Brothers Need Brothers - Teammates in the Game of Life

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how happy I was that the Mavs had won the NBA Finals, and more specifically, about how cool it was to see a bunch of teams full of foxhole guys reigning on the top of the American sporting world, especially when the most recent "defining moment" of that world was The Decision.  That got me to thinking about how much I miss my teammates, and for the past three weeks I've been sitting on my couch watching videos of my Little League years, spraying cheez whiz straight into my mouth, looking at old pictures of my high school teams, and crying profusely.  However, now that it's all out of my system (but not really), I have time to do other things, like thinking constructively on the issue.

With a few exceptions, all of the friends from high school that I have actively stayed in touch with through my first two years of college are former teammates (about .4 seconds after writing that sentence I realized that there is no such thing as a former teammate).  You see, teammates have a special relationship that can't just be created through any friendship.  Teammates are stuck with each other.  They can't jump ship, they can't choose new teammates, and they can't completely ignore each other.  At least while they're on the field they have to interact in a working unit.

Over the course of a season, or, in the long term, a career, almost every team will hit both a hot streak and a slump, and on a smaller scale there will be hissy fits, incredible personal runs, game-losing screw-ups, game-winning plays, "Did you just see that?" greatness, "Did you just see that?" failures, and everything in between.  Through all of the joy, pain, crap, and mediocrity, you learn to deal with these people in about every different setting imaginable, and the most important part is that, unless you perform the ultimate sacrilege and quit, you're stuck with them for months on end.  I've stayed close with my teammates, even the ones that I wasn't super close to in high school, because I can go to them about any number of scenarios and they will know how to handle my emotional states.  After seeing me spike helmets, perform borderline-flagrant fouls, cuss, laugh, cry, jump with joy, fall to my knees in pain, get injured, hit home runs, strike batters out, give up home runs, strike out at the plate, airball shots, hang my head, stick my chest out, draw charges, argue calls, shove teammates, hug teammates, and punch lockers, it's not that tough to read my feelings after a low GPA, a breakup, or a job offer.  Sports, especially baseball, are based off of locker room chemistry more than I think anybody gives enough credit for anymore, and more than that, it's based on keeping each other even-keel.  The highs can't get too high or you'll come crashing down.  The lows can't get too low or you won't be able to rise out of it.  If one person starts riding these, other people start riding these, and sooner or later you always end up on the bottom, so it's the job of teammates to make pull each other through anything; to tell them to flush a strikeout and move on, to give them a butt-pat after a home run and remind them to move on, to keep the player balanced so the team can be balanced.

What do I miss about sports?  I miss the feel of the dirt, I miss the smell of the grass, I miss seeing curveballs snap into the strikezone, I miss stealing bases, and I miss hitting the ball on the sweet spot, I miss getting playing 32 of 32 minutes, I miss the mixture of pride and exhaustion, but most of all, I miss being on a team and I miss having teammates.

Luckily for me, I have two outstanding brothers.

Over the course of a season, or, in the long term, a career a lifetime, almost every team family will hit both a hot streak have high times and a slump tough times, and on a smaller scale there will be hissy fits, incredible personal runs, game-losing seemingly life-altering screw-ups, game-winning plays moments of personal triumph, "Did you just see that?" greatness, "Did you just see that?" failures, and everything in between.  Through all of the joy, pain, crap, and mediocrity, you learn to deal with these people in about every different setting imaginable, and the most important part is that, unless you perform the ultimate sacrilege and quit, you're stuck with them for months on end forever.  I've stayed close with my teammates, even the ones that I wasn't super close to in high school, brothers, because I can go to them about any number of scenarios and they will know how to handle my emotional states.  After seeing me spike helmets, perform borderline-flagrant fouls, cuss, laugh, cry, jump with joy, fall to my knees in pain, get injured, hit home runs, strike batters out, give up home runs, strike out at the plate, airball shots, hang my head, stick my chest out, draw charges, argue calls, shove teammates, hug teammates, punch lockers, punch them, throw temper tantrums, quit on them, bully them, tattle on them, support them, stand up for them, need them to stand up for me, after riding in cars with me, after waiting for me in the car while I puke away my carsickness, after crossing oceans with me, after insisting that I play one more inning, one more quarter, one more set of downs, after boxing with me, after singing with me, after hugging me, after watching me break down, after watching me exude cockiness, and after living with me for twenty years, it's not that tough to read my feelings after a low GPA, a breakup, or a job offer.  Sports, especially baseball, Families are based off of locker room chemistry more than I think anybody gives enough credit for anymore, and more than that, it's based on keeping each other even-keel.  The highs can't get too high or you'll come crashing down.  The lows can't get too low or you won't be able to rise out of it.  If one person starts riding these, other people start riding these, and sooner or later you always end up on the bottom, so it's the job of teammates brothers to make pull each other through anything; to tell them to flush a strikeout failure and move on, to give them a butt-pat after a home run success and remind them to move on, to keep the player brother balanced so the team family can be balanced.

As Dante Shepherd of SurvivingTheWorld.net so wonderfully states, "Life is a lot like a baseball game - You want your team to win, you want it to be a thriller, you don't want it to be called short on account of nature, and you wouldn't mind if it went into extra innings."  In this game of life, it's nice to have some good teammates.

When I was little, I spent just about every second playing with my brothers.  We'd pull out the Indians and the Orioles lineups and play series after series in the backyard; Michael always spotting me just enough runs to keep me interested but just few enough to still be able to come back.  We'd throw elbows on the cement of the basement basketball court.  We'd check each other into the drywall (the same drywall which I once threw a ping-pong paddle through).  We'd never finish a single game of football without a fight breaking out.  And it couldn't have been more perfect.

When I got to high school, it was Michael who took me under his wing.  I was known as his brother and that wasn't a problem for me.  He'd made a name for himself as hard-working, athletic, good-natured, and, as way too many of my female friends told me, a good looking dude.  He was the one who took me out to the batting cages to hit after school with his teammates.  He was the one who brought me to lift weights and play in open gyms.  He was the one that showed me how much diligence had to be put into school work.

When Stuart got to high school, I tried to do the same thing, and I hope I succeeded.  I feel like I did.  Stuart and I got very close during my senior and his freshman years.  We took care of each other.  That's important.  It's the constant that's held us together through all the years.

Michael and Stuart have been there for me through everything, and not just because they have to (at least I don't think that's why).  When I broke up with my girlfriend of two years, it was Michael who gave me a hug and walked with me, even if I had trouble saying anything.  When my baseball career ended, it was Michael and Stuart who were there to comfort me.  When I got into Notre Dame, they were the ones I wanted to talk to.  When I have philosophical issues, I go to Stuart.  When they lost (Michael coaching, Stuart playing) a mere five wins away from the Little League World Series, I felt like I'd gotten kicked in the stomach too.  They've been there for me for every single second, momentous or mundane, of my entire life, and I know that that will never change.

I brag about my brothers, I'm proud of my brothers, and I love my brothers.  They are my heroes, they are my best friends, and they are rocks that I can build off of.  When I graduate college, they'll be cheering.  When I get engaged, they'll be the first to know.  When my first kid is born, they'll be there to see.  When that kid busts into the Majors they'll be wearing his uniform in the stands next to me.  When I need someone to talk to they'll open up, when I don't want to talk they'll sit and wait with me.  When I want to celebrate they'll be the ones popping the cork and dancing with me, when I want to mourn they'll each have an arm around me.

My brothers and I are stuck together for the rest of our lives, but that doesn't really matter.  After being on the same team for so long, I don't think any of us would ever want to take our talents elsewhere.  You see, we don't even really have a choice.  Having been raised together, having learned to rely on each other, having come to trust each other and wanting to fight for each other and being ready to jump in the foxhole together, trying to operate without each other would be like trying to turn a 6-4-3 double play without two of the players.  And that's what separates brothers from any other type of friend, from any other type of teammate, from any other type of relationship.  That's what makes it special.  One of the more regular readers of this blog (of the 6 or 7 that there are) asked me to write about what it means to be a brother, and I guess that I can't really give a prescription or a recipe for what to do, but I can tell you how I feel towards my brothers and about brothers in general.

Brothers don't just love their brothers.  Brothers don't just appreciate having their brothers around.  Brothers Need Brothers, and will continue to need them for the rest of this infinite ballgame.

Championship Teams

Two things:

1.  Bill Simmons' new site, grantland.com, is excellent.  I strongly recommend reading every article.  And if you don't have time for that, just the ones by Simmons and Klosterman, and if you don't have time for that just the ones by Simmons, and if you don't have time for that, reevaluate your priorities.  Thanks to morebaseball.com for the tip.

Moving on...

2.  While being overpaid to stock shoes this morning, and still reveling in the scent of vanilla, choruses of angels (probably something having to do with Moses), soft summer breeze, and the faint sound of children laughing that have been following me (everybody?  I can't be the only one, right?) since the Mavs beat the Heat, I realized that, although my father didn't accomplish the rare Quadruple Crown of having his favorite teams in the four major sports (Packers, Giants, Bulls, Blackhawks) holding championships, we did have a situation where every title that had been won in the past twelve months was won by teams that prided themselves on their team-first mentalities.

Now, because A) I don't really know enough about hockey to start putting pen to paper on it, and B) all hockey teams seem to be pretty unselfish, we're going to skip over the Blackhawks.  I'm sorry.  That leaves us with, in chronological order, the Giants, the Pack, and the Mavs.


After years of carrying around Barry Bonds in order to score more runs than other teams, the Giants finally felt guilty and decided to make up for it by not scoring any runs in the 2010 season.

Actual Barry Bonds head to body size ratio

That's actually an exaggeration, but the Giants did finish 17th in the majors in runs scored, the lowest of any playoff team.  Instead, they rallied around their pitching, defense, a midget they found on the street named Cody Ross, a hobo living under the Golden Gate Bridge named Brian Wilson, and had a group meeting sometime in late August/early September to decide that they were the best team in the Majors and it would probably be fun to win the World Series.  Try to name a star on that team.  Sure, Wilson was good, but he could only pitch 1/9th of the innings.  Lincecum was solid, but only had a few playoff starts.  Ross hit well.  Juan Uribe had some clutch at-bats.  But get this: Edgar Renteria was the World Series MVP.


Let's let that sink in.


The man is 35, which isn't too old until you think about the fact that he abandoned his amateur status (which they should really give you a card to carry around for) at age 16, in 1992.  The man has a lot of innings under his belt.  The Giants stayed within themselves, played for themselves, believed in themselves, and won.  Outstanding.


The Packers put themselves in a similar boat by sneaking into the playoffs with must-win wins in the last three weeks of the season.  They then proceeded to blow through the playoffs like an invisible shank to Jay Cutler's knee.  They did this all with a total of 80+ missed games due to injuries to Week 1 starters, and then, just for good measure, Charles Woodson and Donald Driver got hurt mid-game.
 

At some point during the year, I'm convinced that Aaron Rodgers just decided that they weren't going to lose anymore, held a meeting, shared his opinion, and everybody cashed in on it, leading to your Super Bowl Champions list including Jordy Nelson and some guy named Brett Swain, who doesn't even have a picture on his Wikipedia page.


Coolest moment of the whole thing though? (Besides that awesome picture of Rodgers and Matthews on the podium that shows before Sportscenter)  The fact that during the post-game interviews, Greg Jennings kept referring to Donald Driver as the Packers No. 1 Receiver, even though Jennings out-received Driver by 25 receptions and 700 yards during the regular season.  Hell, Driver was 4th in yards.  Except it was his team, his receiving core, and that was fine with everybody because of all the intangibles that he had provided.

Yep, that's the one.

And then there are the Mavs.  The wonderful, wonderful Mavs.  Sure they had Dirk, but who else?  Jason Terry?  He didn't even start.  Jason Kidd?  Way past his prime.  There were exactly zero minutes in the series when Dallas had the talent on the floor advantage.  But they won because they decided they were going to win.  The popular opinion is that it happened right after Dwyane Wade knocked down the 3 in front of the Mavs' bench, but who's to say that it didn't happen the second that the tattoo artist finished putting the Larry O'Brien Trophy on Jason Terry's arm.  Everybody was watching Lebron James last summer while Dirk & Co. re-signed and got better.  I'm convinced that at some point, the Mavs were walking out of practice and somebody said, "Let's win the Finals," and that was it.  It was done.


Simmons really hit the nail on the head in his retro-diary of Game 6.  In his second-to-last paragraph he says, "When Dirk briefly disappeared under the arena after the final buzzer, presumably to cry and collect himself, it was the most genuine sports moment of the year. He barely made it, you could see him choking up. LeBron would have done it at midcourt in front of everyone, partly for effect, and maybe that's one of the biggest differences between them right now. You play basketball for you and your teammates, not for everyone else."

That last sentence really hits home with me.  There's something about being on a team, a true team, that is absolutely impossible to replace with anything else.  "You play basketball for you and your teammates, not for everyone else."

Although I didn't think about this at the time, looking back, it seems like the three teams that I talked about played without even realizing that there were people in the stands.  As anybody who has ever played on a team with real chemistry knows, there's something special about that bond.  You go through bad stuff together, you celebrate good stuff together, and you get to know each other better than you know just about anybody.  My teammates and my coaches have taught me that if you're going into a foxhole, you don't always want the most talented, but you do want people who are going to fight like hell until the bitter end.  You want people who won't let themselves lose and won't let you lose.  These teams did that.

My favorite teammates

These guys proved to themselves and to their teammates that they were the best.  There's a reason that announcers say that teams "shock the world," but nobody has ever claimed to be shocked themselves after a solid win.  They always know.  They always believe.  These three teams firmly believed that they were the greatest teams in the world, and they set out to, and did, verify it.

Someone I want in my foxhole

One person who I have a lot of respect for is my high school baseball coach, Jeff Aldridge.  When we chose team captains, he would have us write down three guys each that we would want in our foxhole.  What he meant by that was three people that we knew we could count on if we had to make it out of a battle alive.  This meant the people that we picked weren't necessarily the ones we liked the most or who were the best players (although it was always a bonus if they did fall into these categories), but the ones who were loyal enough and valued the group enough to stay with us for better or for worse.  This is somebody that I would definitely want in my foxhole:

The Nard Dawg

I don't think I've ever met a person as loyal as Nardo.  Nardo is somebody who would do anything for any of his friends.  Whenever something seemed even slightly wrong, he'd immediately check on me to make sure I was okay.  Whenever one of us went into an uncertain situation he'd be right next to us.  He gave everybody a chance, and then he made sure that he had their back forever.  Little things like that seemed insignificant at the time, but looking back, it's amazing how much they can do and how much I value them.  Knowing that there's somebody that cares about you is a feeling that you only realize exists when it disappears. 

This man loves his friends more than just about anything in the world, which I'm sure the rest of us wish we could truly say.  No matter how much love I throw at Nardo, he always throws back more, but I guess I can still try.  If I'm ever in a foxhole I want Nardo there next to me, because I know that he'd be more willing to go down himself to get me out than to get out himself.  That's the best kind of friend and the best kind of person, and I can only hope he realizes how highly I think of him.