When I was in the dorms there were a couple enterprising hippie girls on my floor who would make a bunch of grilled cheese sandwiches in the tiny communal kitchen, then go around knocking on doors at night selling them to hungry/drunk/stoned dorm denizens. Putting their salesperson skills honed at Grateful Dead shows to good use.
I met Jerry West for the first time in 1979 at the Forum where he introduced me to Bill Sharman, Chick Hearn, and then Laker owner Jack Kent Cooke. My father, agent and I negotiated over lunch then Jerry took me to the locker room to show me my Lakers jersey. I started to cry and… pic.twitter.com/o9xMDu50Wv— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) June 12, 2024
The most telling thing about that tweet is that a player with the talent of Magic Johnson kept looking for little nuances in his game where he could improve. The difference between being a "very good" player and one of the greatest ever.
Same thing with Michael Johnson (sprinter). His biography is pretty intense. Other Johnson's try other methods.
Magic said the reason he trained so hard was he knew Larry was in the gym taking 3's and extra laps. Larry did so because LA was due in town!
Great pic. I've never seen it. What's interesting is that Mays is from Alabama, so it's not likely he grew up playing stickball.
Oh, don't kid yourself; Birmingham in the 40's? The ball was a pair of old socks wrapped in tape and twine, and the bat was a broom or axe handle or a fence strake or the like. Even in white Idaho in the fifties balls were hard to come by sometimes, and while we had actual bats, some of them were better suited to the fireplace than the batter's box. We had one that weighed more than Babe Ruth, never mind his bat-- the two big kids, Billy and Herbie were the only ones who could swing it and even they bunted a lot. The other one we used was broken and nailed back together. I got given a fungo bad for my birthday by a rich great aunt who didn't know the difference. Or maybe she did-- once I got strong enough to swing it, then I could step up to an actual bat... Eventually Herbie started playing on an actual team and his dad bought him a shiny new Harmon Killebrew...
That's Alabama in the 80s singing about their childhood. There's a reason why movies like Field of Dreams reference players in the 50s and 60s (and maybe earlier) coming there just to get on a team and travel around Iowa. It was a major outlier for playing real baseball with real equipment then.
I once had a phone conversation with him...I think around 2003. Just looked up his office number and called - he answered.
This rare footage of Willie Mays playing stickball in NYC is so cool to seeRIP to a legend and one of the all-time greats 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/t0OcdMkd2D— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) June 19, 2024
Yep. You took a knock on the pitch in elementary school, you walked it off by the end of recess, and played on it after school. 'Cause you were still faster/more coordinated/quicker of foot and thought than the other guys out there. OTOH, you take a knock as a pro footballer, (unless you're a world-beater,) the guy behind you is now more ready to help the team than you are, and will be until you heal completely. One of the few things Michael "Republicans buy shoes, too" Jordan did that revealed him to be maybe something other than a slimeball was his contract that allowed him to play anywhere, anytime. Now, if any of you recall him ever putting that clause to work, say so...
“It’s a very simple game, baseball. When they hit it, I catch it. When they throw it, I hit it. Very simple.” - Willie Mays R.I.P.
Repped, but the GOP doesn't deserve to be rid of him so easily. Let him live until America disavows conservatism.