Three Questions, James Caan

            In Mrs. Tillman’s 9^th grade Honors English class, we watched the movie Brian’s Song, an ABC movie of the week (back when the networks showed movies in the evenings) which is about Chicago Bears football player Brian Piccolo and his battle with cancer, which he eventually lost in 1970. It was the last day of the fall semester in 1986, and she needed something to fill an hour since it wasn’t really possible to introduce new material. What I didn’t realize was how well-received this movie was. It earned eight Emmy nominations, winning four times, plus it won a Peabody Award (UGA plug, since Georgia hosts the Peabody Awards). I knew how the movie turned out, since I read I Am Third, Gale Sayers’ autobiography, as an eighth grader.

            As it turns out, this was my first exposure to the actor James Caan, who is one of my favorites. Technically, I saw Rollerball before this, but didn’t really know much about him at that point.

            So over time, Caan has become one of my favorite actors. Many people likely know him for his portrayal of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (and doesn’t everyone think of Sonny when they stop at the toll booth on the turnpike). But as I’ve mentioned previously, I know him best for his portrayal of Jonathan E in Norman Jewison’s Rollerball (1975).

            Anyway, onto my three questions. Probably nothing earth shattering or worthy of 60 Minutes, but they are things that interest me.

1)   Tell me about playing Jonathan E in Rollerball. I see so many parallels when I compare this movie to the sporting world we live in, so I can only imagine what it seemed like in the early 70s. I realize it’s been 40 years since the movie came out, but in this context, how meaningful of a role/experience was this?

2)   Many other actors and actresses have turned down roles for movies that turned out to be pretty successful. Hindsight is always 20/20, but can you tell us a little bit about the thought process behind saying no to roles in movies such as Kramer vs. Kramer, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Superman?

3)   Your first listed movie role is in 1963, and it was uncredited in the actual movie, and you’ve done so much that perhaps it all starts to run together. Over 50+ years, for any reason, what are some of the roles/movies/people you look back on the most fondly?

So there you have it. There are so many other questions to ask, but only so much time. Enjoy.

Juliette Gordon Low

Back in June of 2014, the First Lady and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary by visiting Savannah, Georgia. We had a fabulous time, saw some marvelous sights, and ate some delicious food.

One of the touristy things we did was to visit the home of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts. Ann has always spoken very highly of her time as a Girl Scout, and I believe those years were very important in forming the woman she has become. And in learning about Ms. Low, I found it very easy to identify with her and how she was able to find a way to make a significant difference on the world we live in.

The Juliette Gordon Low home in Savannah, now a National Historic Landmark.

In learning Low’s life’s story, everything so clearly points to the formation of an organization like the Girl Scouts. As a child she was always interested in the arts, writing plays, poetry, and was skilled in sketching. She and her cousins helped sew clothing for children in the neighborhood. She attended school in Virginia and also in New York City, and did a fair amount of traveling in Europe and in the United States. She even returned to the states during the Spanish-American War to help care for wounded soldiers. So she was definitely a woman of the world who saw and learned a lot of things.

In 1886, she married William Mackay Low at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Savannah [side note—we worshiped in this church during our trip and it was an amazing experience]. They lived in England although she continued her travels. The marriage lasted 19 years, but they were not happy years. They were separated at the time of his death in 1905.

This is where I really started to connect with Ms. Low. Her life was suddenly at a bit of a crossroads, much like mine is at this point.

She spent several years casting about for meaning until 1911 when she met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. In 1912, Low returned to Savannah and created the Girl Guides. The ambition was to teach young girls self-reliance and resourcefulness, and maybe even help them learn about a life as a professional and not necessarily as a homemaker. Starting with 18 Girl Guides, the Girl Scouts USA are now 2.8 million strong, and this organization has shared its values with 59 million women and men worldwide.

And what makes this story more remarkable is that she did all these things despite having back problems and being mostly deaf in both ears for most of her life. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1923 but kept on working until she died in 1927. President Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the highest civilian award in the U.S.

Juliette Gordon Low definitely chose the right path—certainly an untraveled path, and made a difference in the lives of countless young girls, my wife and her friends included. Ms. Low found a way to help people and to make a difference, and I truly admire her for finding a way. She serves as a role model to me.

NCAA Tournament

            I have been up to my eyeballs with schoolwork this semester. I have tried to work harder so I can rise to the level of effort that graduate school requires.

            One casualty is the annual tradition of filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. Or in my case, six brackets. It seems like everyone does it, and it’s great fun trying to figure out who will win, and who will pull off the upset. But this year, the First Lady and I did not fill a bracket out for the first time in many years. Speaking for myself, I just didn’t have the energy for it. Besides—the more I try to analyze things, the more I look at statistics and what not… the worse I seem to do. We were in a basketball pool during the season and it was the same thing. When we tried harder to analyze the teams and schedules, we fell further and further behind.

            So we didn’t fill any brackets out this year. The thing is, watching the games has been just as compelling as it has always been. As an added bonus—our brackets weren’t ruined when Iowa State lost to UAB. They would have if I’d filled one out, since ISU looked really good in the Big 12 Tournament. In addition, who really looks at their picks after the second day of the tournament? If you’ve entered an online group, do you really care anymore once your bracket is blown up? I don’t.

            Only two teams I care about made the big dance—NMSU and Georgia. The Aggies because the campus is in Las Cruces, some of my old stomping grounds. UGA because, well, I go to school there and we had season tickets and had a great time. Neither side won their first-round game, so now it’s a free for all. I’m trying to care about North Carolina, since the wife roots for them (she has an MBA from UNC). It’s difficult, and I just don’t give my heart away that easily. But I’m working on it.

            It’s actually kind of nice to not really care about any of the teams still alive—no emotional attachment means no stress.           

Over Dinner

I recently saw a topic thread online that sounded like a fun experiment. It’s where you can invite any two people (living or dead) to join you for dinner, but you are not allowed to join in the conversation. Order your food and drinks, but otherwise just keep your mouth shut and don’t ask questions. Just listen to your two guests talk. Oh yeah, one parameter—you can’t invite God, Adolf Hitler, or Abraham Lincoln. Too easy. I came up with several pairs—some are diabolical, some are historic, but I hope you would find them entertaining. The thought is to share them over time.

The first pair I’ll throw out there is sports related—Vince Lombardi, longtime coach of the great Green Bay Packer teams of the 1960s, and Bill Belichick, current coach of the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots.

I’m not here to discuss Belichick’s ethics, which have been hashed and rehashed for a very long time. Neither he nor Lombardi should be considered saints.

Belichick is not exactly known for being a chatterbox, but I hear his players love playing for him, mainly because he wins football games. I don’t begrudge that—we all have our reasons. He knows part of his job is talking to the media, and that’s where his reputation comes into play. Coaches do not want to share anything that might clue an opponent in to a weakness, so he does not like to talk where there are cameras around. I imagine his players don’t care about that. Plus, I’m wiling to bet Belichick is more of a social being on the practice field or in meeting rooms. He is also a master at breaking down game film and getting many different parts to work together. He likely learned these skills as a boy when he would spend time with his father, who was an assistant at the Naval Academy.

Vince Lombardi lives on primarily through books and NFL Films videos. He was one of the Seven Blocks of Granite on the Fordham football team in the 1930s (interesting that he was the starting offensive tackle at 5’8” and 180 pounds). The image that comes to mind is one of a stereotypical old-school football man. He’s a world champion coach, winner of five NFL titles in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls. The man most definitely knew what he was doing.

Belichick graduated from Annapolis (Md.) High School in 1970, and Lombardi was coach of the Washington Redskins for the 1969 season, and he died in DC in 1970, so there may be some sort of connection there. It would be fascinating listening to nearly 100 years of football history, since these two men could form a timeline that runs as far back as the 1920s.

            I feel sure my food would get cold—I consider myself an (very) amateur historian and I don’t think I’d eat. I’d just listen to the stories and to the history lesson.

Rollerball

When I was small, there was a movie I was scared to death of. I would hear the opening notes of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and I would just freeze. I don't remember why-- there must have been some sort of formative event, but it escapes me as to why I couldn't watch this movie.

I eventually overcame this fear, and I actually own the VHS version of this film (I know-- how 90s can I be). It has come to be one of my favorite movies, and I saw the last five minutes of it the other day.

Every time I watch Rollerball, I am reminded of how visionary Norman Jewison was, because I sure do see parallels between his movie and sports of today. Perhaps that's how things were in the mid-1970s and earlier. It certainly seems plausible to me.

The 2002 knock off of this movie will not be discussed here. Sacrilegious.

James Caan is a great Rollerballer in a violent sport of the future. This is a game where rules are changed in order to increase ratings and excitement, sort of like changing a rule such as the line of scrimmage for the kickoff in football. Players must go along since they are under contract. Individualism is frowned upon, even punished (instead of fined). The players are expendable, and there is a seemingly endless stream of new guys to replace the ones who are hurt.

All of these things I see in professional sports today. I have no trouble connecting the dots.

I've not included every plot detail, and I don't believe in spoilers as it relates to a 40-year old-movie, so here we go.

Rollerball is a dangerous and deadly game played on a slightly banked track. Two teams comprised of bikers and skaters try to take the object, a large, weighted, metal ball around the track and score a goal, seemingly by any means necessary. The game does not start with a national anthem, rather a corporate hymn or anthem.
  
Jonathan E (Caan) as the protagonist is just a mean dude in this movie. He has had a great rollerball career, but he has started asking questions about how and why things are the way they are. Mr. Bartholomew (John Houseman) of Energy Corporation (based in Houston) has decided he needs to retire and has planned a half-hour show around Jonathan's supposed announcement. He defies Energy Corporation and does not retire, as his Houston team is advancing in the postseason and he doesn't want to leave them in the lurch. This now makes Jonathan expendable, and the rules again are changed in order to eliminate him.

Bikers and skaters going at it in a Rollerball game. Jonathan E is shown with the rollerball in his right hand.
This picture is from the Madrid at Houston quarterfinal match.

Jonathan then has to compete against New York in the finals-- a side that has been instructed to do the eliminating. Our hero barely has any support in his own locker room, as his teammates don't approve (or have been told to not approve) of his individualism. The final game is played with no penalties and no substitutions (a step up from the semis vs. Tokyo, where there were limited penalties and limited substitutions), and players from both sides drop like flies as the game's violence does its work. Eventually, Jonathan emerges battered and bloodied but victorious, much to the dismay of Bartholomew, whose best-laid plan has been foiled. The movie ends with Jonathan skating defiantly around the track, slaloming around the motionless bodies on the track as toccata and fugue in D minor ends the proceedings.

Jonathan E is one of my favorite movie characters, and this movie really speaks to me. Now you know a little bit as to why.

The Royals

Here in the last few weeks, I've been taking a new phrase out for a spin in the reaches in my mind. It is a set of words that explains my state of mind and what kind of man I think I've become.

West Texan by birth, Kansan by choice

I feel I truly learned how to be an adult during the 7 1/2 years I lived in Clay Center, Kansas. I met many lifelong friends, including my bride. I learned how adults work, make decisions, treat each other, and have fun. The places I worked in Texas did not offer me these opportunities. That, or I didn't know how to take advantage of the chances I got. I worked a lot of lonely shifts at TV and radio stations when there very few others around to learn from. As a result, I didn't learn how civilized adults behave.

So I consider myself a Kansan first.

I've also become partial (or have strong opinions of) the state's teams. Specifically, the Kansas State Wildcats, the Kansas City Chiefs, and these guys:

2014 American League wild-card winner, Division Series champion, and winners of the 2014 American League pennant

In addition, the radio station I used to work for was a Royals on Radio affiliate, a network the called the largest radio network in the American League. We'd go to to Affiliates' Day at Kauffman Stadium, hear Royals officials speak, listen to George Brett, and visit/meet with their radio people. This included Denny Matthews, Ryan Lefebvre, Fred White (miss ya, Fred-- RIP), Paul Splittorff (also RIP) and even the broadcasters from the other team, which one year included Joe Castiglione and I think Jerry Remy of the Boston Red Sox. We then got good seats for the evening's game and got back to Clay Center after a three-hour drive back up I-70.

I didn't listen to decades of games on the front porch or while plowing fields, but I did listen to my fair share and I did watch my portion of the Royals during the 2000s, which were some wretched years. What I'm saying is that KC winning the pennant doesn't mean as much to me as it does to a lot of my friends (who have waited longer than me), but I was just as excited to see our guys beat Oakland, the Angels, and Baltimore.

So I bonded with the team and I consider myself a Royals fan, and I understand what this team means to a bunch of us Midwesterners. This story by Joe Posnanski hits the spot for me:

What the Royals mean to us

I've also learned what baseball teams mean to folks. A good friend who hired me in Clay Center gave me a Starting Lineup figurine of Ozzie Smith in a Cardinals uniform as an expression of thanks when I covered him as he went to go bury his mother, who was a huge St. Louis fan. It is a prized possession.

Another friend is a huge Orioles fan who lost his wife about a year ago. A friend went behind his back asking the O's to do something to maybe bring a smile to his face. The team responded with a very kind condolence letter. A third friend is a man I served in the Navy with. He's an Orioles fan and I've seen the pictures on Facebook as he passes along his love of the O's to his son.

In 2004, when the Boston Red Sox went to (and later won) the World Series, The Sons of Sam Horn message board had pages and pages of powerful stories of fans who wrote what this would have meant to their blind grandmother who would stay up to listen to the late-night Sox games from the West Coast. Or of going to the Sox games with their dad, seeing Ted Williams or Johnny Pesky or Carl Yastrzemski play at Fenway.

I feel that sort of connection with the Royals, and I identify with the folks who have been fans longer than me. They are the ones who were around in the glory years of the 70s and 80s and the 1985 World Championship side. They also felt it worse when KC would regularly lose 100+ games with a collection of guys nobody wanted.

This team and this season are why we watch and the reason we stick around and why we are loyal to a fault. This is what we Royals fans have been waiting for. Regardless of how the series with San Francisco turns out, it will have been a remarkable and wild ride.

Finals Series

It's been a few weeks since the Australian Football League crowned its premiers for 2014, which means I haven't needed to record the matches that air live either late at night or early in the morning, here on the east coast of the U.S. I've been recording them and watching them during the week to get my fix.

The AFL Twitter feed is dormant at times I usually check, so I never saw the final score before I watched. I still haven't really adopted a team to follow, and that is probably a good thing, since I typically follow underdogs, and underdogs typically lose. I kind of have a thing for Gold Coast, Fremantle, Port Adelaide, St. Kilda, and the GWS Giants. It's a long list and it's somewhat fluid. I just like watching the matches.

They also have a rather unique finals system, which is how they seed teams for the playoffs. They call it 'making the eight.' The sides are seeded according to their regular season record. 1 plays 4, and 2 plays 3. In the bottom half, 5 plays 8, and 6 plays 7. The top half features no elimination games in the first week. Winners there get a bye directly into the Preliminary Final round, and losers must play the winners of the bottom half of the eight in the Semi Final round. Losers in the 5/8 and 6/7 matches are eliminated. That is what happened to Richmond this season-- they won about their last nine games to squeak into the eight (beating Sydney, which is a good side) on the last day of the home and away season, only to get beat down by Port Adelaide. I guess they spent so much energy on qualifying that maybe they were spent. (1) Hawthorn beat (4) Geelong, and the Sydney Swans beat Fremantle. Bottom half: Port Adelaide beat Richmond and North Melbourne took down Essendon.

Anyhow, we're down to six sides. The two losers in the top half play the winners of the bottom half. Geelong lost their first match to Hawthorn and then lost their Semi Final match to an inspired North Melbourne side. In addition, Fremantle fell to Port Adelaide in this round by 22 points. So the Geelong Cats and the Fremantle Dockers are both done, and we're down to four sides remaining.

Hawthorn and Sydney both got byes into the Preliminary Final round, and both were winners. The Hawks beat Port by three points in a match that saw the Power rally at the end only to come up short by an eyelash. In the other game, Sydney gave it to North pretty good. It's the advantage of doing well in the regular season, to give yourself the chance to rest and only play two games to make the Grand Final, where a team from 5-8 would have to win three times just to make it.

Now all these playoff games were available on my cable system, but the Grand Final was not, and paying an extra $15 a month to watch one match just didn't seem worthwhile. This was a rare good decision on my part, since Hawthorn dominated the Sydney Swans to earn the premiership.

It is a back-to-back premiership and the 12th for Hawthorn since their entry into the league in 1925. They were one of the better sides when I used to watch a bit as a teenager, and they are pretty dominant nowadays too.

So no more AFL until the 2015 premiership season starts in mid-March. The trade window is still open, schedules will still be released, but we are still several months away from matches that count. I'll be waiting.