Guilty Pleasures in Trying Times

Books reviewed:



Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life, by Sean Payton and Ellis Henigan. New American Library, $24.95. 295 pages.



Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s, by Dan Epstein. Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99. 340 pages.



It may be hard to believe for those of you who know me only through my writings, but my mind doesn't occupy itself solely with classic literature, ideas of elevated philosophical import and the most pressing socio-economic issues of our time. I also enjoy bringing my piercing intellect, urbane wit and unbridled passion to the appreciation of those great American pastimes. baseball and American football (as distinguished from the subtle variation known as Canadian football, and the not-so-subtle variation known as "soccer," or "Anti-American football"). Despite my notable lack of success this season in fantasy baseball. I consider myself a serious and well-informed fan with a head for vitally important statistical information, known to most women by the term "trivia," (did you know Drew Brees is the third Purdue quarterback to win the Super Bowl, along with Len Dawson and Bob Griese? Look out, Alabama [Bart Starr, Joe Namath, Ken Stabler]!).



Thus, with baseball beyond the All-Star break and NFL teams breaking training camp, I decided to take some time out from my usual summer tradition of rereading all of Shakespeare's work (in the original English, of course) to sample a couple of recently-published sports books, both of intensely personal interest.



Before the 2009 season, I think I can say that my decades-long passion for the New Orleans Saints legitimately earned me the sobriquet "long-suffering." I remember the Aints, Ken Stabler handing off to Earl Campbell when both were well beyond their prime, dropping an almost-full plate of food when it was clear the team had not come to play in their first playoff game against the Vikings in 1987 (in all fairness, as fondly as I recall Jim Mora, I believe a more fliexible coach would have had the 1987-1991 Saints in the Super Bowl at least once ["Turn Perriman loose, and let Hebert throw the damn ball to him!!"]). My then-infant daughter burst into tears when I was unable to contain myself during the first playoff victory against the Rams ("But Zora, it's the Rams! The freakin' Rams!"). That the Super Bowl victory happened approximately four and a half years after the worst unnatural disaster in U.S. history added that much more drama, especially given the fact that so many of the key individuals contributing to that victory (Coach Sean Payton, players Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Marques Colston, Jahri Evans, Scott Fujita) arrived very soon after, with no illusions about the state of the still-recovering city. So I was anxious to see if Payton would be able to transcend the usual cliches his memoir Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life.



Fortunately, I would argue that Payton successfully avoided the most egregious pitfalls of the coaching memoir. The first is the motivational tome, which tends to rely on metaphors identifying the coach as either a field general or c.e.o., thereby preparing the writer/coach for a second career as a corporate motivational speaker. With his love for and wardrobe identification with laid-back country crooner Kenny Chesney (the photo presence count in the book is Drew Brees four, Chesney three), I don't think Payton is cut from that cloth. The other trap, more ubiquitous in football than in other sports, is the memoir as extended Christian testimonial. You know what? I read the whole damn book, and I don't know if Sean Payton is a Christian or not. Purely statistically speaking, he probably is, not that it's any of my business. And, praise the Lord, hallelujah, amen, he didn't make it any of my business.



The first few chapters are given to a brief pre-Saints biography, one that is both fairly typical of the nomadic life of the football player-turned-coach, and very unique. After a distinguished quarterbacking career at the University of Eastern Illinois, a brief professional playing career brings Payton from Chicago (Arena League) to Ottawa to Philadelphia (as a scab... excuse me, replacement player during the NFL strike), and finally, London, before embarking on a coaching career. Along the way, NFL coaching legend Bill Parcells becomes an important mentor, and Payton comes this close to taking the Oakland Raiders head coaching job, which would have meant working for owner Al Davis, the eccentric and once-brilliant football mind whose recent stubbornness and erratic personnel decisions have made a once-proud franchise a laughingstock.



After Payton takes the Saints job, the portrait that emerges is one of a master motivator and a gutsy, risk-taking tactician. The reader doesn't come away awed by a Bill Walsh- or Bill Belichick-like intellect, one whose innovations will change the way the game is played (leave that for defensive coordinator Gregg Williams). But I think it could be argued that his tutelage has turned Drew Brees and Darren Sharper from NFL stars to NFL Hall of Famers. I don't think Payton inspires the blend of respect tinged with fear that coaches from Vince Lombardi to Parcells to Tom Coughlin have made the template for a football coach in a lot of people's minds. But I do think his methods inspire similar run-through-a-brick-wall loyalties (or, in Fujita's case, surf through a waterpark wooden fence [p. 171]).



Much is made of the emotional and logistical challenges faced in post-Katrina New Orleans (a hellish pharmacy run probably came close to making Payton having to choose between his new job and his marriage, with good reason [pp. 69-70]). Given the unique circumstances, Payton makes some interesting choices describing the 2006 season. Following the nightmare of 2005, which saw the team's home games shifted to San Antonio and called into question the future of the team in New Orleans, the Saints capped off a remarkable run with an emotional playoff win against the Philadelphia Eagles, followed by their first-ever appearance in the NFC Championship, a disappointing 39-14 loss to the Chicago Bears in frigid, snowy conditions. For most teams, under most circumstances, a historical playoff run is the story of the season, and certainly the story of that section of the coach's memoir. But there was a bigger story for this team, and this city, and this coach, and Payton and co-writer Ellis Henican devote the 10 pages of Chapter 16 to the return to the Superdome, probably the most emotional chapter in the book.



On September 25, 2006, the Saints finally returned to their home stadium, approximately 13 months after it symbolized, to so many, the tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina and the criminally incompetent governmental response to it. Regional and divisional rivals the Atlanta Falcons would be visiting, and the eyes of the world would be back on New Orleans, through Monday Night Football, enhanced by the presence of U2 and Green Day, performing before the game. Recognizing the need to prepare his team for this unprecedented gametime situation, Payton reached down deep during the Friday practice before the game.



Gathering his team on the fifty-yard line, Payton introduced them to two Superdome officials who stayed through the Katrina aftermath. Then he gave the signal:



The lights went down. The Dome stayed dark for a moment. Then both the new Jumbotrons lit up, and a powerful highlights video filled the screen. Not the kind of highlights that usually play before a football game. These were highlights of Katrina. Lowlights may be a better word.



The video was just five minutes long. But I swear, it was the most emotional five minutes of tape I'd ever seen. The rising water, the people's faces, the houses with X's on the doors letting the rescuers know many bodies were inside. Those thick New Orleans accents. Very, very powerful stuff from beginning to end. And when the video was finished, these images of Katrina gave way to a song--the throaty exuberance of Hank Williams, Jr. singing "Are You Ready for Some Football?"--the Monday Night Football theme (pp. 130-131).



Everything is encapsulated in those moments. There's a coach preparing his team for an important game. An emotional acknowledgement of the triviality of that game, compared to the moral gravity of recent events not just in that city, but within that very building. A dramatic reminder that the trivial game is to be played on one of the largest stages in the world, and is therefore transformed in such a way that transcends the action on the field.



The Saints won 23-3, and I think it can be argued that a city and its people were able to look to the future with a little more hope, hope that turned to unadulterated joy when Tracy Porter made his way toward the end zone three and a half years later. And I think we all recall that storybook ending, right?

As much as I enjoyed reliving the Saints' Super Bowl victory, and as personally meaningful as it was, I must admit that my personal passion for baseball goes back even further, stoked in the fires of the mid-to-late 1970s American League East pennant races. My family lived just outside of Baltimore for a couple of years, and I became simultaneously obsessed with baseball cards and the Baltimore Orioles, who were eternally locked in competition with the Boston Red Sox and the hated New York Yankees at that time. Led by manager Earl Weaver--at once a fiery, umpire-baiting madman and a pioneering supercomputing analytical manager; dominating, glamorous pitcher Jim Palmer, surely the inspiration for Sam Malone; youthful slugger and first-ballot Hall of Famer Eddie Murray; Vietnam vet centerfielder Al "Bumblebee" Bumbry; aging wily veteran third baseman Brooks Robinson; and a host of role players deployed at just the right time, like so many miners in Weaver's grand Stratego game (Mark Belanger, Terry Crowley, Kiko Garcia, John Lowenstein, Tippy Martinez, Gary Roenicke, Don Stanhouse, Tim Stoddard)--the Orioles of those years were a fundamentally sound, steady contrast to the drama of the Bronx Zoo Yankees and the Greek tragedy that was the Red Sox. Besides the Oakland A's run from 1972-74, either the Orioles, Red Sox or Yankees represented the American League in every World Series in the 70's, a remarkable run in a remarkable decade, for the game and for the society surrounding it. And Dan Epstein captures that decade remarkably well in Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s.

This book will satisfy both the uber-fan and the more sociologically-inclined, as Epstein balances the statistical and the cultural and perfectly as a fork on a fondue pot. He convincingly argues that the social revolution ushered in by the tumult of the 1960's finally exploded into baseball at the beginning of the 1970's, with three events in particular, of arguably varying degrees of importance, signaling the sea change that was coming.

In January of 1970, outfielder Curt Flood brought suit against Major League Baseball, challenging the reserve clause that uniquely allowed baseball teams to "own" a player until such time that the owner decided to trade or release him. When that player's contract expired, his only recourse in the event of stalled contract negotiations was to hold out until one side blinked. Flood, a uniquely gifted player (and the author of the fascinating memoir The Way It Is) and the nascent players union, led by the visionary Marvin Miller, challenged that clause, essentially sacrificing Flood's career for a right taken for granted today. Meanwhile, the summer saw the publication of Jim Bouton's Ball Four, possibly the most explosive sports book (for its time) ever published, revealing the scandalous drinking and carousing habits of big league ballplayers, as well as the use of amphetamines (particularly after a night of drinking and carousing).

Finally, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis, an iconoclastic, outspoken black man with a foot in both the political and lifestyle camps of the counterculture, did the unthinkable, the inconceivable, the impossible. Two days before...:

The Pirates had just finished a series with the Giants in San Francisco and flown down to San Diego, where their four-game series against the Padres was scheduled to commence that Friday. A native of Los Angeles, Ellis decided to take advantage of his day off by dropping acid, renting a car, and driving up to L.A. (apparently in that order) to see some pals. They spent Wednesday night smoking weed and drinking screwdrivers until the sun came up, whereupon Ellis finally crashed. Upon awakening, Ellis dropped another tab of acid; after all, he reasoned, he wasn't slated to pitch again until Friday. Unfortunately, as one of his friends soon informed him, it was Friday--Ellis had completely slept through Thursday (p. 18).

Now I know that some of you know where this is headed, because this story is part of the subterranean lore of baseball, still thought by many to be as apocryphal as Babe Ruth's calling a home run in the World Series or George Washington chopping down the cherry tree after shattering his bat on a nasty split-fingered fastball from Tom Paine. But it's true, my friend, it's all true. Not only did Dock Ellis make it from L.A. to San Diego in time for his scheduled start... tripping on acid, not only did he start the game, not only did he win the game, not only did he complete(!) the game (which a lot of pitchers did back in those days before the overspecialization of middle relievers and closers, and this with a five-man rotation, mind you, which Epstein reveals was pioneered by Tommy Lasorda with the Dodgers,... oh, sorry), Dock Ellis, despite eight walks and a hit batter, threw a frickin' no-hitter tripping balls-out on L.S.D. on June 12, 1970. The psychedelic revolution had come to baseball, and the Louisville Slugger of consensus reality exploded like a bumped Pinto.

So many changes, so much drama: the "innovations" of the designated hitter and artificial turf, and the adaptations to them by savvy teams and managers; the racial dynamics overlaying Hank Aaron's overtaking of Babe Ruth's career home run record; the continued emergence of Latin American stars, in the shadow of Roberto Clemente's tragic and heroic death; the Oakland A's "Mustache Gang" and the Big Red Machine, the postseason heroics of Carlton Fisk and Reggie Jackson; the San Diego Chicken and Disco Demolition Night.

Unsung heroes also emerge from the narrative. Dick Allen, stigmatized as a "moody," militant black man because he didn't automatically defer to the prescribed authority figures, mentoring young players at every step of his nomadic career; the cerebral ironman Mike Marshall, speeding the evolution of the relief pitcher through his kinesiological experiments; Whitey Herzog, building speedy winning teams on the "plastic grass" in Kansas City and St. Louis; the crafty Cuban Luis Tiant, whose ever-present cigar, unorthodox throwing motion and Monsanto-manufactured afro toupee covered the soul of an intense competitor (and whose defection from the Red Sox to the Yankees was, I would argue, second in pragmatic and traumatic significance only to Babe Ruth's); and, my personal favorite, Bill "The Spaceman" Lee, the soft-throwing lefty whose skill at throwing off-speed pitches was matched only by his irreverence for the archaic authoritarianism which pervaded the game.

It is hard not to consider all of these men (not to mention such originals as Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, Rollie Fingers, Joe Morgan, Dave Parker, Pete Rose, Willie Stargell) as giants who strode the earth, the likes of which will be never seen again, exotic creatures like Mark "The Bird" Fidrych talking to the ball or Carlton Fisk willing a home run in '75 with his bizarre New Hampshire body voodoo. Never again.

I mean, unless you count Kirk Gibson in '88, or the Red Sox coming back against the Yankees in '04. Heck, just this season, we saw Oakland A unknown Dallas Braden's upbraiding of self-centered punk slugger Alex Rodriguez, followed quickly by his emotional perfect game on Mother's Day, which he dedicated to his late mother while his grandmother was in the stands watching (and then she told A-Rod where to go!). Plus the emotionally overwhelming spectacle of umpire Jim Joyce blowing the call that lost Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga, followed by the grace and dignity of both men's responses. What can I say but, "Play ball!"