Lorenzo Charles and the Shot

First the apology: This will be more about me than it will be Lorenzo Charles. These are the feelings coursing through me. Lorenzo Charles died on Monday, a shocking thing. He was driving a bus for Elite Tours and the crash happened on Interstate 40, near Raleigh, N.C., where he was beloved. Charles had lived a basketball life -- he was an excellent college basketball player, of course. Then he played in basketball leagues all around the world, and he coached for a while before settling back in Raleigh and driving busses. He also made a famous shot. Buck O'Neil, who lived to be almost 95, always said that we should save our tears for those who die young. Lo Charles was just 47 years old.

I met him only once. But I thought about him often. It had something to do growing up. And that's what I think about now.

The Least Exciting Player Ever

You could argue -- what the heck I will argue -- that Adam Dunn in 2011 is the single least enjoyable player to watch in baseball history. He still has a half season to go and in that half season he could turn things around, whack a few home runs, lead the White Sox on a bit of a charge, it's not impossible, not even wildly improbable. He's hit 38-plus homers every single year since 2004. But watching him the first half season has been so dreary, so depressing, that after seeing him play a couple of games in a row I feel like I need a shot of Vitamin D or a vacation to someplace sunny.

Why is baseball fun to watch? There are many answers -- different ones for different people. The connection to the past. The battle of pitcher and hitter. The geometry of the field and the way fielders try to cover it. The tense moments. On and on. But at its core, for me at least, the fun of baseball comes down to the connection of ball and bat. That is where so much of the action begins. That's what leads to triples, double plays, diving catches, plays at the plate, long home runs. Bat meets ball leads to motion, leads to action, leads to heroics and mistakes and cans of corn. Sure, there is excitement found in other places -- in the fastball that brushes the outside corner, the curveball that buckles the knees, the big swing and miss. Sure, there is fun in the cat-and-mouse game between pitcher, catcher and a great base runner and in the well-earned walk. But, for the most part, the game needs a trigger. And the trigger is ball hitting bat.

My Friend Nick Charles

We stood in his driveway in the fading New Mexico light, exchanging goodbyes, when Nick Charles said something I will never forget. He said: "I wish I knew you before." His eyes glassed over then, rain on a window pane, and that was the moment when I came closest to crying. There were numerous other moments of crying and near-crying throughout that day because we both knew exactly why I had come. Nick was dying. And I had come to write his obituary.

"I hope I gave you what you needed," he said as we tried to stretch out the moment. It's a strange thing to write about someone who has spent a life writing about others. Nick Charles was the original sports anchor on CNN. If you are of a certain age, you will certainly remember him and Fred Hickman reporting the sports day every night. Keith Olbermann would say that Charles basically invented the cable television sportscast. But, more than his ability to animate sports highlights, more than his talent for passing along the news and color of the sports day, Nick prided himself on his writing.

Nick: "Do you know what you're going to write about me?"
Me: "No, not yet."
Nick: "Will the words just come to you?"
Me: "I don't know. I hope so."
Nick: "I'll bet they will. I love it when words come to me."

Wriggling for Riggleman

I'm trying very hard to see Jim Riggleman's side of the story. I really am. I want to sympathize with him. I want to root for him. I want to side against management. I am a sucker for stories about unreasonable bosses. I am a fan of the "take this job and shove it," brand of entertainment. Sometimes, in airports, just for fun, I will listen to two people rip their bosses and enjoy the conversation even though I have no idea what they're talking about.

Here, though, is how I understand the Riggleman story.

The 14 Most Dominant Performances

So, this is an attempt to come up with my 14 most dominant performances in sports history. The idea -- thought up by my friend Tommy Tomlinson* -- began with the simple question: Was Tiger Woods' amazing performance at Pebble Beach in 2000 more impressive than Rory McIlroy's amazing performance at the U.S. Open this year? This led to the question: What are the most dominating performances ever?

*If you want to read the single saddest story you will read this year, well, here you go.

Switching to 14

Here's how dumb I am: A while ago, I decided that I would make all my lists match up to the best number in sports. That, in and of itself, is not a terrible idea. Rather than Top 10 lists, which are boring, I would make my lists a different number, one that has some sort of magical connection to sports.

Obviously, the number could have been ANYTHING. I could have said that I was going to do Top 7 lists in honor of Mickey Mantle and George Castanza. I could have done Top 9 lists in honor of Ted Williams, Roy Hobbs and Mia Hamm. I could have done Top 12 lists to celebrate Brady, Namath, Bradshaw and the 12th man. I could have done pretty much anything.

And what did I do? I decided instead that the best number in sports is THIRTY-TWO.

It is true, I think. Thirty-two is Jim Brown. It is Sandy Koufax. It is Magic and Halladay, Carlton and Malone, it is THE number. Thirty-two is also A VERY LONG list. I mean, doing the 32 best sports calls of all time or the 32 best NFL running backs or the 32 best baseball players ... at some point, hours into those lists, it might have occurred to me that my life would be a whole lot easier if I decided that Bill Russell and Stan Musial shared the best number in sports (No. 6). If I had gone with Tommy Lasorda and Derek Jeter (2) I could have been out golfing.* I'm just not particularly savvy.

*This seems as good a time as any to announce that, beginning with the August issue, I will be writing the back page column for Golf Magazine. The point, generally, will be for me to learn how to play golf. You might know that I have not played even most of a round since playing 16 holes at Augusta National in 1992. The potential for destruction and injury is pretty high. There are some plans in the works -- will keep you updated.

In any case, I'm bringing back the lists ... but we're going to try a more sensible list number so that I can actually live a life. I'm going to go with No. 14 -- that's the number of the guy on the cover of my last book Pete Rose. It's also Otto Graham's number, A.J. Foyt's number, Johann Cruyff's number and Bob Cousy's number. That's a pretty cool collection of athletes. And 14, for list purposes, is significantly less than 32.

The Jose Bautista Story

One thing I've had to get used to while working at a magazine is that there's a gap between when you write a story and when it appears in print. This happened now and again in newspapers, but generally I would write something one day and it would be waiting for me on my doorstep at 6 a.m. the next morning. And obviously, the Internet moves even faster.

But magazines take time. And so while I've been working like mad the last few weeks, the results are only now beginning to show. This week, my story on Jose Bautista appears in the magazine, along with my back page column on Rory McIlroy.

-- You can download the magazine right now to your iPad (and if you are a subscriber with an iPad and you have not downloaded the amazing free app ... what are you waiting for?).

-- You can wait hungrily by the mailbox for your magazine to arrive (I highly recommend this).

-- Or you can get a sneak peek here.

I have another big story coming next week in our Where Are They Now issue. I'd give you a clue, but the problem with clues is that they tell you something without telling you anything.*

*Hint: That's the clue.

Coming later today (I hope): The 13 most dominant performances in sports.

The Championship Q&A

Here is my official Q&A session after winning Sports Illustrated's NBA Ultimate Draft. In it, 10 SI writers held an open draft where every NBA and ABA player (in the prime of his career) was available. Those teams were then run through a Strat-o-Matic league. And, well, yeah, the Cleveland Spiders won the championship.

My team, you might note, is the Cleveland Spiders.

I did not do any interviews during the season because I did not want to distract my players from their mission, and because I was too busy debating whether or not to fire my coach, Bob Knight. So this will serve as my lone interview.

The Big Man

I only saw Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band perform Rosalita one time in all the years. I love Rosalita, love the song because it sounds like 17 years old, you know? It is bold and messy and irresponsible and full of life. The words, let's not kid anybody, are ridiculous. We're going to play some pool, skip some school, act real cool, stay out all night, it's gonna feel all right. The instruments seem to me to be attacking each other in a playful way -- like a musical water-balloon fight. Rock and roll can mean so many things. One of those things it can mean is youth. But youth fades. Layla grows old. Amanda grows old, Beth grows old, Melissa, Michelle, my bell, Miss Molly, Good Golly, Billie Jean, not my lover, Judy Blue Eyes, Brown Eyed Girl, sha la la la, Lola, L-O-L-A, Lola, Roxanne, heck, even Mary and Wendy grow old.

But, to my ears anyway, Rosalita stays young forever.

A Fatherhood Story

Throughout our cross-country move from Kansas City to Charlotte, friends have asked the same question again and again: How are the kids taking it? It's a thoughtful question, a heartfelt question, and I very much appreciate them asking. But, the truth is, they already know. They're taking it exactly like just about every kid who has ever moved. If there's one thing you can say about moving, it is that the feelings are universal ... and cliche-ridden. Just about every adult who has ever moved to a new place has felt overburdened and has promised themselves, at least on some level, to never move again. Just about every child who has moved has felt, at least on some level, like Ralph Macchio from The Karate Kid.

Our girls are 6 and 9 and, so, have been a spectacularly erratic bundle of emotions. This is particularly true of Elizabeth, the older one. One minute, she's excited about a new life. The next she's collapsed in tears. The next, she's talking giddy about the puppy we're going to get*. The next she's talking about how she will never have a happy thought for the rest of her life.

*Fathers are not above bribing daughters.

The Case For Rooting Against LeBron

Being in Charlotte again, I am reminded that no athlete in the history of American sports better understood the delicate concept of sports hate than a now 66-year-old Charlotte resident who was born Richard Morgan Fliehr and became known to the world -- or at least a fair part of the world -- as Ric Flair.

Ric Flair was a professional wrestler, of course, one of many who would be known as "The Nature Boy." He won World Championship belts about 583,284 times -- I know he holds various records. But Ric Flair's enduring legacy, in my mind, is as one of the great bad guys -- heels, as they are called -- in the history of wrestling. Flair strutted. He bragged. He taunted. He insulted. He shouted "WOOOOO!" with authority. He cheated with style, bled with gusto, used metal chairs as weapons like few ever have. He locked on the figure four. He said cartoonishly insulting things like: "When it comes to the Nature Boy, ladies, you cannot not be the first, but you can be the next." He soaked in the boos like they were friends he had not seen in years. "To be the man," he announced early and often, "you have to BEAT the man." In this scenario, in all scenarios, it was understood that Ric Flair was the man. And the more they hated him, the more he became the man.

True: Pro wrestling is not real.

Opinion: Other sports are not all that real either.

Feeling The Heat

It probably goes without saying that I will talk about the moment when Dallas led Miami by eight points with about four minutes left in Game 6. That sequence rages in my mind. And the thing is, I don't know exactly how I feel about it. I know how I SHOULD feel about it. I know how I WANT to feel about it. But ...

... it's just a bit more complicated than I expected, I guess.

My Kansas City Goodbye

I wanted to tell the girls to find their goodbyes to Kansas City, but I wasn't sure how to explain that concept to them. I'm not even sure I understand the concept in words. It's a feeling, you know? Anyway, it didn't matter. They're so young that goodbyes come easy. Elizabeth is 9. Katie is 6. When you're that young, I think, you live close to the surface. The sun is a blinding yellow. The rain can sound like music against the window. Everything feels urgent and alive. When you say goodbye to your best friend at the end the school day, it can feel like the water scene from "Titanic." Put it this way: Elizabeth cried when we had our driveway fixed so that it no longer had an inch-high drop in it. "I miss the bump," she told me. Every day. It's like that for them. They do not need to trigger their emotions. They do not need a single memory or scene to bring it all to the surface. Any goodbye is a heartfelt goodbye.

I did need that, though. Anyway, I wanted that.

Getting 3000 At Home

Going to save the absurdly long Derek Jeter "What Does 3,000 Hits Mean," post for next week. This was originally just part of that post when the Posterisk got unwieldy.

A question: Will Jeter get his 3,000th hit at Yankee Stadium?

The Emergency Poscast

The Poscast With Michael Schur (The Obsolete Things We Miss Draft).

Have I ever told you about the time I slept through a Shaquille O'Neal college game I was supposed to cover? I'm pretty sure I've told that story before. But I'll go ahead and tell it again briefly to get the point across. When I was a columnist in Augusta, Ga. -- this had to be 1992, I suppose -- LSU came to play at South Carolina, and I was going to Columbia to write about Shaq. Well, early that morning I went fishing with the Chronicle's outdoors writer Bill Babb. I did this for a column. I don't fish. I'm not opposed to fishing, but I just don't do it. To my best recollection, I've been fishing three times in my life, all for columns.

So I was up at some absurd hour, 3:30 in the morning or something, so I could go fishing and write about how I didn't catch anything. I made it back to my apartment by late morning and thought, "OK, I'll take a little nap here, be up by 2, head over to Columbia, it will be great." I set the alarm for 2. I did not realize that I had set it for 2 AM rather than 2 PM.

I did not realize it until 8:30 or so that evening when I actually woke up.

My Last Royals Game (For A While)

So this is my last Royals game as a Kansas Citian ... we move to North Carolina this week. I figure I might as well ramble a bit about some of my feelings about all that. Here are 3,639 words of ramble.

The Unbeatable Rafa

There was a single point during Sunday's Rafael Nadal-Roger Federer match that actually made me shudder. I don't often shudder during sporting events. To be honest about it, I don't often shudder period. I am lucky enough to live a pretty shudder-free life.

But there was something about this point -- well, I was rooting for Federer to win (like always). This has nothing at all to do with the personalities. I Rafa Nadal very much. I like the way he kind of blushes and protests whenever people ask him if he's the greatest tennis player ever. I like the quiet way he knows how much he intimidates. I like that he's a huge fan of other sports. I like the time he puts into charity. And, if you like tennis at all, you cannot help but be overwhelmed by the way he plays. He is like a blend of some of the giants of the game -- a little bit of Connors, a little bit of Borg, a little bit of Agassi, a little bit of Laver. He plays with passion but he also plays with control. He is a fighter, but he's also an artist. He hits ridiculous shots all the time. It is impossible, I think, to watch him play and not feel awed.

How To End The Intentional Walk

The Poscast With Bill James

So, I was in Toronto last week working on this Jose Bautista story that could run next week -- more on that fun experience when the story runs -- and I saw something that drove me nuts. Anyone who cares would know just how much I despise the intentional walk. I despise it because it's often (usually) illogical. I despise it because it's always (always) anti-competitive.

Here was the situation: The Blue Jays and White Sox were tied in the eighth inning. The series was a cavalcade of small-ball gobbledygook*, infields played in, suicide squeezes blown, the sacrifice samba.

*Part of the ongoing series: "Using words that are supposed to be out of date."