Andy Young: Is it time to rebrand December?

By Andy Young

Months are just like human beings.

No normal person wants to be inaccurately prejudged. But when it comes to stereotyping, many otherwise rational individuals only recognize the injustice of prejudice when they sense, justifiably or not, it’s being aimed at them. The sad reality: far too many people unjustly profile folks they don’t know based on one or more preconceived (and usually erroneous) notions.

It’s unlikely there’s anyone currently living in America who hasn’t felt the sting of being unfairly or wrongly characterized based on race, nationality, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, profession, mode of dress, or a combination of those things at some point in their life.

And even if such an inordinately fortunate person did exist, they couldn’t be female, African-American, Irish, Jewish, Asian, Italian, blonde, Hispanic, male, Islamic, Democrat, Republican, introverted, extroverted, Polish, French, gay, straight, nonbinary, an evangelical Christian, a baby boomer, a Gen X-er, a Gen Z-er, a car dealer, a lawyer, a vegan, a cigarette smoker, a government employee, a city dweller, a rural resident, a recipient of public assistance, a billionaire, a celebrity, or a billionaire celebrity, given the proclivity contemporary Americans have for being judgmental.

Are there positive stereotypes? Sure… sort of. But while complimenting someone based on their appearance and/or perceived talent(s) may seem like a kindness, the fact is not everyone over 6’6” is good at basketball, or has even the slightest interest in the sport, for that matter.

Which brings us to unfairly stereotyped months, specifically December.

Sure, being associated with Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa is nominally better than a wide variety of lesser distinctions. But every month has something that makes it stand out. To wit: January: New Year. February: Valentine’s Day. March: St. Paddy’s Day. April: showers. May: flowers. School’s out in June, July, and August mean endless summers, which thankfully don’t include triple digit temperatures around here. September (Labor Day weekend), October (Halloween) and November (Thanksgiving) all have specific celebrations as well.

But having an entire month classified as “holiday season” is too generic. December is overdue for a strategic rebranding, and there are a myriad of directions in which the final month of the calendar year’s perceived image can go.

For example, America’s December is, unsurprisingly, already National Eggnog Month and National Fruit Cake Month. It’s also National Impaired Driving Prevention Month, although with no disrespect intended, every month ought to be National Impaired Driving Prevention Month.

A trio of American presidents, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson, were born in last 12th of the year, but since three former chief executives (George Washington, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford) died during December, labeling it “Commander-in-Chief Month” seems a bit of a stretch.

Less USA-centric types might point out that December 2nd is Armed Forces Day in Cuba, the 9th is Navy Day in Sri Lanka, the 22nd is Unity Day in Zimbabwe, and the 26th is Thanksgiving in the Solomon Islands.

Maybe “Innovation Month” would work, since Chiclets (1905), Monopoly (1935), Scrabble (1948) and Count Chocula (1970) were all trademarked and/or patented during December.

Many accomplished musicians (Taylor Swift, Frank Sinatra, Ludwig van Beethoven), athletes (Larry Bird, LeBron James, Sandy Koufax), actors (Denzel Washington, Mary Tyler Moore, Brad Pitt) and other impact makers (Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Walt Disney) were born in December. But so were Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Emperor Nero, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and General George Armstrong Custer, so “Great Birthdays Month” is probably out.

Hmmmmm.

After considering the alternatives, it’s abundantly clear: no rebranding of December will be necessary. For now, continuing to be “Holiday Season” month will have to suffice. <

Insight: A father does know best

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In my profession as a newspaper editor, my free time is limited because of work. Somehow, I missed watching sportscaster Joe Buck’s television interview show “Undeniable” when it aired from 2014 to 2019.

Ed Pierce is shown with his father, Ed. Sr.
about 1958 in Rochester, New York. 
COURTESY PHOTO

On the program, Buck sits down in front of a live audience for hour-long interviews with some of the most prominent sports stars ever. During the past week, I made time to watch two of these exceptional interviews, one with tennis star John McEnroe and the other with hockey Hall of Fame legend Wayne Gretzky.

What I discovered is that they both had fathers who envisioned tremendous careers for their sons and were encouraging and supportive of them years before anyone had heard of them. Their keen insight and guidance regarding their sons resulted in five Wimbledon championships, 77 career tennis titles and four Stanley Cups and nine National Hockey League Most Valuable Player Awards.

I enjoyed learning about their early lives and how both of their dads realized their talent and suggested ways to continue to improve their skills so they could go on to lead productive lives.

When I was young, I had two dreams, one was to become a sportswriter and journalist, and the other was to coach the men’s college basketball team at Syracuse University. I had fallen in love with basketball from the first time I attended a Rush Henrietta High School varsity game at Christmas in 1966 and had watched a player named Bill Smith compete in a tournament for our school.

Smith, a 6-foot-11 center, graduated from high school the following spring, and enrolled at Syracuse. He went on to be one of three Syracuse players to average more than 20 points a game during his career there and set the all-time single game scoring record with 47 points in 1971 against Lafayette, a mark that still stands nearly 53 years later. 

Today I am friends with Bill, who played in the NBA, and is retired and lives in Oregon.

My own basketball career came to a crashing halt at Rush Henrietta when I became the first player cut from the team on the first day of tryouts in November 1969. The coach offered me a position as a manager and wanted me to keep the scorebook for the team.

I remember speaking to my father about this and he thought it was a great idea, telling me that if I couldn’t play, it was the next best way to stay involved with the team. He also reminded me of something that I had done several years before.

When I was in Fifth Grade, I watched a sandlot baseball game in Brighton, New York between my brother’s elementary school, Queen of Peace, and my school, Our Lady of Lourdes. I jotted down details of what happened in the game and produced an account that was published on Sunday in the church newsletter. My father thought that it was a remarkable feat for being just 10 years old and never forgot it.

I accepted the scorebook job, but it was the responsibility of the coach to call in the box score after each game to the daily newspaper. Because he was so busy, sometimes the coach would bring me into his office after games and have me call the sports desk at the newspaper to tell them what happened.

Once, the assistant sports editor asked me if I could watch a game in a neighboring town when our high school was not playing and call in the results. I did it and received a $5 check in the mail for doing that the next week.

But by the time I was graduating from high school, I was torn between the decision of going to college and studying physical education to become a basketball coach, or to study journalism and pursue a career as a sportswriter.

When it came time to fill out my college application form, I had made up my mind and was determined to follow my dream of coaching basketball. I handed the application to my father, who had to sign it as my parent. He said he’d do that and take it to the post office and mail it in for me.

After a month of waiting, a letter from the college arrived for me and informed me that I had been accepted into the freshman class that fall. I spent the summer getting ready to travel across the country and preparing to take the first steps of living on my own for the first time. Before I got on the plane, my father told me to work hard in school and that he believed in me.

When I arrived at the college admissions office to receive my class schedule, I was surprised. My schedule was filled with journalism classes, not physical education classes. When I was shown my college application, I found my father had erased physical education and in his own handwriting, had replaced my major with journalism. Now 48 years into my career as a journalist, I can’t thank him enough for doing that for me.

I’m not John McEnroe or Wayne Gretzky, but I understand when they speak with reverence about how their fathers influenced their lives. I can say the same.

Andy Young: Taking a crack at acting my age

By Andy Young

Some years ago, when I was both much younger and certain I’d never grow old, frail and crotchety, I vowed I’d never become one of those long-winded old geezers who spends his time perpetually muttering about how much better things were in the good old days, rambling on about his myriad medical issues to anyone who’ll listen, and perpetually yelling at random passers-by to “Get off my lawn!”

But that was then. This is now, and I need to vent.

Baseball’s postseason includes too many teams; getting to the World Series has become a virtual crapshoot. This year none of the three 100-win squads even got as far as their league’s championship series. Besides that, I’m sick of watching jewelry laden, tattooed egotists gesturing to the heavens and mugging for the cameras while they showboat their way around the diamond after slugging a Superball wrapped in horsehide over the fence.

Whatever happened to modestly circling the bases after a home run, getting patted on the rump by the third base coach, shaking hands with the next hitter, and then returning to the dugout without fanfare so the game could continue? Major League Baseball’s regular season has become just as meaningless as the National Basketball Association’s or the National Hockey League’s.

Why should anyone pay the stratospheric prices required to see a bunch of callow, over-privileged millionaires play a silly regular season or playoff game, anyway?

Speaking of sports, can anyone in the National Football League score a touchdown, recover a fumble, or intercept a pass without immediately going into a childish, poorly choreographed celebratory routine with their fellow steroid monsters? My favorite player is whoever just gives the ball to the referee after he makes a big play, or more accurately, does what he’s being paid to do.

And when it comes to the “Hey, look at me!” set, athletes in other sports aren’t any better. I’ll respect any NBA player who can slam the ball through the hoop and then hustle back to the defensive end of the court without thumping his chest, unleashing a primal scream, or simultaneously trash-talking and pointing at the guy on the other team he just posterized. And don’t even get me started on those prima donna soccer players!

Another thing: kids today are lazy, spoiled, and entitled. They spend the day mesmerized by their phones, listening to ear-splitting, off-key cursing they call music, and chugging oddly hued beverages with more caffeine in them than 10 cups of coffee.

No wonder the average high schooler has the attention span of a gnat! These teenage twerps leave campus at mid-day, then return at their leisure for club meetings, acting in the school play, or competing in interscholastic sports. And it’s all thanks to spineless, enabling school teachers, and administrators.

Kids come and go as they please because they’re driving Mom’s SUV, or the car their spineless, enabling parents provided for them. And they’re hypocrites, too! Anyone want to guess how many members of the Environmental Protection Club get to and from school via public transportation?

My vision is blurred. My hip keeps acting up. My neck is stiff. My back hurts all the time, and I get winded climbing the stairs. It hurts to sit. It hurts to stand. Lying down feels okay, but how am I supposed to make a living? Are there any companies offering competitive salaries and a decent benefits package for full-time mattress testers?

What a relief it is getting all that off my chest! I feel spiritually cleansed. However, there is just one additional thing I’d like to say.

Get off my lawn! <

Andy Young: A sobering epiphany

By Andy Young

It’s hard to imagine where I’d be today without having had America’s nominal national pastime in my life.

I learned to read thanks to the baseball cards on the backs of Post cereal boxes. I played the game well enough to make the local Little League and Babe Ruth League all-star teams, before hard throwing, curve-balling pitchers led to my playing days ending at age 16 or so. But my involvement with the game went on at the high school, college, and professional levels as a coach, writer, radio announcer and publicist for another three decades or so and continues today as a Little League umpire.

Baseball helped me develop self-confidence, determination, social skills, and a strong work ethic. It also aided me in finding ways to deal with life’s periodic setbacks, and hastened my understanding of what makes a good teammate, both inside and outside of athletics.

That established, watching the game’s declining status at the youth level both locally and nationally has led me to an unhappy realization, which is that if I were a teenager today I’d have long since put baseball in my rearview mirror, assuming I had even bothered to get involved with it in the first place.

I started playing baseball for the same reasons I subsequently took up football and basketball: because virtually every other boy my age was doing it. Playing outside was an integral part of growing up in pre-cable TV, pre-Internet, pre-Smartphone days, a sort of informal socialization for pre-teenagers.

Today’s kids want to fit in with their peers just as much as my childhood friends and I did. But given the easy accessibility of instant-gratification-providing electronic devices, it’s no surprise that many of today’s athletic-minded youth consider baseball far too devoid of action. Lacrosse and ultimate frisbee are two sports on the rise that involve more movement and exertion, and for the disturbingly growing number of one-sport athletes, there’s spring soccer and basketball to contend with as well.

Another often-overlooked cause of youth baseball’s decline is the troubling upsurge (and continuing expansion) of the youth sports industry. While those wealthy enough to afford travel baseball generally get better schooling in the game than what’s provided by the community volunteers who staff Little League teams, ultimately “travel ball” quickly widens the gap between skilled and unskilled players. And while it may eventually produce a few more elite level high school players, it also drives many potential late bloomers away from the game.

Another disservice youth sports entrepreneurs provide is urging promising youthful athletes to play their chosen sport year-round. This does no one any favors, least of all the children themselves. There’s no way to estimate how many young people swear off other sports because some handsomely compensated youth coach recommends (or insists) their young charges focus solely on soccer, basketball, hockey, tennis, or whatever athletic activity their benefactors have chosen to sink their money into.

Rational people understand there are few future professional athletes in Maine, and the number who’ll ultimately be offered a Division I athletic scholarship is tiny as well. But while the majority of those involved in for-profit youth sports have enough integrity to not promise professional careers or college athletic scholarships to prospective clients, there’s no shortage of those who won’t bother to actively discourage any well-heeled parents with the preconceived notion that their particular youngster is potentially one of the chosen few.

So is baseball declining because of societal changes, misplaced priorities, greed, electronic diversions, unrealistic parental expectations, or the availability of other more attractive athletic options?

Sadly, the simple, accurate answer to that question is “Yes.” <

Insight: Full-court presses and triple-doubles

University Arena, also known as 'The Pit,' is located in
Albuquerque, New Mexico and is home to the
University of New Mexico Lobos basketball team.
COURTESY PHOTO 

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Since my first day of high school, I have been fascinated by the game of basketball.

On my first tour of the brand-new school building my sophomore year, I discovered that there was just something spectacular about the shiny hardwood flooring, the bleachers, the scoreboard, and scorer’s table. Somehow standing there I knew deep down inside that’s where I wanted to be eventually for a career, although it didn’t quite turn out as I expected. 

I loved everything about basketball and the talent it took to play the sport. Unfortunately, my athletic talent was lacking and so my Rush-Henrietta High School coach, Gene Monje, asked me to serve the team in another way and it was something I was good at, keeping the scorebook.

Sitting at the scorer’s table at midcourt next to the timekeeper gave me the best vantage point in the gym to watch the games and it was an important responsibility to tally points, fouls and minutes played in each contest.

As I would arrive for each game, I would pause in the doorway to the gym and just take in the atmosphere, which included the crowd noise, the sound of team’s bouncing the basketball on the floor while warming up, the cheerleaders, the smell of the popcorn machine and the uncertainty of what was about to unfold.

Moving on to college after high school, I found the gymnasium at my first college, New Mexico Highlands University, to be more of a cavern than my high school was. It was much larger and a less intimate setting. It always seemed to be colder there, and the bleachers were much farther away from the floor than I expected them to be.

Only a few hundred fans would attend each home game unlike my high school’s games where every seat in the gym was occupied no matter the opponent.

After leaving that college to transfer to the larger University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, I quickly became a fan of their legendary basketball facility, University Arena, also known as “The Pit.” It was an amazing place with around 18,000 seats of screaming fans that during games created a decibel level rivaled only by the noise of a Saturn V rocket lifting off.

“The Pit” had been built by digging down into a mesa, or a plateau, with the basketball floor sitting on the bottom. There was not a bad seat in the house, and it was an intimidating a place to play for opponents.

During my first stint attending college there, I became a fan of the team, known as the UNM Lobos, and they were led by one of my American History classmates, a tall fellow who had the longest arms I’ve ever seen, Michael Cooper. He later went on to win five NBA championships in the 1980s as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers.

After serving for eight years in the U.S. Air Force and coaching our squadron’s team in Germany, I eventually returned to college at New Mexico and joined the staff of the school newspaper, the New Mexico Daily Lobo, as sports editor in 1986. One of the tasks of the position was to cover college basketball games for the newspaper at “The Pit.”

I found I had come full circle from my high school years. New Mexico was hosting the Western Athletic Conference men’s basketball championship tournament that season and I had a floor seat to some of the best basketball played in the country that year.

Just a few seasons before that in 1983 in "The Pit," Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State Wolfpack team had defeated the Houston Cougars in the last seconds to win the title, 54-52, in a game many remember. Had to pinch myself at times to assure myself that I now stood on the exact same floor interviewing college players who were soon to be drafted for careers in the NBA.

Before the tournament’s title game that year between Wyoming and New Mexico, I recall closing my eyes and just standing there listening to the crowd getting pumped for the big game. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” I thought.

In my professional career in journalism, I have found myself in many different gyms through the years covering basketball games. Each facility is different, and I’ve been blessed to witness and write about many exciting games, outstanding teams, and wonderful people I’ve met along the way.

Last fall during my 50^th high school reunion, I got to go back to my high school and tour the school with some of my fellow classmates. The gym where I first fell in love with the game of basketball in 1968 is no longer there, having been replaced in 2013 with a new expanded gymnasium with the walls covered by some of the championship banners my classmates won decades ago.

James Naismith is credited with inventing basketball in 1891 as a way for students to stay active in winter months and on rainy days. For me though, basketball has certainly been one of the mainstays of my life, given me a lifelong career and memorable experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything.  <        

Andy Young: Renewed self-esteem, thanks to the pandemic

By Andy Young

Special to The Windham Eagle

For openers, let’s establish that the world’s ongoing battle against the deadly coronavirus (and its emerging mutations) is both horrific and terrifying.

But it does have some silver linings. Pandemic-related limitations in 2020 allowed me to pedal 2,000 miles on my bike, put 10,000 fewer miles on my car, and read over 80 books, or about 77 more than my usual annual total.

I’ve also, in the same odd way I did more than three decades ago, gained a renewed sense of self-worth.

At the time I was young, single, possessed a full head of lush hair, and drove an eight-year-old ‘vette. Yet I voluntarily went dateless on a consecutive series of Friday and Saturday nights, spurning every invitation to socialize, no matter how alluring the opportunity. And I wasn’t pledging a fraternity, involved in a 12-step program, or contemplating joining the priesthood, either.

But for the duration of my self-imposed social isolation, the person I saw in the mirror wasn’t a lonely, pathetic, awkward loser, but an upstanding, attractive, socially responsible Prince Charming.

The full story: earlier that year I had begun what was supposed to be a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, determined to become fluent in Spanish while simultaneously ending poverty and suffering in Guatemala by teaching fundamental basketball skills to children.  But less than three months later a skeletal version of me returned home, in need of a medical appraisal to determine exactly why I had lost 35 pounds in such a brief period of time. After jabbing me with more needles than most pincushions contain, the evaluating physician solemnly informed me I’d need to return six weeks later to re-take a required blood test, one which would determine whether or not I was HIV positive.

In the late 1980’s an AIDS diagnosis was akin to a death sentence, but while the doctor’s pronouncement took me aback, I wasn’t overly concerned. The Peace Corps medical staff had thoroughly educated its trainees on exactly how one contracted the dreaded virus, and since I hadn’t engaged in any of the behaviors which put one at risk for acquiring it, I figured I was in the clear. But on the off chance I was going to make medical history (first person to get HIV from using an unclean fork?), I obeyed the doctor’s strong recommendation and stayed resolutely celibate until the re-test, which unsurprisingly came up clean. The unexpected bonus: staying home alone those Friday and Saturday nights reminded me that in reality I was an ethical, selfless, and noble hero, not a lonesome, socially inept pariah.

Now, a third of a century later, I’ve been holed up in my personal fortress for the past several months, emerging (dressed like a train robber) solely to go to work or get groceries. That’s taken some getting used to. But I’ve gradually lost track of how long it’s been since I’ve gone out to eat, seen a movie, or entertained visitors in my humble abode. In short, my in-person socializing has simply ceased to exist. However, as was the case more than three decades ago, I currently see myself not as isolated and forlorn, but gallant and altruistic.

Still, I’m looking forward to the day (hopefully sooner rather than later) when I’ll be able to spend a maskless night out (or in) with a friend or friends.

I just wish I had that same great car I did 33 years ago. It’d be a classic today. But it really wasn’t the lure I thought it would be. Not many women, it turned out, were drawn to guys who drove Chevettes. <