Who Can Make The Sun Rise?
December 15, 2008
My wife no doubt considers herself exceptionally fortunate that there is little to dislike, let alone detest, about me. When pressed, she’d probably admit that she considers herself just the slightest bit unworthy to have such a charitable, altruistic, angelic, fun-loving and (of course) good looking husband.
But we have identified one habit of mine that she doesn’t really like. It’s my imitation of Sammy Davis Jr.
Actually, it’s not a direct imitation of the inimitable Rat Packer, so much as it’s my attempt to copy my college friend Justin Scarpone (of the north Jersey Scarpones), imitating Billy Crystal imitating glass-eyed Sammy.
But regardless of whether it’s direct of three levels removed, she doesn’t like it. I’ll channel Sammy as I drive down the road, while I’m getting dressed in the morning, while I’m walking the dogs. I’ve even been known to belt out a little “Candy Man” in the shower. She hates it, mostly because it’s so freaking catchy. If she hears it in the morning, she can’t get the tune out of her head all day.
Justin now lives in Tokyo with his wife and daughter. My brother and his family live there, too, so when the old lady and I traveled there last February, I made it a point to look up Justin in the hopes of getting together. We hadn’t seen each other in well over a decade.
Upon arriving at their apartment, I could scarcely take off my shoes (Japanese custom) before I had to ask him to do a little Sammy. I could hardly wait. After all, that imitation, along with his cauliflower ear (the result of his intercollegiate wrestling career) were what I remembered most about him. So you can imagine that I was taken aback when he said that he hadn’t done his Sammy imitation at all in recent years. All along I’d figured he’d been working on it, honing it, wowing thousands if not millions of Asians with his imitative vocal stylings, perhaps a dance move or two . . . and the truth was it was no longer part of his repertoire.
But when pressed, he was able to do a reasonable facsimile of his past efforts, although it required a lot of explaining to his Japan-born wife why this was relevant, let alone entertaining.
So I thought I knew all about him and a decade later it turns out I didn’t know squat.
Which got me to thinking….this was someone I’d shared a house with in college, thought I knew him well, but either that assessment was wrong or else he’d changed over time, or both. That in turn caused me to question what I really know about the anglers I work with and write about every day. Are my impressions of them accurate? Are they even close?
The question crystallized for me when I watched a video on Wired2Fish (disclosure – I write for them) of Gary Klein talking about how he’s know for versatility. It’s true – he is known for versatility, having won during his longstanding career with both a flipping stick and with finesse gear. Yes, he’s known to be versatile, but is the core assumption – that he’s more versatile than most other pros – a valid one?
We know that Klein is versatile because he tells us so, and because the conventional wisdom around him is that it’s true. I don’t mean to pick on Gary, he’s just a good example here. How do we know that Denny Brauer and Tommy Biffle are the best jig fishermen out there? Does it necessarily follow from the fact that they’ve won gobs of money with their flipping sticks, or does that just mean that they flip more than their peers? I don’t mean to imply that they’re blind squirrels who occasionally happen across an acorn. Instead, my question is this – how much do we really know about the pros we follow, cheer for and emulate?
A few years ago, ESPN held its “Greatest Angler Debate,” and determined that Rick Clunn was the greatest bass angler of all time (to that point), edging out Roland Martin. But like all-star voting in all of the major sports, there were no established criteria for determining who was the best.
Don’t get me wrong, I love those sorts of hypothetical mind twisters (if only I had lived in NY in the 50s when they had three baseball teams and kids got beaten up over their opinions on who was the best of three center fielders – Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays or Duke Snider), but those of us who follow fishing are at a comparative disadvantage. We don’t have any way to see how the competitors deal with situations on the water, how many miscues they make, etc. Even Kevin VanDam, who I would guess is the most heavily recorded angler in professional bass fishing history -- only a very small percentage of his time on the water is available for viewing. Contrast that to a Michael Jordan --- it’s a pretty safe bet that every minute Jordan played professionally is preserved for all time. For players who followed Jordan, for example LeBron James, it may be possible that we have a video dossier of every game they’ve ever played, along with practices, workouts, etc.
Michael Jordan, lots of info. Kelly Jordon, not so much.
In baseball, they’ve taken it so far that if you want to see every two out at bat with runners in scoring position that Alex Rodriguez has had on odd-numbered Tuesdays, some stathead can pull up the footage in a matter of minutes.
For better or worse, our competitors spread out over thousands of acres, make thousands of casts, and generally do their best to keep their secrets to themselves. CC Sabathia’s pitching motion may have been scrutinized to death in recent months, but the same likely cannot be said off Skeet Reese’s pitching motion.
I don’t mean to discourage anyone from rooting for a particular angler or engaging in debates about who’s the best, in general or in a particular situation, just that all of it has to be taken with a grain of salt. We can remember Jordan’s jumper over Bryon Russell as a turning point, same with his shot to beat Georgetown in the NCAAs, but our sport is a little more inscrutable than that. It’s not entirely bad. Let some secrets remain unknown. Let our perceptions about who is good at what and why live another day – it makes the arguments more fun and it “makes the world taste good.”
Table For Eight
December 9, 2008
In college, my nickname was “Neidermeyer.” I thought for a long time about whether it would be wise to disclose that in this space and initially leaned away from doing so, but ultimately I concluded that it’s harmless enough, and it’s a useful vehicle to get to the point I’m going to try to make in this column. Furthermore, I previously outed my good friend Brian Thompson, whose wife disclosed that the members of his former bass club in Pennsylvania called him “Dexter,” apparently in reference to some nerdy television character. So I guess turnabout is fair play. Even if I’m not obligated or otherwise inclined to tell you all of my dark secrets, however minimal, I suppose it builds trust, between you, the reader, and me, the slightly embarrassed blogger.
The Neidermeyer who inspired a group of upperclassmen to bestow that name upon me as a hapless second semester freshman was one Douglas C. Neidermeyer, the fascist Omega House brother (“We shall now consecrate the bond of obedience”) and ROTC leader (“You're all worthless and weak! Now drop and give me twenty.”) in the classic college film Animal House. As a side note, I think every college fraternity or clique worth anything at all identifies with the Deltas, the underdogs who emerge victorious, just as I’m suspicious of any teenager who doesn’t feel at least a slight empathy for Holden Caulfield.
I was neither a button-downed elitist nor a member of the campus militia. In fact I never exercised a bit of authority over anyone during those four years, but those perceptive slackers who managed to get in a few years ahead of me noticed my oblong shaped skull and a haircut that was short and stubbly without being quite so fashionable as a buzz cut, and gave me the name. It stuck. Now, nearly twenty years later, I’m taken a bit aback when I’m called that name across a crowded room by a college friend who I haven’t seen in years, but I nevertheless instinctively respond to it.
And I still love the movie. Believe it or not, the first dance my wife and I shared at our wedding was to “Shamma Lamma Ding Dong” (and yes, someone in the back of the room had the wherewithal to shout out “Otis, my man.”).
The key Animal House scene that I’m channeling right now is at the very end of the movie, when the Deltas have successfully employed the Deathmobile to ruin the homecoming parade. The parade is aborted, the streets are in shambles, the town elders don’t know what to do, and Neidermeyer’s protégé, Chip Diller (played by a youthful Kevin Bacon when he was still at least nine or ten degrees from anyone) stands in the streets, yelling “Remain calm. All is well.”
The guys who thought they had everything under control (as Dean Wormer said, “Get Neidermeyer on it, he’s a sneaky #%@&.”) actually had no clue, or at least they weren’t willing to accept the reality as it bowled them over.
The mainstream fishing media, influenced as it is by the tournament circuits and their advertisers (disclosure: I write for many, if not most, of them), has not really disclosed how bad the situation is right now, at least on the tournament side of things. But have you heard any angler mention a new major deal, particularly a non-endemic one, this off-season? A deal of the sort that we assumed would flow constantly when wrapped boats and “personal branding” first entered our consciousness. For that matter, have either of the major circuits announced any new financial support? On the contrary, the groups like Advance Auto Parts have left, and if they’ve been replaced at all it has been by minor players.
They should be in crisis mode, and perhaps they are behind closed doors, but none of the rest of us seem all that concerned. Maybe it’s that their actions and health don’t really affect us. Maybe it’s that when you’ve lost your job you don’t have time to think about the health of some guys making a living at what you consider a leisure time pursuit. I think part of it is a natural settling process. A few years back, when BASS and FLW were still fighting for turf, we all seemed to have a lot more invested in who got what and who fished where. Now that they’ve pretty much drawn a line in the sand, claimed their own poster boys and aligned themselves with certain brands and waterways, it somehow seems less pressing, less confrontational.
Gas prices may be low now, but they’re certain to go back up. Boat sales are already in the tank. People have less to spend on leisure activities and we’re told that the worst is yet to come. If that’s not a crisis for this segment of the sport, you’ve been drinking the optimist tea far more frequently than I have.
Therefore, as someone who does take all of this far too seriously, I think that we have to consider the issues, and consider them soon. Thus, I propose, as I have done before, that we commission a blue-ribbon panel to figure out how to save our sport, where fishing should go from here. Is it that dire? I don’t know. But it’s real enough that I think we could benefit from a summit of sorts. I previously suggested that it should be a panel of media types – maybe Mark Jeffreys, Craig Lamb, Alan Clemons, Steve Price, Louie Stout, Jon Storm, etc. But upon further consideration, I think it has to be more broad-reaching than that. Nothing against any of those guys – they’ve all been mentors or informal advisors to me at some point, but they’re all insiders. A bit of that is ok. Too much and it would be too much rehashing and story-telling. There will be a time and a place for those stories – I want to hear them and I’ll pay for the beer – but this requires thought of a different ilk. And since I’m the one convening this imaginary brain trust, here’s my dream team, a dinner table of eight people who could solve bass fishing’s problems in short order and then move onto some other big ticket issues before a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit.
Me
It’s my idea and I think I’m brilliant (so does my mom).
Alan Clemons, outdoor writer for the Huntsville Times
(http://blog.al.com/outdoors/).
I know I said that I wasn’t going to make it a tribunal of insiders, but I need one such individual on my side. Unlike some of the others, Alan’s job description doesn’t include selling advertising space, nor is he beholden to any particular tournament circuit. He covers both BASS and FLW, and does it well. He knows the issues and the players, but he’s not afraid to call BS on any of them. In the interests of full disclosure, he’s been a mentor and advisor to me in recent months. I’ll get an email asking about a particular article I’ve written, either commending me or gently jabbing me with a question like “Did you ask him about….” or “Why didn’t you call….?” Each time, he’s gets right at the crux of the matter. The point is that where I might let an issue go at our closed-door session, he’d push to ask one more question. Perhaps more importantly, he’s a consummate foodie, so I’d put him in charge of the menu. If the conversation doesn’t keep the players around, maybe the foodstuffs and libations will.
Nick Taylor, author (www.nicktaylor.us).
Taylor wrote Bass Wars over two decades ago and it holds up today, at least in my mind, as the truest representation of what bass fishing is like in the major leagues. He pointed out that the prizes weren’t always what they seemed (annuities, overvalued boats) and that life could be tough, even for the most accomplished anglers. Most importantly, he came to the sport with an outsider’s critical eye. His recent book, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work was named one of the year’s best pieces of non-fiction by the Washington Post. I’d like to think that the research that went into the latter book would give him some pretty good insights on the broader issues and might provide a general template on how to get us out of whatever mess we’re in.
Rick Pierce, BassCat Boats.
I questioned whether to include Pierce in this group. Yes, I’d want someone from the boating industry, specifically because that industry is hurting now, but I like his boats (my last two, a new one and a used one before that, have both been Cats, even though I have no direct affiliation with the company) and I wondered if that swayed my decision. I suppose that you could include one of the other companies, but Skeeter and Ranger have close ties to the two major tournament circuits, which rules them out for my purposes (even though I had the good fortune to eat breakfast with Ranger’s Randy Hopper at the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup and in that brief encounter found him to be both candid and insightful). Earl Bentz? I just don’t know enough about him. The closest I’ve come to meeting him was sharing an elevator with his wife and attractive daughters at the 2004 Classic in Charlotte. Mrs. Bentz was talking with Ron Shuffield, and I assumed they were married, although with no offense intended to Ron, that seemed to be an unexpected coupling. In my limited dealings with Rick Pierce I’ve found him to be honorable and forthright. When he builds a boat, it’s not always to the industry’s expected design template, and not always to everyone’s liking, but he has a reason for everything he does.
Scott Boras, super-agent.
I have no idea if Boras knows which end of a flipping stick to hold, but his zealous and often non-yielding representation of some of baseball’s biggest superstars is impressive. I’m sure he’s hated by a lot of owners, a lot of general managers, some fans and even a few players, but he usually seems to get his way. Even though professional bass fishing does not present the typical relationship of management to salaried athlete, I’m sure he could shed some light on how the anglers could better serve their own interests by leveraging their value to the sport.
Mark Cuban, internet billionaire, owner of the Dallas Mavericks (http://blogmaverick.com/).
As a counterpoint to Boras, we’d have to have someone to represent the “management” side of the equation. Not only is Cuban brilliant (just ask him), but he’s also willing to buck the establishment – even though he’s part of the establishment. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that he’s the most heavily-fined figure in the history of sports. He’ll criticize officials, criticize the league, suggest ways to make things better. I want someone like that at this summit. He’s got nothing to lose and could probably give old Irwin a run for his money.
Michael Lewis, author.
I wanted a literary figure with no known connections to bass fishing, so I narrowed it down to Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell. While I think that the concepts in Gladwell’s Blink and The Tipping Point have great relevance to the art of bass fishing (and from what I understand, his new book, Outliers, does too), for some reason his writings seem more theoretical and ultra-intellectual than do books like Moneyball and The Blind Side, from Lewis. I don’t know if that’s an accurate assessment, but sliced thickly that’s where I came down. Moneyball was such a game-changing book for me, in terms of how I looked at baseball, how I looked at fishing, how I looked at a lot of things, that I really want the opportunity to have Lewis apply those same Beane-isms to fishing. Besides, I’d like an opportunity to ask him what it’s like to be married to Tabitha Soren.
Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics, Smith College (http://sophia.smith.edu/~azimbali/biography1.html)
I thought about asking Richard Lapchick of the DeVos Sport Business Management program at the University of Central Florida to take the last spot at our table. He is frequently called as an expert on social issues in sports. But while the possible slow death of professional bass fishing is a social issue, to be sure, it is also an economic one. And Lapchick’s counterpart, when it comes to credibility on issues affecting the economics of sport, is Zimbalist. Without passing judgment on whether he’s more relevant to our inquiry than Lapchick, I think Zimbalist’s curriculum vitae speaks for itself. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t considered or written about professional bass fishing. We need the lessons derived from his other endeavors. Furthermore, as a professor at an all-female college, he might be able to tell us why there aren’t more hot bass fishing groupies.
That’s my panel and my reasons.
It’s not really relevant to this blog entry, but it somehow bears mentioning that Neidermeyer was killed by his own men in Vietnam. There’s a brilliant reference to this in the Twilight Zone movie, if you’re interested. I suppose the moral is that you have to choose your friends carefully, your dinner companions more carefully and your fishing partners with care bordering on obsessiveness.
Faithfully submitted,
Peter R. Robbins.
Quotes of the Week
December 9, 2008
Apropos of nothing, here are a few things I’ve read this week that caught my attention. I had planned to save them for future columns, but felt like sharing now:
“Those big-headed guys can catch ‘em."
--Jeff Kriet
“When I’m at bat I’m in scoring position.”
--Oscar Gamble
“All barbecue experts are self-proclaimed.”
--Greg Curtis, Texas Monthly
“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing that makes you good.”
--Malcolm Gladwell
“I’m the straw that stirs the drink.”
--Reggie Jackson
Voodoo Economics In A Bass Based Economy
December 5, 2008
“As goes General Motors, so goes the country.”
Ouch, that doesn’t sound so good right now. And that’s coming from someone who drives a Chevy Avalanche, which was preceded by a Suburban, which was preceded by a Tahoe. One way or the other, there might be a Toyota in my future.
But the old line about GM doesn’t sound nearly as bad as the words uttered to me by a tour-level pro, who shall remain nameless, who when I asked last week if he’d lost any sponsorship deals this offseason, had the following to say: “No, but I cringe every time the phone rings.” That’s the quote that crystallized the current environment for me, in my limited world.
As much as I dream sometimes that someday I’d have the skills and the wherewithal to get out there and fish at a tour level, it only took those nine words to bring me back to earth. They made me glad that I get a paycheck every two weeks.
Kicking the Bucket
November 18, 2008
Numerologists and those who study symbolism in dreams can probably offer more profound reasons than I can for why some numbers are considered lucky, like seven, and why others are typically associated with bad luck, like thirteen, so I won’t attempt to go there.
But regardless of why it might be associated with a lack of luck, the number 99 hasn’t fared well in pop culture.
Most recently, Jay Z rapped about having ninety-nine problems but a five-letter-word-starting-with-“B”- and-rhyming-with-“witch” ain’t one.
Prior to that, there was Nena’s early 1980s one-hit wonder “99 Luftballoons,” which Wikipedia informs me was incorrectly translated to English at “99 Red Balloons” when it actually should have just been “99 Balloons,” not that the addition of “red” really makes any difference for purposes of this analysis. What does make a difference is Wikipedia’s further assertion that “both the English and German versions of the song tell a story of ninety-nine balloons floating into the air, triggering an apocalyptic overreaction by military forces.” Not good times, no matter how you title it.
And of course, before Nena, who I imagine is now probably slinging beer and schnitzel in some big hall filled with long communal tables somewhere outside Hamburg (lederhosen optional), there was “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” a song gleefully chanted by backwards-counting grade schoolers everywhere but actually describing a germophobe’s worst nightmare. Why can’t we just take a beer or three apiece?
Speaking of incongruous tunes, a friend of mine recently sent me a link to Marvin Gaye singing an a capella version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87FjkqtK67o). It was the first time in years that I thought about how sad and tragic this song really is – the lyrics are all about how this guy learned through word of mouth that his girlfriend is cheating on him and he’s making a plaintive cry to ask for her back. Yet somehow the song has become a staple of weddings everywhere – grandmas in rolled up stockings and drunk bridesmaids alike dancing to it happily. Hell, we’ve even witnessed a popular advertising campaign built around this sound, with claymation raisins dancing in lockstep to its words. Really makes you want to eat dried fruit, doesn’t it?
As I stated above, I haven’t put much thought into the idea of why the number 99 is so significant, except for the fact that it rolls off the tongue easily (thus its use in so many songs) and the other reason must have something to do with the fact that it’s one short of the magic round number one hundred. So if just shy of one hundred is bad, is the converse true? Does exceeding the century mark, regardless of how small the margin, make for a good omen?
But except for Dalmatians and lists in magazines for domesticated ladies’ magazines (“101 things you can cook in a crock pot”), 101 doesn’t seem to be as significant in popular culture as 99. But one good example of its positive use was by Ted Leonsis, who made about two truckloads of dollars working at AOL in the 1990s. After a near-death experience a decade earlier, Leonsis, who is now the majority owner of the Washington Capitals, developed a list of 101 things he wanted to do with his (http://www.tedstake.com/?p=8).
Some of Ted’s 101 (now that I know his innermost thoughts, I feel comfortable calling him Ted) are possible for anyone with a pulse and some other assorted body parts (“Fall in love and get married”; “Have a healthy son”; “Have a healthy daughter”) while others (“Create world’s largest media company” – that one already has a check by it) are more challenging, and others (“Give away one hundred million dollars in lifetime”) are pretty darned ambitious.
By my count (there’s number one for my list – buy a calculator or an abacus), Ted has hit 75 of his marks, which means that he might want to preliminarily create #102 – “Start another list” – after all, he’s only 51 years old.
I recently interviewed pro angler Marty Stone both before and after he got to ride in a F-15E Strike Eagle Fighter Jet, thus fulfilling one of his dreams. He had previously told BASS that he had three goals in life – to drive a NASCAR stock car, train with the U.S. Army Special Forces and ride in a fighter plane. Now he’s done the first and third items on that list.
It made me think about what I’d put on my own personal bucket list. I think I’m going to spend some time this winter coming up with two related lists, one general and one for fishing and writing-related achievements. Some will be easy to achieve – fish Erie, fish Clear Lake, fish Amistad, fish Falcon (again), catch a fish on a foot-long swimbait. Others will be slightly more challenging – eventually own my own pond managed for trophy bass, like Ray Scott’s lakes.
But the one that intrigues me most is that someday I want to have a lure, or more likely a color pattern, named after me. Not sure if that’ll take up one or two spaces on my list. I don’t know what that color will be. KVD has pretty much already claimed Sexy Shad. And when it comes to plastics, to be honest the vast majority of my fishing is with green pumpkin, black/blue and junebug. But there’s time to work on it. And you can be damned sure that my list is going to have more than 99 items on it. I may have a lot of catching up to do, but I’m 13 years younger than Leonsis. I’m 5 years younger than Marty, too.
I’ll continue to offer up information in this space as the list develops. In the meantime, if you have ideas, or preferably if you can help me achieve my goals, don’t hesitate to write into the home office.