My fourth grade teacher had a magnificent egg collection. I was reminded of it today as I looked at the collection of beautiful Easter eggs my mom placed in the living room. People have all sorts of collections and my childhood was characterized by some good ones. My brother collected baseball cards and bottle caps. My sister collected stickers and more stickers. I shared her fancy and have wondered from time to time whatever happened to those photo albums artfully arranged with rainbow, unicorn and scratch and sniff goodness. I am still a collector—only today I collect something that is hard to show, but easy to give away. I take this collection very seriously. New items are added, more or less weekly, if not daily! They cost little but are utterly priceless. Perhaps you have contributed to my collection and odds are if you read my blog, you have benefitted from it. What do I collect? Stories...and sports offers some of the best ones.
Greg Boyle has said "good stories come to those who can tell them." I don't disagree but I don't need to be the subject or the object, for that matter of the stories I tell. I look and listen for good ones. I like to think of stories as seashells on the seashore—pick up the good ones, carry them with you. Some are fragile; many are holy.
I have but a few tips for finding good stories. I'd be interested in hearing yours. One of mine is to read the "Letters to the Editor" of a magazine you enjoy and read regularly. I think it's safe to assume you will know a story from a good one based people's responses and reactions. And, the missive by Jim De Brouwer from Blenheim, Ontario was all I needed to pick up the issue, two weeks prior to read "The Logan Effect." DeBrouwer wrote
I've been a subscriber to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED since 1979. I've played hockey my entire life. I'm a tough guy. Your story on Humboldt Broncos player Logan Boulet (March 11) brought me to tears. It will be with me for eternity. Bravo, Greg Bishop.
Unfortunately, I've head stories about sports team and bus crashes before. By no means should any of them be trivialized or reduced to a number or statistic. Each one is personal and painful. My own friend and fellow alumna, Haley Scott DeMaria chronicles her experience of surviving a fatal bus crash for two members of the Notre Dame women's swim team in her book "What Though the Odds." I had the honor and privilege of teaching this text to my seniors in Sports and Spirituality last Fall. Her story will stay with me, and my students, for eternity, too. I wondered how this one might be different.
I don't know that I would have read "Life and Legacy: The Logan Effect" were it not for that SI Letter to the Editor. I'm not a huge hockey fan and given the magnitude of the loss—16 Humboldt Bronco hockey players—I thought it might be too much. But I would like to share this story here and now because believe it or not, "The Logan Effect" is an Easter story. The world needs Easter stories.
I believe Bishop's piece is an Easter story because like Easter, this tale also involves a terminal death and a paschal death. What does that mean? Ron Rolheiser explains this well.
First, regarding two kinds of death: there is terminal death and there is paschal death. Terminal death is a death that ends life and possibilities. Paschal death, like terminal death, is real. However, paschal death is a death that, while ending one kind of life, opens the person undergoing it to receive a deeper and richer form of life. The image of the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying so as to produce new life is an image of paschal death.
Richard Gaillardetz adds, "The central challenge of Christian life is to internalize and make this spiritual rhythm of life-death-life our own. With Jesus we are to live out of the assurance that we are God's good creatures, die to any tendency to make ourselves the ultimate reality in the universe, and live anew in lives of loving attentiveness and service to others."
I urge you to read "Life and Legacy: The Logan Effect" for yourself. I can assure you that Logan lives on in six other people as they were able to harvest his heart, lungs, corneas, liver, kidney, and pancreas. The beauty of this gift is that it was made possible because of a former coach who decided to be a donor just a few weeks before his own terminal death. Logan's death started a national conversation and countless smaller ones in a country with a real organ donation crisis due to abysmally low donation rates. Since Logan's terminal death, tens of thousands of Canadians have signed up to become donors, too.
I arrived at this Easter Sunday with a little hesitation. It's not easy to turn the corner... to turn penance and sacrifice overnight to joy and delight. After all, we spent 40 days in the desert, we walked the road to Calvary, we cried at the foot of the cross. Terminal death is real. But as I look to the 50 days of Easter, the Easter lilies in full bloom and the promise of the Risen Lord, I know that a Paschal death yields new life....risen life.
This is my hope and my prayer for the Boulet family, the people of Saskatchewan and those who have lost loved ones in this way. Please know we won't forget what is terminal; let us hope and pray for the love and light of what is paschal. Your story is one I will keep in my collection. It is sad, painful and tragic; it also miraculous and meaningful. Thank you.
BTW: the word "Easter" in Latin is "paschae." Make sense.
Photo Credits
Team
In today's Gospel, the disciples ask Jesus, "Where could we ever get enough bread in this deserted place to satisfy such a crowd?" The Lord does not answer with words, but with action. He takes what they already have—seven loaves and a few fish and gives thanks. From a place of appreciation and gratitude, Jesus breaks the bread and the crowd partakes. Everyone ate. All bellies were filled. There were even left overs. Amazing!
But what if I told you the hungry crowd was fed by something other than bread or fish? What if Jesus answered the disciples' question with something that nourishes our hearts and minds, rather than our bodies? What if the bread which He offered was made of events and happenings, memories and tales from our past? No flour, no water, no yeast. No. What if what truly satisfied the people in this deserted place was a story. Would you believe me? I would. I do.
Why? How? The longer I live, the more I find true sustenance in story. It need not take an actual story for me to learn this lesson, but Barry Lopez—an author and poet—captured this truth so well that I haven't let go. He wrote, If stories come to you, learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
Lopez teaches me that stories are a gift. I'm not sure we can look for them, but rather let them come to us. And when they do, they aren't meant for us to hold tight. We need to share them. We ought to pass them on, but note his caveat "where they are needed." Don't let them fall on deaf ears. Don't just pass them on without consideration. Reflect and examine who needs to know. Who might be hungry? How might be in need of sustenance? Share your story there...then.
So here's my story to pass on. Actually, it's not my story, this one belongs to Sadie In the Woods. It's her personal story of Resilience as captured on the podcast "Why Sports Matter."
Available through iTunes as well as PlayerFM, "the episode explores resilience through two young leaders in the Native American community, and how they’ve used basketball to overcome immense adversity and build better lives for themselves, their communities, and future generations."
Sadie in the Woods of Pine Ridge Reservation, tried to commit suicide at the age of 11. When the rope that she used to hang herself broke, Sadie failed at something for the the last time. How? In the wake of her failed attempt, she noticed something incredibly vibrant, alive, pulsating, and invigorating. It was a Duke basketball game. She wanted to be a part of it all. The miracle is, she did. She was! Ask Diana Taurasi. Give it a listen. Unbelievable.
Sadie In the Woods narrates much of her own story. Her memories, her voice and inflection, her honesty and her smile (yes, you can hear it!) provided me —the recipient of her story— with a different type of nourishment. I feasted on hope and awe that a young woman like her could achieve her dream and find new ones along the way. I would like to thank Gotham Chopra and his Religion of Sports company for creating and hosting the “Why Sports Matter” podcast.
He says, "In general, I think podcasting demands great storytelling. You can’t rely on cinematic images to deliver emotions for you – it’s all in the ability to communicate through words and sounds. So I think that pushes storytellers to be even more diligent in what they want to say and how they want to say it.”
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| Sadie In the Woods |
He said the audio medium leads to very different approaches and choices than his TV work.
“It’s a different sort of storytelling. With filmmaking, you can rely a lot on the visual material you insert into the frame to help you communicate an emotion or evoke a mood. With podcasting, there’s no such luxury – it’s about the words and sounds coming from someone or something and that requires a degree of attention and story crafting that is very different.”
I want him to know how grateful I am for the stories I have heard thanks to this new podcast.... and for the opportunity to give them away.
Photo Credits
Sadie in the Woods
I interviewed one of my favorite people in the world today, my friend Mike Caponigro, the co-creator of the “Catholics vs. Convicts” t-shirt. I wanted to get the official history of how the shirt, banned by the university was made and sold before the October 15, 1988 Miami vs. Notre Dame game. In a posting that will follow before the Irish play the Hurricanes in the Sun Bowl, Mike concluded his remarks with a question to himself: Would I rather have the money or the story? I guess the money…no wait a minute, at the end of the day; I would rather have the story.
He raised what I believe is an interesting point and an intriguing idea, a good card in life's game of “would you rather.” The victory? the money? the girl/guy? the glory? or the story? Perhaps it’s because I’m Irish (Mike’s Jersey Italian….close enough) but I agree, I'll take the story too.
And for the first of my 2010 “Best of” postings, the best sports auto/biography goes to Andre Agassi for his controversial autobiography “Open.” Why? the guy has the girl(s), the glory, the money, and a whole lot of victories. But this isn't what makes his book so memorable; he knows how to tell a good story.
Ironically “Open” begins with a chapter entitled “The End.” He writes
I open my eyes and don’t know where I am or who I am. Not that unusual—I’ve spent half my life not knowing. Still, this feels different. This confusion is more frightening. More total.I look up. I'm lying on the floor beside the bed. I remember now. I moved from the bed to the floor in the middle of the night. I do that most nights. Better for my back. Too many hours on a soft mattress causes agony.
The bad back, three decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard led Andre to retire at the age of thirty-six (young by most standard except for professional tennis). But he isn’t only speaking about retirement, or pain or self-knowledge, he is setting the stage for what this book reveals.People would ask Agassi why he thought the end of his career was the appropriate time to write his autobiography. Why not wait until many years later—with time and distance from the game? Agassi conceded that it was therapeutic for him to undertake this endeavor. He reviewed hundreds of hours of game tape; he spoke with his coaches and trainers, reviewed interviews and more. Writing “Open” allowed him to make sense of the madness that is life on the ATP Tour. Tennis is played on six continents; it can be tremendously lonely and physically exhausting. But, it can also be pure entertainment. With Agassi’s active role as a US Davis Cup player, he came to appreciate a team dimension as well as the ultimate team—his wife—one of the greatest female players of all time, Steffi Graf. It doesn't have to be so lonely. Incredible victories, upsetting losses, his unconventional childhood, even the era he played all make for an autobiography that reads as a story.
It’s fitting, Agassi does not begin “Open” with the story of the last match he played, rather, he weaves in details of his life with his family on the tour, the cortisone shots he must take (whoa) all while leading up to what is final professional victory, against Marcos Baghdatis.
Ranked number eight in the world in the September 2006, I remember what a big and strong guy he was…and that he was Greek from Cyprus. I will never forget the school year was just underway and one of my students, a gentle giant was very proud of his Greek heritage. I happened to ask Matt Kosmas if he had family in Cyprus. He did. When I mentioned Baghdatis, he nearly went ape shit (I’m sorry, I typically don’t swear, but that’s the truth. Honestly, tell me how many Cyprian Greeks you know?!)
Like the rest of the book, Andre doesn’t just recall details of the match, he colors the pages with his emotions, insights, how his supporting cast—coaches, personal trainer and family played their parts. His recall is phenomenal and so are his experiences and adventures.
After he defeats Bagdahtis in five grueling sets he writes:
By the time I reach the locker room I’m unable to walk. I’m unable to stand. I'm sinking to the floor. I’m on the ground. Darren and Gil arrive, slip my bag off my shoulder and lift me onto a table. Baghdatis’s people deposit him on the table next to me. ... He curls up into a ball and begs (his people) to leave him be. Moments later something makes me turn back to Baghdatis. He’s smiling at me. Happy or nervous? Maybe both. I smile back. In my peripheral vision I detect slight movement. I turn to see Baghdatis extending his hand. His face says, We DID that. I reach out, take his hand, and we remain this way, holding hands, as the TV flickers with scenes of our savage battle. It was a fun way to start the book; I was hooked.
I hate how the press that surrounded "Open" focused on his usage of Crystal Meth, not to mention his hair loss, and hollow marriage to Brooke Shields. I hate how he hates tennis—I don’t. Even when I went to hear him speak at a book signing/release, I thought he is still a bit of a punk. Not a lot of Andre and his life resonate with me. Yet what totally fascinated about his memoir were the places he traveled, the people he met, his genius of a mind for the game and his significant comeback in his 30s.
And by way of compare and contrast, I read Pete Sampras’ autobiography "A Champions' Mind." Poor Pete…truly one of the greatest players of all time and he made me yawn. Case in point, after he captured his seventh title at Wimbledon, he wrote “we went out and had a blast.” I’m sure you did Pete. My God, you’re the winningest male in the history of the tournament and that’s all you want to share? Vitas Gerulaitis is rolling in his grave (good, bad or otherwise).
Andre is not a religious person. He intimates at his spirituality, but in the most abstract way possible. Yet, Andre and I share a common humanity; despite the challenges he has faced, the contradiction he is and the abuse he has endured from family, the media and self, I am certain he would say, ultimately, “Open” is a story of one man’s humanity. I want nothing to do with "Eat, Pray, Love" or "Girl with the Dragon Tatoo;" this is one story worth reading.
NB: "Open" was released in 2009...I may be cheating here! I didn't get to read it until January 2010.
Photo Credits
"Open"
Steffi and Andre
Andre and Bagdahtis
Brad Gilbert
