Clemens, who had narrowed his choices to the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros and New York Yankees, said he was responding when his son, Koby, commented that he was working out harder than his father.
"Koby asked me last night when we were working out, he was doing more of a workout than I was," Clemens said, KRIV-TV reported. "I still told him 80-20 that I wasn't going to play." (Source)
Is their love not enough to bring Clemens back to baseball?
Saturday afternoon, writing in the basement, I took a break to surf the Internet. A headline caught me up short.
"Hank Bauer dies."
The name means nothing to Americans under 60. But to a grade-schooler in the 1940s and 1950s, who looked on the New York Yankees as a synonym for American greatness and invincibility, Hank Bauer was a hero. If Lou Gehrig was "The Pride of the Yankees" in the post-Ruth era, Bauer was the soul of the Yankees of the 1950s, the greatest team ever assembled.
Born in East St. Louis, Ill., across the river from "The Hill" in south St. Louis where Yogi Berra grew up, Bauer fought as a Marine in the Pacific, where he picked up two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. In the battle to capture the Okinawa airfield, he lost 58 of the 64 Marines in his unit. On Iwo Jima, he picked up shrapnel he would carry the rest of his life.
Bauer's first full year in the Majors was 1949, the beginning of the Casey Stengel era. From 1949 to 1953, Bauer and the Yankees won five straight pennants and five straight World Series, breaking the record set by the Gehrig-Dimaggio Yankees of 1936-1939.
"He was my best friend in life," first baseman "Moose" Skowron related on hearing of Bauer's death. "When I came up in '54, we won 103 games and still didn't win the pennant. Hank told me: 'We win every year. This is all your fault.' I told him, 'I did all I could.' I hit .340 that year, but Hank was just getting on me."
As the Daily News obit writer put it, "Bauer was the unofficial Yankee 'enforcer,' customarily straightening out players who failed to hustle with a terse 'you're messin' with my money' admonishment."
Rough-hewn, tough, full of spirit and fire, a proud professional, Bauer was the quintessence of what it meant to be a Yankee. He hit when it counted, setting a record still unbroken for hitting safely in 17 consecutive World Series games. In the 1955 Series, he batted .429.
No beauty, a 1964 Time cover story about Bauer, when he managed the Baltimore Orioles to a World Series victory, said looking into Bauer's face was like "looking into a bowl of mashed potatoes."
In a famous incident at the Copacabana in May of 1957, Bauer, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Berra and Billy Martin were celebrating Martin's birthday, when the next table began to heckle the entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr. A brawl broke out, and a patron claimed the man who cold-cocked him was the right fielder and ex-Marine.
No other witness came forward to identify Bauer, but all the Yankees involved were fined $1,000. Fifty years later, I yet recall the depiction of the incident by a sportswriter who wrote that Mantle, Bauer and Berra had been walking home from early mass, when they had been accosted by male models.
A month later, Billy Martin was traded to Kansas City. A bad influence on the team, it was said. Two years later, Bauer followed in a seven-player deal that brought to the Yankees a kid by the name of Roger Maris. With Bauer's departure, to this writer, the era was over. Though the Yankees won the pennant all four years from 1960 through 1963, they were not the Yankees I had grown up with, the Yankees of Dimaggio, Phil Rizzuto, "King Kong" Keller, Eddie Lopat, "The Big Chief" Allie Reynolds, "Fireman" Joe Page, Hank Bauer and Yogi Berra.
I had all their autographs. The Yankee Clipper's was the toughest to get. He came out of the locker room fast, brushed past the kids who raced after him and walked straight to the bus. But persistence paid off for me once. Don't know what became of that autograph book, but it would be worth a lot to me today. And not in money.
Griffith Stadium was where the Yanks came to play. On opening day 1956, Mantle drove two over the centerfield fence. Two days later, he drove one over the left field wall, 405 feet from home plate, over the bleachers and out of the park. They said the ball went 565 feet. No one had ever done that before. No one ever did it again.
"The Mick" was MVP that year and won the triple crown -- leading the American League in batting, home runs and runs batted in. The last was easiest. The Yankees ahead of him in the batting order were almost always on base.
Two years ago, I traveled with "The McLaughlin Group" to Palm Desert, Calif. Nothing to do one morning, I went to the hotel health club. As I reached the door, a short older man trotted up. I held the door. As he came close, I stared into his face. "Are you who I think you are?"
"Are you who I think you are?" he replied.
For 15 minutes, Yogi Berra and I talked of the old Yankees and Nats. With the autograph-hunting kids, Yogi had been the best, signing until every kid was gone. I told him how hard it had been to get Dimaggio's autograph.
"Yep, that would be Joe," Yogi said.
As I said, it was a great time for America, and they were the greatest.
From The Corner:
From This Faith No One Can Shake Us
Since the possibility of war with Iran is in the air, I'll take the opportunity to note that the Armenian Church celebrates today one of its major feasts, marking the martyrdom of St. Vartan and 1,036 of his fellows at the hands of the Persians in the Battle of Avarayr in 451 A.D. Of course, peoples who have been sat on by history often harken to their glorious defeats, whether Gettysburg or Masada or Kosovo Field or Karbala. The difference is that the Battle of Avarayr was arguably history's first battle strictly for freedom of conscience, unmixed with other political objectives. The Armenian nobility and clergy acknowledged continued Persian political supremacy, rejecting only the demand that they renounce Christianity. From their letter to the shah:
"From this faith, no one can shake us, neither angels nor men; neither sword, nor fire, nor water, nor any, nor all other horrid tortures. All our goods and possessions are in your hands, our bodies are before you; dispose of them, as you will. If you leave us to our belief, we will, here on earth, choose no other master in your place, and in heaven choose no other God in place of Jesus Christ, for there is no other God."
 From Townhall Blog: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 |
| A Tale of Two Rapes in Durham |
| Posted by: Mary Katharine Ham |
| There's another accusation of rape floating around Durham this week. The accuser was allegedly attacked at a house party this Saturday. The accuser is white. The suspect is black. Heard anything about that? Yeah, I didn't think so.
It was never about protecting women. I know that because I live in a neighborhood that has the dubious honor of being the namesake of at least one serial rapist. There were few candlelight vigils; there was no national media attention; there were no pot-bangers when the women of my neighborhood couldn't take their dogs for walks at dusk. And, those black-on-white rapes just didn't bring the activist out in people the way the Duke non-rape did. The News & Observer's omission of race is laughable:
Why laughable? Because the same story appeared in the Charlotte Observer, written by the same reporter, with "black" included, since it was part of the original police report. It was clearly removed in the Raleigh edition: Police had not charged anyone late Sunday in connection with the allegations but released a description of a suspect: a black male, in his late teens or early 20s, about 6-feet-1-inch tall and wearing a black do-rag, a gray sweat shirt and blue jeans, according to the news release. And, isn't this uncharacteristically respectful of the judicial system, coming from Duke University? Duke University administrators will wait for Durham police to finish their investigation of a freshman's allegations that she was raped at an off-campus party before doing an inquiry of their own. What? Not disbanding the African-American fraternity-- Phi Beta Sigma-- whose members threw the party? I mean, we don't have to wait for anyone to be charged, do we? K.C. Johnson notes a difference in treatment by the D.A.'s office, too. I'm shocked-- shocked! "We haven't made any arrests or anything yet," said Maj. L.A. Russ of the Durham Police Department. "He would not get involved this early." I'm glad things will be handled more level-headedly this time in Durham, but I'm sad to say it's probably not because the people and politicians of Durham have learned any lessons. But regardless of the reason, it's good to know this case will go more fairly. I just hope the dear "victim" in last year's case hasn't made things harder for this girl if, in fact, her story is true. The Duke lacrosse season starts next in the next two weeks. Please support them as you can. I'll be going to a few games. |
 |  Anna Nicole 1967 - 2007 by Larry Miller 02/12/2007 12:00:00 AM
|
Today in the Orthodox church marks the carnival, the farewell to meat, in preparation for the full Lenten fast beginning next Sunday evening, until Pascha (Easter, April 8 this year, same as in the West).
I find the readings for this Sunday particular sobering, based in part on the scene of the Last Judgment from our Lord's parable in Matthew 25 of the sheep and the goats.
Several of the texts from Vespers (Saturday evening):
When Thou shalt come, O righteous Judge, to execute just judgement, seated on Thy throne of glory, a river of fire will draw all men amazed before Thy judgement seat; the powers of heaven will stand beside Thee, and in fear mankind will be judged according to the deeds that each has done. Then spare us, Christ, in Thy compassion, with faith we entreat Thee, and count us worthy of Thy blessings with those that are saved.
The trumpets shall sound and the tombs shall be emptied, and all mankind in trembling shall be raised. Those that have done good shall rejoice in gladness, awaiting their reward; those that have sinned shall tremble and bitterly lament, as they are sent to punishment and parted from the chosen. O Lord of glory, take pity on us in Thy goodness, and count us worthy of a place with them that have loved Thee.
Knowing the commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life: let us feed the hungry, let us give the thirsty drink, let us clothe the naked, let us welcome stangers, let us visit those in prison and the sick. Then the Judge of all the earth will say even to us: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you."
Not your feel-good sermon, but then again, the New Testament is not a feel-good book. But this is all Good News. Sin and evil will be judged. God is not indifferent. We are not alone in the universe. And God Himself saves us in His compassion in His Son. Sorry, I know you know all this...but I find reminders helpful, so maybe you will too. For those observing it, it's a good time to seriously make plans for what to do in Lent, lest it sneak up on us and we have given it no thought.
February 11, 2007 -- IN this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis - gratitude decaying into idolatry - is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.
That is one lesson of John Patrick Diggins' new book, "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History." Diggins, a historian at CUNY, treats Reagan respectfully as an important subject in American intellectual history.
The 1980s, he says, joined politics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory was radically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine. Burke believed that the past is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom. Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."
Diggins' thesis is that the 1980s were America's "Emersonian moment" because Reagan, a "political romantic" from the Midwest and West, echoed New England's Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Emerson was right," Reagan said several times of the man who wrote, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine - conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived from his conception of the supernatural.
Diggins says Reagan imbibed his mother's form of Christianity, a strand of 19th-century Unitarianism from which Reagan took a foundational belief that he expressed in a 1951 letter: "God couldn't create evil so the desires he planted in us are good." This logic - God is good, therefore so are God-given desires - leads to the Emersonian faith that we please God by pleasing ourselves. Therefore there is no need for the people to discipline their desires. So, no leader needs to suggest that the public has shortcomings and should engage in critical self-examination.
Diggins thinks that Reagan's religion "enables us to forget religion" because it banishes the idea of "a God of judgment and punishment." Reagan's popularity was largely the result of "his blaming government for problems that are inherent in democracy itself."
To Reagan, the idea of problems inherent in democracy was unintelligible because it implied that there were inherent problems with the demos - the people. There was nothing - nothing - in Reagan's thinking akin to Lincoln's melancholy fatalism, his belief (see his Second Inaugural) that the failings of the people on both sides of the Civil War were the reasons why "the war came."
As Diggins says, Reagan's "theory of government has little reference to the principles of the American founding." To the founders, and especially to the wisest of them, James Madison, government's principal function is to resist, modulate and even frustrate the public's unruly passions, which arise from desires.
"The true conservatives, the founders," Diggins rightly says, constructed a government full of blocking mechanisms - separations of powers, a bicameral legislature and other checks and balances - in order "to check the demands of the people." Madison's Constitution responds to the problem of human nature. "Reagan," says Diggins, "let human nature off the hook."
"An unmentionable irony," writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. "Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it."
Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government, they will get ever larger government. But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's First Inaugural) that they are all heroes? After being assured that all their desires, which inevitably include desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?
Similarly, Reagan said that the people never start wars, only governments do. But the Balkans reached a bloody boil because of the absence of effective government. Which describes Iraq.
Because of Reagan's role in the Soviet Union's dissolution, Diggins ranks him among the "three great liberators in American history" (along with Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt) - and among America's three or four greatest presidents. But, says Diggins, an Emersonian president who tells us our desires are necessarily good leaves much to be desired.
If the defining doctrine of the GOP is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison. As Diggins says, Reaganism tells people comforting and flattering things that they want to hear; the Madisonian persuasion tells them sobering truths that they need to know.
By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
The joke goes something like this: "Authorities today indicted eighth-grade teacher Melissa J. Smith, 34, of Bethesda on two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for allegedly having sexual relations with a male student. In a related development, the eighth-grade boys elected the blond instructor Teacher of the Year."
All right, it isn't funny -- but it gets at how confounding a train wreck this particular configuration of human folly represents. The older woman, a teacher no less; the young man, unformed of face and fuzzy of cheek. What the heck? Nobody knows what to make of it. Parents are apoplectic, the school board is shamefaced, the principal is destroyed, the other kids think it is so cool, the woman's husband is probably unmanned for life and talk shows and journos make laffs and millions of bucks in its wake. As for the love criminals? Well, no one can really know; they did what they did because that's what they did.
Now "Notes on a Scandal" offers what is possibly the only intelligent account of such a disaster ever constructed, with a point of view that is somewhat gimlet-eyed and offered with absolutely no sentimentality whatsoever.
That point of view, from the mind of a bitter woman named Covett, observes the behavior not as crime or tragedy but as opportunity. Ms. Covett -- the great actress Judi Dench in a knotted, embittered rage almost throughout -- is a salty old pro teaching at an English school, and she noted poor Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), the new art teacher, back when she came to the young teacher's rescue as misbehavior threatened to turn her class into anarchy. Covett and Hart? Is that touch perhaps a little precious? In any event, Ms. Covett, iron of spirit as well as of petticoat, stops that outbreak with a few steely words, then takes the younger teacher under her wing.
We watch what we think will unspool as a touching story of human weakness as told from a sympathetic viewpoint, but we soon realize that cheesy uplift is not on the menu. No, indeed. All life, the film argues, is political, in that it progresses from each according to his desires to that same each according to his power. And Ms. Covett has an agenda; she's not even honest with herself, much less us, about that truth, but she wants something from the young, somewhat disorganized beauty. In the narrative sense, Ms. Covett turns out to be that favorite of old-fashioned mystery-dame specialties, the unreliable witness, who is hiding as much as she is revealing.
So the movie is in one sense the story not merely of a scandal -- Mrs. Hart's weakness for young Steven, however misplaced, is the least of the sins it documents -- but of a scandal's utility, for it is Ms. Covett who turns her knowledge of who's doing what to whom into leverage and attempts to get Mrs. Hart out of the frying pan and into an especially hot fire. You have games within games, intrigues within intrigues. It's like the Kremlin in the '30s.
One thing that marks the dark brilliance of "Notes on a Scandal" is the level of the acting, but that is just part of a larger issue: its vision. I can't remember a film that sees the here and now more precisely, one that offers total believability in the tone and motive of its characters and then goes further, showing us a whole and completely recognizable world.
Director Richard Eyre (his last film was "Stage Beauty") and writer Patrick Marber (his last film was the screenplay adaptation of his play, the acerbic sex rondelet "Closer"), working from a novel by Zoe Heller, have extraordinary powers of observation.
As much as anything, "Notes on a Scandal" is a study in the anthropology of British liberal-left middle-class life. The film shows them living in sloppy houses full of artistic disorder and giving full vent to their oh-so-important feelings, which they confuse with reality. They nurse their illusions (several others have comically dangerous illusions, too) and try to hurt nobody's emotions. Cosseted in the bosom of a nanny state, they've lost the power to defend themselves and are free lunch to predators.
Surely Dench will get an Oscar nomination for her performance; she makes you feel the absolute will to power, the Stalinesque shrewdness for weakness and the utter ruthlessness to use it. As the somewhat ditsy Sheba, Blanchett has exactly the appropriate inability to meet anybody's gaze, fear of shouting and disappointment, hunger to help all, addiction to the high of compassion that designates a mark . Bill Nighy is magnificent as an intellectual, boho king who thinks irony will protect him in a world where the bullets are real. As the young bounder Steven, Andrew Simpson has the same hunger for victory that distinguishes Ms. Covett; he is really just her in slightly more glam guise. This is a movie about sharks and little fishes.
Notes on a Scandal (110 minutes) is rated R for sexual content and profanity.
Feb. 10, 2007
By Adam Lucas
Michael Jordan is in the kitchen making coffee.
Where else, other than Jordan's house, do they say those words?
Saturday, that's exactly what the man who came to Chapel Hill as a lanky basketball player and exploded into a worldwide brand was doing. This is to be considered normal at Carolina. You walk into the basketball office a couple of hours before the game, and there's an all-time great taking cream and sugar.
Can this be considered normal? On this day, in this place, at this time, it was.
Days like this don't happen anywhere else. You know that, right?
It takes a really remarkable day to be extraordinary in Chapel Hill. This is a place where NBA All-Stars roam the halls in the summer and players from one of the nation's best college teams can often be found playing ping-pong in the basement.
But Saturday was extraordinary.
It started with the dedication of the newly-named Bill Guthridge Locker Room, as the Tar Heel locker room was renamed for one of the most dedicated Tar Heels ever. The ceremony was held in the tiny hallway outside the locker room, with a podium wedged against the door and attendees standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
Roy Williams likes to bring his team in tight before they take the floor in a big road game, so they can feel the energy and the closeness. It was the same way for the dedication. There was the entire living roster of the 1957 title team on that side of the podium. Here was the 1982 team on this side. It was like walking through a Carolina Basketball Encyclopedia.
"It's a great thrill for me to pull up in the parking lot and see the Dean Smith Center," Roy Williams told the small crowd. "And it will be a great thrill for me to walk into this locker room and see the Bill Guthridge Locker Room."
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He started out with his trademark dry wit, saying, "I have to pinch myself. Usually this only happens to people when they're dead. So I wanted to make sure I was OK."
Then the tears came. As he tried to thank his family, the tears came, and they wouldn't stop.
But it wasn't uncomfortable. Everyone pressed together in that small space knew how much he'd given to Carolina, how much his time in Chapel Hill had meant to him. In a bigger setting, it probably would have been cause for some applause to pick him up. In this environment, though, it was OK to soak in the feelings.
Eventually, he recovered. "You know, I could beat anybody running the golf course," Guthridge said, "except for Michael Jordan. He wouldn't lose."
That's when you heard a familiar deep chuckle. And standing right next to you was Michael Jordan.
Do I lose professionalism points by telling you that it made my stomach flip?
Jordan, of course, was the picture of calm. "I couldn't lose," he said. "I would've had to run again."
So do you see why highlights won't work for this day? It was about relationships and hugs and the ties that bind.
The '82 team is a bunch of rock stars. Really, they are. They have a handful of members who need just one name--Jordan and Perkins and Worthy and Coach Smith. In most places, they would be the show. The beauty of Saturday was that they were as enthralled by the 1957 team as everyone else was by the '82 squad.
"Don't get me wrong, I want to see the guys from my class," Perkins said. "But I also wanted to see the history that came before me. Those '57 guys, they are so close. And it's great to see that."
The 37-point win over Wake Forest was perhaps the most anticlimactic ACC basketball game in conference history. This story is supposed to be about the game. Do you mind if we just skip that part?
For the first time ever, no one left their seats at halftime. And when the '57 and '82 teams took the floor together, flashbulbs popped like the first pitch of the World Series.
They were saluted with videos put together by Jones Angell, Ken Cleary and Justin Burnett. Maybe you were part of the crowd of 21,750 that watched the videos along with the players. But if you took just a moment to take your eyes off the screen and watch the players, you saw something that would make you shiver:
Several of the 1957 players were crying. They played in an era with no television, no internet, and only the barest of radio. And now, 50 years later, they were being greeted with a roar from over 20,000 people who still appreciated what they had done.
Will anyone remember what you've done today 50 years from now? And if so, can you imagine how good it would feel?
And then, the '82 introductions. Perkins, Worthy, Jordan and Smith on the end of the line. This was not just a moment for Carolina basketball--it was a moment for the entire basketball world. And when you looked over at the tiny Wake Forest rooting section behind their bench, you couldn't help but notice that almost every single one of them had out their cameras or cell phones, snapping photos so they could prove they were there, too, on a very memorable day. It's impressive, sure, when you're loved by your own. It's even more impressive when you're respected by your foes.
Jordan threw his left arm around Smith and planted a kiss on the top of his head as the head coach--he'll always be the head coach, even if Roy Williams officially bears the title now--was introduced. It was a spine-tingler. The greatest basketball player of all time and the regal coach who often kept his emotions hidden, for one brief second open for the entire world to see.
We hear and read about the Carolina basketball family. In that moment, Jordan and Smith cracked the door for all of us to actually see it.
"Sometimes, on a day-to-day basis, we get so wrapped up in the next practice that we don't take time to look at the rafters at the jerseys or banners and think about the history here," Wes Miller said. "We've got it around us with pictures and banners. But to actually have the people who are part of that history come back, and to see them so involved with the program, it shows how special Carolina basketball really is."
Tonight, Miller and the rest of his teammates will join the '57 and '82 players at a banquet where they'll get another taste of the history they are living. The current Tar Heels were in the locker room as the halftime ceremony ended. They didn't see the '57 and '82 teams embrace. One-by-one, they shook each other's hands--Rosenbluth and Black, Brennan and Worthy, Jordan and Kearns.
They've gone their own way and made their own reputations and lived separate lives. But in that moment, on the Smith Center floor, they greeted each other like brothers.
Like, yes, a family.
"It puts it into perspective," Bobby Frasor said. "It shows you how big North Carolina basketball is. It makes you so happy you're a part of it.
"We're lucky. We don't always think about it, but we're very lucky."
Feb. 10, 2007
By Adam Lucas
There is one room in the United States where Michael Jordan walks to the podium in front of a capacity audience and does not get a standing ovation. OK, maybe one room in the entire world where Michael Jordan walks to the podium in the front of a capacity audience and does not get a standing ovation.
Saturday night, that room was inside the Carolina Club on the UNC campus. Jordan was the last of four speakers to address a banquet honoring the 1957 and 1982 teams. And as he made his way to the front of the room, something remarkable happened--everyone clapped...while staying in their seats.
That's remarkable to you and to me. If Jordan walks to a podium in front of us, we stand on the chair and wave our hands above our heads and generally act like Julia Roberts in the polo scene from "Pretty Woman" (Woo woo woo!).
But in front of the '57 and '82 teams, Jordan is something he is nowhere else in the world--he is among peers. To some of them, he is still Mike Jordan. To all of them, he's simply family.
His presence was important because he was a key member of Dean Smith's first national championship. But as was mentioned several times during the night, and although history tends to obscure it, he was not the key member.
"I heard through the grapevine that Michael didn't want to speak tonight," said Jimmy Black, the point guard and co-captain from 1982 who was the first member of that team to address the gathering. "But Michael, with all you have accomplished, you can't step on any toes. I'm happy and proud to call you a teammate."
"This is our family," Roy Williams said as he opened the evening. "And we always want our family to feel good about coming back."
On nights like tonight, they wouldn't have any choice. Fifty years of Tar Heel history was in the room, from the full living roster of the '57 squad to the '82 team to the current team. Williams usually gives his current players one simple instruction at reunion events: "Don't try to be cool." It means he doesn't want them to send text messages during the speeches, doesn't want them to check their watches, and doesn't want them to guess how much longer the speaker will be at the podium.
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"Guys, I want you to listen to this," he said. "In 1957, we all realized Lennie Rosenbluth was the best shooter we had. So the rest of us knew we had to become a better rebounder, or a better defensive player, or a better passer. We had to struggle with that through our sophomore years.
"And when we understood that and became a team during our junior years, that's when we won a national title."
That title is familiar to many Carolina fans but not always easily accessible to the current team. This is a generation that considers the '91 Bulls-Lakers NBA Finals to be a historic game. So it was instructive to watch Danny Green raise an eyebrow at Marcus Ginyard as the details of the '57 squad's back-to-back triple overtime wins in the Final Four were recounted.
"Being from the West Coast, I think I'm missing a part of that whole Carolina tradition," freshman Alex Stepheson said. "I wasn't able to live in that moment and in that time. So I'm excited about getting a taste of everything."
The day's earlier events included the unveiling of a new banner honoring the perfect 32-0 record of the '57 team and head coach Frank McGuire. To some fans, it might have been simply another banner. But to the '57 Tar Heels, it was recognition they had been seeking for decades. Not for themselves, but for McGuire.
"Frank McGuire meant everything to us," said the night's second speaker, '57 reserve Bob Young. "Getting him the recognition he deserved was the highlight of the day."
It was a testament to the events of the evening that everyone could have probably identified a unique highlight. One of them came next, as the '82 team was saluted with a special '82-centric version of the now traditional "One Shining Moment" video. February 10 will be remembered for many different things in Chapel Hill. But it will be hard to forget the opportunity to watch Jordan, Worthy, and Perkins watching much younger versions of themselves while the current Tar Heels bobbed their heads to the song every player hopes to watch from the NCAA podium after accepting a championship trophy.
"Hey," Black said when he took the microphone, "I can probably make my mile time after watching that video."
Ever intent on sharing the credit, Black also called co-captains Chris Brust and Jeb Barlow to the podium. Barlow's final words perfectly captured the spirit of the night.
"I didn't play a single minute in the championship game," he said. "That was my last college game. And in the locker room after the game, Coach Smith came to my locker while my dad was sitting there and apologized for not getting me into the game.
"That is Carolina basketball and that is Dean Smith."
Jordan's speech was the shortest of the night, but its brevity made it crackle. Imagine that you're a 2007 Tar Heel. You're one of the five best teams in the country. But you're also very, very young.
And then the world's greatest basketball player stands at the front of the room, looks at each of you, and says the following:
"The memories I have with the '82 team can never be replaced. It's like no other team I played with.
"For the 2007 guys, this is the only time you will ever be on a team like this. The things you laugh about, the things you joke about, are the same things you'll talk about when you get together 25 or 50 years from now. That's what this program means.
"This will never be replaced in my memory. And this will always be home for me."
At exactly that moment, there was not a single college basketball player in the entire United States who wouldn't have wanted to be a Tar Heel. Only a select few get the opportunity. And they were all beaming.
"I love Carolina basketball," Williams told the room. "And that means I love the people in this room. That's why every single day I make sure I do every bit of work that I possibly can to make sure I don't cheat you."
Before the group disbanded, they made time for photos. One shot brought together all three teams. Wright and Perkins, Rosenbluth and Jordan, Worthy and Hansbrough.
The photo was exactly what it looked like:
A family portrait.
Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team
