Ideal Bowling

I went bowling the other night.

Midweek get-togethers with friends are a nice way to break up a work week. Bowling is a challenge for me. It’s difficult just picking up spares but feels like it should be much easier. On the first roll I knock down about half the pins. The second is even more embarrassing. It doesn’t matter how they’re lined up either. Pins on opposite sides of the lane are nearly impossible to hit. Most people can get one but without a bouncing the pin off the back and striking the other one, forget it. Have you ever seen anyone actually do that? Nail a perfect 7, 10 split?

When I have three pins staring at me all lined up down the center I’ll miss to one side or the other. If the pins are clustered on one edge I’ll just miss by rolling past the side or clunking it in the gutter. My favorite is when two pins are standing up with a bowling ball size gap between them. I make a selection on which one to hit and miss both pins going right between them.

It makes me think of the boat chase scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

“Are you crazy don’t go between them!”

“Go between them are you crazy?!”  

No matter how wide the miss I always manage to stare at the cleanup gate like I’ve just seen an elephant knock them over with his trunk. It’s partly confusion and partly surprise, Why? How? Bowling is no different from every other activity. In order to get good you have to spend time at it. On a good year I’ll go twice, so I won’t be getting better anytime soon. Bowling, pool and darts are just games you play at the bar or at birthday parties or on a snow day from school. Obviously some people compete in them like any other sport, but for most of us these are occasional events. We can only …ahem, spare so many hours every year. Mostly I just think WAAAAY too much about the larger implications; hence this blog.

That I get too frustrated with my ability is a given; why I get so frustrated is a mystery. I’m not the kind of person that needs to be good at everything all the time. I’m as competitive as most guys but I think I have a standard idea in my head of what the performance level should look like. Let’s call it “Ideal 1”. It’s an artificial level that exists in my head representing my expected game. Ideal 1 doesn’t measure my actual ability, it’s pure fiction. It isn’t rooted in past efforts or realistic notions. How I arrived at this level is anyone’s guess.

You’ll understand this feeling if you’ve ever watched the US Open and thought “I should be able to do that”. Of course you don’t mean “I should be able to do that” at the same level and Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer.” You just mean I could volley the ball back and forth over the net, no problem. But it is a problem. A very big problem. What you should ask yourself in reply to the silly assertion is “Based on what, should I be able to do that?”

 Anything short of Ideal 1 is failure, which is tough on the psyche. It’s not a competitive thing as much as an expectation; again, for a game which I don’t play often and have almost no knowledge of. I don’t expect to get over 200 and if the highest score of the group is 175 and at 145, I’m OK with that. But those sub 100 games are embarrassing even if the top scores are only a few points above that. Ideal 1 doesn’t come with an exact score number which is convenient because then I’d have to name it.    

What is that mechanism in my thinking that makes me imagine a world where lofty expectations are the norm, based on nothing?

There is good news however. It seems to lessen with age. I’ll bet it never goes away completely though. I can make fun of myself a little more now.

Life is basically a collection of moments like my ill imagined bowling expertise. We think we have some notion of how it goes until we start to play, start to work, start to raise kids and start to save and invest money. Suddenly it all starts to seem unfair and we wonder why we aren’t better at this? ‘I’ve watched others do it and it doesn’t seem that tough’ is a kind of unspoken rule. I didn’t expect the setbacks or the debt. I didn’t expect the illness or the lack of opportunity. I thought education would ensure a better buffer.

But everyone who stays at it improves, with effort and with learning. That may be the only truly observable lesson. Stay in the game, even when you struggle with the wobbly pins.

Signs Signs Everywhere Signs

 

Who was it that said "If you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying"? Alex Cora, AJ Hinch?

 Well the Astros tried hard, and took sign stealing to an industrial scale level. Manager AJ Hinch was suspended for a year by the commissioner, as was the General Manager Jeff Luhnow. Promptly after that Astros owner Jim Crane fired them both. The league also tacked on a 5 million penalty to the team for violating policy, which they can afford now after dumping both Hinch and Luhnow.

If you’re not up to speed on this scandal here it goes. Since at least 2017 the Astros used a sophisticated form of sign stealing from opposing pitchers in their home games. Sign stealing is familiar to everyone who’s ever played little league. If you’re a runner on second you look at the sign the catcher gives the pitcher and you try to relay that sign to your teammate at the plate. If the catcher puts one finger down it’s a fastball (usually) and two fingers mean an off-speed pitch like a curve or change-up. You can communicate to your batter a signal like tipping your cap or clapping. Teams look for it though and try to come up with different signals to confuse. No one considers this cheating.

But let’s say one of the parents behind the fence in center field uses a high resolution video camera and zooms in on the catcher. The parent recording the game communicates to the batter by shouting or waving his hands. Most people rightly see this as cheating. Not just because of the magnitude but because the other team isn’t aware it’s happening. This is almost exactly what the Astros did. What they were doing, and it looks like the Red Sox as well, was industrial scale cheating. I’m sure they weren’t the only ones but they needed to be made an example of.

Rumors floated around the league after the 2017 season so other teams got wise to the Minute Maid Park (Houston) advantage. The Nationals, who just won the last series, used a complicated set of signs for all their games in Houston.

Pitcher Mark Fiers, who was with the Astros in 2017, broke the story to the Athletic in November last year. Minute Maid Park has a camera set up to record the game for instant replay purposes. This has been the case for all teams since 2014. Somehow the team was able to send the live feed to a dugout monitor where the players would watch and bang on a trash can for off-speed pitches and sit quietly for fastballs. If anyone was going to have major problems with sign stealing it would be a pitcher. Not to mention, doing something this brazen is bound to fall apart after your players start going to other teams. The Astros of course won the World Series in 2017. How much is due to their clever ‘replay gate’?

If it didn’t help, no one would bother. This is the biggest problem with cheating, you tarnish your reputation for something you may well have earned without it.

 It doesn’t matter that they had the best pitching staff that year, by a long shot. It doesn’t matter than Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Corea, and Alex Bregman all had incredible years. Altuve even won the MVP award that year.

A lot of teams the Astros went through that year are rightfully salty today. C.C. Sabatha (Yankees) wants the win vacated as does David Freese (Dodgers). Kevin Youkilis  (Yankees) is disappointed that the penalties weren’t steeper. Trevor Bauer (Reds) trolled the Astros with video clips of AJ Hinch mocking the idea that the team was cheating. 

I don’t know how to feel about the punishment the MLB did hand down. In addition to the 5 million dollar fine slapped on the organization they also lose their first and second round picks for the next two years. It might not seem like much, but the real damage is not in payroll or future talent or vacated wins, it’s in the perception we have of players who cheated. Not to mention an organization that allowed it. 

Baseball’s commissioner Rob Mannford decided to not punish the players individually. It’s too difficult to determine to what extent each player benefited or went along with it to not upset the others. That’s a reasonable explanation for me but I can’t imagine it goes over well with players on other teams that got beat. If social media is any indicator of how other players feel about the Astros, it will be a while before this episode is forgotten.

One Shot One Thrill

Sam Mendes created an entire movie as one shot. It’s dramatic and focused, suspenseful and intense. By telling one story over the course of a full day, back stories and side narratives get eliminated. We follow the characters from start to finish with nothing in between.1917 is less about the war as it is set during the war. Very few scenes contain 'explainers' where generals discuss troop movements or point to maps and tell the audience where divisions are located. It’s a break from most war movies that seek to explore the historic costs of war, and the underlying political fault lines. 1917 wants to immerse you in the war, for a full day.

We are shown the mission at the beginning for the sake of plot; a British regiment deep behind German lines is facing imminent slaughter. Two soldiers are chosen to deliver a message to halt an attack before it’s too late. Other than that, most details about setting and maneuver are stripped away. We see and feel the way the soldiers do, a little lost and overwhelmed. This is a simple movie exploring the challenges of mission and the weight of responsibility. It doesn’t rehash political ideas about the war or the danger of nationalism. In this way the movie says less about World War I, or any war, than it does about determination, sacrifice and brotherhood--everything critical for carrying out mission in impossible situations. 

I’m not sure how much Sam Mendes (the director) believes this is a story about individual growth, but those characteristics are present. We see the reluctance to take the mission, the unlikely chance for success and the challenges that threaten to derail the whole thing.

“There goes First Principles, trying to stuff conservative ideals into movies again”.     

I don’t know a lot about camera work but this film is beautifully shot. We follow the soldiers as they traipse through empty trenches and open fields. We run with them to avoid bombs that light up the sky. The camera gets uncomfortably close as they kill and get shot at; it floats down the rapids after a jump into the river to avoid German gunfire. We feel as exhausted and nervous as the soldiers. The message the soldier carries is time sensitive, adding to our discomfort. We see dead bodies and rats scurrying through the muddy trenches and climbing over each other.

If Saving Private Ryan tried to answer the question “What is a life worth?” 1917 tries to answer the question “How does responsibility change a person?” In particular, responsibility that’s put-on, demanded of, critical for others. From a movie point of view, war is as good a theater to explore these questions as anything. It’s unrelenting, mistakes are deadly and there is no time for regret. We keep moving through the mess, determined. Lives depend on it after all.

I read an interview with the director, Sam Medes, who talked about shooting the opening scene from Spectre (James Bond film) in one shot. Because that sequence is one shot and completely memorable, he wondered what an entire movie shot this way might look like. 1917 is the result and the shots really pull you in. The word he kept using was “immersive”. He wanted an immersive feel for the audience.

It’s a granular and emotional story with just the scantest reminders that this takes place during World War I. 1917 is interested in the human part of mission and the mettle required to focus and finish.1917 shows how difficult situations create extraordinary courage.

This will win an Oscar. It has to.

Jogging Routines

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an update on running. 

Mostly I’ve settled into a routine that feels like autopilot so the news is pretty much the same. I go 15 to 20 miles per week over the course of 3 days (sometimes 2). I run outdoors on Sunday because traffic is light and because I like to get 9 or so miles in. Sunday is still my most consistent day and also my long day. The pace has improved on the margins but only a little. I guess as long as my primary goal is distance, time will remain a secondary concern. I like where I’m at, just under 10:00 minutes per mile and occasionally under 9:50 per mile. That isn’t exactly lightning speed but it feels comfortable for now.

Comfort might be the problem though. I imagine jogging in the winter the way athletes imagine their off-season, as a time for maintenance. They hit the weights and do cardio, but the real grind happens during the regular season. The practices are intense, the schedule is packed and the stakes are high. I’m hardly an athlete in the off-season, but the lack of a specific goal keeps me comfortable with my routine. I want to be ready to get into a half marathon at pretty much any time of year. The races are still a ways off but I never should need a 2 month program to get back into shape. I do plan on doing a few more this year. I only did two last year and one was a disastrous trail run.

 “Never again!” he shouts as the mountain air fills his lungs and he trips over a hiking log, gasping like a rioter through a cloud of tear gas.

The weather has been spectacular, especially when you consider this is usually the coldest time of year and it hasn’t dropped below 30 in over a month. The wind is the wind. If it’s too strong I don’t go, but up till now it hasn’t held me back. I’m under no illusions that winter will continue to be so mild throughout the rest of the year. We did just hit January after all. But I’ve been through some mild winters before in Oklahoma. We seem to get them every 3 to 5 years. It might not drop below 30 again.

I started out early (6:30 am) on Sundays during the summer because the heat gets unbearable in the morning. I stuck with it in the fall despite the cooler mornings. It just made sense to get the run in early and it still does. Since I go to gym early during the week I decided to stick with the early run on Sunday as well.

I’ve been fortunate not to have terrible injuries. I don’t push anything too hard anymore. On countless occasions I’ve injured shoulders, joints and muscles while lifting weights and trying to set personal records. After a few of those you lose your competitive drive and try to work out smarter. For bad injuries you can miss months at a time, no exercise and no alternative. So I improve at a slow pace. That’s OK with me. Jogging isn't sprinting.