Repeating, Remembering And Buring Out Early
May 11, 2017 at 4:36 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
It claimed a most-unlikely victim this week.
Former Grace College Lancer Marcus Moore announced that he was stepping down from his position as head boys basketball coach at Jimtown High School. He told the local media there is only one way to coach a basketball team, in his mind, and he didn’t have what it took to keep doing it that way.
He’s been the coach there for three seasons.
He’s 32 years old.
If you know Marcus Moore, you know that he is infectiously positive. He is the guy who could walk into a room of crying people and make them all smile in 30 seconds. When you see him coming, your day instantly gets better.
Heck, I am writing this sitting in my favorite chair at home, and just thinking about him makes me break out in a full-blown smile.
But he says with everything he has going for him – youth, energy, enthusiasm, knowledge – he is walking away from it. He says it’s not just stepping back from coaching either. He says he cannot envision a path back into coaching.
That’s a shame. Coaching needs Marcus Moore. He is real. He is genuine. He knows the game because he didn’t stop playing it himself that long ago.
But being married for less than two years and having a baby who is still a few months away from staring into their first birthday cake matters.
I love this guy, and whatever he does it will be good for whoever he does it for and with.
We have been reminded in the first six weeks of the baseball season why it’s such a hard game to play.
Last season, the Cubs seemed to do everything right. Their pitching was consistently dominant. They almost always got the big hit. They climbed tarps and dove into the first row of seats to get outs. And in the end the Cubs won their first World Series title in 108 years.
But a lot of the opposite things are happening so far this year. They have given up at least one run in the first inning in over half of their games. They are making base-running gaffs. Defensive specialists are making careless errors.
They are not sharp. They are not focused. They cannot hit, and they cannot get batters out.
They are …s till groggy from a World Series hangover???
Very possibly.
What made the 2015 season so exciting was not only the hope of ending the curse with a championship, but that the franchise was so gorged with young talent that it was poised to be in contention for several seasons.
But what no one expected was that their rise to greatness would occur so quickly in that window of opportunity. It sure feels like these Cubs, who seemed too young to know better as they undid generations of failure and futility, now seem too young to know how to handle their baseball lives moving forward.
Let’s be clear – it’s May. There are still four months of games to play and no one else in their division seems poised to run off and hide with it. But I don’t like the body language, the approach, or the general feeling I get about this year’s team.
Time for a closed-door, team-only meeting.
While I have your attention, a lot of you have been asking about how to get tickets to watch Kyle Mangas and the Indiana All-Stars take on Kentucky this summer.
The Warsaw Athletic Department will be announcing details on how to get your hands on those tickets soon. The game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse will be played on June 10.
Today’s column is dedicated to the quality journalists at ESPN who were fired two weeks ago in what was described as “budget cuts” but was more like a massacre of sports journalism.
There was a running pattern to those they let go. They were the quiet ones. They were the ones who went about doing their jobs well, but with little fanfare.
They did not yell or scream. They rarely-if-ever sparred with anyone that we saw. They asked hard questions and people respected them so much that they got real answers. They worked at odd hours, stayed after everyone else had gone home and gave sports fans the access and information we crave.
And for that, they got a phone call from management thanking them for their service and telling them to leave their name badges at the door at the end of the day. Ironic, since management is responsible for the financial mess that ESPN is in for overspending on rights fees and ventures that have not repaid their value.
The unsinkable ESPN ran straight into an iceberg, and there weren’t enough life boats to save everyone. So the loud, pushy people jumped into the boats and lowered them, while the quiet ones stayed at their task of playing music on the deck.
And everybody lost.
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It claimed a most-unlikely victim this week.
Former Grace College Lancer Marcus Moore announced that he was stepping down from his position as head boys basketball coach at Jimtown High School. He told the local media there is only one way to coach a basketball team, in his mind, and he didn’t have what it took to keep doing it that way.
He’s been the coach there for three seasons.
He’s 32 years old.
If you know Marcus Moore, you know that he is infectiously positive. He is the guy who could walk into a room of crying people and make them all smile in 30 seconds. When you see him coming, your day instantly gets better.
Heck, I am writing this sitting in my favorite chair at home, and just thinking about him makes me break out in a full-blown smile.
But he says with everything he has going for him – youth, energy, enthusiasm, knowledge – he is walking away from it. He says it’s not just stepping back from coaching either. He says he cannot envision a path back into coaching.
That’s a shame. Coaching needs Marcus Moore. He is real. He is genuine. He knows the game because he didn’t stop playing it himself that long ago.
But being married for less than two years and having a baby who is still a few months away from staring into their first birthday cake matters.
I love this guy, and whatever he does it will be good for whoever he does it for and with.
We have been reminded in the first six weeks of the baseball season why it’s such a hard game to play.
Last season, the Cubs seemed to do everything right. Their pitching was consistently dominant. They almost always got the big hit. They climbed tarps and dove into the first row of seats to get outs. And in the end the Cubs won their first World Series title in 108 years.
But a lot of the opposite things are happening so far this year. They have given up at least one run in the first inning in over half of their games. They are making base-running gaffs. Defensive specialists are making careless errors.
They are not sharp. They are not focused. They cannot hit, and they cannot get batters out.
They are …s till groggy from a World Series hangover???
Very possibly.
What made the 2015 season so exciting was not only the hope of ending the curse with a championship, but that the franchise was so gorged with young talent that it was poised to be in contention for several seasons.
But what no one expected was that their rise to greatness would occur so quickly in that window of opportunity. It sure feels like these Cubs, who seemed too young to know better as they undid generations of failure and futility, now seem too young to know how to handle their baseball lives moving forward.
Let’s be clear – it’s May. There are still four months of games to play and no one else in their division seems poised to run off and hide with it. But I don’t like the body language, the approach, or the general feeling I get about this year’s team.
Time for a closed-door, team-only meeting.
While I have your attention, a lot of you have been asking about how to get tickets to watch Kyle Mangas and the Indiana All-Stars take on Kentucky this summer.
The Warsaw Athletic Department will be announcing details on how to get your hands on those tickets soon. The game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse will be played on June 10.
Today’s column is dedicated to the quality journalists at ESPN who were fired two weeks ago in what was described as “budget cuts” but was more like a massacre of sports journalism.
There was a running pattern to those they let go. They were the quiet ones. They were the ones who went about doing their jobs well, but with little fanfare.
They did not yell or scream. They rarely-if-ever sparred with anyone that we saw. They asked hard questions and people respected them so much that they got real answers. They worked at odd hours, stayed after everyone else had gone home and gave sports fans the access and information we crave.
And for that, they got a phone call from management thanking them for their service and telling them to leave their name badges at the door at the end of the day. Ironic, since management is responsible for the financial mess that ESPN is in for overspending on rights fees and ventures that have not repaid their value.
The unsinkable ESPN ran straight into an iceberg, and there weren’t enough life boats to save everyone. So the loud, pushy people jumped into the boats and lowered them, while the quiet ones stayed at their task of playing music on the deck.
And everybody lost.
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