News Feed Fire Hose

Dearest Rachel –

I had actually started a topic yesterday afternoon that I was going to work on for you for today, but it doesn’t seem like I’m going to arrive at any resolution to it soon enough, what with the weather being sunny today and rainy thereafter until the weekend – which means that I’m walking with Lars today, and therefore won’t get a whole lot done at the ‘office’ (including doing the stuff that I would have been writing to you about). Maybe in another couple of days; I mean, it has to be done soon, or things won’t happen at all…

But for now, I need to have something to tell you about, even if it’s only a small and insignificant distraction. Sure, we could go hours together in companionable silence, but we could also talk about the most irrelevant topics for stretches at a time (although, in perspective, just about any topic here on earth feels insignificant compared to where you are now, I suppose); it probably goes without saying that I miss those days, even if only because it feels like now, I have to hold up the conversation single-handedly.

Fortunately, there’s always my news feed, which is a wealth of (more or less) insignificant goings-on. While I tend to check it first thing in the morning by habit, it’s a dangerous game for me to engage in, especially when I’m trying to prepare to send you a greeting. There’s nothing like a torrent of the latest goings-on in the world to flush out any thoughts I may have started the day with. It’s like trying to fill a teacup (that’s already full of something warm and soothing to start the day with) with a firehose – not only do you lose the tea, the cup goes flying out of your hand, and you have to hope that it’s not one of your good china ones, as it’s likely to shatter when it hits the ground at that force.

To be sure, even starting the day like I am today with an otherwise empty teacup is a risky proposition, since my news feed generally focuses on world events, especially in the political sphere, and that’s not something to discuss unless you want to anger half the world by bringing it up. Doesn’t even matter about the topic; bring it up, and either one half of the world will get mad, or the other will. Really, you can’t win unless you don’t bother to play that game in the first place, and so I try not to, even though you and I would discuss such stuff all the time – although that was because it was between the two of us, and we were generally on the same page, so there wasn’t the fear of those eavesdropping upon our conversation. Then, if someone outside of us got upset, it was their fault for their rudeness… now, they’re kind of my audience, so I have to be careful.

At least today, I was greeted with all manner of news of a sporting nature; and while you were never a fan of sportsball in general (indeed, having grown up amid several generations of sports fans, I rather gave it up to a great extent due to your indifference to it, as it’s no fun to watch with someone who doesn’t enjoy it. Fortunately, since I’m a third-generation Chicagoan, that wasn’t a particularly terrible sacrifice), you could at least indulge me in the topic now and again, especially when it came to the follies of the game. And this is something of a particular folly, which makes it worthy of bringing up.

To tell the truth, it should be a fairly slow time in the world of sportsball right now. Football is long since past (the Super Bowl was over two months ago) – and the CFL doesn’t start up until June or July – and while the basketball playoffs are underway, the real story that is March madness concluded a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, baseball is just getting started, and while hope springs eternal among Cub fans – the boys in blue seem to be off to a good start, as it happens – I find myself siding with the Zen master about their chances: “We’ll see.”

So what has the attention of my news feed, and what have I found myself reading a half-dozen articles about over the last twelve hours or so? Believe it or not, it’s about the draft. Which is weird, because the vast majority of the players drafted every year – and there are hundreds of them each year, enough to fill the entire CFL roster (of course, these college boys are gunning for the NFL) – really don’t make that much of an impact on the scene. They barely show up for a cup of coffee – or tea, if you prefer – before washing out. In a way, it reminds me of the dating scene, only it’s whole teams swiping right or left on this or that player. There’s no point in getting excited about any of them until and unless they can put rings on each others’ fingers come February (and not necessary even this coming February).

Okay, you might ask, grasping why the concept might interest me in the moment on a metaphorical basis, but it doesn’t explain why a normally politics-laden news feed would be giving me all those articles about a bunch of potential future football heroes. That’s a reasonable question, and it’s where things get a little more spicy. It also gets a little into your family, as it involves a guy who bears your name (although I’m not gonna mention it until later, when another ‘family’ member pipes up; in the end, it really doesn’t matter, since, like me, you have a lot of people in this world who share your family name, most of whom are unimportant. Including, it might be argued, this guy), as well as his father, who also shares your name, obviously.

A little background is in order, since you would only be dimly aware of the dad, let alone his son. This fellow was a multi-disciplinary all-star athlete; he was good enough for major league baseball, but really went into football and had a Hall of Fame career. The thing was, he knew he was a Hall of Famer from the moment he stepped onto the field, and he made sure everybody else knew it, too. Now, if a person can back up his braggadocio with results, much can be forgiven (except by members and fans of opposing teams), but he did rather tend toward being insufferable. Interestingly, when his playing days ended, he went into coaching, where he took a college organization from moribund to contention. Not to a championship – not even close, yet – but a respectable improvement from before his tenure.

The thing is, his son was among his players on that college team, and was their lead quarterback this past season. Now, remember that I said the team had a respectable season, not spectacular; fairly even in terms of wins and losses. This was, from what I could tell, a vast improvement over the previous regime, but still, nowhere near a championship season. And yet, for whatever reason, the kid was being touted as a first-round pick.

Now, athletics is a field in which the nature-vs-nurture folks have a field day. It could easily be argued that good genes lead to superior muscle tone and athleticism; it’s why Derby winners are prized as stud horses, after all. But then there’s the fact that even natural ability has to be harnessed and cultivated; world-class athletes work out and practice on the regular from childhood, day after day, to reach the level that they do. It could easily be argued that this young man had both advantages, especially given the fact that he was, literally from day one, under the tutelage of a world-class athlete father and coach. So some of these expectations for his prospects could be justified.

The thing is, there are other aspects that have their own nature-vs-nurture argument going for them. Is it possible that having an ego like his dad’s was born in him, or was it part of the way he raised him? Either one could have its proponents, but the fact of the matter is, the young man seems to have believed every bit of hype heaped upon him. Remember, he quarterbacked a team that, while having improved from the bottom of its conference to the middle of the pack, wasn’t a league leader; and yet, he (and those in the field) seemed to think he had a right to be selected, if not in the top ten, within the first thirty or so that would make up the first round of picks.

But he wasn’t. Nor was he picked in the second, or the third round… or even the first day of selection. It wasn’t until the fifth round, about a hundred forty or fifty selections in, that he went to Cleveland, of all places (and the last time the Brownies drafted what they thought was a top-flight quarterback, he had a tremendous ego and flamed out pretty quickly, too. Speaking of which, for all I know, the fact that your mom came from there might go some distance in explaining your indifference to sport; as bad a reputation as we have for losers in Chicago, Cleveland has it arguably worse – who would raise their child to love that kind of sportsball? I could go on about that for a while, in fact, but I’ll just let it go at that for now). It could be that this may humble the young man a little, and he’ll learn to bloom where he’s planted, but this once again brings out the Zen master in me: “We’ll see.”

On top of everything, someone got his phone number that he’d gotten especially for him to receive calls from the various teams, and pranked him by calling him up, claiming to be a coach from another team, and telling him, “You’ll have to wait for a little while longer.” Not cool, and the prankster – a twenty-year-old kid of a third team’s coaching staff – has been caught and forced to apologize. Amazingly, the would-be draftee seems to have accepted the apology with some grace, which speaks well for him and his future.

On the other hand, the media sphere hasn’t been quite as gracious, which may be why it ended up in my news feed in the first place. For all that the kid has demonstrated an ego commensurate to that of his old man (with what appears to be less of his dad’s abilities – bearing in mind that that’s a high bar to clear), it can’t be helped by the news hype bolstering his own beliefs in himself as first-round material. Indeed, the conclusion as to why he wasn’t picked during the first round, or immediately thereafter was announced to be due to… wait for it… you guessed it… racism. Eighty percent of the played chosen before him were members of the same race as he was, but sure, let’s stoke that resentment. Forget the fire hose; let’s bring a flamethrower into the discussion.

Still, the fact that he was chosen seems to have defused the situation, and we can hope that things settle down for the future. He may not be able to command the salary he thought he could, but with a little humility of spirit, he might last that much longer in the leagues than “Johnny Football,” Cleveland’s last first-round football pick. Let’s not forget that the man considered to be the greatest quarterback of all time, with more rings than he has fingers on either hand, wasn’t selected until the sixth round himself; so really, you never know.

Oh, and I mentioned him being your namesake; well, another namesake chimed in once the dust settled, one you’d be more familiar with. Here’s what a representative of your ‘uncle’ Harland had to say in congratulations when the dust settled:

Here’s to see what happens once everything shakes (and bakes) out; we’ll see.

Hope you found that amusing, honey, even if the subject matter might have otherwise been of little interest to you. Anyway, keep an eye on me for the remainder of the day, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.