Friday, February 25, 2011

Out of the Park: Remembering why I admire Bill Simmons

I don't mean this to be an insult to Simmons.  I have been a fan of his writing for almost ten years and no matter what anyone says about his work I will always find it funny and full of the kind of sardonic pop culture references that I could never make, but love with a passion.  Things are just, well, different now.  Hopefully all will become clear.


You are who you read.

It is the voices that a writer is exposed to early in life that ultimately help influence the voice which that writer develops as an adult.  That isn't to say that someone who goes through a lengthy Hemingway phase as an adolescent is going to focus on concise dialog and simple declarative sentences any more than someone who reads too much Salinger is going to feel drawn to spend pages describing the contents of purses, cupboards and medicine cabinets in excruciating detail.  Unless you limit yourself to one or two influences or blatantly plagerize the style of some author you admire, your voice is going to develop as a varied amalgamation of those thousands of little "a ha" moments you had leafing through books as a kid, when some phrase or idea just sounded right and stuck in the back of your head.

Now, I'm not much of a writer.  This much I will freely admit.  That isn't to say I am incapable of producing something transcendent on occasion -- I have a few pieces of writing from the last year that I am very proud of and wouldn't change one bit.  I am simply not as consistent as I would like (is anyone?).  The more I immerse myself in the art and science of great writing, the more I begin to realize that truly great writers aren't the ones who hit the highest peaks, but the ones who produce consistently good writing on a regular basis.  Who is more valuable to a baseball team, the guy who hits .325 for his entire career on mostly singles and doubles, or the guy batting .200 that wallops a few homers but all too often shows only warning track power?  Sure, everybody wants to be Willie Mays or Hank Aaron, but there is a reason why the hall of fame is so hard to get into.  You don't find a lot of guys who are routinely knocking them out of the park.

All of this leads me in a round-a-bout way to Bill Simmons.  There is no other sportswriter out there who I attached myself to as early as Bill (with the exception of the late Ralph Wiley, but that tragedy is another column entirely).  I started reading Simmons' work as a Senior in high school.  I was a student aide for one of my high school teachers which often meant a great deal of downtime.  That left me alone in the back of the classroom with nothing much to do by surf the internet.  From there I naturally gravitated to ESPN.com, and it's cultural/sports hybrid: Page 2.  I have been reading Bill Simmons regularly ever since.

While I did a lot of reading during and after college, I wasn't as much a fan of particular writers as I was websites.  Only in the last couple years has that shifted.  Once I began to immerse myself deeper into the world of college football did I begin to seek out particular voices which I valued.  It started with guys like Brian Cook at mgoblog and Dave at Maize n Brew -- Michigan football sites, obviously -- and soon spread to phenomenal writers such as Spencer Hall of EDSBS, Matt Hinton of Dr. Saturday, Bethlehem Shoals of Freedarko, William Saleton of Slate, and Ty Duffy and Jason Lisk of The Big Lead (a very honorable mention goes to Chuck Klosterman, whose web profile is much lower) to name a few.  These were the guys I would search out on a daily basis.  The people whose insights I could count on when a trade happened or a scandal arose.

The thing about it was that the bigger the club got, and the more passionate I became about some of the writers in it, the more someone like Bill Simmons got marginalized.  It isn't that I've outgrown Bill (I tore through TBofB like it was only half of its 700+ page length) it is simply that the draw isn't as strong.  I still tune in for columns on certain subjects, but there is only so much discussion I can handle of the Red Sox or pro football gambling, no matter how many pop culture references are littered on the page.  What's more, I find myself searching for the soul behind some of Simmons work these days.  Maybe I have become spoiled that his wit and sarcasm work much better in podcast form (and I am a huge fan of his podcasts), or maybe there are just too many mailbags, but often I find his writing these days to be formulaic.  This player/coach/team did this, and according to this theory, person X will act in one of ___ ways (insert list), drop an 80's movie reference, and finish with a joke.  The humor is still there, but the passion of the fan isn't.  I can remember reading a piece either on Freedarko or by Shoals that essentially boiled Simmons' problem these days down to an overuse of the fratish, crude humor that originally vaulted him above the rest of the internet's unwashed masses, while ignoring of the kind of deeply personal fan "for the love of the game" nostalgia that shows just how wonderful and expressive a writer Simmons can be when he gets past himself and just writes*.

* (I am almost certain that this point comes from Shoals review of TBofB and contrasts the first chapter -- Simmons' personal account of growing to love the NBA and the Boston Celtics (not in that order) -- with the final chapter -- Simmons attempt to shoehorn a reference to Tupac's "Picture Me Rollin'" into his final interview with Bill Walton.  While I am a sucker for Tupac, after judging the two chapters I have to agree with Shoals).  


And that "vintage Simmons" is what brought me here to write when I have like five other things I should be doing right now.  I read Simmons' latest column this morning and was mildly amused.  Lots of lists, lots of theories, lots of name drops.  Basically what you expect from Simmons in 2011.  However, the end of the second part stuck with me.  No surprise it comes from Simmons examining, of all things, the Boston Celtics.  Specifically the part of him that isn't impressed with the trade of Kendrick Perkins.  I'll quote the whole damn thing below:
"And there's the rub. We don't play basketball on paper. I cared about this particular Celtics team more than any Celtics squad since Reggie Lewis was alive -- and that includes the 2008 title team -- mainly because the players enjoyed one another so much. I wasn't surprised to hear that Perkins cried for most of the day Thursday, that Boston's veterans were infuriated by the trade, that Rondo (Perk's best friend) was practically catatonic heading into Thursday night's game in Denver. These guys loved one another. As recently as last season, you couldn't have said that. But Shaq loosened everyone up; so did four full years of the core guys being together; so did Doc's belated maturation into an impactful coach (believe me, I'm as shocked as anyone); so did the contract extensions (Boston's four All-Stars are signed through at least 2012); so did the bonding experience of blowing Game 7 and having that purple confetti fall on their heads; so did the enduring belief that nobody had ever beaten them when they were healthy.

I attended Tuesday's game in Oakland and saw exactly what I expected to see: a well-rested, veteran team that knew it hadn't won there in six years and took care of business accordingly. In the first half, David Lee didn't like the way Perkins fouled him on a drive, whirled around and bumped Garnett and Perkins (standing next to each other) on his way to the line. Double technicals. I remember thinking, "Uh-oh -- no way we're losing now." Something like that happened frequently with these Celtics. They had become the modern-day version of the Bad Boy Pistons -- not the fighting, just the barking, woofing, shoving and general villainy -- with Perk and Garnett as Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn. That was the team's identity, for better and worse. They knew who they were. I left Oakland thinking that we were headed for the Finals. We had "The Look," as Mike Lombardi calls it.

Less than 48 hours later, I found myself staring at an "FYI: Perk for Jeff Green" e-mail for two solid minutes. What???????? I remember drafting Perk out of high school. I remember his being fat and awkward. I remember liking his mean streak that surfaced at the strangest times. I remember those flashes of potential as Perk banged the boards with Al Jefferson. I remember thinking we could count on him after the Garnett trade and not really knowing why. I remember watching that same ugly jump hook over and over again, hoping beyond hope that it might get better. I remember winning a title with him, and I remember losing a title without him. I remember seeing him warm up before opening night, a good two hours before the game, almost as though he didn't want the team to forget that he was coming back. Like every other Celtics fan, I watched him go from nothing to something. I certainly never imagined watching Perk play for another team.

My father was more crushed than me. He's been a season-ticket holder since 1973 and still attends 25 Celtics games per season. As he explained Thursday night, "I was invested in Perkins. I sit 15 feet from their bench -- I watched him grow up. I don't think sports is always about winning and losing. We might be better, but right now, I don't care. I liked the team we had. It doesn't feel right that he's not on this team."

See, you can't truly love a team until you've suffered with it. The 2008 title team always felt like a fantasy team that had been thrown together in some sort of euphoric basketball dream that wasn't quite real. Losing Garnett in 2009 (and eventually, the Orlando series) definitely hurt; blowing the 2010 title was 100 times worse. The agony of those last two games pushed our relationship with the team to an entirely different level. I still remember seeing Perkins rolling around in pain during Game 6 -- it happened about 20 feet away from me -- then the veterans watching him get helped off, his right leg dangling in the air, the life sinking from their bodies like Apollo watching Rocky wave him back to the corner. With a healthy 2011 Garnett in that Game 7, maybe we could have survived. Banged-up 2010 Garnett couldn't get it done. The trophy was sitting there, and we couldn't take it. A crestfallen Perkins spent the summer blaming himself, busted his butt to come back … and the Celtics dumped him a month after he returned. Claiming they couldn't afford him only made it worse: The kid signed a discount extension four years ago and outperformed it. They owed him.

Selfishly, I wanted one more chance with them: Garnett, Pierce, Allen, Rondo, Perkins, Baby and Doc, the only seven guys who mattered here. But that's the thing about sports -- "them" always seems to change when you least expect it. We traded Charlie Scott when I was in the second grade. We traded Danny Ainge when I was in college. Now Perkins. Those were the three most brutal Celtics deals of my lifetime. Each one hurt the same. Doesn't matter how old you are, where you are in your life, where you're living … there's no feeling quite like your favorite team trading someone you genuinely liked.

You might remember LeBron and Carmelo getting excoriated for stabbing their respective teams in the back. You want to know why they didn't care? Because, deep down, they know that teams don't care about players, either. They probably witnessed 20 variations of the Perkins trade during their first few years in the league. Hey, it's a business. Hey, that's just sports. Hey, trades come with the territory. Isn't loyalty a two-way street? When a team does what's best for itself, we call it smart. When a player does the same, we call him selfish. We never think about what a double standard it is.

I thought Perk deserved better than getting blindsided in Denver, then having to limp around with a sprained knee and pack his stuff with tears rolling down his face. Maybe I'm a sap. But that was our guy. Family. On the phone, my dad decided -- completely seriously -- that he would rather have lost the 2011 title with Perkins than have tried to win it without him. Why?

"Because he was truly part of our team," Dad said. "I don't want to root for laundry. I watched that guy for eight years. That should mean something. Continuity should mean something."

Within a few weeks, both of us will have talked ourselves into the Jeff Green era. That's what fans do. We take the hits, shake them off, keep coming back. The Celtics will morph into something slightly different: a little more athletic, a little more flexible, a little younger and, hopefully, almost as tough. Perkins will fly to Oklahoma City, live out of a hotel room, make new friends and try to help Durant and Russell Westbrook make the Finals. Maybe the Celtics will see him there. It won't feel weird at all, because that's the way professional sports work. We are rooting for laundry. Whether we want to admit it or not."
After I finished reading that I left the tab open in google chrome for around two hours.  I didn't even know what I was going to do with it.  I wanted to link to it somewhere.  Send it to a friend and say "Isn't this great?  Doesn't it just get to the heart of the complex love we have for players on our favorite teams?"  I finally closed the tab, but quickly came over here and started writing.

It would be foolish of me to say that Bill isn't still the kind of writer that is absolutely worth following.  To extend the baseball analogy a bit further, he is consistently productive enough that ESPN has decided to build a whole team around him, he has reached a point in podcasting that makes them almost more essential than his columns, and his work in bringing about the 30 for 30 project from a dream to reality might be one of the most important and relevant areas of growth that ESPN has seen in the last decade.

However, it still put a smile on my face as I read Simmons talk about the Perkins trade from such a personal standpoint.  I may be wrong when I say that his writing has been growing complacent over the past couple years.  Certainly the jobless hack writing on a blog for essentially his friends and family is in a precarious position to throw stones at the most successful sports writer of the internet age (and I don't think I am throwing stones as much as gently critiquing.  With love, of course).  As a fan and someone who thinks he might be able to make some waves as an occasional writer, I'll be damned if it wasn't great to see Simmons definitively hit one out of the park, just like I remember him doing when I was a high school kid looking to kill some time before the bell.  After all, it is this kind of writing that made me want to get into the game in the first place.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Revisiting The Wire

"What the fuck did I do?"
I just finished watching The Wire for the second time. A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to watch the whole series again, and Sunday -- after staying up until after 2am -- I finally put down the rest of season 5. Watching the show for a second time was great, as it let me rethink a lot of my opinions from the first time around. Knowing what was coming allowed me to really get critical of things as they happened, and look at the way that the story flowed from one event to the next. While I would kill to be able to watch the show again for the first time, it was very rewarding to rewatch it.

Perhaps the thing that I found most interesting is the way in which I have reevaluated two of the seasons. After watching the series for the first time I had quite a few discussions with friends that revolved around ranking the seasons in terms of most to least liked. My rankings always had seasons three and four in the top two spots, followed by season one and two and finally five. It was never a question for me before which seasons were the best. Now, I'm not so sure.

I think in terms of actual narrative structure and excitement that season one is much stronger that I initially gave it credit for. All the other seasons do a great job, obviously, but they build off the foundation of season one. It was so good that I was inclined to just go back and watch season one as soon as I finished it a month ago. Furthermore, season two was always one of the seasons that I was down on after my first viewing. After watching it again I have completely come to my senses. The Sobatka detail rivals the kids storyline from season four for the most heartbreaking. After watching the series for the first time I was down on this season because it shifted away from what I liked so much about the series to begin with, the drug game. We saw Stringer running the Barksdale crew, but that was about the most of our time on the street. Having watched it season two again with knowledge of how it fits in with the rest of the series, I appreciated it that much more.

However, the season that I have changed my tune on the most is season five. The first time through I was really bothered by the serial killer plot that seemed to be too sensationalist for a show grounded in the gritty reality of the street. However, looking back on it now I think the season is much better viewed as a satire. If you look at it through the lens of the first four seasons of The Wire, it is sure to disappoint. Jimmy and Lester, the two main heroes of the first four seasons go off the reservation and end up as something like villains. However, if you look at season five as it was meant to be looked at, as a perverse look at just how messed up everything is in Baltimore, then season five becomes much more funny and tragic.

Season five is akin to watching a version of Dr. Strangelove about the Baltimore PD (So says even David Mills, one of the shows writers when asked about the season). Think about it. Things are so messed up in the department that they can't afford anything outside of the 8 hour paychecks for the cops and the bare minimum of logistical and tech support. Because it is over a year old, the worst string of murders in Baltimore history isn't even enough to keep the brass from shutting off the money. Carcetti called for a new day early on, but in politics there is always another bowl of shit to eat, and he can't fix the one thing he promised in his campaign: crime. So what does McNulty do? He creates a crime out of thin air. He stages crime scenes, tampers with case files, and even makes a prank call as the killer. The whole thing is riotously funny when viewed as the last desperate act of a man trapped in a broken system. I see a lot of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 in season five, and you can make an easy comparison between the main character, Yossarian, and McNulty. They've both been driven crazy by the system, and they have no other escape than to try to beat the system at it's own twisted game of appealing to the political aspirations of the higher ups. The only way anything ever gets done in the show is if someone upstairs thinks it will help them move up a rung on the ladder.

As Jimmy stages all of this and builds this serial killer case out of nothing, he drinks furiously. He is taking swigs from the bottle at the first homeless scene that he tampers with, and you can see that the only way he gets the nerve up to do it is with a few drinks. The whole season is a farce. The department is so eff'd up that not only could something like this go unnoticed for weeks, but it would be the only way that any real police work gets done. Whats more, McNulty essentially becomes a boss once the serial killer scam gets legs in the media and the brass upstairs is worried about how it will make them look. How he is doling out cars and man hours to other detectives in homicide. Even more he begins to feel the frustration of being this high up the chain. One detective games him for a free weekend in Hilton Head, and on top of things in homicide getting away from McNulty, Lester keeps pushing for more help and time, driving McNulty to declare that he knows why Daniels always cringed when Lester spoke: because Lester is a bosses nightmare -- ironic coming from a man who never knew a chain of command he didn't feel like wantonly breaking at his first convenience. Even the way the whole thing begins to unravel is hilarious. The case grows way too big for Jimmy to control. Now every homeless death is swamped with officers, Landsman is giving Jimmy too much manpower to use --taking away from real policework -- and the FBI gets involved with one of the funniest moments ever in the series, the serial killer profile, where McNulty sits uncomfortably as the profiler that he laughed off just minutes earlier describes him in such exact and unflattering detail that he cant help but begin to hate himself for being the Jimmy the audience has always loved -- the smartest guy in the room.

And how does it all end? Just the way you would expect a satire like that to end. Jimmy and Lester have made a big enough mess that the bosses have to play along or risk their own jobs, but the Stanfield case is screwed up beyond belief and both their careers are over. The one cop, Kima, who looked up to them the most eventually ratted them out. In the end all the people at the top who have gamed the system for so long just find a way to twist this mess into better jobs (as Norman comments in the office, this is the second time that a faked murder has helped Carcetti advance politically). It seems unfair the way things ended for a lot of the characters in politics and the upper seats of the police department, but I think it was spot on. This is the way things work in Baltimore. The way things have always worked. All the hacks turned the disaster into a better job by wheeling and dealing, and all the good cops (Daniels, Lester, McNulty) end up out of the system after being fed up by just how fundamentally screwed up things are. Of course there are new cops to take over, like Carver, Sydnor, and Kima, but only time will tell how they will fare.

In the end the Hollywood style happy endings are few and far between (Bubbles, Namond), but more often than not you see characters just dealing with a transition that is neither good nor bad (Lester and Jimmy adjusting to life off the force, Bunk and Kima honestly plugging away at another murder). In a system so screwed up as the Baltimore PD (and schools, and city hall) you have to end it this way. After five seasons of setting up a place where the audience's omniscient and morally enlightened sense of justice doesn't jive with events on the street, the writers couldn't just backtrack and throw the hacks out and give the department over to real police. Guys like Levy and Rawls almost always win, and even when they don't, they still never lose (see Clay Davis and Ervin Burrel). Even someone like Omar -- who exists outside all of the systems in place, be it the game or the city bureaucracy -- eventually gets got. He tried to fight the system and was swallowed up by the corner culture he wouldn't adhere to. Thats why, in my opinion, Kenard killing Omar works so well. Kenard is a product of the environment that guys like Barksdale and Stanfield created. Kenard is hardened by the street to the point where he pushes around Dukie and talks much bigger than he actually is. He sees his chance to kill the great Omar, and does so. But in that moment as he stands over the body you can see the kid in him again. He has just taken a real human life, and for a moment he is a terrified little kid again. Omar knew it just like Snoop, Slim, and the rest of the soldiers -- sooner or later, everybody got to get got. Guys like Stringer and Prop Joe were off the street too long and they both forgot that. They tried to buy and talk their way out. Omar's death is indicative of just how rough the game is. In the end, season five may be ridiculous for the serial killer and the Templeton story, but it is the cap on the four previous seasons of frustration over an ineffective but culturally ingrained way of doing things. The system is broken, and it is fitting that the end of the story shows us more of the same for Baltimore.

After a second viewing of the series I don't think I could rank the seasons anymore. It is too hard to elevate one season to the top of the heap and drop one season to the bottom. The beauty of The Wire is that all five of the seasons work so well together that if you remove one it cheapens the rest. If anything I'd like to look at just what was the standout part of each season:

Season One: Best Written - Most gripping 12 episode story arc. The reason you came back for, and understood the world of the next four seasons.
Season Two: Best Drama - Could be titled "the death of the american working class". The fates of Ziggy and Frank are horribly saddening despite the fact that we've only known the characters for a dozen episodes.
Season Three: Most Revolutionary - Hamsterdam worked, until it didn't. While it solved real problems on the street it was never sustainable because of how it looked on paper. Honorable mention to Carcetti's campaign*.
Season Four: Most Frustrating - The MCU under Merimow, the vacants filling up with bodies, Marlo's hold on the west side, the failure of the school to do right by Dukie and Colvin's program, the failure of the cops with Randy, and the failure of anyone to reach Michael. Season four made you want to beat your head against the wall, and I almost didn't watch it just to avoid the heartbreak. I know I'm not alone.
Season Five: Best Comedy - "Tell me you didn't kill them yourself, McNulty. At least tell me that." Lines like that (from Rawls) and the utter breakdown of the system are set up as the darkest of black comedy. Season five is the culmination of four seasons of utter breakdown by the system.

*(After watching the series a second time I am even more firm in my belief that Carcetti is not a bad guy, but rather someone who got swept up in the system and kept putting off the real nitty gritty of helping people for some latter date. You can tell in the way Carcetti speaks, not just in front of a camera but behind closed doors, that the guy does care about change. And you would think that Norman would have sense enough not to jump on board with some political hack. I think season three and the beginning of season four are supposed to be about the good people want to do before they get in the system. Looking from an outsider perspective, Carcetti wanted to enact positive change. However, once he got into office he began to realize that it wasn't going to be easy. He had to make sacrifices. Eventually, Steindorf (the devil) won out over Norman (the angel) in the battle of Carcetti's conscience. However, I still believe that in his heart Tommy feels like he is trying to do right for his city. He has just gotten too deep into the system.)

So, that was kind of long, but anyone else have any thoughts?