Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Double Negative

Wednesday night's game turned out to be a near-rerun of Tuesday night's walkoff victory, except this time it was 2-1, I wasn't in attendance at the game, and it was Jason Varitek instead of Kevin Youkilis filling the role of Big Stud with the Big Hit.

And it was a studly hit, bounding with authority into center field while Manny hauled ass to score from second. Also in contrast to the previous night, Vernon Wells had not bobbled the first dribbling single hit his way in an attempt to score Jed Lowrie, and had cut the Sox rookie down at the plate with a surehanded throw. After Manny crossed the plate to finally shove that run across, he flung down his batting helmet, an exclamation point on the victory.

I've heard it said that it has been determined by scientists that if you were to model the entire history of baseball using a series of totally random coin tosses, you would essentially get the same historical record of statistics as actually exists. I can't help but think of that when I think about how a team with so much of the same personnel can have such a totally different character so early into a new season. Last year, I grudgingly got used to the fact that the Sox were not a big comeback team--this year, they seem to have done nothing but come back.

It has been exciting, but I'll also confess to some relief last night, when they finally laid a good old fashioned smackdown on somebody, that somebody being the Tampa Bay Rays, restoring some order to the universe after occupying the receiving end of last weekend's sweep.

After it was pointed out by a coworker that my attendance at the first of the five lost games last week may not have been coincidental, I predicted that my reappearance at the park Tuesday would be like a double negative, turning their luck again. I'm often mocked for my superstitiousness, but that night turned out to be the first of three victories this week and the consensus best game of the season so far. Now, it seems the reappearance of the Rays is having a similar effect, restoring the Sox to normal baseball just as they threw them off track in the previous series.

This is the thing about that series of random coin-tosses that make up baseball. Randomness is full of patterns.

***

I finally got around to editing, posting, labeling and tagging the last two weeks' worth of baseball photos on Flickr. Here are some highlights from Tuesday's Blue Jays game (click for photo page):

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I also want to point out one more thing about Tuesday's game, now that I've watched the TV broadcast as well. I was particularly paying attention to Jonathan's inning, of course, and I was struck by the closeups the NESN cameras got of his reaction to Dustin Pedroia's showstopping play. Let's just say that if someone looked at me like this:

Somehow I don't think my first thought would be that congratulations were in order.

***

Way back in the hoary mists of last week, I took some photos of a game against the Angels, too:

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***

Next item of business for me in this catch-up post is a blog recommendation.

I first discovered Magazine Man's blog in October 2005, after I wrote a post about the anniversary of Carlton Fisk's famous Game 6 home run in 1975. A commenter posted a link to MM's blog, specifically his post talking about the letters he had exchanged with Pudge as a kid. I got in contact with him right away to ask if he'd ever found the letters, particularly the reply he got from Fisk. He said no, and with my usual rationality I told him to PLEASE FIND IT. He promised to try.

Since then, I've kept up with MM's blog whenever I can. I've chuckled at stories about his kids' hjinks with the dog; gasped aloud at the quest he had to go on to save said dog from an unhinged former owner; joined his substantial audience in mourning when his parents were killed last year in an horrific car crash; and regardless of the subject, I have always, but always, thoroughly enjoyed his vivid and suspensful writing.

And finally, two and a half years after Carlton Fisk first brought us together, I got an email, this time from MM himself, telling me he had some news I might be interested in.

Dear [MM], I am 6' 2 1/2" and weigh 212 lbs. I was born in 1947, the day after Christmas, in Bellows Falls, Vt...

See his post for scans of the orginal letter and autographed picture, finally found.

***

Finally, a DVD recommendation. You might have dismissed the cheesily-titled sequel to the cheesily titled Still, We Believe movie that they're selling these days at the grocery store. And while admittedly, it is all those things, I picked up Blessed: Still, We Believe 2 at the Star market last week on a whim, and have not regretted it for a single moment.

The Beckett content alone, particularly his glowing remeniscences about Clay Buchholz's no-hitter, has to be seen to be believed. And if that's not enough to interest you, might I suggest the later scenes featuring a generous walk-on role for Billy Mueller? Between those things, plenty of drawling appearances by Jonathan Papelbon and the fact that just about every game they show on the DVD is one I attended last year, they might as well have titled this movie "Baseball Porn for Beth." So if you share any of my particular obsessions interests when it comes to baseball, I'd recommend giving Blessed a gander.

A great light has gone out

That Adams was football obsessed had been obvious from the time he had arrived at Andover and had sat in the back of some of his classes--more often than not science classes--and had pleased the teacher by seeming to be the most diligent and enthusiastic note taker in the class. Sadly, it would turn out, and much to the irritation of the teacher, these were not science notes but turned out to be the sketches where eleven Xs took on eleven Os. In time the teacher notified Helen Adams, Ernie's mother. She was not surprised, because Ernie's housemaster, Hale Struges, had already written her of his own concerns about the narrowness of her son's interests: 'I wish he would expand his horizons. His interest in football has assumed such proportions that it seems to be closing doors on other areas of endeavor.' (At virtually the same time, an eerily similar scene was taking place at Annapolis High, where Bill Belichick was taking French; some thirty-five years later Jeannette Belichick happened to stumble over some of her son's old notebooks, including one from French class, and eager to see what he had been doing in a subject that she had once taught, she opened it, finding inside not very much in he way of French verbs but a lot of football plays that had been diagrammed, part of his secret world of Xs and Os.) (The Education of a Coach, 2006)

David Halberstam, author, Summer of '49, October 1964, The Making of a Quagmire, The Best and the Brightest, The Teammates, and most recently, The Education of a Coach, has been killed in a car crash at the age of 73.

Moving the Chains

To get through this book without a barf bag, you should really be a Patriots fan. It helps if you're an unrepentant, sycophantic, slavering, rabid, completely closed-minded Tom Brady fan. You know, like me.

This book lays it on thick in places. Okay, in a lot of places. Like when the book itself--not just the teammates and coaches and family members it quotes--starts referring to him as "Tommy." Tommy this, Tommy that. This book is Brady-worship of the highest order.

Which, of course, I appreciate. But still. Be forewarned.

I thought Chad Finn also had a good, if painful, criticism about the way the book is written in general: "his writing level exceeds my pea-brained comprehension by such a great distance that sometimes I can't see his point with a telescope." It's true that Pierce can get a little too caught up in his own turns of phrase, the themes he's developing, and they are definitely hit-or-miss.

In my opinion, though, when they hit, they hit. I particularly enjoyed the little threads woven through the book, the anecdotes of crazy coincidence and irony over about a decade in the history of the football business, which are told more convincingly and to greater effect when they are unraveled bit by bit than if they were simply stated factually, all at once. In particular, I loved the story of Raymond Berry, Johnny Unitas, and the play they worked on for years--and used exactly once. And I also thought the punchline to the story of Mike Riley, the coach who first tried to recruit Brady to USC, and who later encounters him on the staff of the San Diego Chargers, was worth the price of admission. And--to name just one more example--the way the story of the first meeting between Brady and Bob Kraft is told, through two "angles", thirty pages apart, is mastferful.

And you know...sometimes the book is cheesy. Sometimes it's overwrought. Certain stylistic tics of Pierce's become irritating, like the number of times he returns to the phrase "The problem with metaphors..." in the first half of the book, or his insistence on referring to Brady's family's street in San Mateo as "The Avenue of the Fleas" rather than its actual, Spanish name.

But football, in my opinion, needs more flowery language. It can never muster the number of trees felled in praise of baseball, but for it to have more emotionally intended, sociologically analytical and respectably written books representing it on the shelf would be a step in the right direction. Football is a beautiful game, its machinations as indicative of our deep unconscious yearnings as any tragically nostalgic baseball game in mid-August, and its icons as important to their generation as the Babe. But it doesn't get the credit. It doesn't get the play. Schmoopy or not, football could use more books like this.

Friday at Fenway

I saw part of the game last night, but I cannot tell a lie--I left Julia's house and crashed and missed the extra innings. I still had my cell phone on, though, and I heard two quick beeps for new score updates. Wearily, I checked the phone. TOP 11 OAKLAND 5 BOSTON 3. With a groan, I fell back into bed again. A little while later, I heard one beep and my eyes popped open. I waited. I waited. I waited.

Moments later there was another beep. I waited again, for a long time, before I concluded that was to be the last beep. The last message I get is a message giving the final score. Since only two more messages had come across, I knew the final: 5-4 Guys in White Shoes, and I counted myself lucky, for the moment, not to know exactly why.

Tonight, I bummed around quite a bit, not really feeling like watching the game. I think I should've taken the All-Star break off as others did, because I was feeling a little burned out on baseball.

Then, while I was lying on my bed, reading Feeding the Monster (because yes, that is what I do when I am burned out on baseball, apparently; I read a book about the inner workings of the Red Sox front office), my dad called from Loge Box 150. I had forgotten he was going to the game. I was resolute, though, that I was taking a break.

Yeah, about a half hour later, the game was on.

What can I say?

I came in on the game in the second inning. And there was my Barry. Sigh.

I love me some Barry Zito; he's probably my all-time favorite non-Red-Sox player. Even given his relative shakiness in the years since his 2002 Cy Young, I would probably drown in my own drool if he were ever to become a Red Sox. I try very hard not to think about the possibility of that becoming real (given everyone knows that he's not playing in Oakland next year, and it's still unclear whether Beane intends to trade him or let him become a free agent), because I would be that much more tempted to head to the Tobin Bridge if the Yankees, desperately in need of a lefty starter, snap him up instead.

Anyway, Tonight, Barry appeared with probably the shortest hair he's had in years; I rather like the look on him even if it makes his hat look a smidge too big on his head.

More importantly, though, he came to Fenway with his curveball working. There were two men on already in the persons of Jason Varitek (somehow) and Gabe Kapler when I turned on the television, and Coco Crisp proceeded to put in a truly diligent at-bat against Zito, fouling off that nasty curve at least three times, the last time by just the tip of the bat. But then Zito, revealing his master plan, came with a beautiful changeup and Coco swung and missed so hard he dropped to one knee in the right-hand batter's box.

It's hard for me to know how to feel in such a situation. On the one hand, I can only marvel at Zito, who, even if he hasn't been the most effective pitcher in the league, is certainly the most artistic; on the other, after such a valiant at-bat a K is that much more crushing for Coco, especially with his two comrades waiting patiently for him to drive them in.

I called my dad back with Gonzo at the plate to commiserate over Coco. Through him, I heard what happened in Gonzo's at-bat a few seconds ahead of the TV broadcast. It went like this.

"All right, come on Gonzo, here we go, buddy!"

On TV, Zito was still fiddling with his glove.

"Whoa! Okay then!Strike one. Whoops." My dad laughed.

On TV, the pitch came in moments later. Gonzo's bat didn't hint at leaving his shoulder.

"Poor Gonzo," I laughed into the phone.

"It's all right, he'll get right back in it n--oh boy, strike two."

A little bit later, I said, "Eh, I thought that was inside."

"Really?"

"Yeah, little bit."

"Well, it looked about thigh-high from here, but I can't tell if it's--oh, boy, say goodnight, Gonzo."

In the top of the third, another run scored, and the ball was bobbled by Mark Loretta on an attempt to catch a runner stealing by Varitek and Beckett on a comebacker to the mound, though Beckett got the out.

In the dugout, Kevin Youkilis was doing what looked like Tai Chi but was probably an exercise on something he needs to work on with his swing. He is so intense, though, it kind of makes me laugh sometimes. I wonder if his teammates ever suggest to him that he should get out more.

Youkilis grounded out on a meaty curve from Zito. As usual, when this happened, he walked back to the dugout as if he was going to commit hari kari. When he sat down on the bench, he gestured and spoke to no one in particular as if to explain.

Barry walked Mark Loretta next on a pitch that, though outside, had a delivery that was a thing of beauty. Barry, in his high socks, kicked and leaned and then all of a sudden his whole body seemed to fly open like a bird taking flight and the ball hopped and dipped. This was the best of both worlds in the end--lovely Barry, a victory of sorts for the Sox.

Tangent time: Exciting news on the home front for me--after learning Manny actually has a meniscus tear, my dad, the most unrepentant Manny hater I personally know, emailed me to let me know he was considering that he thought maybe he should consider lightening up on ol' Manuelah (as he calls him). I sent him back a link to Boston Sports Media Watch's compelling persuasive essay about Manny, which pushed him further along the path of forgiveness, I'm happy to report.

Here's another tangent that I feel compelled to go on: I have a baseball on my desk at worse in a little plastic holder. It's a long story as to where I got it from, but suffice to say it's a souvenir baseball. I also have a collection of squeezable balls, some foam, some rubber, some fluid-filled, on my desk; it helps me concentrate to be fiddling with a stress ball sometimes while I work. The other day I decided to try something different and took the baseball out of its case. I don't know when was the last time I held a baseball, and I don't know if this baseball was regulation, and I've certainly never held a game-used ball, but I was surprised at how inflexible its surface was. Between pitchers rubbing up the ball on the mound to the way it seems to smash flat as a pancake when colliding with David Ortiz's bat before springing back into form on its way over the wall, I somehow had the impression that the baseball would have slightly more give. Holding this ball, with its perfect white surface and sharp red stitches on it, was just a tangible demonstration of how little I know about what it's actually like to play baseball. I wonder what a player's relationship with the ball is like; I wonder how they develop their habitual ways of holding it, throwing it, catching it, the kind of finesse it takes to make this hard little thing bend and dip and curve in the air.

Feeding the Monster (which, by the way, is a superbly written and fascinating book so far, and probably among the most important Red Sox journalism ever to come down the pike) makes the argument that "baseball, along with jazz, is one of the great indigenous American art forms..." I have a sense of that artistry after playing with that baseball the other day. Maybe next I'll take it out and throw it around a little, and think about it some more.

That's the thing about being a girl and being a baseball fan. Virtually every little boy in America either voluntarily or involuntarily plays either tee-ball or baseball at one point in his life. For every Major Leaguer, there are thousands of men who rose to some level of accomplishment on a diamond, whether on a dusty sandlot or a high school field or even in the minor leagues. Girls increasingly play Little League as well, but by the time girls reach high school, our vaginas apparently require that we play softball or field hockey at best. The only sport I've ever played in my life was soccer, and that ended for me abruptly at eighth grade. I am a singularly unathletic person, and have never really been inclined to play even a semi-organized intramural or even picnic game of any kind. But I realized that that's a thing that's missing from my understanding of the game as a fan, and something I may want to change at least a little bit.

And finally, another tangent, which are quickly becoming the main topic of this post, I'm afraid: So far the most compelling yet difficult passages of Feeding the Monster to read for me have been the ones that detail conversations between Theo and the rest of the management staff in meetings after the end of the 2005 season. In particular, this excerpt got to me:

"It's a subtle thing," Epstein said that day. "We can't always make ourselves out to be a superpower. For our part, on the baseball operations side, we know that's not an effective strategy in the long haul." [...] "This has to be reinforced on the public level," he said. "We may be reaching a saturation point. We keep asking for more, more, more. But there will be a point where we don't do more [one year] because we need to do things for the long run."

Epstein took pleasure in talking about, and planning for, the days when the team's emerging talent took center stage, but he worried that the transition to the team's up-and-coming stars would be hindered by the too-bright glare of unrealistic expectations. The previous year had been a good reminder of how an overabundance of media could become suffocating.

"Somehow, we still get involved in these weekly soap operas," Epstein told the table. "A lot of it's because the veteran players who have a forum because they always have a mic in their face become blowhards. Certain people have too much influence--the older, louder veteran players. They need to get a little more professional about presenting themselves...That's one element of it becoming an uber-organization. We build the brand so big that it becomes hard to manage." Epstein was trying to remain calm, but he was clearly distressed by much of what he was describing.

Soon, as happens with many conversations involving the Red Sox, this one evolved into a discussion of money...One of the team's financial advisors warned that a single 85-win season could cost the organization as much as $20 to $30 million in lost ticket and advertising revenue. Lucchino raised the haunting legacies of teams like Baltimore, Colorado, Cleveland, and Toronto, all clubs that had enviable runs of high attendance followed by years of mediocre on-field performances and prolonged periods of fan apathy.

"We have the long-term solution to that problem," Epstein repeated. "We can be both a large revenue club...and have a strong farm system. But it's probably not going to be a seamless transition. This year we had a great year. We will probably be worse next year."

An old Red Sox hand who worked in Fenway Park operations spoke up. "We'll just tell [the fans] different, we'll just tell them we'll be better."

Finally, Epstein lost his cool. "No!" he barked. "No!" Struggling to control himself, he said, "We can't just tell them we'll be better. That's the whole point! That's what I'm trying to say!"

Maybe I'm just naive. I know almost as much about running a huge business as I do about actually playing baseball, which is to say, close to nothing at all. I am probably not the fan--and anyone reading this is probably not the fan--that the unnamed official in that meeting was talking about, that those on the opposite side of the discussion from Theo were worried about. Clearly, winning has put butts in the seats. So it might just be an unrealistic thing for me to wish that they would understand a little more about where their core fan base is coming from, which Seth Mnookin describes thusly:

[Since] the Impossible Dream season, the Sox [have had] a fan base that would forge an almost religious connection with the team, awarding them a loyalty whose intensity and durability would prove astonishing.

With Theo back with the team (something for which I am still grateful every single day, Matt Clement and Byung-Hyun Kim be damned), clearly his point of view has won out to at least some extent within the organization. And there have been some feel-good stretches to the season, to be sure, but the last three games, including this one, which was quickly 4-0 Oakland as the innings wore on, have sent the pendulum we've been riding this season back into doubt.

Now, it could be that the Red Sox themselves aren't sure how the season will work out--that they're all just waiting, too, to see the way the team settles into one groove or another. It could be they haven't told us anything because there isn't anything to tell us.

But as we go back and forth between winning and losing streaks that have been equally bewildering this year, I guess I just wish that if the Red Sox organization does have an ulterior motive or plan for the season--i.e., if there is to be no free-agent cavalry before the trading deadline, or if the FO is operating as if there will be another postseason trip this year--they would indicate that somehow. Obviously it would be stupid for Lucchino to call a press conference and say "We're gonna lose this year, thanks for coming anyway!" And they obviously don't have a crystal ball. But it would be nice if they would be a little more candid about whether or not they will operate the team from one standpoint or another. Is 2006 a season in which the Red Sox will take what they can get, but they're not going to be wheeling and dealing? Or are they entertaining another trip to the playoffs this year as a serious goal for which they are prepared to make moves?

The thing that saddens me so much about all this is the fact that, due to a number of forces and for a number of totally justifiable reasons, many of which have nothing to do with either the FO themselves or the fan base themselves, that level of candor between Red Sox brass and their core fan base seems like it probably won't ever happen (at least, of course, to those of us without SoSH memberships, and perhaps I overestimate their access to inside information as well).

We'll know by the trading deadline, I suppose, which way they've been playing it. But for now, yanked back and forth between hopeful stretches of winning and troubling stretches of difficult close-but-no-cigar losses, we're left to figure it out for ourselves. That is probably the biggest theme of 2006 so far: Where Are We Headed? What's Really Going On? As a fan, my perspective is that if I could just know what the game plan is, regardless of whether or not it's what actually dictates the result, I could afford to be much more philosophical about a game like the one tonight.

Fans like me--and I like to think we're still in the majority--are in it from the story. We have demonstrated our patience. We have demonstrated that we can grasp the idea of player and team development. We have demonstrated, especially since the World Series, that we can get our minds around the idea of a narrative for the team that spans seasons, rather than simply harping on a deadline every year in October.

It saddens me, too, that an ownership group that has demonstrated through its PR so far that it understands what its fan base wants far more than any previous management could still find itself unable to make this last leap of understanding: at least as far as the core fan base goes, there's demonstrably very little indeed, if anything at all, that could make us "quit" the Red Sox. The Red Sox are a product, yes, and a product that needs to be marketed carefully---but they are also a religion and a drug and a cultural touchstone in this city, and I'd like to think that warrants a bit more trust from those who hold the reins than the panicked notion that they can just "tell us different" and everything will be okay.

In other words, we've shown so much faith in them; I wish they felt they could have that faith in us.

But what do I know.

"Roberto was a hero in every sense of the word"

I was touched by the ceremony honoring Roberto Clemente between the fourth and fifth innings of tonight's game. If you don't know much about Roberto Clemente (and I'm not saying I know all that much myself) a great place to start learning more is this book excerpt from SI. (If you're not a subscriber, try bugmenot.) Or hit up a subscriber. Or find a back issue. Whatever. It's a worthwhile article.

The book it was excerpted from is here.

"That professor of occult speed and pretzel curve..."

Among the books I am currently reading is The Head Game, by Roger Kahn, a man as pitcher-obsessed as I am--or, probably more, since he went and wrote a whole book about it.

It feels like this book was written for me. Each chapter centers on one great pitcher from the earliest days of baseball, and how they made the position what it is--how, from the days in which pitchers merely served to deliver an easy lob for the batter to put in play to the current incarnation of the "duel" between pitcher and batter, it has been the pitchers themselves mounting "an assault against passivity" in their position. Which is in itself a beautiful and fascinating concept.

It's also beautifully and delightfully written. There's wry humor of the chapter about the earliest dominating pitcher--the proto-pitcher, if you will, Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn, who, to quote one particularly memorable passage, was heard to huff indignantly, "'Tire out tossing a little five-ounce baseball for two hours?...Man, I used to be a butcher. From four in the morning until eight at night I knocked down steers with a twenty-five-pound sledge. Tired from playing two hours a day for ten times the money I used to get for sixteen hours a day?'"

Let me re-emphasize: the man's other job was killing steers with a sledgehammer. Damn.

There's also a delightful appearance of Nuf Ced McGreavy and the World Champion Boston Pilgrims of 1903 in the chapter about Cy Young (entitled "Cy Young, Ticket Salesman", a reference to the fact that Young was actually called upon to staff the box office before one of his own World Series starts).

But the chapter that so far has blown me away (and compelled me to write about this book today) is the chapter on Christy Mathewson, whom the author clearly idolizes. The title of this post is a quote from a New York Times article about Mathewson that appears in the chapter; but the real "nut graf" of the whole chapter--maybe of the whole book--is the following:

Starting a third World Series game in six days, Mathewson was not as fast as he had been. He would strike out four, no more. But his control, the Mathewson touchstone, remained, as the Times would put it, a ray of the midday sun. He would not walk a man. His confidence, this long-ago day, was that of a divinity. Oh, I may tease you with the luxury of hope, and let you dream a while of victory. But the outcome--and we understand this in our souls--is not in question.

Reading that passage, there was one face that jumped immediately into my mind: Pedro Martinez. This is absolutely the Pedro Martinez Attitude, isn't it? Even if it doesn't always work, that's what Pedro's whole person says whenever he takes the mound.

"His confidence was that of a divinity". One of my all-time favorite sentences, right there. And it goes a long way to striking at the root of my own pitcher-obsession--the drama and arrogance and charisma with which they carry themselves.

Needless to say, I recommend this book.

Bill Belichick's Ego

For those of you just joining us, this is part of (the last, actually) in a series of excerpts from The Education of a Coach, David Halberstam's instant-classic biography of Bill Belichick. This passage is at the very beginning of Chapter Three, but it seems a great summation of the rest of the story.

Bill Belichick was a star who did not want to be a star, a celebrity in search of privacy and the right to do his job without any public interference. Unfortunately for him, on a playoff weekend, upward of 40 million Americans cared about him and what he and his players did. The camera had long since let the entire nation into his world, and it had created an appetite, healthy or unhealthy (he thought it was unhealthy), to know more about him as a celebrity, something he most demonstrably did not want to be. That on an ordinary Sunday some 15 or 16 million people wanted to watch him at work--and that the figure swelled to 90 million for a Conference championship and to around 135 million for a Super Bowl--moved him not at all. He was a man for better or for worse, remarkably without artifice. He had little gift or interest in modern public relations--if anything, he seemed almost uniquely resistant to it for someone so much, however involuntarily, in the public eye. He was about one thing only--coaching--and wary of anything that detracted from hit, and in his mind, much of the modern media, especially television, did precisely that--not just because it took up time that could be better spent doing other things, like watching a bit of film for the tenth or eleventh time and working with assistant coaches, but because it was singularly dangerous, it fed egos, and swollen egos detracted from the essence of football, which was the idea of team. Modern media created a Me-Me-Me world, whereas he insisted on a We world.

He feared the celebrity culture's addictive force, which was particularly dangerous to athletic endeavors, though much less of a problem in baseball, rooted as it was in individual accomplishments, and a little less of a problem in basketball, where (as in the case of Michael Jordan) an individual accomplishment and team accomplishment could often be merged, and where there were so few players on a team. But football was a sport based entirely on the concept of team, where as many as forty players might play important roles in any given victory--yet the television camera might celebrate the deeds of only one or two. Thus, a great deal of time and energy in the world of the New England Patriots went into selecting players who were at least partially immune to displays of ego and self. This did not mean Bill Belichick was without ego--far from it. His ego was exceptional, and it was reflected by his almost unique determination. He liked being the best and wanted credit for being the best, a quiet kind of credit. But his ego was about the doing; it was fused into a larger purpose, that of his team winning. It was never about the narcissistic celebration of self that television loved to amplify.

The Rise of Tom Brady

Excerpts from The Education of a Coach continue...

Just to remind himself not to believe all the hype and that he could readily have screwed up on that draft, Pioli kept on his desk a photo of Brady, along with a photo of the team's fifth-round draft choice, the man whom he had taken ahead of Brady: Dave Stachelski. He was a tight end from Boise State who never played a down for New England. Stachelski was taken with the 141st pick, Brady with the 199th one. 'If I was so smart,' Pioli liked to say, 'I wouldn't have risked an entire round of the draft in picking Brady.'

[...]

Brady himself had expected to go in the fourth round--going in the sixth stunned him--and he took it as a personal challenge and became even more determined to turn himself into a quality NFL quarterback. N one, he decided, was going to work harder. That was what surprised us the most, Ernie Adams said, and it was there from the very start. It would have been very easy for a player who had already done well in college but who was now listed as the number four quarterback to lose heart. Adams and the other coaches had all seen young quarterbacks, accustomed to being at the center of things and hearing the cheers, emotionally disappear on them when they found themselves very much off to the side. But here was Brady during the off hours behaving as if there were no off hours; he was always sitting in a small room, studying film, comparing it with the playbook, which he had already mastered. He did it in an interesting way, Adams thought; some players might have done it noisily to show how hard they were working, but Brady was as unobtrusive as possible, as if this were a private thing; he was doing it as quietly as possible, sneaking into a tiny office and burying himself in front of the film.

Then, when everyone else was gone for the day, he would go out and practice, using some of the receivers from the taxi squad, most notably a young man named Chris Eitzmann, a tight end how had just graduated from Harvard and signed as a free agent. Some members of the custodial staff were a little uneasy--did this young man have permission to d this, and keep them from closing up--but Pioli and Adams assured them that it was perfectly all right. What impressed Pioli and Adams, both of whom liked to slip down and watch these workouts, was how disciplined Brady was and how exceptional his work ethic was. What he was doing in those extra practices set him apart. He was not just telling the receivers, let's run a down and out, or a square in, but he was calling plays as if they were in the playbook and as if the players were in a pressurized, game-time situation. He would use the playbook terminology and call the requisite play. He was taking the theory of the playbook, Adams realized, and making it a reality, so he could understand it in a game situation, in case he was ever sent in.

The other thing he was doing was cajoling the receivers to work with him--pushing them to do more, telling them that it was the only way they were going to make it. He was a fourth-string quarterback behaving like a coach. He was also working out every day in the weight room, building his body up, and working on drills to improve his agility. 'I remember one night, it was late on a Friday, and everyone had gone home, but the light was on in the bubble, so I sneaked over, and there he was working with the wide receivers, using the playbook as if it were a game-time situation,' said Pioli. 'It was absolutely Belichickian.'

Belichick University

Ernie Adams and Evan Bonds, Belichick's close friends at prep school, would be the first of a group Halberstam comes, by the end of the book, to refer to as Belichick University--the people who, either in the company of Bill Belichick or under his influence, established a kind of theoretical bloodline concerning football. Belichick University, essentially, is that school of thought accredited by the Patriots' three Super Bowl wins. Halberstam's retelling of Adams, Bonds and Belichick in their Andover days, is touching to me:

Bonds had also read Steve Belichick's book and was equally thrilled that the scion of such a distinguished football family was about to become a teammate. 'Because we were such football nerds, it was absolutely amazing that Bill had come to play at Andover, because we were probably the only two people in the entire state of Massachusetts who had read his father's book,' Bonds said years later. Bonds felt that though his own life revolved completely around football, Adams was already a good deal more advanced in his football obsessions, going off on his own to coaching clinics where everyone else was at least ten years older, collecting every book written by every coach on the game, the more technical the better, and collecting films of important games: Ernie already had an exceptional football film collection, sixteen-millimeter stuff, the great Packer-Cowboy games, Raiders-Jets, films like that, which he somehow found out about through sports magazines, and had sent away for, and for which he had enough primitive equipment so that he could show the films,' Bonds said. 'It's hard to explain just how football crazed we were, but the year before Bill arrived, when we were in the eleventh grade, and it was sprig, the two of us went down to Nickerson Field, the old Boston University field, because BU was having an intra-squad spring game. We were up there in the stands taking notes, these two seventeen-year-olds--can you believe it?--scouting an intra-squad game at BU on our own, and I still have no earthly idea what we would have done with the notes. Anyway, pretty soon a BU assistant coach came up looking for us, to find out what we were doing, and why we were doing it. So we said we were from Northeaster, as if that would give us extra legitimacy, and the coach said what we were doing was illegal, and we had to get out then and there.'

I love that story about scouting a scrimmage at BU--and getting kicked out for their troubles. That's dedication.

That Adams was football obsessed had been obvious from the time he had arrived at Andover and had sat in the back of some of his classes--more often than not science classes--and had pleased the teacher by seeming to be the most diligent and enthusiastic note taker in the lass. Sadly, it would turn out, and much to the irritation of the teacher, these were not science notes but turned out to be the sketches where eleven Xs took on eleven Os. In time the teacher notified Helen Adams, Ernie's mother. She was not surprised, because Ernie's housemaster, Hale Struges, had already written her of his own concerns about the narrowness of her son's interests: 'I wish he would expand his horizons. His interest in football has assumed such proportions that it seems to be closing doors on other areas of endeavor.' (At virtually the same time, an eerily similar scene was taking place at Annapolis High, where Bill Belichick was taking French; some thirty-five years later Jeannette Belichick happened to stumble over some of her son's old notebooks, including one from French class, and eager to see what he had been doing in a subject that she had once taught, she opened it, finding inside not very much in he way of French verbs but a lot of football plays that had been diagrammed, part of his secret world of Xs and Os.)

"His secret world of Xs and Os." I love it.

Adams remains part of Belichick's team to this day, as a film analyst and scouting expert. Adams was the most obsessed at the time they met, but Belichick was the one ultimately who allowed him to have a career lost in that "secret world of Xs and Os."

Bill Belichick's roots

Bill Belichick's most important biographical detail is, of course, his relationship with his father. I have discussed that, with quotes from The Education of a Coach, in this game post.

Here's the rest, as told by Halberstam:

The name was originally Bilicic, and it was phoneticized or Americanized, not, as happened with so many immigrant families, at Ellis Island, by immigration officials reluctant to master the names from the old world, with their weird mixtures of vowels and consonants, but rather by a first-grade teacher in Monessen, Pennsylvania. That teacher, told by Anna Bilicic, Steve's oldest sister and the first family member born in the United States, that her name was Bell-uh-chik, wrote it down as Belichick, thereby earning the undying hatred of Mary Barkovic Bilicic for corrupting the family name.

[...]

The values of that era and of that particular ethnic culture were basic. You worked hard. You saved. You did not waste anything. If possible, you grew your own food. You did not complain. You did not expect anyone to do anything for you. Discipline was not so much taught as it was lived, as an essential part of life for which there was no alternative. It was, says Bill Belichick, 'a Draconian unsparing world.'

[...]

The entire region of western Pennsylvania and eastern and central Ohio was great football country, both high school and college football. Everyone seemed to care passionately about the game. This was, after all, a part of the country where tough men endured great physical hardship to earn a living--only the strong succeeded, and not surprisingly, they produced big, strong, athletically gifted children, who had no fear of ferocious physical contact--indeed, they seemed to relish it. In the era before the coming of the great black athletes, when power was blended with speed and the game stayed just as physical but got a lot faster, no area produced as many great football players or as many distinguished coaches as this region. For the children of the steel mills, whose parents barely spoke English, it was often the first step in the Americanization process, the first recognition as successes they or their families would get, and in some cases, the first ticket out of the steel mills and coal mines, a chance for a college education.

So it was with the Belichicks.