question best pondered in a dimly lit room and with proper mental lubricants in play: classic jazz playing, incense wafting though the air and a decent amount of whisky having been consumed by the conversationalist. 

In that aforementioned discussion with my dear friend and fellow member of Gen-X, we had none of those ingredients, but we made due with salads, iced tea and the multi-decade poporri of pop music that was playing in the background.  We talked about our unique place in history, as the last generation that will remember life before the internet and the first to encounter and wrestle with its impact and evolution – in the workplace, as parents and across all aspects of society.  We cherished our ability to escape it all as needed; after a tough day at school there were no text messages to fear or address, there was only the therapeutic solitude of the basketball court in the backyard.  We reminisced about how we used to consume music – hunting for the latest album, scoring it at a record shop, listening to it front to back (no skipping), finding the hits and exploring the deep cuts, learning all the words – and our sympathy for kids today who are robbed of that magic by the instantaneous, superficial world of digital downloads.  Road trips were another topic.  Truth be told, I wouldn’t trade the power of GPS, but navigating with a road atlas and a little bit of directional chaos sure created some epic adventures.  Sports were very different too.  We felt closer to our teams and our favorite athletes, even though they were far less accessible; the suggestion being that a child’s imagination is a better gap-filler than a website, YouTube or a social media follow. 

At the conclusion of our discussion, we parted ways with a hearty bro-hug, an appreciation for the emergent circumstances that brought us together, gratitude for genuine, focused human contact and this definitive conclusion: We grew up in the best of times.

Off-putting

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

“The Lakers just traded Anthony Davis for Luka Doncic.” 

My son burst into our sports loft one night earlier this year and spoke those words.  I was skeptical.  My bull-stinky-stuff meter registered “likely”.  The boy, this dear offspring of mine, has an ability to deadpan some nugget of marginally believable news and make you buy it.  It’s annoying, but he’s good.  I feel no shame admitting he has fooled me several times, enough where I’ve debated continuing to provide food and shelter. 

I wasn’t taking the trickster’s bait this time.  Nice try, kiddo, but you went too big.  There is no way the Mavericks traded Luka to the Lakers.  Then defiant dad met the telling screen of his humored son’s cell phone.  The Mavericks had in fact shipped Doncic to the City of Angels.

The trade made no sense on paper.  The Mavericks received Davis, 32, an older, inferior player to Doncic on an expensive, multiyear contract.  The Lakers welcomed Doncic, a 26-year-old franchise anchor and one of the best ballers in the world.  There were other players, teams and draft assets involved, but none of consequence.  This was, for all intents and purposes, a dubious one-for-one that justified this gray-bearded dad’s doubt of his prankster offspring.  So, what was Dallas thinking?  Former Notre Dame head football coach Lou Holtz might have captured the Maverick’s mentality when he said, “Don’t tell people your problems: 80% don’t care and 20% are glad you have them.” 

Prior to the trade, I was aware of the book on Doncic: elite scorer, defensively challenged and a bit fussy.  Meh: That’s the story with most modern stars.  But a move from Dallas to Los Angeles, from the Mavs to the 17-time NBA champion Lakers, brings more than a jersey change: a much, much bigger stage awaits.  After being just an occasional video acquaintance for years, it felt like Laker Luka was screen-side every other night.  It offered a different view from the bleachers - more thorough, more nuanced, more complete.  The familiarity of full Luka exposure bred contempt.  My conclusion after just a few months: Watching this guy regularly for extended periods is intolerable. 

In arriving at this place of total judgment, I acknowledge that I am the old sports fan screaming from the porch with a snarl on my face, a can of beer grasped tightly in my hand and an ever-present ache in my back.  I don’t care; my conviction is unwavering.  Much like what a dying Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks) urged Private Ryan (Matt Damon) to do in “Saving Private Ryan”, Doncic has earned this.  Doncic is a great scorer and a challenged defender, but these words define him: whiney brat.  My beef with Doncic: He complains about every call.  Not some.  Not only during timeouts.  Every call.  Often while the game is still being played.  As if he is the center of the universe and the world should stop while he airs his grievances.  Doncic’s whining is in a class by itself, even in a league where officiating complaints are routine.  Doncic’s behavior, and sense of entitlement to everything, is so off-putting that it completely overshadows his game.  A two-year-old fit follows every time he possesses the ball and a defender makes the slightest contact.  If Amazon sold emotional intelligence, I’d ship him some.

Seeing Doncic flail, flip his arms in the air and fire verbal barbs at officials sends the mind on rewind, back to players like Art Monk, Cal Ripken and Barry Sanders – consummate professionals who carried themselves with class and dignity.  Did they get every call?  Did the game always go their way?  Of course not.  Juxtaposing how Doncic and these three greats handled adversity, unfairness or even the unjust, offers a teaching moment.  Is it about you?  What you want?  What you deserve?  In the moment and always?  Or is it about staying focused, overcoming resistance and propelling a group to victory?  Putting appearances aside, it’s unclear how Doncic would answer those questions as he obnoxiously announces his problems to all.  That said, one can begin to understand why Dallas made the deal.  Lou Holtz certainly would. 

The Gr8 Familiar

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

It is a dreary Saturday afternoon after a monsoon blew through Southern Maryland.  Walking in the yard sounds like skipping across a saturated sponge.  Best to settled in for some deep couch sitting and, what’s this, an encore showing of “Avengers: Infinity War”. 

No happy endings with this one: Thanos victorious, the Avengers broken and half the universe’s beings reduced to dust by the combined power of the Infinity Stones and the snap of Thanos’s fingers.  Those left were more confused than hurt, unable to process the speed and depth of change.  It feels like College Park was just a victim of Thanos’s omnipotence.  Just days after the best season in men’s basketball in a decade, the coach (his name will not be typed here) and every player of consequence is gone – to graduation, to the NBA Draft, to the transfer portal.  New names and faces are gradually filling the vacancies, but the only thing familiar about next season will be the jerseys.

Familiar.  It is a highly valued commodity as a child.  As one ages into adulthood, there’s an assumed disruption, as life, opportunity, school, career, friend groups and significant others pull in all directions.  Then mid-life arrives, somehow by surprise despite society’s and an aging body’s strict and inescapable keeping of time, and familiarity again becomes a desired state of mind and being.  And for a world that encountered a pandemic and has been on tilt ever since, the added disruption and confusion has created great weight on conscious minds that crave a recognizable stasis. 

Even in chaos, seekers can find familiarity.  It can been in simple things: a spouse’s warm smile, a favorite dish, a drive through town or the feel and smell of a dear pet hugged tightly to one’s chest.  There is familiarity in big things too: the moon overhead on a clear night, the incomprehensible beauty of mountains extending into the horizon when viewed from a peak in Shenandoah National Park, a sports team you’ve followed all your life, or in a star player that feels like a friend despite you never having met.

Reflecting on Terps basketball, this season won’t be anomaly; it is indicative of the way things are and a predictor of the future more than a one-off created by the confluence of strange circumstances.  Stated more bluntly, there will never be another Juan Dixon or Len Bias, players we watched grow up over four years and grow into a national champion and the greatest player in program history.

Local pro sports have provided a few athletes that were “Great Oaks” in our lives.  Skins fans enjoyed 20 seasons with Darrell Green.  Ravens fans had a similar run with Ray Lewis.  The greatest example, and something out of a fairy tale, was Cal Ripken Jr.’s career with the Orioles.  Local kid.  Dad worked for the O’s.  Drafted by the team.  Played 21 seasons in Baltimore.  Won two MVPs, a World Series, sets the consecutive games played record and punches an immediate ticket into the Hall of Fame.  Does it get any better than that?

No, but it can get as good. 

Alex Ovechkin has been in the news of late for an extraordinary feat: breaking Wayne Gretzky’s goals scored record by netting number 895.  In a sport where 50 goals in a season is an extraordinary accomplishment, scoring nearly 900 once seemed impossible.  Ovechkin has disregarded previously held hockey and human limits.  After being the top overall pick in the 2004 NHL Draft, Ovechkin’s career in Washington has somehow exceeded all expectations: perennial all-star, three Hart Trophies (MVP), nine Rocket Richard Trophies (league leader in goals scored), a Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP), a Stanley Cup, and now the all-time goals scored record.

Immediate thoughts of Ovechkin lock on these superlatives.  In the afterglow of his record-breaking goal, though, there is something else, something extraordinarily simple.  For 20 years now, flipping on a Caps game has meant seeing Ovechkin, D.C.’s great hockey oak, on the ice.  The hits, the tooth-challenged grin and that that glorious shot from his “office”: In an otherwise ever-changing world, Ovechkin’s unchanged and perfectly familiar.

Cup of Coffee

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

27.  16.  9.  As in 27 wins and a Sweet Sixteen berth – both milestones last reached nine years ago.  That is what the Maryland men’s basketball team accomplished this season.  And what a fun team it was.  The ingredient list was diverse: star freshman Derik Queen; Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Rodney Rice and Selton Miguel, three huge portal additions; and Julian Reese, the rarest of college athletes – a senior who spent all four years at Maryland.  The season featured buzzer beaters – both for and against the Terps – gritty conference battles, a cool nickname (“The Crab Five”, an ode to those five aforementioned starters, Michigan’s “Fab Five” from the early 1990s and our state’s fabulous crustacean) and an epic bank shot by Queen to send the Terps to the Sweet Sixteen.

So, all is good in College Park, then.  Ahhh…if it was that easy it wouldn’t be life or major college sports.  There’s a fly in the ointment.  A black spot on the sun.  Pineapple on pizza.  Fruit in beer.  Pick your favorite idiom that best expresses a flaw in a masterpiece.

Head coach Kevin Willard isn’t happy.  He doesn’t like not knowing who will be Maryland’s athletic director and his boss (AD Damon Evans recently departed for SMU).  And he wants more NIL money for the basketball program.  More resources and a clear chain of command.  These are fair asks. 

The issue is Willard used the NCAA Tournament platform as his Festivus, an “airing of grievances” to the extreme pleasure of Frank Costanza.  A day before his team was play its opening round game in the crown jewel of the sport, a moment that can create memories for a lifetime, and while he was still very much employed, at a rate of $4M a year, Willard chose the podium in front of a national audience to register his complaints against the university.  His complaints.  His asks.  While the Villanova job, one he’s certainly interested in, sat quietly open.  There are no coincidences, as the saying goes, or boundaries for seeking personal gain, apparently. 

Since that initial bombshell press conference, Willard has done little to dispel the rumors of his departure.  In the same breath that he has repeated his issues with Maryland, he’s pledged his love for the university and his focus on his players and this moment.  It’s a lot of yada, yada, yada, to use another Seinfeld reference.  The punch is so full of, well, not punch now that it’s hard to imagine Willard returning to Maryland.  So be it.  This is the game now.

College basketball games are still amazing.  The athleticism is off the charts.  The tournament remains a fantastic experience.  But for fans - the ones with long history, lots of memories, psychological scars and incredible highs with their schools, the ones who bleed the colors and wear the gear and genuinely hurt after losses – this product feels inorganic. 

Willard doesn’t love Maryland.  He loved the opportunity when he got it and the accompanying salary.  Do the players love Maryland?  Maybe Reese.  Queen, a local kid?  Hard to say, but when asked about listening to his coach, he quipped that Willard’s the guy paying him.  The rest?  Did they choose Maryland or did Maryland simply offer the best financial and basketball situation? 

The competition still matters.  The score still matters.  Coaches coach hard; players play hard.  The score still matters - you can’t fake it at this level and win 27 games.  And the overall experience still matters.  But the colors and the name on the front of the jersey don’t matter; in most places everyone involved in these programs is there for a cup of coffee and personal gain.  Everyone is on a one-year contract.

A lot of suits made a lot of money off college sports for a long time.  Players sharing in the revenue they create seems right; massive coaching salaries do too.  But the fan experience doesn’t have the same depth anymore.  There’s no marination, no team building, only an annual frenzy catering to a powerful force: self-interest.  Which makes college sports a reflection of the modern world it exists within.

A Farewell to Words

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

We were introduced via a rolled up, well-traveled newspaper.  Our meetings were frequent.  He did all the talking.  His opinions would occasionally cause me to mumble a reply or blurt out a passionate counterpoint, but he never heard a word I said.  On any day.  Ever.  The one-way interactions weren’t bothersome; we had a lot in common – music, righteousness, an appreciation for writing and the press, and, most importantly, an insatiable appetite for sports. 

For my entire childhood, my dad was out the door long before my alarm rang for school.  Accompanying him, on a road to some Southern Maryland jobsite, was that day’s edition of The Washington Post.  He would return home long after my school day ended with a folded and tightly rolled Sports section with him, looking as used and abused as his work boots.  To me, it was perfect.  Pure gold. 

Within this daily masterpiece was a window into one of the few worlds that made sense and provided comfort during adolescence: sports.  I poured through box scores, monitored individual player statistics and religiously read the literary works of talented columnists.  Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were my go-tos.  I loved Kornheiser’s humor and Wilbon’s directness.  But there were others.  Thomas Boswell.  Sally Jenkins.  David Aldridge.  Even an infrequent piece by the legendary Shirely Povich.  Think about that list.  Extraordinary talents, many of whom transcended the pages of The Post to find greater fame. 

The Post’s Sport section is where I “met” another of my favorite writers: John Feinstein.  Feinstein, author of numerous sports and children’s book, may have been the most prolific writer of them all.  His book, “A Season on the Brink” about the 1985-86 Indiana Hoosiers men’s basketball team and Bob Knight, its combative head coach, is regarded as one of the best sports books of all time.  (“Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball” is a recommended read for distraction seekers - and who isn’t?)  Like many Post colleagues, Feinstein also grew beyond print media, doing stints on ESPN’s classic show “The Sports Reporters” and a long-running weekly appearance on the The Sports Junkies radio show. 

John Feinstein died suddenly last week.  He was 69.  Fittingly, given his prolific writing career, his last Post column was published on the day he passed.  The tone is routine Feinstein and the subject, the longevity of Michigan State men’s basketball Head Coach Tom Izzo, is benign.  But the near future that would be realized soon after Feinstein created this piece made it a heavy read; to borrow a title from a classic Ernest Hemingway novel, it is a farewell to the author, the words he produced and those left unwritten, at least in this dimension. 

Life is full of farewells, “final columns”, if you will.  The last day of formal schooling.  The last day of work.  The last time you fish with a childhood friend.  The last time you hike that intense summit trail in Shenandoah.  The last time you see a favorite athlete play.  The last birthday.  The last Christmas.  The last beer.  The last hug.  The last kiss.  The last day.

Some “lasts” are predictable, most are not.  At the confluence of ego and foolishness, one will often find the human brain sorting through such milestones, filtering on the most undesirable ones and setting an estimated arrival date based on an assumed general order of life events.  The illusion of control is powerful, indeed.  Meanwhile, another little voice in our heads, one often dismissed because its truth is terribly uncomfortable, points to the folly, even to the tragedy, of such thinking.  I’ll hike that trail next spring.  I’ll schedule that round of golf with my old roommates in a few months.  I’ll tell my wife and kids I love them tomorrow.

Tomorrow.  Next week.  Next month.  Assumptions. 

John Feinstein’s end of life perspective is unknown, but I’ll take this from his parting bow: By leaving us with a posthumous article and a new book just published last November, he was writing it hard - living his craft and his life - to the very end. 

Finding Footing

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

The line it is drawn.  The curse it is cast.  The slow one now will later be fast.  As the present now will later be past.  The order is rapidly fading.  And the first one now will later be last.

Those words, the last verse of an iconic song, were written by a famous poet from Minnesota over fifty years ago and released to the world in 1964.  While many Bob Dylan’s songs are abstract word paintings that evolve over time and leave the meaning in any moment to the listener, “Times They Are A-Changin’” clearly speaks to a world and a current reality shifting under foot.  The gist of Dylan’s musical sermon is this: The old order is done, the present is strange and new, and the future remains a great unknown. 

At the core of the song’s timelessness is its lyrical wisdom.  The ground is always moving under our feet.  Change is the only constant.  Control and stasis are but an illusion.  But there are certainly times that are more fluid than others.  In 1964, America was processing the recent death of John F. Kennedy, escalating commitments in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Act and desegregation.  The currents of change flowed briskly.  Enter Bob Dylan to capture, in song, a moment in history that stirred a spectrum of human emotions.

With that opening, what happened in D.C. sports last fall seems insignificant.  Historically, it is, but for fans of Washington football - a lot that covers the gamut from blinded-by-love forever-fans, graybeards whose interest succumbed to decades of losing and off-field atrocities, and youth who have known no success – last season is as big as anything experienced since the burgundy and gold last hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in early 1992.

In roughly a four-month period, the competence of new leadership was confirmed, the seeds of cultural change were planted, sowed and sprouted, and, most importantly, a franchise quarterback, indisputably the most important asset in any sport across the globe, was found.  

“Jayden Daniels”, the concept not specifically the player, happens in other places.  Patrick Mahomes rewrites Kansas City history.  Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Joe Burrough make Baltimore, Buffalo and Cincinnati perennial contenders.  Jordan Love, Justin Herbert and C.J. Stroud make Packers, Chargers and Texans fans rightfully hopeful.  Such things never occur in D.C.  Heath Shuler, Gus Frerotte, Trent Green, Brad Johnson, Patrick Ramsey, Jason Campbell, Donovan McNabb, Robert Griffin, Kirk Cousins and Alex Smith all delivered only false hope.  Jayden Daniels feels different.

With one epic season in the books, the present for Washington football, unlike Dylan’s long-ago suggestion of never-ending uncertainty, has painted a crystal clear future, dictated by finance.  Daniels is signed through the 2027 season (with a club option for 2028).  His cap hits for those seasons range from $8M to just over $12M; these figures are a quarter of that of other elite quarterbacks.  Translation: Washington is now all-in.  The team has four seasons to capitalize on its quarterback bargain and spend wildly across its roster.

It feels like “Times They Are A-Changin’” has been playing in a constant loop since at least the pandemic.  To grab a metaphor from nature, life over the last five years has been less deep-rooted, steadfast oak and much more like occupying a boat on rough seas or being a leaf in a brisk autumn breeze.  Superficially the world looks familiar, but much has changed on a global, national and personal level.  That the Commanders are suddenly competent, have a foundation for long-term success and just played for a spot in the Super Bowl – crazy talk just 18 months ago - is more evidence of a world flipped on its head.  It also indicates how quickly fortunes can change, even after a lengthy, hope-sapping malaise.  One supposes the take-away is to seek moments of footing, remain confident in their arrival and be poised to capitalize.  It might not be as obvious and impactful as drafting Jayden Daniels, and it could get lost in the flow of life, but opportunity will wash ashore.  And even Dylan would agree that while change is constant, progress need not be flat.