A Lesson in Humility from America’s Greatest Coach
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I’ve just finished a terrific book on the person many consider America’s most outstanding coach, John Wooden.
Wooden’s greatest player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, wrote Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court a few years after Wooden died at 99 in 2010.
Abdul-Jabbar, 76, has written over 50 books; Wooden wrote over 20.
Coach Wooden began his adult life as an English teacher with a love of poetry that he would routinely quote to his basketball players over his 29-year coaching career.
He also wrote poetry as, in his words, an amateur. He said about his poetry efforts,
“Good words in good order is good enough for me.“
I thought about Wooden’s words about writing yesterday when I read this beautiful quote by
“When a writer conveys something universal and true, something so fundamental to being human it’s as if a little rent in the universe appears and a kindred spirit has grabbed my hand. The right words placed in the right order can unleash profound affinity. Even more impressive is when the writer’s words are direct and seemingly simple.“
Scorziello’s quote with the vital sentence boldened by me refers to why an essay by Nobel Prize winner Herman Hesse works so well. There is that phrase, again, right words in the right order.
To Scorziello, Hesse’s words “were writing gold, but I could only produce base metal.” I feel the same way about my writing. I read better writers daily, including Wooden, Abdul-Jabbar, and Scorziello.
What do I do about that fact?
When Wooden sat down to write poetry, did he sit in the shadow of Kipling, one of his favorite writers? Is that why his quote concludes with “good enough for me”?
And what about an ordinary coach thinking about her career? Does she sit in the shadow of John Wooden? Or an average NBA player with Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points looming over him? Or Jabbar, now the second fiddle in the points record book to Lebron James.
Did Shakespeare loom over Kipling’s scribblings? Who did Hesse consider his writing master?
For me, I’m in awe of this description of Ted Williams’ last home run from Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu by John Updike:
“Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.”
Good words in good order, turbocharged. I could no more write that Updike paragraph than an ordinary college coach could win Wooden’s nine national championships.
Like Michelle Scorziello, I’m confronted daily with a bittersweet fact: I read better writers than me. They offer me hints about how to put words in good order.
In the film Amadeus, a lesser composer, Antonio Salieri, is driven mad because he can’t take his eyes off the gap between his work and the efforts of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Good notes in good order was not enough for Salieri.
How do you manage the tension between the ceiling set by the writers you admire and your lesser efforts?
I occasionally try this mental trick; let’s call it the fly-on-the-wall maneuver.
I become the fly and observe myself sitting in my writing chair, tapping away at the keys on my MacBook Air. John Updike is sitting in the corner, looking out the window, writing in a notebook. Walt Whitman is sitting on his shoulder.
This image always makes me smile.
And brings me back to the task at hand.
The production of which is good enough for me.
