Washed up

I recently came to the realization that I'm a nineteen year-old washed up athlete.  Bummer.  Considering that my life plan had always been to make the big leagues, this is a pretty disappointing situation.  Instead of being in hot pursuit of that goal, I have a bad knee, an iffy shoulder, my athletic prime is two years gone, and I take interhall football and pick-up basketball way too seriously.  Now, my vow to never become Papa Billingsley is getting tough to do.

Young William and son, circa 2040

Sports are a big part of life, and competitive sports are something that's really pretty hard to directly replace.  I'm currently trying to channel the energy that I used to put into sports into other things.  It's working fairly well; I'm can get excited about it, I still have that drive to be successful, but it's just not quite the same.  In sports, it's pretty much encouraged to try to hurt the opponent as a form of retaliation, but apparently that doesn't transfer to other aspects of life, as I found out when I tried to beat up our club sponsor when she forgot to reserve a room for a major meeting last semester.

I always loved baseball more than just about anything.  It's the only thing I ever wanted to do with my life.  Just swinging a bat or scooping up a ground ball or throwing batting practice or chasing down fly balls or pitching in the bullpen made me feel like there was nothing else in the world.  The diamond is the thinnest place I have.

Unfortunately, I can't play ball anymore.  It's tough to find enough guys to field a real game, and unlike other sports, pure athleticism doesn't really translate into much unless you have a skill set already, which is why pickup baseball doesn't have the same popularity as pickup football or basketball.  I'm not complaining.  I really don't think I'd ever want to play on an uncompetitive level now that I've reached the levels of competition that I have.  In basketball you can create your own competition.  Even if the defense is weak you can take tough shots.  In baseball, if the pitcher can't find the plate or puts meatballs over it, there really isn't much of a challenge.

I realize that it's kind of pathetic.  I understand that I have my whole life in front of me, but for a kid who was given a bat at the age of two, it's a hard habit to break.  I've played ball (I've been reminding myself this whole time to use past tense and it's just not working) since before I could put together a complete sentence, before I went to school, before I spent my first dollar, way before I earned my first dollar, before I touched a piano or a drumstick, before I knew Stuart, before I had ever talked to a girl that wasn't related to me, before anything.  It's been the one constant throughout my entire life.  In the winter I'd throw a tennis ball against our basement wall for hours and in the summer it was like one long game, inning after inning after wonderful inning.  I played for the Lakewood Vultures with Michael, and we had miraculous comebacks seemingly every night against my dad, who represented the Crystal Lake Cougars, the Turnberry Titans, and whoever else was in that league.  I played for the Prairie State Cardinals with Stuart for much longer than was ever really socially acceptable for a kid to have imaginary teammates and opponents.  Becoming an Indian was something that I thought would just happen, because I never dreamed of anything else.

Up until recently, this was what I assumed work attire was

Like I said before, I've been working on filling the cavity that the loss of baseball has left in my life with various other options.  Most of all, I've learned to love the little moments that sports give.  I love putting on a football helmet, I love the way a basketball feels when it leaves your fingers and you know it's going in, I love catching passes, I love starting the fast break.  Very few other places in my life (outside of possibly music in some situations) can provide such great enjoyment from such seemingly meaningless moments.

I wrote the first two paragraphs of this a few days ago, on the suggestion of a ginger, but I couldn't really see what angle to take on it.  Then, tonight, at 2:00 in the morning, after playing an hour and a half of pickup basketball and watching an hour of He Got Game, I finally realized what being washed up really meant to me.  Maybe I'm not as unlucky as I thought I was.  Maybe it's a blessing in disguise.  Until my senior year of high school, when I realized how quickly things were going to end, I probably would have used a lame knee to get out of practice.  I would have gone inside instead of hitting an extra bucket of balls.  Now, I'm finally realizing how much beauty is inside every moment for me, and I need to cherish it. 

The same must go for life.  Life is about experiences and moments.  It's not a checklist.  I want to take advantage of those moments.  I want to know that I appreciated every special moment when it happens, instead of looking back and realizing I missed it.  While I may be washed up in the literal sense, while I'll never get to step into a batters box or hit another meaningful shot in basketball, the lessons I learned from walking away from what I love can be carried elsewhere.  Maybe I'm only getting started.

A theory of relativity

This is part 1 of a series of important things I want to tell my children.

Over Christmas my mom and Stuart and I discussed the theory of relativity.  I've always had a major conflict with this theory.  I'd love to believe it (mostly because Einstein is a major supporter) except for the fact that it's weird as hell.  I don't know about you guys, but I've been raised under the belief that units of measurement (such as minutes, seconds, feet, gallons, BAC, etc.) pretty much remain standard.  Hearing that time can move faster or slower depending on the situation really messes with that idea. 

Actually, it looks like Al looks pretty confused himself...

Anyway, we were in the kitchen and Stuart and my mom (without a doubt the two smartest in the family) were discussing how time was the fourth dimension.  It was about noon, I'd woken up about twelve minutes earlier, and basically it was way more than I could handle, so I focused on the Honey Bunches of Oats (we've been out of Kap'n Krunch for approximately 8 months, harder to live without than you thought).

Mom, Stuart, and a creepy looking dude circa 1997

On the car ride back to South Bend I started thinking about this stupid concept, and believe it or not, I started to believe it.  I mean, how else could a car ride take so fricken long?  I therefore started driving faster, and now owe $175 to the state of Indiana.

I've been thinking more and more about this idea and finally today I realized why it always made a little bit of sense to me.

A few years ago my church had an interim minister named Gil Fauber, who I always had a pretty solid spiritual connection with.  He made a sermon about what he called "thin places," which were places where you felt more connected to God, or nature, or basically the rest of the universe.  There really isn't much other description than that.  If you have these places you already know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't found them yet you'll know exactly what I mean when you experience them for the first time.  I have thin places when I walk through Notre Dame's campus when it's empty, and it seems like it's just me and the universe, absolutely timeless.  I find them at the ballpark in late afternoon, when it's cool and humid and it feels like the game could go on forever.  I find it when I'm driving in the summertime with the windows down, or when I'm on the golf course when there's still dew on the ground, or when I'm listening to one of my favorite songs.

The thing that all of these places have in common is that there is no sense of time.  No matter how long I'm out there, it's like the outside world doesn't change at all, like the universe knows how important these places are to me and decides not to mess with them.  Somebody up there knows that these are the moments that we want to remember, that will live on forever inside of us.  The truth is, a few minutes earlier or later and the air wouldn't feel right on the ballfield, the grass wouldn't feel right on the golf course, or there would be a few other people walking through the serenity of campus, and the thin places would get a little bit thicker.  Instead, it seems like time freezes for everybody but still allows us to live in our moment.  The moment lasts for what could be hours, giving us enough time to really soak it all in.  Then once they're over, it's like time snaps and the hours rush forward to catch up to where it's supposed to be.  We need to treasure these moments, though, because if we don't treasure them, they'll come and pass just as quickly as anything else.  Maybe time really is the fourth dimension.  Maybe it does speed up and slow down.  Maybe the world isn't as simple as we think.

Important things to tell my kids

According to thinkexist.com, Larry Elder is "the sage from South Central."  If anybody knows what that means I'd appreciate some insight, because he said (at one point in his sagehood, naturally), "A goal without a plan is just a wish."  Therefore, I needed to make a plan to change my (apparent) wish of making millions of dollars off of my children in order to make it an official goal.  Larry Elder is really making my life a lot more difficult.

Young William's Long-Term Life Goals
1.  Marry a girl with a good job
2.  Become a stay at home dad
3.  Train my kids into superstar athletes and overall good people (but mostly superstar athletes)

The plan above is a watered-down version of a 487 page outline (8 point font) that I started (because of Larry Elder) on my computer as a file titled "Steps for living a great life," and plan to give to every girl that I ever intend on asking on a date, so that she can look it over and see if she even wants to give it a shot.  Included in that plan are day-by-day instructions for how I will become a drill sargeant total dick wonderful coach for my children.  Unfortunately, I'm still kind of cloudy on the whole "become a good father" thing (apparently it comes with experience).   Nineteen years without children has given me absolutely zero experience, and therefore I'm still unable to fill in the blanks about that portion of my future life.  Fortunately, the past nineteen years haven't been a total waste, as I've been able to pick up a few things along the way that I think are probably worth passing on in one way or another.  In the next few days (or weeks, depending on my motivation levels, get off my case), I'm going to throw out a few more of these.  Feel free to throw them back.

A young artist

I saw this picture today while I was supposed to be working.  While it may seem like a wonderful representation of the beauty and simplicity of youth sports in America (which it obviously is), it is also a picture of one of the best pitchers of our generation.  This is Tim Lincecum of the World Champion Giants somewhere between the ages of 1 and 15, so if you thought it looked familiar, it's probably because nothing has changed in the last ten years or so for this guy.

One of my favorite things about sports is that it's something that people do from the beginning of their lives without many changes taking place.  Accountants don't become accountants at age three, but kids do start playing ball around that time.  In this regard, athletes are artists.  They don't need someone to pay them in order for them to do something.  Love comes first.  Money comes second.  That's why I was so excited to see this picture.  This is akin to seeing Rembrandt with an 8 pack of Crayolas, of Beethoven playing a piano like Schroeder plays in Peanuts, of Charles Dickens writing a letter to Santa (or of Barack Obama stealing candy from the kids who had trick-or-treated for hours on Halloween and giving it to the kids who didn't want to go out in the first place).  I'm sure that none of those three decided at the age of 22 that they were going to paint or compose or write.  The art had been inside of them the whole time, just like pitching had been inside Young Timmy.

P.S.  If anybody has any pictures of Michael Jordan dunking on a little tykes hoop, Tiger Woods playing mini golf, or Michael Vick wrestling with his dog, let me know.

A Nicaraguan, a ginger, and the forced disappearance of controversy

Last spring, the week before spring break, one of my top four favorite Nicaraguans, Juan Raul came up to me in Psych class and said, "Weeeeeeel.  You neeeeed to reeead dis boook," and shoved a copy of Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, into my hand.  I hadn't heard of it, but once I showed it to my mother she started to go on a tangent about how it was highly disputed and controversial and a lot of other things that I probably would have remembered if I had been paying attention.  I quickly found out that she was very right.  The book is in the same category as Orwell's 1984, but is focused on "perfecting" the population through genetic engineering as opposed to brainwashing.  Scary stuff.  Anyway, after reading it I'm fully convinced that Huxley was probably just bored one day, wanted to stir up some controversy, and cranked out this crazy novel in order to do so.

Juan Raul in the most Latino picture of all time

Huxley's main character, Bernard Marx, is frustrated with the new system in which all are expected (and created) to be the exact same.  At one point in the book, he says, "I don't want comfort.  I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.  I want sin."

I fully support this concept.

The word "bore" is defined by whichever dictionary I installed on my dashboard as "a tedious situation or thing" or "to make someone feel weary or uninterested by tedious talk and dullness."  Basically, it's the opposite of anything exciting or interesting.  It is the absence of controversy.


Bernard Marx is put into what would seem like an ideal situation.  He has great genes, everybody in his world has sex with everybody, he is an "Alpha," which means that he's at the top of the social ladder.  Basically it's everything that we dream our lives could be, except that it's actually the complete opposite.  "But Young William," you say, "How can this be bad?  I would love to have sex with whoever I wanted, not have to worry about relationships, and be able to look down on all of the people who were inferior to me.  What could possibly go wrong?"


Unfortunately, about 99.82% of the time that the phrase "what could possibly go wrong?" is used, an average of 173.20928 things go wrong (statistics complied by LtP staff).  In this case, the problem was that there wasn't anything wrong.  I've been home for 23 days for Christmas break, and I have had approximately 3 responsibilities during that time.  My life has been pretty close to perfect.  It gets boring.  There's nothing to rush about.  There's nothing to accomplish.  There's nothing to argue.  There's nothing that makes me genuinely worry or be afraid or get excited about or make my adrenaline rush.  I love being able to be with my family and see my friends, but sometimes it feels like I'm living in a fish bowl and my mom drops food in three times a day.

Ironically, this "perfect," comfortable situation is one of the most uncomfortable in the world.  I feel like a waste of a person.  I feel like the world could go on in pretty much the exact same manner if I didn't exist (scary though, for me at least).  This is terrifying.  Instead of being somebody with a purpose and a role, I've suddenly become a filler for a space and a time.


I want sin.  I want things to go wrong.  I want things to blow up in my face (figuratively, of course).  I want to have to work to overcome difficulties.  These things are what define people as individuals.  These are what pull people out of the pot and put them into the spotlight.  These are the people that we remember.  It's no fun to talk to somebody who agrees with everything you say.  It may be refreshing for an hour, a day, a week, a month, but after a certain period of time it gets frustrating.  I hate "me too!" conversations more than just about anything in the world.  I'm prepared to call bullshit on anybody who believes that they have the same viewpoints as me on everything (or at least on the non-trivial things).  I'd rather talk to somebody who has a complete mirror image of my beliefs than somebody who matches mine.  It's fun to circulate ideas and have conflicts and controversies.  It's what advances us as a culture.


Without conflict and controversy we would still be single cell whatever-they-ares in the ocean.  If we were meant to meet the status quo we could have done it then, but we didn't.  We could have done it before we discovered fire.  As far as I know, most primates can't create fire, and they're still living.  The thing is; That wasn't good enough for Grandpa and Grandma Gorilla, so they hunted and gathered their way to fire, and to tools, and to culture.  We could have agreed with the English when they taxed us.  We could have agreed with Hitler that there was a superior race for the sake of avoiding controversy.


Why didn't we?

"Ehhhhhhh, screw it.  Wouldn't want to stir anything up!"

Because overcoming controversy and working through conflict are the only ways to accomplish anything.  Did George Washington call off the troops across the Delaware because it was cold and Christmas Eve?  Hell no.  The British had been abusing him and 2.5 million of his closest friends in the colonies and he wanted to do something about it.  He wanted to beat them.

This brings me to my next point.  Nine days ago (and only a few days after Ed Rendall called out Philadelphia, the NFL, and America for being wusses), my favorite left-handed ginger this side of the Mississippi sent me this link about how competition is being eliminated in many schools.  This is the worst idea I've heard since my friend Eric jumped into Lake Michigan on New Years Day (I guess that's not that long ago, just pretend that it is).  It reminded me of this classic Rick Reilly article (from before he sold out his soul to the devil and started writing crappy, meaningless stuff for ESPN after leaving SI), which basically points out that, well, some people end up winning in the world and some people end up losing.

Can't imagine why this kid would be sending me articles on New Years Eve instead of going out.  Nope.  Looks like he has a lot of friends to me...

Not everybody is the best in the world at something and not everybody is the best in the world at everything.  This doesn't mean that we have to pretend that they are.  If some kids suck at sports, why do we have to pretend that they're just as good as everybody else?  (Can you imagine how bad pro sports would be if we had to do this on that level?  We'd probably have 7-9 teams in the NFL playoffs or something stupid like that)  We don't give all kids the same GPAs or ACT scores.  We don't prevent some kids from singing or dancing or writing as well as they can because some others can't.  Life is made up of a million different competitions every day, and while we may not be directly pitted against another team or another athlete or anything like that, we are always competing against something.  We're in constant competition against curves for grades, against co-workers for promotions, and against ourselves to just be better people.  Imagine if Thomas Edison or John Adams or Jesus or Edward Sorin had given up and said, "Welp, I tried.  That's all anybody can ask of me."

Success is a relative term.  If even the poorest of the poor was bringing in billions of dollars a year Bill Gates and Donald Trump would be living in the slums.  Just like there isn't a set score to win a baseball game, there isn't a set amount of success that is needed in order for one to become successful.  All you have to do is beat the competition.  Instead, we're beginning to train people to avoid this competition all together.  How are we supposed to beat them if we avoid them?  

"Ya know Franklin, I bet that ol' Adolf is just feeling a little blue because he got picked on in our Leaders of the Modern World class.  I bet that if instead of trying to be better leaders with better nations than him, we tried to help him become as powerful as us, he'd forget all this "Aryan Race" stuff and be a really nice guy on the inside."

Nobody strives to maintain an entry-level position at a company.  Nobody busts their butt to be the best if there's no reward for doing so.  We are only as strong as the weakest link in our groups, so why are we intentionally helping weak links join our groups?  In the Boston Globe article, it mentions the case of four students helping one student finish the mile run.  This case takes FOUR kids who could have run the mile faster than the ONE kid who couldn't.  So we're actually WORSENING the four's own expectations of themselves and their own ceilings in order to assist the one kid who probably won't ever run in his life.  How would N.W.A. feel if they were ordered to put me in their group and not be able to finish a song until I'd contributed 1/6th of it because my rap skills would be made fun of if I did it on my own and without peer support?  This is stupid.


America is one of the most powerful countries in the world today because of the work of Barack Obama because of the way that we have repeatedly outworked, outschemed, and outperformed anything that stands in our way.  Cuba is one of the weakest, worst off countries in the world because they don't encourage their residents to do anything but meet the status quo.  By trying to eliminate competition, we are telling our youth that it's okay to fail.  That it's okay to not try as hard to succeed because no matter what you'll get a trophy.  That we'll all end up in the same place no matter what our abilities and work ethic and morals are.  Sounds promising to me...

New Year's Resolutions

Bad news, folks.  Only four days into 2011 and my annual resolution of not biting my fingernails anymore has come to a screeching halt.  Mom always told me that I'd never have any friends or get married because of ugly fingernails (she's batting 1.000 for now), so I figure I should try to pick this one back up on January 5th.  Anyway, now that my on again off again (but mostly on again) relationship between my teeth and my fingernails has been firmly established, and since I only get one more chance to do this since the world's gonna end in December, 2012, I've decided to make some other New Year's Resolutions:

1.  Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the way we treat each other - You see, the old way wasn't working, so it's on us, to do what we gotta do, to survive.
2.  Listen to more Tupac - The man knows what he's talking about
3.  Prove that Tupac is still alive - and preferably have a meet and greet session after.

Tupac changed his name to "Steve Yzerman" on September 14, 1996

4.  Buy "Just Dance" for Wii
4 (a).  Become "Just Dance" World Champion
5.  Move to Australia
6.  Play more piano - for the sole purpose of serenading girls
6 (a).  Find a girl that will put up with me long enough to let me serenade her
6 (b).  Avoid restraining orders
7.  Don't kill Voldemort the fish
8.  Be Tonya Harding to LeBron James' Nancy Kerrigan
9.  Figure out why ESPN isn't showing ND basketball on TV right now
10.  Ice Jimmy Clausen - and Jay Cutler
11.  Get the people of the great state of Wyoming something besides, well, nothing.

Aaaaaaaaaaand that's it

12.  Introduce Rex Ryan and John Madden - with their football appreciation I'm sure they'd hit it off pretty well

"Why yes, Rex, I do believe this would help your wife's feet stay beautiful."

13.  Convince Brian Kelly to have a tryout for the position of "Slow, short white guys who can't jump."
13 (a).  Attend tryout
13 (b).  Make it at least past the first 13 minutes of tryout
14.  Declare myself eligible for the NBA draft
15.  Get a shoe deal
16.  Be a leader
16 (a).  Become a legend
17.  Try to get visited in a dream by Ron Santo and/or Bob Feller
18.  Remind everybody that lacrosse is exactly like hockey (without the ice, and with a bigger goal, and with less pads on the goalie which makes the goal even bigger) so it's just as hard (right?)
19.  Watch the Indians and Cubs both in the World Series
19 (a).  Watch the Indians and Cubs both manage to lose the World Series
20.  See Brett Favre "play his last game"
21.  Get Ellen Page's number
21 (a).  Accidentally get Ellen Page pregnant while we're both still in high school, find a couple to adopt the baby before it's born, be ignored by Ellen Page for a while, before she realizes that the husband of the adoptive parents is a sleaze and that I still love her despite her baby, visit the hospital after the birth and spoon as the credits roll.
22.  Dumonts.  Lots and lots of dumonts.
23.  Forge a fifteen year Packers contract with Aaron Rodgers signature
24.  Figure out a way to keep Rich Rodriguez at Michigan
25.  Eat more Mike & Ikes
26.  Floss (but only cause my mom told me to and could definitely beat me up)

Home of the Cyclones

27.  Retire numbers 1, 13, 24, 27, and 51 at Pete Dodd Field, home of the Crystal Lake Cyclones Traveling Baseball Club
28.  Convince the Crystal Lake Cyclones to officially change their name to the Crystal Lake Cyclones Traveling Baseball Club
29.  Lead Athens to a National Championship before Johnny Morgan graduates
30.  See if I can pull a Brett Favre-esque return to high school baseball without being caught
31.  Find another class taught by Pilky
32.  Not blow out my knee(s)
33.  World peace, obviously
34.  Run a marathon (as in at least 26.2 miles total for the year)
35.  Find out if I got the DePaul basketball coaching job I applied for last year.
36.  Get on a game show
37.  Play the lottery
38.  Grow 5-7 inches
39.  Maintain the world's bushiest sideburns

Should keep me busy.  I'll check back in 360 days to see how I did.  If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to comment.  Chances are that I'll bail on those too, but at least you will have thrown your ideas out there!