Q Factor
Nate Newton gave me a quarter!
That sentence is probably the biggest sports related tall tale that I’ve ever told in my life.
And it was obvious how young I was when I told it, because Nate Newton was making millions of dollars at the time and poor seven-year-old me thought it would be cool that he only gave me a quarter.
You’re probably wanting some backstory on this whole scenario. Let me take you back in time a bit.
When I was in elementary school, I had a chance to take a field trip in Dallas where we got to see several different sights. But my favorite stop on the field trip was Texas Stadium.
It was right around that age where the Cowboys were consistently good and I was watching and rooting for a winner. My dad was a Cowboys fan so I became one because young me wanted to be just like my dad.
And yes, I still want to be like my dad. He’s so much cooler than me.
Anyway, I was looking forward to the chance to see the stadium with the hole in the roof “where God could watch his favorite team play football,” as some of the old heads used to say. More than that? I wanted to see an NFL stadium with my own eyes. I’d have been happy to go to any one of them.
Philadelphia was low on the list; I was afraid I’d get booed.
We get there and we get the chance to walk out on the field and run around a bit. Nothing makes a little kid happier than getting to run around where some of their favorite players did every week. We played a little two-hand touch, we threw the football around and our teachers were happy to let us do it because they knew we’d fall asleep when we got back on the bus, giving them some (much-needed) peace and quiet.
Our tour guide then asked if we wanted to tour the locker rooms and we were all excited. I was going into an NFL locker room! I’d get to see where Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, Jay Novacek, Ken Norton Jr. and Nate Newton spent their time before games!
I was a huge fan and one of my cousins used to — and still does — call me Leon Lett after the defensive lineman and current position coach. I always liked Nate Newton, though, because he was gregarious, he was always good for a soundbite and he wore my favorite number.
I’ve always been drawn to the number seven at least partially due to the fact I was born on July 7. As I was learning about football, I learned that only skill positions could wear number 7.
Due to the fact that I enjoyed food and had only trace amounts of speed — fast for my size and that was about it — I was told pretty early on that I’d probably be a lineman — thus robbing me of my chance to wear 7. For reasons only young me could discern, I wasn’t very fond of the number 77.
But number 61 — just like Big Nate? That was perfect: six plus one equals seven, after all.
So for those reasons, Nate became one of my favorite players. I even got the chance to see his locker. The disposable camera used to take that picture was lost to time a long time ago, but it was a great memory.
And then I saw it: a shiny quarter just sitting on the floor of the locker room in Texas Stadium. No one else saw it, so I picked it up and pocketed it.
That, however, is not a cool story for a seven-year-old.
“Hey, I saw a quarter in the locker room at Texas Stadium and picked it up!”
So on the bus ride home, I decided I’d tell a tall tale and let people know that my favorite lineman, Nate Newton, saw me in the locker room and gave me a quarter. “That’s a much cooler story,” I thought to myself.
I am also ashamed that I thought this story was cool. We didn’t meet one player — we went on the tour during the offseason — and again, why just a quarter?
The story did not hold up to any sort of scrutiny. I got home that night and told my mom and she laughed, asking me why, if that was the case, I didn’t get more than just a quarter.
Even young me knew I was beat. I shelved the tall tale because she was absolutely right. It was at that moment that I learned two things.
First, I learned that you don’t have to embellish a story to make yourself seem cooler. I went to Dallas, saw all kinds of cool things in museums, ate at a nice restaurant and got to tour Texas Stadium. For a seven-year-old, that’s not too bad at all! That’s a cool story to tell people who didn’t go.
Secondly? I learned to always work on my craft and improve when telling my stories. Seriously — a quarter?
The scrutiny I put on my own stories pushes me to tell them to the best of my ability.
With the benefit of hindsight? I should have said Big Nate bought me lunch at Grandy’s, for which he did several ads. People would have believed that.
ALWAYS BEAT YOUR HEROES?
Wimbledon is underway in London and perhaps the biggest story at the All-England Club is 15-year-old Cori “Coco” Gauff.
Gauff qualified for Wimbledon only to play one of her heroes in the first round. Gauff said the Williams sisters were the reason she picked up a racket and there she was, opening her tournament against Venus Williams.
And then there she was, winning her opener.
She won her second round match, too, over Magdalena Rybarikova, a player who had really started coming on in the last few weeks. As I wrote this column, Gauff was set to play Polona Hercog Friday morning.
Win or lose, it’s good to see a new generation of players starting to step up and play their game. There have been a few eras of dominance in women’s tennis. In my lifetime, it was Steffi Graf for so long, then Martina Hingis and then the Williams sisters.
Now? Tournaments are wide open. No one can seem to hold on to the number one ranking. This leaves the door wide open for a new group of players to take over.
On the men’s side? Not quite so much, as Federer, Nadal and Djokovic don’t seem to be ready to pass the baton. Still, there’s probably a young player on the court now, practicing to take his or her shot at the crown.
THE HOME RUN DERBY
AND SOMETHING I NEVER
UNDERSTAND
Monday is MLB’s annual Home Run Derby and I love that event. There’s one thing about it that I’ve never understood, however.
Every year, eight baseball players – usually players at or near the top of the home run tallies – take part and every year, fans worry that they’ll get in a slump or they’ll get hurt or that they won’t come back the same player.
This is odd to me. The Derby is a lot of fun to watch and the players love taking part. It’s basically also batting practice.
Christian Yelich of the Milwaukee Brewers said the same thing in an interview with ESPN on Friday.
“It’s batting practice,” he said. “Each round is four minutes. How much damage can you do to your swing in four minutes? It’s 12 total minutes if you go all the way (to the finals).”
Yet every year, if a hitter takes part in the Derby and starts slow after the All-Star Break, people are quick to blame them taking part. It’s a long season and hitters go through slumps.
I enjoy seeing sluggers get on a hot streak and hit massive home runs. I loved seeing Ken Griffey Jr. turn his hat backwards and win the derby.
The second half of the season will come, the playoff race will heat up and players will catch fire like they always do. A possible 12 minutes of swinging at softly pitched balls won’t hurt that.
Do what MLB’s latest commercials say and “Let the kids play.”