Blogging in the Word

The 108th and Greatest U.S. Open: The Playoff

2008-06-17T11:48:00.005-05:00

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The USGA takes a lot of criticism for holding an 18-hole Monday playoff to break ties. All the majors once used it, but since shifted to more TV-friendly formats: four-hole aggregate playoffs in the Open Championship and PGA, sudden death at the Masters. The last three playoffs had been won by good golfers (Payne Stewart, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen) playing OK golf and their pursuers playing poor golf. None had been particularly dramatic.

"Anticlimactic," some said. "Anachronistic," said others.

For 11 holes, that seemed the case. After lunch with Uncle Larry in Dearborn, I tuned in and found Woods and Mediate on the 12th tee. Rocco was struggling at 3 over par. Tiger had just bogeyed the 11th hole and shaved his lead from three strokes to two. The 12th hole was the longest par-4, at 504 yards, in U.S. Open history.

Tiger sprayed his tee shot askew. Rocco, after an accurate but short drive, had 240 yards to the hole. He took out a fairway metal. He made his characteristic half-waggle and foot shuffle, pulled the club back, and struck the ball onto the green, hole high.

"Oh, boy!" I shouted at the TV screen. "Now we've got ourselves a playoff!"

The rest is history.
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Father's Day Finish

2008-06-17T11:34:00.002-05:00

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Benign conditions prevailed at Torrey Pines on Sunday. Low scores were there to be had. Retief Goosen, two-time U.S. Open champion, shot 67. Heath Slocum shot a bogey-free 65, the low round of the tournament. The final groups, though, felt the heat most intensely. The best score out of any of the last four pairings was Rocco Mediate's what-me-worry round of par 71.

Tiger and Lee Westwood weren't at their best. Woods, again, double-bogeyed the first hole to give away his miraculously earned lead. Westwood missed makeable birdie putts inside ten feet. At the 18th tee, both Woods and Westwood stood at even par for the tournament. Rocco was in the scorer's trailer at 1 under. A birdie by either player would set up a Monday playoff.

Woods drove it in the left fairway bunker. Westwood drove it in the right fairway bunker.

Westwood blasted out to a safe position on the short grass. Woods missed right and threw his club down in disgust. Both golfers had to get up and down from 100 yards to force a playoff. Westwood played 15 feet above the hole. Woods played a brilliant shot that landed hole high, 12 feet from the cup.

Lee Westwood didn't hit his putt hard enough. It curled left to right too early and stopped just short and right of the cup. He tapped in for par.

Tiger stalked his putt, looking deliberately from every angle. The stroke was true. The green in that area was bumpy. His ball shook, rattled, rolled, rimmed the cup - and curled in. "He rimmed it in," I said. Woods let out a primal roar. The crowd erupted. Westwood walked forlornly off the green.

The best was yet to come.
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Tiger's Saturday Night Special

2008-06-17T11:16:00.003-05:00

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Somehow, when I got to Lucky's, an odd melange of an arcade, sports bar, martini bar, surprisingly good restaurant, dance club, and bowling alley under one roof, on Saturday night, Tiger Woods had rolled in a 60-foot bomb for eagle at the par-5 13th hole and got back to even par on the 17th tee.

I walked up to the bar, ordered an Arnold Palmer (half iced tea, half lemonade), and sat down for Woods's final two holes.

He hit an awful drive well right into the tall, gnarly U.S. Open rough. He tried a heroic second shot and found more tall, gnarly rough beside the green. The ball was on a severe slope at least a foot above his feet. The green ran away from him. I distinctly thought, "If he can somehow get up and down, and birdie 18, then he's only one stroke behind (Lee) Westwood." Westwood looked like the 54-hole leader at two under par.

Woods hacked at his ball. It hit the green, took one high hop, and fell directly into the cup. My jaw fell to the floor. "He put it in the hole!" I screamed. The bar patrons took a collective "Ohh", astonished. Woods shared a laugh with Steve Williams and shook his head in wonderment, as if thanking God for all He had entrusted to Woods.

If Woods hadn't made the chip-in at 17, I strongly doubt he would have eagled 18. He needed the crowd's energy, the realization of just how good he was, just to finish the round. And he did, with a flourish.

Two strong shots gave Woods a 25-footer for eagle and a tricky downhill putt that, it seemed, half the field had tried and not come close to holing. He started it on a line well left of any previous try. "Uh-oh", I thought, "he knows something we don't." Indeed, he rolled it true, and the ball broke right, then a little left, straight into the cup.

Looking back at the entire U.S. Open, the chip shot on 17 was one of the great greenside shots of all time. The gold standard, Tom Watson's chip-in on the par-3 17th at Pebble Beach in 1982, was from a level position, not from the cartoonish uphill lie that Woods overcame.

Woods, after his 3-3 finish, walked off the 18th green one stroke ahead of Westwood.
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Tiger and Rocco, in Four Parts

2008-06-17T10:52:00.004-05:00

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If Shakespeare lived, instead of recording the military exploits of medieval kings and noble Romans for posterity, he would dramatize the story of Tiger and Rocco for generations to come.

Just the names call forth the Muses. Tiger and Rocco. Rocco and Tiger. Those names aren't golfers' names. They sound like the combatants in a UFC title bout or a mixed-martial-arts exhibition. Somehow, a playoff between Lee (Westwood) and Geoff (Ogilvy), which came close to happening, wouldn't have had the same euphony.

Fittingly, the contest between Tiger and Rocco became a brawl. It had a visceral feeling of man on man, golf ball against golf ball, as if one could stymie the other. The atmosphere matched that of one of Sampras and Agassi's famous duels, or the Thrilla in Manila. The raucous patrons grasped the space-time singularity that made the 108th U.S. Open the greatest of them all.

Tiger the Gimp

Woods played the Masters in pain, couldn't hole a putt, yet finished second when the entire field, save champion Trevor Immelman, crumbled under the brutal Sunday conditions at Augusta. He then had knee surgery. The recovery took longer than most expected. He missed the Memorial, Jack's tournament, when he hoped to return. He hadn't played a competitive round in over two months.

Woods double-bogeyed his first hole on Thursday. Playing in pain, he managed 1-under for the first two rounds. On Saturday it got worse. Coming out of a bunker, he hoisted himself up with two golf clubs, like a pair of crutches. The winces and grimaces grew more pronounced. Lesser golfers would have withdrawn.

Rocco's Modern Life

Rocco Mediate grew up in the steel-driving towns of West Pennsylvania, the area best known as the cradle of quarterbacks: Unitas, Namath, Montana, Marino. Arnold Palmer was his hero, and the national championship, the U.S. Open, was his tournament. An affable, fast-talking, nearly hyperactive, thoroughly frank man, he wore his heart on his clothing - literally. He festooned his hat with pins from previous U.S. Opens. On Sunday, he sported a giant peace symbol for his belt buckle.

And his shot! Renowed swing gurus shook their heads. He hit every full shot with a pronounced right-to-left draw. He couldn't fade the ball to save his life. Yet the big hook was big-time under crushing pressure for the whole tournament.
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There it goes...

2008-06-17T10:41:00.002-05:00

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Well, the political crystal ball got a bit cloudy. One of my VP picks, Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, is no more: he issued a Shermanesque statement last week.

Obama still has many attractive options. He can choose Evan Bayh or Sherrod Brown if he wants to shore up the Midwest. Jim Webb is raring to go. However, my best hunch is a selection from the Mountain West, which he would really like to carry (and has to carry for 271 electoral votes, if he can't win Ohio or Florida). This puts forward Bill Ritter, Brian Schweitzer, and Bill Richardson as the most likely candidates.

McCain, from the little that I've heard, seems to be leaning more towards Tim Pawlenty. That would be a mistake; McCain needs more liveliness out of his running mate.
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Eclipse game post (3)

2008-06-09T10:12:00.003-05:00

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Venue: Eastpointe, MI
Opponent: Mt. Clemens Regulars
Score: L (4-6)
Batting: 1-3

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Mt. Clemens has improved as a team over the past year. They scored four of their runs on a pair of tremendous clouts over our outfielders' heads, which turned into two-run home runs. Their fielding was crisp and allowed us few chances on the bases.

The club also has a rule that you must keep one foot on the stride line (a horizontal line across the middle of home plate). This was common in early baseball, before some wise man thought of the batter's box. However, it hurt our striking. Most of us keep our back foot on the line and step forward with our front foot. This means that the pitches come in a little faster, and a little higher, than usual - just enough to throw a batter off.

First time up, I popped up. I realized what happened, adjusted, and got unlucky on a foul tip straight back, then hit a ground single to the right side. However, my teammates kept popping up and making the Regulars' job easy for their fielders. I was on deck in the ninth when Dutch, who had pitched very well, hit into an unlucky double play on a hard one-hopper to end the match.

At least we weren't embarrased, as we were in Romeo (a game I missed) when the Regulars won 16-2. My season batting record stands at 6-15 (.400), with 1 tally and 3 runs driven in.
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Ultra-Secret V.P. Picks!

2008-06-09T09:53:00.003-05:00

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While I am not privy to internal campaign rumors, I have a good sense of whom McCain and Obama ought to choose as their vice-presidential nominees.

Republican: Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana. There's speculation that McCain will choose Tim Pawlenty, the young Governor of Minnesota and one of McCain's early supporters in the dark days of his candidacy, or his buddy, Charlie Crist, the Governor of Florida. Both of these selections would be mistakes.

Running a ticket of two white men against Barack Obama would not be visually appealing - even more so if the Democratic V.P. nominee is female. It might appeal to the 20% of the electorate that won't vote for a black man, but it would marginalize the Republican ticket in the eyes of independent voters in key swing states.

Jindal is young, rising, and savvy, and he heralds a new role for Indian-Americans in U.S. politics. If McCain wins, he's in pole position to succeed him. If McCain loses, it's no skin off his back; Jindal can go back to being an effective governor and burnishing his credentials. Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't hurt by running with James Cox (and losing badly) in 1920 when his turn came twelve years later.

Democratic: Ted Strickland, Governor of Ohio. Barack Obama won't, and shouldn't, choose Hillary Clinton. There's too much water under the bridge. When Senator Obama thanked Senator Clinton for making him a stronger candidate, he really meant, "Thanks for digging up all the dirt on me in the primaries, so that voters forget about it come November." Privately, he doesn't want the Clintons anywhere near the ticket. He has enough to worry about.

But he does have to worry about the Electoral College. McCain will win Florida - older voters tend to care more about Obama's race than younger voters. Obama has an uphill climb in Ohio, which Kerry narrowly lost in 2004, and Pennsylvania, where Hillary decisively beat him. Even if he can turn Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico, he needs one of those two states.

Strickland is his best bet to carry Ohio and appeal to Appalachia in general - he studied at Kentucky's well-reputed Asbury Theological Seminary, earning an M. Div., and has a doctorate from the University of Kentucky. He would be a potent ally for Obama, and has the advantage of starting the primary season as a Hillary supporter.
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June 3: Montana and South Dakota

2008-06-09T09:49:00.003-05:00

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Montana:
Obama 57
Clinton 41

South Dakota:
Clinton 55
Obama 45

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This, of course, was the end. With all 50 states, plus 4 more contests (Guam, Puerto Rico, D.C., and Democrats Abroad), having voted, Obama claimed victory and Clinton, after a final rally to buck up her bewildered supporters, quickly conceded the nomination. South Dakota was, ironically, Hillary's only win in the Mountain West states.
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June 1: Puerto Rico

2008-06-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

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Clinton 68
Obama 32

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It's interesting to think about how vigorously Obama might have contested Puerto Rico if the race had been closer. With his lead, he barely bothered with the island territory, which Clinton claimed by a wide margin. However, turnout was low (only 400,000 islanders voted), dashing Hillary's last faint hope of claiming an edge over Obama in the total popular vote.
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Remembrance of things past...

2008-05-31T16:59:00.001-05:00

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In homage to Proust, let me quote from a January 4 blog post:

O me of little faith; I never imagined that we would see an Obama/McCain general election. Now, the respective candidacies of America's two best men for the job is not only possible, but probable.

At last, my hopes are being vindicated.
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Eclipse game post (2)

2008-05-27T14:25:00.002-05:00

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Venue: Home game
Opponent: Royal Oak Wahoos
Score: W (24-1)
Batting: 3 for 6, 1 tally, 2 runs batted in

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Vintage base ball is all about fielding, particularly in the infield. If you can't record outs on batted balls topped at home plate, or hit directly towards a fielder, then the opposing team will tally a lot of runs. This is what happened in Saturday's game. We scored four runs in the first, and seven more in the second, with relatively few hard line drives for such a prodigious total.

Both of my first two times at bat were with the bases loaded. The first time, I hacked the ball straight down between home and the pitcher's plate. Both the pitcher and catcher chased the ball, and no one covered home; everyone was safe. The second time, I grounded into a short-to-second force play, easily beating the throw to first and scoring the man from third.

On my fifth try at the plate, I borrowed Barrister's maple bat, the shortest (almost comically so) and lightest of all the team's bats. It helped a lot: I lined a single over the shortstop's head into left-center, eventually tallying a run, and hit a hard but high drive to center field that was well-caught on the fly.

Our next game is Sunday, June 1st, at 1:00. Please come!
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May 20: Kentucky and Oregon (Democratic)

2008-05-27T14:18:00.002-05:00

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Kentucky:
Clinton 65
Obama 30

Oregon:
Obama 59
Clinton 41

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This was an almost exact redux of the Indiana-North Carolina outcome from two weeks ago. Senator Obama won the more populous state, and Senator Clinton took the less populous state. Obama's delegate lead remains comfortable. In Kentucky, a state with only Louisville as a major urban area, rural white voters broke for Clinton, as they did in West Virginia. Oregon, a dynamic state with plenty of young people and high technology, broke for Obama.

Obama's cachet is still there: he drew a crowd of 70,000 to the banks of the Willamette River to hear him speak, to which Jay Leno quipped, "And then he fed all of them with five loaves of bread and two fish."
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Eclipse game post (1)

2008-05-27T14:10:00.004-05:00

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Venue: Sylvania, Ohio
Opponent: Great Black Swamp Frogs
Score: L (1-5)
Batting: 1 for 3

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Many of you know that I play vintage base ball (yes, two words) for the Northville Eclipse. We strive to make an accurate representation of base ball as it was played in the 1860's. The most obvious sign is the semi-formal dress in which we play. Some of the rules are different, too. The pitching delivery must be underhand, gloves are not worn (they were considered dandified and effeminate, though a few players experimented with flesh-colored gloves not unlike a modern golf glove), and a batted ball caught on one bounce is an out for the striker.

The team's first game, on Saturday in Romeo, was an embarrassing 16-2 defeat. Today, we were far better in the field, allowing three runs in the first inning and only two thereafter. The bats, though, were silent. I hit two ground balls to second base, beating one out for an infield hit, and popped up to the pitcher. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Note: In the picture, I am in the back row, third from left.
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May 13: West Virginia (Democratic)

2008-05-27T13:45:00.002-05:00

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Clinton 67
Obama 26

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It's easy to dismiss the West Virginia result as being due to racism alone, and it is astounding that a full 20% of West Virginia voters, in exit polling, publicly identified themselves as racial bigots. Forty years after Spencer Tracy's last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, it's sad that his memorable line, "How long will it take? Fifty, a hundred years?" (before Americans would freely accept Dr. Prentiss's and Joey's mixed-race children) has not yet been fulfilled across the whole country.

West Virginians didn't just vote for Mrs. Clinton on race alone; the wide spread indicates how issues of race, class, and urban culture work together to artificially divide Americans. One West Virginian left a comment that is flat wrong in its implications: "West Virginians are disinclined to vote for a liberal politician from Chicago, especially one who disrespects the culture of small-town America."

Is there nothing that Senator Obama can teach West Virginians? Is small-town culture so sacrosanct, so inherently optimal and ideal, that Chicagoans have to bend over backwards to accomodate themselves to the culture? Small-town culture, as a whole, in the United States is characterized by poverty, low educational attainment, high rates of drug use, and widespread belief in Biblical literalism. Doesn't this sound like the neighborhoods where the young Barack Obama was a community organizer on the South Side? Doesn't every small town have its own Jeremiah Wright, a minister who blames everybody else and refuses to look to their church's own shortcomings?

The two-thirds of West Virginians who voted for Senator Clinton are perpetuating a myth at the expense of their own lives and their children's. Kudos to Senator Obama for refusing to take the bait and for wanting what is authentically good for West Virginia, unlike his opponent.
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May 6: Indiana and North Carolina (Democratic)

2008-05-27T13:37:00.002-05:00

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Indiana:
Clinton 51
Obama 49

North Carolina:
Obama 56
Clinton 42

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Obama exceeded expectations and ended his damaging streak of lost primaries. He came within 14,000 votes of Mrs. Clinton in Indiana, much closer than most polls and pundits had expected, and he won North Carolina by a decisive margin. Senator Clinton is not quite knocked out - after all, she did win Indiana - but she is running short of delegates. I don't blame her for refusing to withdraw or concede, but she is highly unlikely to be nominated after these results.

John McCain won 77% in Indiana and 74% in North Carolina, with the balance going to protest votes for Huckabee and Paul.
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Pardon me...

2008-05-27T13:34:00.001-05:00

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Dear regular readers, please excuse the lack of recent posts. I have been preoccupied with final exams and seminar papers in Milwaukee, plus the logistics of moving back to Livonia for the summer.

This summer, expect changes to this blog, including a hit counter, pictures, and links to other sites of interest. If you have any comments, suggestions, or input, leave a comment!
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You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#2)

2008-04-28T17:10:00.003-05:00

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Apparently, French Socialist parliamentary deputies denounced President Nicolas Sarkozy's consistent policy of Franco-American rapproachment, criticizing France's "global strategic alignment" with the United States. NATO officials might be surprised to hear this, no? At the way that the U.S. security guarantee over France morphs, according to the Socialists, into a nefarious Orwellian alliance?
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April 22: Pennsylvania (both parties)

2008-04-28T16:02:00.003-05:00

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Democrats
Clinton 55
Obama 45

Republicans
McCain 73
Paul 16
Huckabee 11
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Pennsylvania's Catholic voters split seven to three for Hillary Clinton. I couldn't believe this. In Wisconsin, Obama had captured just shy of half the Catholic vote. At a time when I find myself returning to my Catholic roots, what on earth went on in Pennsylvania?

A big part of the answer came this morning as I flipped channels. EWTN, the Catholic channel, was airing a rerun of the news from a week ago, when Obama made his unfortunate comments about "bitter" rural Americans "clinging to guns and religion". Like many others, I thought Obama's comments were oversimplified, but not far off the mark: a lot of Americans don't understand globalization. They don't realize how to adapt to it or how to intelligently resist it.

The three male anchors at the EWTN news desk tore into Obama. One of them even said, "People with high school diplomas are more educated than people with higher education." I nearly fell out of my chair and muttered, "Only in the United States."

Their subsequent comments seemed straight out of the 1950's. Obama had insulted ethnic working-class communities. Obama exemplified of the groupthink that highly educated people inevitably succumb to (false at best, insulting at worst), and so forth. It hit me why so many Pennsylvania Catholics broke for Hillary: vestigal European ethnics-vs-blacks racism (which the Church is now bravely transcending) and equally vestigal Catholic contempt for the WASP intellectual elite. Ugh. That's cultural Catholicism at its worst.

Obama is in no danger of losing his pledged delegate lead: of the 10 or so delegates he lost here, he'll gain back in North Carolina and then some. Yet he needs to actually win a primary. Hillary, justifiably so, has a mini-argument that mirrors Obama's "ten in a row" run before March 4: she keeps winning (in the states most demographically favorable to her). Harold Ford of Tennessee was spot-on when he said, "Obama must win Indiana."
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The folks at Daily Kos were atwitter about 30% of the Republican vote not going to John McCain. But, as John McAdams, author of the provocative and principled blog Marquette Warrior, said, protest votes are most theoretically worthwhile in elections where the outcome doesn't matter (implying free choice at the polls, of course). Thus, I backed off.
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Peggy Noonan on the campaigns

2008-04-21T14:44:00.003-05:00

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Dear readers, in case you feared I had lost interest in the presidential race, fear not. Peggy Noonan has said it, far better than I could, in Friday's Wall Street Journal. Enjoy!
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On hunger of various sorts

2008-04-21T13:14:00.007-05:00

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For most of this academic year, I have fought my calling to a kind of monastic life in Milwaukee. The most visible manifestation of this calling is living and eating alone. I've never done either for a prolonged span; I lived at home, where either Mom or Dad was present for nearly every meal. Then I moved to Michigan State, where I lived in the dorms and took my meals with friends in the Case Hall cafeteria. For a long time, I felt lonely and resisted the loneliness in many ways, not all of them edifying. I complained to Sally when she had plenty enough to do in Ukraine, went out alone at night (never a wise idea), and felt wounded when my new friends paid attention to lifelong, local attachments ahead of me.

I've now embraced the calling to interior reflection, sober living, and habitual prayer. Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen are my best friends; their books point me towards a Christian life that is obedient but not uncritical. I'm happier than I have been in a long time. The essential question of my vocation, though, remains open.

Often, I sense a calling to live in the way of Merton and Nouwen - pastoral care, counseling, study and lecture on God's Word and spiritual topics, menial labor, service to the poor, and healing. The name Jason means "healer", so perhaps I am on to something.

Other times, I feel an inner conviction to keep on the path I have chosen so far - the study of international relations. In this field, I have the ability to do something about world hunger, whether it is feeding the malnourished directly (as a representative of an aid agency or a UN body), lobbying for domestic public policies and better global governance to ensure that the malnourished are fed, or someday helping to draft and implement those policies myself. Nouwen, because he wisely (for him) chose to devote his life to personal ministry, could only write how frustrated he was at the problem; in contrast, I have the opportunity to be God's hands to the hungry.

So the dialogue continues - though I am consciously letting it become less of an inner dialogue and more of a prayer-dialogue between Jesus and I. Readers, I welcome your prayers.
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On the hunger crisis

2008-04-21T13:07:00.002-05:00

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Henri Nouwen writes on November 25, 1974:

"More and more, the hunger in the world is entering our consciousness. I have heard and read about it for years, but now it is the dominating issue... at the end of the '60s the Vietnam War was the central issue. Now it is hunger, starvation, famine, death. It is an issue that is so enormous and so overwhelming that it is nearly impossible to grasp in all its implications. Millions of people are faced with death; every day thousands of people die from lack of food. It makes it all the more frustrating to think about this in a monastery where three days a week about 15,000 loaves of bread come out of the oven and where the wheat and corn harvest was better than in many previous years."

(From The Genesee Diary, p. 186)
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You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#1)

2008-04-18T20:15:00.003-05:00

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In honor of my weekly subscription to The Economist, I'd like to share with my readers the news items that I find side-splitting. World politics is full of unintentional humor - one of the reasons studying it is so enjoyable. The best example came from an article on the rising price of pork in China last year.

The U.S. government maintains strategic reserves for a variety of commodities. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is best-known, but we also maintain reserves of essential metals like titanium, iron, and gold (hence, Fort Knox is perhaps our oldest "strategic reserve"). Well, the People's Republic of China keeps strategic reserves of - you guessed it - pork. This Chinese strategic reserve, according to The Economist, consists of both frozen pork and live pigs.

Imagine the call from the PRC's Politburo: "Mr. Zhou, this is Mr. Liu. Go to the deep freeze! We need 5 tons of frozen pork NOW!"

The best one from this week comes from Egypt. Hosni Mubarak, faced with riots over the rising price of bread, ordered the Egyptian armed forces to bake bread and distribute it to the people. Way to increase your national debt and maintain your dictatorship all at once!
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Jay Leno is spot-on

2008-04-17T09:41:00.002-05:00

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After the Ohio primary, I blogged on the essential differences between the (younger) supporters of Senator Obama and the (older) supporters of Senator Clinton. Last night, Jay Leno revealed another distinction:

Jay: "So now Hillary Clinton has called Barack Obama an 'elitist' who 'thinks he's smarter than most people'. Isn't it about time we had a President who's smarter than most people?"

(General laughter.)

Jay: "Haven't we already tried the other way 'round?"

(Loud laughter.)

Jay: "How has our political system got so messed up that being smarter than most people disqualifies you from being President?

(Hysterical laughter.)

Heh. It may be worth noting that at the Midwest Political Science Association conference in Chicago, one of my neighboring poster presenters had done a survey on favorability ratings of leading media personalities based on one's position on the left-right political spectrum (divided into quadrants). Oprah, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Anderson Cooper, Letterman, Leno, and Bill O'Reilly were the media personalities. Leno was the only one to garner a net favorable rating from all four quadrants.
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KGB at the Varsity Theater, Part 3

2008-03-29T19:42:00.004-05:00

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Part 3: On Spiritual Things

KGB's confrontation with Gill Byrd ended with a summons to Byrd's office the next day at 9 a.m. Gbaja-Biamila was afraid he had blown it and would be cut. Instead, at the chosen hour, a white man - the pastor of a local church - was in Byrd's office. Kabeer waited outside, but Byrd said, "Come in." Byrd - who was a Nation of Islam member before his conversion - invited KGB to share his Islamic-derived criticisms of Christianity with the pastor. Kabeer found, to his surprise, that either Byrd or the pastor were able to answer his questions as no one had before.

His actions began to match his growing faith. Later that day, KGB cut off a friends-with-benefits relationship with a local woman. On September 26, 2000, Gbaja-Biamila was baptized.

Gbaja-Biamila was forthright in his testimony. He said, "Jesus is my Lord because he is my master, and he is my Savior because he rescued me from hell." He exhorted his audience: "I go fishing quite a bit. When you go fishing, do you gut and clean the fish before you catch it, or after it?" After we replied, he said, "You don't have to be clean before you come to Jesus Christ - in fact, you'll be unclean. If you let Jesus catch you, he'll clean you - you don't have to worry over it. Just let Him transform you."

He warned the young men in the audience, "I trust that most of you hope to be married one day, so I'll let you know: the standards you set now will persist into your marriage and color it." He shared an example from his own marriage: just after he married his wife, his sex drive waned and he found it difficult to make love to her. He puzzled over this for a while. One day, walking in the local mall, he found his eyes drawn to a girl across the aisle. He stopped and realized that he was so used to seeking the "forbidden", joining the "thrill of the chase", that married life seemed boring. That evening, he prayed with his wife for God to renew their love, and the problem went away.

I went mostly to hear a pro athlete speak and came away pleased at KGB's candor and obvious growth as a Christian. Hearing his talk was an unexpected bonus in my week.

KGB at the Varsity Theater, Part 2

2008-03-29T11:06:00.005-05:00

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Part 2: A Transformed Life

Gill Byrd played cornerback for the San Diego Chargers from 1983-93. He is the franchise's all-time leader in interceptions with 43; also, according to Gbaja-Biamila, he was fantastic in the iconic video game Tecmo Super Bowl. Byrd became a Christian in 1983, in his rookie season. He kept spreading the Gospel in retirement: he had ties to the Athletes in Action chapter at San Diego State, and he sent KGB a text message during Gbaja-Biamila's brief stint with the group. At the time, Kabeer felt awed to get a text from a "NFL player".

When Kabeer was drafted by the Packers and flew to Green Bay, who was there to meet him at the airport? None other then Byrd, hired in 1999 as the Packers' executive director/player programs. In that job, Byrd was primarily responsible for managing the Packer rookies' transition into the NFL. The two men became fast friends: KGB soon leased an apartment, but he felt lonely in Green Bay and visited Byrd's house nearly every evening that summer of 2000.

Kabeer said, "When I stepped into the Byrd home, it was like stepping into another planet." He noticed how Byrd treated his wife, Marilyn, with love and respect, and how Byrd cared about the media his then-teenage sons, Gill II and Jarius, watched and listened to. Kabeer told us, "I just wanted to live like him. I was not open to Christianity at the time, but I saw the peace and joy in his house, and I wanted to have what he had."

In the beginning, Kabeer was like another, older son, "a big brother" as he put it. Back then, he dressed in black urban style, with hoodies and baggy pants. He also joined the Byrd sons in youthful hijinks; one day, he told Gill and Jarius how to avoid detection after looking at Internet porn sites (presumably by erasing the 'History' menu). The boys eagerly went along with KGB in the moment, but later turned around and told Dad, earning KGB a severe lecture from Byrd.

As the summer wore on and training camp neared, KGB's veneer cracked. One evening, after breaking down in tears in his apartment, he drove over to the Byrd's and asked Gill what he needed to do to become a Christian. Gill laid a hand on Kabeer's shoulder, prayed over him, and instructed him, "Read the Bible and obey it."

Kabeer opens the Bible

Most Christians whom Gbaja-Biamila had met primarily cited the New Testament. Therefore, Kabeer concluded that the Old Testament contained embarrasing secrets they wished to hide. He began by opening the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis.

KGB read through the Creation and the Fall matter-of-factly, but he was struck by Genesis 6:5, an expression of God's anger towards human rebellion: "Yahweh saw... that every inclination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil all the time" [NIV]. Kabeer's belief, influenced by his father's practice of Islam, had been that the Bible was a man-made book. But he couldn't believe that a man who wanted to tell an appealing story would write Genesis 6:5. He kept reading through the Flood and came to Genesis 8:21-22: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. Never again will I destroy all living creatures." Again, KGB was deeply moved by the contrast between God's majesty and humanity's baseness.

Gbaja-Biamila said, "I couldn't stop reading. Every free moment I got during training camp, and just about every evening, I read through the entire Old Testament, and I saw how it pointed to the coming of Jesus Christ." All was not rosy, though; KGB started to catch flak in training camp for leaning so heavily on Byrd. One day, for the first time, the two men exchanged strong words at work. KGB accused Byrd of not standing up for him, but Byrd responded that KGB had a long way to go before he could say he walked with Christ.

To be continued...
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