The Pistol

Yesterday was the anniversary of Pete Maravich breaking the NCAA scoring record set by the Big O - Oscar Robertson. He ended with 3,667 points and an unbelievable 44.2 points-per-game - both records still. No one conceives of the per-game record being broken.
Pete played college ball when freshman were not allowed to play varsity in college though he started for his high school varsity as an eighth grader. Those who saw him play speak with incredulous glee as basketball has never seen the likes of the Pistol. He sold out the LSU "  Cow Palace" for freshman games because he every game was an exhibition. He scored 50 in his first game. The LSU varsity arrived as the freshman game wound down and saw the packed house. Those numbers dwindled quickly with the close of the freshman game.

Two stories from Mark Kriegel's The Pistol.  Pete, 11, was at a basketball camp where Lefty Dreisell, then Davidson's coach, instructed. "'I've never seen a player like that. He was the hardest working athlete I've ever been around. It'd be 110 degrees, and he'd be dribbling or throwing the ball against a cement wall hours at a time.'
'Pete,' Dreisell would say, 'you're working too hard.'
'I'm gonna be a millionaire, coach.' The boy kept going, throwing all those fancy passes against the wall.
'I ain't never seen Oscar Robertson throw nothing but a plain old chest pass,' said Dreisell.
'They don't pay you a million to throw a plain old chest pass.'"

LSU played Lou Carnesecca's St. John's team in the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii. Pete scored 40 points in the second half to St. John's 39. Lou Carnesecca called it "the best performance in basketball I had ever seen." Kriegel writes, "The passes were more memorable than the shots, as they were thrown in ways the city-slick Carnesecca had never even considered: blind, behind the head, off the wrist. Upon his return to the mainland, Carnesecca alerted the New York basketball establishment. 'You talk of Jerry West or Oscar Robertson or any of those great ones. Maravich is better.'"
Check out the passes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVnJeKX5OeY
 

Russ

Sports books captured my attention as a boy, along with history, probably to supply fodder for my imagination. I imagined myself to play, for example, with the Boston Celtics' many championship teams. It wasn't that Boston demanded my affinity, it was Bill Russell's Go Up For Glory (out of print).

 It provided an eye-opening journey into the racist world facing black players in the 50's and 60's. It introduced me to the great players and coach of the team that won 11 championships in 13 years and eight straight.

Mr. Russell faced the most dominant player of that era, Wilt Chamberlain. The Celtics got the best of Chamberlain more often than not and Russell got the best of Chamberlain. They were different players and different men. Chamberlain was offensively minded - the only player ever to score 100 points in a game and earned a reputation for being difficult to coach. Bill Russell was a defensive specialist and a great rebounder. Possibly the best shot-blocker in NBA history, he made sure his teammates got the ball off of a block rather than sending it to the stands.

Red Auerbach relished beating the Warriors/76'ers and Lakers (Chamberlain's teams) and Russell's edge over Chamberlain. I believe it was 1965 when Chamberlain commanded a contract for the then unheard of sum of $100,000. Auerbach stood firmly behind his man and got Russell $1 more - $100,001.

The team team blended not only the unique talents of the players - Bob Cousey, Bill Sharman, KC and Sam Jones, Russell, John Havlicek, Tom Heinsohn, etc. - a reflection of Red Auerbach's ability to recognize those talents and to weave them into an effective unit. It is not easy to get men to lay aside their egos but Auerbach effectively cast the vision of what might be if they would work together. The real mastery may well have been pioneering a racially diverse team during those years. Ironically, those Celtics represented Boston which divided along racial lines. Russell became the first black head coach in the NBA.

A memory of one of Russell's stories: if memory serves, the team played one night with a heckler sitting courtside wearing out the Celtics. They set up a play to deal with the man. One of the players ran to the sideline in front of the man. The ball swung round to the same side of the key. A hard two-handed chest pass flew towards the Celtic perched on the sideline. At the last second, he side-stepped, the ball whizzing past him...into the face of the heckler.

A Life of Service

     James Bradley followed his successful and moving Flags of Our Fathers with another World War II work, Flyboys. At times disturbing, Flyboys takes a different tack on the Pacific war. He confronts the reader with much more of the Japanese perspective, which naturally runs cross grain to the American understanding of the war, motivations, and right/wrong.
     The tale of the exploits of the 41st American President, George H.W. Bush, reached out and grabbed me by the collar. President Bush lives a life of service and that life includes not only serving as President, but also two terms as the Vice President with Ronald Reagan; congressman, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Ambassador to the United Nations. This does not touch the life of post-Presidential humanitarian service he continues to live. Why such a dedication to public service?
     His service as a Naval aviator in the Pacific offers a clue. Bradley tells of the operations against the Japanese radio station on the island of Chichi Jima in which President Bush flew a Grumman Avenger with a crew of three. The plane took anti-aircraft fire and Bush struggled to keep the plane on course. After delivering the payload, he then struggled to allow get his crew free from the burning plane.  The efforts failed.

Wounded, Mr. Bush floated alone, wondering if he would be captured. His remarkable rescue by and time aboard the USS Finback etched a sense of purpose on his heart as he reflected on what had happened.
"I'll never forget the beauty of the Pacific - the flying fish, the stark wonder of the sea the waves breaking across the bow. It was absolutely dark in the middle of the Pacific; the nights were so clear and the stars so brilliant. It was wonderful and energizing, a time to talk to God. 
I had time to reflect , to go deep inside myself and search for answers, People talk about a kind of foxhole Christianity, where you're in trouble and you think you're going to die so you want to make everything right with God and everybody else right there in the last minute. 
But this was just the opposite of that. I had already faced death; and God had spared me. I had this very deep and profound gratitude and a sense of wonder. Sometimes when there is a disaster people will say, 'Why me?' In an opposite way I had the same questions: why had I been spared and what did God have in store for me?"

A Sad Part of the Augusta Legacy...

    A friend and I met to hit some balls at a driving range some months ago and he pulled out an article clipped from, I believe, Golf Digest. It disturbed me. The content disturbed me and the lack of editorial comment disturbed me as it seems clear something should have been said.
   The article concerned, loosely, the Masters. As spring quickly approaches, so does the golfing highlight of the spring - The Masters. The course is unmatched for beauty and the design offers opportunity for drama and dexterity. It punishes mistakes. History speaks from every hole and every hole location. But I digress.
    The subject of the story was the boxer called Beau Jack, a one-time lightweight champion. He got his start at Augusta National. In fact, the legendary Mr. Bobby Jones, known as the greatest amateur ever to play, gave Beau Jack his start, staking him $2500 he'd raised from club members. Why would they invest in the career of this man?
    Beau Jack earned a reputation among the members of the club through "entertainment" he and other young black men provided. Here is a piece of the same article from Sports Illustrated:
    "IN THOSE days wealthy sportsmen would pit half a dozen blindfolded black men against each other, all at once, in a bloody spectacle called the battle royal. The last fighter standing was showered with coins. Fifteen-year-old Beau never lost a battle royal after he figured out a trick. "I stayed in a corner with my back to the ropes," he told Sports Illustrated years later. "Those other bigger fighters were busy trying to knock each other out. Whenever one of them backed up near me I slammed him good and knocked him out. One time my brother John Henry was in a battle royal with me, and we were the last two left. So I knocked him out, too."
    His biggest battle came during one of the first Masters. "All those rich people who'd come to Augusta to see the tournament had to be entertained at night," Jack said. "So the club put on this big battle royal in the dining room of the Bon-Air Hotel." The brawl came down to "me and one last big feller." Jack threw a long, looping bolo punch that knocked the man out. Now the men around the ring threw not coins but 10- and 20- and 50-dollar bills. He took $1,000 home that night.
    The steward at Augusta National gave Jack a job shining shoes at the club, where many of the golfers treated him as if he were invisible. "Only Mr. Bobby Jones had time for me," Jack told boxing writer Harry Zambelli."
    The story was told from the perspective of Beau Jack's boxing career, but the more important story is the sad and painful legacy of racism and hypocrisy behind the history of the Masters. I don't think CBS will touch it for fear of losing the television rights for the event. But I think it would be right for the club to openly acknowledge the shadowy and racist side of it's legacy and distance itself from a past where the veneer was never to be pierced lest the substance be open to genuine scrutiny.

The Right Stuff

Recently, a special aired featuring the operations and an inside look at Air Force One. The presidential transition from Bush to Obama was a feature. It was not flattering to Mr. Obama's understanding of military protocol (Commander-in-Chief) as he did not seem to grasp the type of man who would serve him as his pilot - a full-bird Air Force Colonel who obviously earned the position through a distinguished flying career. As Obama came on board, he said the following:  "You're exactly what I want the pilot of Air Force One to look like. You look like Sam Shepard [the actor who played Chuck Yeager] in The Right Stuff." 
      Why the president would not have been briefed on the Colonel's name and appropriate ways to honor the uniform was not disclosed. But to relate to him that he looked like an actor who played Chuck Yeager belies the substance of both the Colonel and the man Yeager himself. Why not honor him for carrying on the fine tradition of courage and service set by General Yeager and so many others?

     "Who's the greatest pilot you ever saw?" The theme of "The Right Stuff" was the sheer love of flying best demonstrated by the amazing career of General Yeager.
Briefly, he was shot down by a German FW-190 shortly after he began his service in Europe as a P-51 pilot. He managed to evade capture and was taken to a French safe house. The woman in charge said to him upon looking him over, "Why, you're just a boy... My God, has America run out of men?" Well... he did just fine, ma'am. Thank you.
     Upon return to the 8th Air Force, he was told he could not return to flying missions because he knew too much about the French Underground and were he to be captured, it would not go well for him as the Germans kept record of who had been shot down. He relentlessly pressed against the regulation until he was back in the cockpit. He became the 8th Air Force's first "ace in a day" with five kills. Donald Miller describes him in Masters of the Air in this way: "Yeager was a born aerial killer, with matchless vision and reflexes, and, in one flight leader's words, 'more (manliness) than brains." In World War II he flew 64 missions with 13 downed enemy planes to his credit.  And he was just getting started...

Perspective

Most people don't know the name Ralph Guldahl. He is in the Golf Hall of Fame. You've probably heard the names Johnny Miller or Greg Norman. Mr. Guldahl won more major championships than either of them. He won three majors, as many as Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson currently have. Guhldahl was, from 1936-1939, perhaps the hottest golfer in professional golf - winning two U.S. Opens, a Masters (with another in his grasp until missing a short par putt to lose to Byron Nelson) and three Western Opens - the only player ever to win back-to-back U.S. Opens and Westerns. At the time, the Western was considered on nearly the same level as a major. Known as a cool customer on the course, Sam Snead once said, "If Guldahl gave someone a blood transfusion, the patient would freeze to death." Snead also complimented Guldahl's swing saying he went back on line and through on line "near as perfect as any player I've ever seen."
But his success disappeared seemingly overnight - from being a brilliant ball striker to one who could barely play - mystifying his fellow competitors. Fellow Hall of Famer Paul Runyon (two PGA championships) is quoted saying,  "It's the most ridiculous thing, really. He went from being temporarily the absolute best player in the world to one who couldn't play at all."
Why? While the reason may not be certain, Guldahl may have let a faulty perspective undermine his swing and his confidence. He apparently did an intructional booklet featuring a series of photos that, if they were flipped through, would look like a moving image of his swing (high tech for the time!). He made the mistake of studying his own swing. The problem was one of perspective. You see, the photographer stood slightly forward of Ralph shooting, not straight on, but at a slight angle. Fooled by the perspective of the photos, he tinkered with the ball position in his stance and soon lost not only the correct position but his swing and his successful playing career.
Isn't it the case that a wrong perspective can deeply affect so many things - our relationship with God for example. Do I view myself, my circumstances, my future through the lens of the promises of God's word or my perspective? We must continually be reminded of the undying and unchanging love of God for us in Christ and not yield to a faulty view.
Perhaps if Ralph had a friend or teacher who could have corrected his perspective, things might have turned out differently.

Pressing On

We looked briefly at Henry Knox, the prominent Revolutionary War general, in a recent post - a remarkable man whom history linked with other remarkable men, most notably George Washington.
David McCullough referenced a quote from General Knox at the opening of a chapter in 1776. It caught my attention.

"  We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged."

 Given his exploits, he was not a man easily given to discouragement. Neither was his senior, General Washington. McCullough does not water down the numerous, and seemingly constant challenges faced by our first president. Those challenges came from every side. He faced a well-armed and seasoned British army who also additionally employed the mercenary Hessians to aide their efforts at putting down the rebellion. Logistical issues pressed in the form of an army lacking necessary training, equipment, provisions, clothing, ammunition, and food. The winter weather decimated the ranks of the Colonial army along with sickness and disease. The morale of the army needed constant attention (Washington shines here). The terrain varied widely as the war traversed the mountainous of the northeast down through the coastal swamps of New York and New Jersey. Internal strife ate at the chain of command as orders and decisions were questioned and Washington's authority endured constant challenge.
Fortune, to use Henry Knox's term, frowned constantly on these men. Yet, in the light of history, their greatness shines.

Its in the Trying

    David McCullough's 1776 (the audio version, narrated by McCullough, is excellent) commends itself on several levels, but the leadership of Washington and his contemporaries, examined by McCullough, shines against the dark, and near hopeless, background of the revolutionary effort.

    Briefly, consider Henry Knox. A bookseller by trade, he used the time on the bookshop to study, of all things, artillery. He did not possess a military background, just the desire to learn and an opportunity presented itself to put his knowledge to use in 1775. He offered his service to George Washington. McCullough describes the events leading to the Colonials achieving the high ground on the Dorchester Heights above Boston, where the British and their navy were firmly entrenched. The problem they faced was no artillery. Knox offered to retrieve the more than 50 guns previously captured at Fort Ticonderoga.
    Leadership often means facing a need and determining how to meet it. Ideas are good. The challenge is what is the right idea? What idea is worth the effort? Knox saw the artillery retrieval as doable - not without logistical issues, but doable. His challenges took a different form than he anticipated.
     The weight of the guns and mortars totaled at least 120,000 pounds and the journey was 300 miles. The trek began in December, with snow and ice dominating the land. He and his team of men gathered more than 40 sledges to begin the backbreaking trek requiring the use of logs, horse, chain, rope, provisions. It would have been easier to say the task could not be done.
     The work was difficult and dangerous, requiring ingenuity to find ways to check and balance the great loads as they traversed over and down hills using rope and chain. At one point all of the guns had safely crossed a frozen river, when a large gun fell through thawing ice. It would have been easier to be content with the cargo already across the river. Retrieving the gun demanded great patience, tenacity, and strength. It required an engineer's mind to calculate the loads and angles. Yet Knox and the men persisted working in the freezing water.
     The group found the going grew more difficult due to an unexpected thaw which turned to hard-frozen ground to mud. The pace slowed to a crawl. They persevered. Finally the ground froze again, and the journey eased. All in all, it was February when the guns arrived.
     Knox decided to try. He overcame incredible difficulty by utilizing a team of men and their collective persistence and tenacity. They ignored the hardships of winter. Knox urged the men on when it is likely they would have been happy to quit. Because of Knox the British had quite the surprise finding Colonial artillery on the heights above them, with the precious navy, perched at docks, within range.
      There are always reasons not to lead, not to decide. Decisions aren't always right. One might fail utterly. One can be paralyzed weighing the options and seeking the best alternative. Questions cry for attention - "What if careful analysis misses something crucial?" "Is the time right?" "Can it be done?" "Will anyone follow?" Knox decided to try - and not give up. 

Amazing Grace

    At a time when golf news is dominated by Tiger Woods' turbulent personal life and questions about his return, let's briefly breathe some fresh air as we look forward to April's first major.
    How sad to read much of the commentary trying to navigate through the news of the latest revelations. Writers and broadcasters and fellow golfers stumble over themselves trying to find a way to make sense of what happened without appearing to condemn. Much effort is made to separate the public life of the golfer from the private life of the husband/father. Let's briefly consider another way - let's look at a man who saw no separation between his public and private life. In fact, it was his goal to live a life which was consistent on and off the course. Let's consider Byron Nelson.
Nelson competed against, to name two, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, some of the best. He knew well what it takes to be a champion golfer - concentration and consistency. It requires a singular focus. Even more when playing with clubs that were small with sweet spots smaller still and with balls needing to be checked hole by hole for roundness.  Contemporaries Snead and Hogan were known for their focus and competitive fire. Neither man was know for his graciousness. Snead, when asked by a guest at the Homestead Resort in Snead's hometown of Hot Springs, VA, for a quick look at his grip in the lobby, billed the man's room for a golf lesson. Hogan, whose playing partner one day made a hole-in-one on a par three, told the man as they left the green, "You know, that was the first time I ever birdied that hole." No mention was ever made of the ace. Nelson was different.
     Was he good? He won 11 straight tournaments - a record most think will never be broken (Tom Watson calls it "the 40' pole vault) - and 18 total in 1945. His career victory count stands at 54, sixth all-time, and five majors. He never won the British because he did not like boats and there was no air service to the U.K. during his playing days. His ball striking still captures the respect of the entire golf world and his 68.33 scoring record which stood for 55 years. He retired at age 34 to be with his wife and purchase the ranch that was to be their home. He died at 94, at home.
      What made him really stand out, despite being a recognized golfing great, was his gentlemanly demeanor. "I think the thing people will always talk about me is my degree of consistency on the golf course, winning money in 113 [straight] tournaments, but I want to be remembered as a good man and a Christian man. That's all that really matters," Nelson said in 2001 interview with Sports Illustrated.
"Not many golfers live as long as I have," Nelson said. "I have a young wife [his first wife, Louise, died of a stroke in the 1980s] and I don't smoke or drink or run around. In 2000, when the United States Golf Association had all the former champions back at Pebble Beach for the 100th anniversary of the tournament, there were 31 former champions there (Nelson won in 1939), but I was the only one from 1954 back to the beginning of the event. I was the only one still alive."

     "I don't know very much," Nelson said in a 1997 interview with The Associated Press. "I know a little bit about golf. I know how to make a stew. And I know how to be a decent man."
Consider the words of his peers.
Ken Venturi, who played on the PGA Tour with Nelson for years and remained one of his closest friends, offered this final summation, which would have most pleased his mentor."Byron is golf's greatest gentleman," he said.

Arnold Palmer said, "I don't think that anyone will ever exceed the things that Byron did by winning 11 tournaments in a row in one year, but I suppose that is not the most admirable thing that he did, although it was certainly tremendous. He was a fantastic person whom I admired from the time I was a boy."

PGA.com's Grant Boone wrote, "Byron Nelson wasn't randomly respectable, not generically good. He was a follower of Christ, and his discipleship dictated his decency, demeanor, decision-making, and the way he dealt with people. ... But Nelson never brandished his faith as a weapon, choosing instead to extend an empty and open hand in friendship to all comers. And did they ever come. Wherever the debate over which golfer is the best of all time ends, Byron Nelson was the game's finest man, hands down."
Cleveland Golf put together a tribute piece you can see.
     A man is a man. He is not separate pieces - what he is as an athlete or a business man, or any other walk of life, does not tell the whole story. Success as a whole man is success. One must view the whole man. Check out more of Byron Nelson's story.

A Sad Response

     Herbert Sobel gained notoriety through the publication of Band of Brothers and the following HBO production of the same name. This man, too, bore the consequences of his military experience long after the war ended. Compare and contrast James Stockdale and Herbert Sobel.
     Bitterness destroyed his life rather than memories of combat or lost friends. His experience could be anyone's - that is what makes his story sobering. What will we do when wronged by others?

     Sobel commanded the training of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division at a place called Toccoa in the Georgia mountains. Sobel earned the reputation of a hard driving and strict leader who arbitrarily dispensed discipline and harsh treatment of the men with seemingly no regard for them either as fellow men or fellow soldiers.The Company's website reports the following: "Sobel was a strict disciplinarian, handing out cruel punishments for seemingly harmless infractions of the rules. During training in England, he threatened to court-martial Lieut. Richard Winters for his alleged failure to inspect a latrine at the appointed hour. In response, Easy's non-commissioned officers offered to turn in their stripes out of loyalty to Winters. Shortly before the company headed to France on D-Day, Sobel was reassigned and became commander of a parachute jumping school. Despite Sobel's unpopularity, many credit Easy Company's success in battle to the rigorous standards that he set for his men."
     He carried bitterness towards the Company relentlessly through his post war life. The success of Dick Winters, and the regard the men had for him, may have paricularly eaten at him. He refused attempts at communication. He refused invitations to reunions. One member of the Company paid his annual dues for membership in the 101st Airborne association. His marriage failed and his two boys were estranged.
      The end was not pretty. He botched, according to Stephen Ambrose, an attempt to shoot himself. Neither his family nor any member of Easy Company attended his funeral.
      Contrast the bitterness at perceived wrongs which were no wrongs to the response of those men who emerged better men, not bitter, from their imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton  (prior post).
      Consider the words of Christ from Matt 6.14-15: "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

Personal Aftermath

I wondered as a boy why my father remained completely uncommunicative regarding his war experiences. He could not hide the scars near his waist as he cut the grass. That he'd been horribly wounded was clear, though I couldn't comprehend the significance or sacrifice.
I did not understand why something so fascinating and compelling to me as World War 2, remained taboo through nearly his whole life. His war experience proved to me an unsolved mystery... It wasn't so much a conversation informing me not to bring it up. It was one flash of anger when I vaguely recall pressing him for information during a car ride when I was about six. And he never got angry. I recoiled and withdrew. I probably took some other stabs along the way, but the island remained impenetrable.
I can never fully understand as I never served on combat. I read. I watch. I listen to interviews. I study photos. But it will never be the same. I am grateful to friends who shared their experiences and what it is like trying to bear the great weight of memories. Perhpas the story below explains one reason some men find it difficult to discuss combat experiences. Certainly the names and situations and circumstances vary widely but this is insightful and hopeful.
A story from the Epilogue of Band of Brothers: (Photo: Sisk on Left)

Sgt. Skinny Sisk also had a hard time shaking his war memories. In July, 1991, he wrote to winters to explain, "My career after the war was to try to drink away the truckload of Krauts that I stopped in Holland and the die-hard Nazi that I went up into the Bavarian Alps and killed. Old Moe Alley made a statement that all the killings that I did was going to jump in bed with me one of these days and they surely did.I had a lot of flashbacks aft the war and I started drinking. Ha! Ha!
Then my sister's little daughter, four years old, came into my bedroom (I was too unbearable to the rest of the family, too hung over or drunk) and she told me that Jesus loved me and she loved me and if I would repent God would forgive me for all the men I kept trying to kill over again. That little girl got to me. I put her out of my room, told her to go to Mommy, There and then I bowed my head on my Mother's old feather bed and repented and God forgave me for the war and all the other bad things I had done down through the years. I was ordained in the latter part of 1949 into the ministry and believe me, Dick, I haven't whipped bu one man since and he needed it. I have four children, nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren. 
The Lord willing and Jesus tarrys (sic) I hope to see you all at the next reunion. If not I'll see you on the last jump. I know you won't freeze in the door."
The Rev.Wayne Sisk passed away to be with his Lord on July 13,1999.