Men, Moment

Sports fans share a common visual vocabulary. There are iconic images that we recognize instantly. Neil Leifer's shot of Muhammad Ali standing over a vanquished Sonny Liston. Walter Iooss Jr.'s photo of Dwight Clark making The Catch. Leifer capturing John Carlos and Tommie Smith quietly and powerfully making a statement at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. You have your favorites, I'm sure.

Jerome Brouillet may have captured my new all-time favorite. Yesterday, during the Olympic surfing competition at the fabled Teahupo'o in Tahiti, Brazilian Gabriel Medina delivered the best-scoring ride of the day. He surged off the back of the wave and held his index finger aloft in recognition of the quality of his performance. Brouillet caught the moment perfectly:

That's just spectacular. And it will be hanging in my house at some point.

Palate Cleanser Filler: Relevant to Our Interests

You know you love it.

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Gheorghe Explains: Project 2025

The world has changed quite a bit since I started writing this post. In the span of a week - A FUCKING WEEK - we witnessed an assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate, a Vice-Presidential choice, a nominating convention, the other party's candidate existing the race, and the sitting Vice-President picking up the baton and getting off to a sprinting start. 

It's safe to say that the dynamics of the 2024 U.S. Presidential race have been upended in ways absolutely unprecedented. But it says here that the stakes have not, which is what I meant to write about in the first place. 

This is Kevin Roberts, President of the 
Heritage Foundation. He recently told Steve Bannon
"We are in the process of the second
American Revolution, which will remain bloodless
if the left allows it to be.” Charming. 

In recent weeks, more and more "neutral" political observers have begun to discuss Project 2025, widely regarded as the Trump campaign's actual (if preferably secret) platform for governance. Written by a number of former Trump officials and acolytes and coordinated by The Heritage Foundation, the 900-page document that details the intentions of the Trump movement is wide-ranging and radical, and serves as a blueprint that guides the things a second Trump administration would seek to implement.

We read* it so you don't have to (and by read, we mean, found some people online who actually did read it, summarized their conclusions, did actually read some text, and then wrote this really quickly). In any government the size of ours, there are offices and programs that deserve scrutiny, and I think any administration that follows the current one is well-served to examine what works and what doesn't. There are things in Project 2025 that are worth considering. For example, the priorities related to the Department of Defense in Chapter 4 (namely, 1) Reestablish a culture of command accountability, non-politicization, and warfighting focus, 2) Transform our armed forces for maximum effectiveness in an era of great-power competition, 3) Provide necessary support to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) border protection operations. Border protection is a national security issue that requires sustained attention and effort by all elements of the executive branch, and 4) Demand financial transparency and accountability) contain some valid critiques of DoD, though #3 makes me a bit nervous. But on balance, there's a lot to be concerned about in the text.

*In a bit of a Gheorghe Notes sorta way

Allow me a bit of an explanatory interlude here. I am prone to the occasional hyperbolic pronouncement. Sometimes that's done for effect, and sometimes I can get a tad carried away. Marls tends to play the sober-minded counterpart to my alarmism, the little c constitutional conservative to my hysterical lefty. And so I tried to do this post with Marls' generally more balanced viewpoint in mind. WWMD, if you will. 

Friends, I failed, because this shit is fucked up like a football bat. The policy objectives and prescriptions in Project 2025 amount to nothing short of a wholesale dismantling of a broad range of government programs we take for granted. For one example of many, say goodbye to NOAA, and hello to weather forecasting with Sharpies. From Chapter 21 of the Project 2025 report, "The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories." The author goes on to say,  in regard to NOAA component offices, "Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."

It is worth noting that the commercial concerns that would ostensibly benefit from privatization of certain NOAA functions want no part of it. AccuWeather CEO Steven Smith issued a statement that read in part, " “The American public and economy are best served when all entities provide their expertise, capabilities, and contributions to the common goal of best informing the public and protecting lives and property through accurate and timely forecasts and warnings." 

That's a pretty innocuous example, even as it represents the breadth of the project, so maybe let's talk about some of the more grotesque policy recommendations from the worst sort of ghouls (there I go with the hyperbole) like Stephen Miller to Russ Vought. 

Let's start with female bodily autonomy, which comes under attack in the Project 2025 report. Sure, abortion is a non-starter with the GOP, but they seem to be coming for contraception, as well. According to analysis by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, more than 48 million American women would be at risk of losing cost-free access to birth control medication. The personal consequences for women would be staggering, to say nothing of the economic implications.

Lock all these degenerates up.

The authors of the manifesto call for the criminalization of pornography and the imprisonment of anyone who produces or consumes it. Setting aside the wild impracticality of such a policy, the definition of pornography gives the game away. According to the authors, the "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology" is a form of pornography, as are texts that influence the "sexualization of children" - the latter term being a preferred dogwhistle of the right referring to LGBT+ predation. All of this is of a piece with the weird sort of Christian nationalism vibe to much of the social policy elements of the document.

In addition to these, the plan seeks to eliminate the Head Start program, defund the FBI, radically shift the tax burden even further from the rich to the middle class, end climate change research (Chapter 2 calls for a "whole of government unwinding" of the Biden Administration's efforts to combat climate change), among a great many other changes large and small.

The icing on this particular cake comes in the broad-reaching changes to Federal employment policy that would ensure a President Trump would be able to replace wide swaths of the bureaucracy with true believers, pushing out anyone deemed sufficiently disloyal to the cause, and increasing the likelihood the policy goals outlined in the document are implemented. 

If you're interested in looking more deeply into the sources I leaned on, you can check them out here.

Verify

The Cut.com

People Magazine (when People is doing the work, well, that might tell you something about how their editorial staff views what's happening - or not - in other media outlets.)

There's a reason the Trump campaign is bending over backwards to discredit reporting that connects it with Project 2025: the policies therein are deeply unpopular. If the Harris campaign asks for my advice (and I'm told they're avid readers), I'd tell them to hang this shit around Trump's neck like Christmas lights. I'd also tell them to continue to attack Trump as a felon, a loser, and a shitty businessman. He hates being mocked, and he'll hate it all the more coming from a smart black woman. I think the Dems have traditionally been too unwilling to fight hard, even when they've been punched in the mouth. The stakes now are just too high for them to not go out guns blazing.

Gheorghe Explains, Briefly

Gheorghe will explain the radically changed Presidential election landscape in a future post, but in an effort to bide some time and avoid having to think, we'll kick the week off with a brief look back at Xander Schauffele's win at Royal Troon. And Gheorghe will explain the hidden advantage the 30 year-old American had on Sunday.

If you watched the final round, you might've caught a few candid moments between Schauffele and his caddie, Austin Kaiser. The two have been friends since they played together on the San Diego State University golf team. Schauffele has been vocal about the importance of their teamwork to his success. Check out this moment from the walk down 18 after Schauffele hit his iron onto the green and the duo knew they'd won - Kaiser goes about doing his job, giving his pro his putter and replacing a divot, while the pro waits for him so they can walk together and receive the adulation of the crowd.

Classy! pic.twitter.com/pENYKlhBVw

— Oma Golf (@oma_golf) July 21, 2024

Which brings me to the advantage I think Kaiser offers Schauffele. At several key moments on the back nine, as Schauffele hit one clutch shot after another, the two could be seen laughing with one another. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the comfort the pro feels with his friend and caddie is a real and significant boost to his confidence and mental strength. Now that Schauffele has won a couple of majors after falling short several times, it says here there will be several more over the next few years.

If I Could Turn Back Time

During the course of his recent podcast trilogy about William Shakespeare (which, by the way, is really excellent - I had no idea, for example, how much our current language owes to the Bard), Professor G. Truck postulates that the optimal use of a time machine would be to return to 16th century England to watch a performance at the Globe Theatre. His logic is persuasive, but I can think of a few other places in time I'd like to go.

Mine is, of course, a very Western perspective. Others might wish to be back on the steppes with Genghis Khan, or watching the invention algebra, or pasta, or gunpowder. I don't know from that stuff, so I'll focus more narrowly.

I thought about heading back a few decades and dropping into the ice rink in Lake Placid in 1980 to witness the Miracle on Ice in person. The atmosphere must've been batshit crazy - height of the Cold War, a bunch of American kids taking on and beating the Soviets on U.S. soil. Worth seeing, I think. But I watched that game on TV, so it wouldn't be quite the same as experiencing history completely fresh.

So I got to thinking more about that history angle, and thought about how fascinating it might be to observe the landing of the Allied Expeditionary Forces on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. The sheer scale and world-changing import of the D-Day invasion seen live, that seems epic. You'd probably see a lot of blood, guts, agony, and death in that place and time, though, which would be a bit of a downer. I think I'll skip it.

Less blood and guts, but maybe equal amounts of mud and mess would greet us if we decided to spend a weekend on Max Yasgur's farm in August 1969. Depending on how the metaphysics of time travel work, we might even meet some groovy hippie chicks (or dudes, for those of us more inclined in that direction) while we jammed to Jimi, the Dead, Janis, CSNY, and the rest. Makes a strong case, Woodstock, but we'll keep our options open.

Maybe we could head to the room where it happened, and sit in on the deliberations between the Founding Fathers as they debated the future of our then-new nation. It was hot as fuck in Philly that summer, though, and there wasn't indoor plumbing, which argues against it. And I'd really worry that I'd be tempted to tell them about the current state of affairs in the nation and convince them to stick with the King. Maybe we shouldn't go back to 1776.

Switching gears a bit, wouldn't it be fun to go back to the time and place your parents met? How cool to see the beginning of the relationship that led to your very existence. Two things, though. What if I Marty McFlyed it and fucked up the future, and erased myself? That'd suck. And my parents met when they were toddlers, so I'm guessing the sparks would be hard to discern. 

Would you want to see Beethoven at work? Einstein theorizing? The first cavefolk taming fire? Dinosaurs roaming in their natural habit? (I've seen Jurassic Park. That seems like it could be dangerous.)

What about Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points? Or being part of the crowd of 200,000 that watched Uruguay shock Brazil in the Maracana in the 1950 World Cup? Seeing Bobby Thompson hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World would be fun.

Maybe hearing Martin Luther King speak live would be edifying? Or watching Martin Luther nail up his theses. Would Michelangelo let us watch on while he painted the Sistine Chapel? He probably wouldn't even notice, honestly.

Or maybe we could solve some mysteries. Let's go find the Holy Grail (or, let's go watch the Monty Python gang write The Holy Grail - even better). We could finally determine whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. 

I guess, in the end, I need to be true to myself. Professor Truck is an English teacher and a Shakespeare scholar. Me, I'm a simple guy, and sports is probably the most important through line in my personal history. I want to be in the middle of a big crowd, to hear the roars and the groans, feel the emotional clench and release, share in the experience. Part of me wants to head to the Fenway Park bleachers in 1960 and sit next to my then-14-year-old Dad and watch Ted Williams homer in his final at-bat. But more of me is drawn to the historic parallels implicit in leaving a time of significant societal upheaval and traveling to watch Jesse Owens make Adolph Hitler uncomfortable during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Maybe I'd learn something I could bring back to the future.

Who's Your Best? (Cont.)

At the request of the site’s benevolent curator, I pondered competitive connections with primo athletes and relationships with illustrious former peers, and found both lacking. Or more accurately, my recall and engagement are lacking. But in the interest of thematic continuity, here’s a meager addition to “Who’s Your Best?” 

The area south of Annapolis, Md., where I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s was transitioning from rural to suburban and produced no athletes of note. Granted, plenty of professional athletes come from tiny, nondescript places – Jerry Rice is from a small town in eastern Mississippi with a population of fewer than 1,000, Bo Jackson is from Bessemer, Ala. (pop. 27,000) and Scottie Pippen came from Hamburg, Ark. (pop. 3,000) – just not my nondescript place. Closest I came was a high school buddy, a multi-sport athlete and all-around good goof in his younger days named Dale Castro, who went on to become an All-American punter and kicker at the University of Maryland. 

In my previous life as a newspaper sports guy in southeastern Virginia, I was fortunate to cover an inordinate number of exceptional athletes and events. I saw Allen Iverson and Michael Vick and Alonzo Mourning and Bryant Stith and Chris Slade and Ronald Curry and Percy Harvin and champion quarter-miler LaShawn Merritt and Ticha Penicheiro and Olympic gold medalist Francena McCorory. That list doesn’t even include those who competed in the area as youngsters – David Robinson at the Naval Academy, Elena Delle Donne at Delaware, Brian Westbrook at Villanova – and a metric f*ckton of future college and pro hoopsters at local AAU impresario Boo Williams’ tournaments such as Jason Kidd and Kenny Anderson and Kevin Durant and Breanna Stewart and Tyson Chandler and Maya Moore and Jayson Tatum and Trae Young. 

Given that my longtime home didn’t have major league sports, I saw many of those athletes in their formative years, before they became famous and wealthy. Though I did witness all-timer Annika Sorenstam win her 72nd and final LPGA Tour event in Williamsburg and saw then-local pro Curtis Strange at the height of his powers at the annual PGA Tour stop there. I spent time around future world champion boxer and Norfolk native Pernell Whitaker and his 1984 Olympic teammates Evander Holyfield, Mark Breland and Meldrick Taylor, who were managed and packaged together for several years and regularly stopped in Hampton Roads. 

Which gets to the “coverage” part. Much of my work put me around other Virginia and mid-Atlantic reporters, many of whom were aces if not well known outside their readership and writer circles. Occasional Washington NFL games and ACC coverage put me in rooms with a bunch of Washington Post staffers. Former columnists Dave Kindred and Ken Denlinger were gracious and amiable. John Feinstein was always friendly to me, but I get that he rubs some folks the wrong way. Before he became TV Personality Mike and Mouthpiece of the Stars, Michael Wilbon was approachable and receptive. Liz Clarke was a kind of jill-of-all-trades who wrote about everything from the NFL to tennis to NASCAR to the Olympics. She was a lovely and friendly and chatty presence and more than willing to quaff a couple beers after deadline in the press parking lot with the rest of us idiots following night races at Richmond International Raceway. 

I covered a Super Bowl, three NCAA Final Fours, a national championship football game and a slew of NCAA Tournament games, men and women. Which is to say that periodically I was around a lot of Bigfoot writers and journalists, most of whom I barely glanced at because I was either busy working or hanging with those I knew. A couple of them, however, left an impression: Before he moved to political writing and blogging, Charlie Pierce was a top-shelf sportswriter, mostly for Boston and New England outlets. He dips back into the genre now and then and remains a go-to when he does so. I shared a few press rooms with him at several NCAA Tournament sites in the ‘80s, ‘90s and early ‘00s. In the days before the internet and when everything was available, I managed to read his stuff on occasion and marveled at his style. In person, from a distance, he was smart, gregarious, and a wicked quick writer. He also often wore a baseball hat with patches of Historically Black Colleges and Universities logos sewn into the crown, a small yet visible statement of his support and solidarity with those under-funded and often underappreciated schools. 

Frank Deford was sports writing royalty. He was one of the preeminent writers and essayists for Sports Illustrated in its heyday, a man whose stuff I read religiously. I shared a few press rooms with him in the ‘80s and ‘90s and tried to keep my gawking to a minimum. Where Pierce often looked like an unmade bed, Deford cut, dare I say, a dashing figure. Tall (6-foot-4), lean, dark hair combed back, rakish mustache, dressed in a sportcoat, button-down collared shirt and slacks, handkerchiefs tucked into lapel pockets, he might have stepped out of a Raymond Chandler novel. As a writer, he was a brilliant stylist and someone who preached observation and detail and description and narrative. There’s a story that he once told a fellow staffer who he thought relied on too many quotes in a feature piece: “You’re a writer, not a stenographer.” 

Best I got. I’ll try to connect and engage better in my next life.

1994! What Was It Good For?

File Under: things you don't need explained to you. 30 years is quite a long time. Like, really long. A generation-plus for humans. The lifetime of a koi. And yet, it was just yesterday in my brain. 

So what were you doing 30 years ago today? Summer of 1994?

I know what a couple of you were doing. 

Dave was in the Garden State -- in grad school or maybe just having finished. Living in a converted whorehouse on Route 18 in New Brunswick with some reptiles that scared me and some of his old buddies... who also scared me at times. His old mates played in a band and occasionally let the Idiots jam with them for a minute or two at a time. They threw all their spare change into a big bucket every day for a year and then threw a major rager with the take. Dave read a lot of books, especially for a 24-year-old, and he drank a beer called Artic Ice. It was a Coors product misspelled badly, but Dave liked the ABV and it only had 11.5 ounces, which he said cut out the half-ounce of backwash. He also lived with a guy who took his bride's surname, but I think you would have, too. Dave also worked tirelessly to murder a monitor lizard that they should have named Rasputin. 1994 for Dave: it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. 

Rob, meanwhile, lived in Arlington, Virginia. With me. He worked for a government contractor at Fort Belvoir. He dated off and on, but he spent more time sitting on couches with Spoid and me and Buckles and Cliffy and Evan and Old and others drinking Busch Light and playing Sega and watching SportsCenter and Beavis & Butt-Head. Like lots and lots of time. Rob drove his hand-me-down Chevy Blazer, replete with Celtics vanity plates, until he went S-10 so as not to have to drive when we went out. That summer he excelled at after-work wiffle ball in our home stadium, a gloriously, perfectly dimensioned natural grass field with a big, asphalt-shingled Grey Monster in left. (Rob coined that one.) We had multipurposed the field one Saturday earlier that year for the Magnificent 7, a stop along the preposterous annual keg croquet tour -- the likes of which we may never see again. Rob tried to learn to drink scotch whisky one night in 1994. It didn't take. Rob helped make up 100 great games that year, only to promptly forget about most of them, mainly because we also hosted some of the area's best throwdowns. 1994 for Rob: it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.

My 1994 looked similar to my little buddy's. I had a long-distance gf who'd become my first wife a few years later. Most days and nights were spent amongst my comrades. I, too, logged countless hours on the sofas at 5800 Little Falls Road. I devised a creation called T-120, a VHS cassette always just a "Record" button push away from action when the nude scenes came on our premium cable channels. Spoid received that as a parting gift when we were evicted the next year. I worked my government contractor gig in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, faking it until I never made it and getting to know what life as a regular in an Irish pub or two (nextdoor to each other and across the street from my office) was all about. I wore a suit to work every weekday, which now seems as antiquated as the VHS tape. I rode the metro to and fro my DC job, only occasionally falling asleep on the last train to the Burbs after happy hour extended. I saw Dumb & Dumber in the theater, more than once, and things were never the same. I helped host multiple bachelor parties, seeing wild new stripper tricks and taking regrettable pictures. I began amassing compact discs in earnest with a completist's savage fervor, just at the outset of a long journey. I saw They Might Be Giants several times in different venues in 1994. And loved it. I began frequenting the Cowboy Café that year, commencing and consummating a love affair with that place that has stretched past multiple marriages. In 1994 I helped found a men's beer league softball team that delivered years of smiles. And oh, yes, I also helped plan a dude's trip to go fishing in Nags Head, NC, one with sea legs that not any of us could possibly have calculated or even dared wish for in 1994. 1994 for me: it was the season of light, it was the summer of hope, and we had everything before us. It was truly the best of times...

...even as I reserve the right to apply this label onto other pockets of time during my life.

How about you guys? What was the summer of 1994 for you? College summer school days? High school job mowing lawns? Well into the working world? Better halves and little ones? Selling used cars? Trying to go pro in leisure sports? Hiking the Appalachian Trail?

Unsurprisingly, so many of the memories from 30 years ago are entwined with music. Shows of all kinds, from drunken Buffett smorgasbords to killer nights at the Bayou, or the old 9:30, or Lisner, or Radio Music Hall (now the 9:30), or in Richmond or Merriweather or wherever. Ah, the fleeting freedom of having nothing much to do, great concerts abound, and just a $22 ticket standing in the way.

When we weren't catching live acts, we were watching MTV (as yet not a misnomer) or cranking the hifi with the latest arrivals from Columbia House or BMG. I joined, quit, and rejoined those clubs countless times with pseudonyms ranging from the obvious to the ludicrous -- and what a haul of CD's that period ushered into our house. A new album to soak in every other night. If music be the food of love... give me the equivalent of Wendy's SuperBar, please. 

What of the music of 1994, you ask? Well, your old buddy Whitney has gone to the trouble of curating the tunes we amped through the Onkyo that year. Here are 80 songs from 80 artists in 1994. I have seen 27 of these bands get their live groove on. And I'm still not done. Dredging through the old stuff reminded me how much fun it is. Dig in, and as one of my favorite guitarists once offered in liner notes... happy hunting. 

GTB On USMNT: The Definitive Guide to Picking a New Manager

It is de rigueur for American footie fans to weigh in on the search for the next USMNT manager, and we're nothing if not rigueurous, so we'll plunge right in. In our inimitable style, short on analytical rigor and long on winging it. 

I've heard a couple of good arguments from various pundits on the topic, which I'll repeat for your benefit and use as guideposts for my thinking. First, we compete globally, so it would good to have a manager with a broader perspective than just American soccer. And secondly, this is an 18-month job. We're not looking for a program builder. We need to use the talent we have the best way possible to maximize our achievement in World Cup we're hosting in 2026. Anything beyond that should be the Federation's focus*, not the manager's. Hat tip to Taylor Twellman for the spot-on second point.

*Of considerable note, the Federation is peopled by cronyistic doofuses, which perhaps makes 2026 an even more do or die priority.

Others have suggested that we need a manager who's held the reins of a national side, and while I think that wouldn't hurt, I'm not sure it's mandatory. We need a coach with a track record of building teams that win. Full stop.

There have been a lot of names bandied about in the press, from big names like Jurgen Klopp to Americans having success in Europe like New Jersey's own Pellegrino Materazzo, who coaches TSG Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga, to MLS long-timers like Philadelphia Union's Jim Curtin. Those are all fine coaches, and if we can get Klopp, we should get Klopp - that would be a homerun hire on the field and in the boardroom. But he just left Liverpool because we was burned out, and he's reportedly rebuffed U.S. Soccer's initial entreaties. So we look elsewhere. 

Look at this stud

For me, there are three names I'd like us to take a run at. The first one is a reach, but he did spend part of this summer in Montana, and he reportedly really loves America. He's also the all-time leader in Champions League trophies as a manager, and while he's never managed a national side, he did play for Italy for 10 years, including at the 1990 World Cup. I'm talking, of course, of the great Carlo Ancelotti, in the conversation for the best manager in history. The five-time Champions League winner has won everywhere he's coached, with league titles in England, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany to his name. If he's interested, he's a no-brainer.

And if he's not, I'd like U.S. Soccer to hire either LAFC's Steve Cherundolo or Columbus Crew's Wilfried Nancy. Neither are particularly sexy, and there will be those who are gun-shy about hiring another coach directly from MLS after Gregg Berhalter's mixed tenure. Cherundolo and Nancy have very different profiles than Berhalter, however. The former is arguably the best outside back to ever represent the U.S., and played and coached in the Bundesliga before coming back the America to take the LAFC job. In his first two years in Los Angeles, Cherundolo won an MLS Cup and lost in the final of another. This year, his third in L.A., the club has the best record in the Western Conference. He checks the boxes for me, having international experience and a winning background.

This is the way

Nancy played in the lower rungs of the French professional system before coming to North America to coach provincial sides in Quebec before joining the CF Montreal (then Montreal Impact) youth system in 2011. He joined the coaching staff of the MLS side in 2016 before being promoted to the head job in 2021. The long-time mediocre club finished a best-ever second in 2022, setting franchise records for wins and points (and an MLS record for road wins). Nancy left Montreal after the 2022 season, largely because owner Joey Saputo is a notoriously hot-headed dickbag.

He joined Columbus Crew next (which is the club Berhalter left to take the USMNT job), and proceeded to win MLS Cup by beating Cherundolo's LAFC in his first season at the helm in Ohio. His teams' playing style is proactive, flexible, and positive, all attributes that fit the American soccer mentality, and he's had immediate success at both of his professional stops.

U.S. Soccer's Matt Crocker has a lot of eyes on him as he makes the decision about the next manager for the national side. He's the same guy who flubbed the call to bring back Berhalter, so it's no stretch to say that this hire will determine the course of his career. He may be tempted to go for a known quantity. Wilfried Nancy won't move the needle in the public's mind, but he may well be the best bet for our 2026 hopes.

The Best...Around

Mark sent me a text last week about a kid he played pickup hoops with getting an invite to the Sixers' summer league squad, which led me to ask him about the best player he ever competed against. His answer, which I'll let him provide in the comments, is a far, far bigger star and better athlete than anyone I've ever battled.

The exchange got me to thinking about really excellent athletes I'd played with and against, and from there, wondering how we might answer the question about top performers in other fields. All of which brings me to this new recurring bit: Who's Your Best?

We'll start with athletics for me, and the list is fairly brief and unspectacular, though it does include an Olympian. In chronological order, then:

When I was in 8th grade, I was a backup winger on the Fred Lynn (not that Fred Lynn) Middle School varsity soccer team. The starter at my position became a four-year starter in high school and broke the state record for career goals before going on to William & Mary and doing the same things - started all four years, broke the school record for goals scored. Rebecca Wakefield was a badass.

As a senior in high school I played #3 singles on the tennis team. I got bumped up to #2 for a match against our arch-rival and got my ass absolutely kicked by a kid who went on to play for Seton Hall. In an amazing coincidence, I ended up working with him a few years after grad school, and went down to his club to hit with him, where he beat me 6-0, 6-0 - and it wasn't even that close. The fact that he was a colossal dickhead was no salve.

During the 1996 Olympics, I stayed with our friend Jay Saunders at his folks' megaplex in Atlanta. Jay ran track and cross-country at W&M, and his friend and teammate Brian Hyde was a part of the U.S. Olympic team, running the 1500m. Brian stayed with Jay's parents before his qualifying heats because he didn't want the distraction of the Olympic Village. One day, I went out for a run with the two of them. I held my own for the first half-mile, because it was straight downhill. As soon as the terrain flattened, I was flattened. Those dudes were out of sight in 30 strides. Humbling.

A decade or so ago, my neighborhood friends and I had a regular Sunday morning pickup hoops run at the local rec. We were occasionally joined by a 6'6" guy who played at the Air Force Academy. Dude could shoot it from 30 feet without trying hard, and was strong as hell to boot. And a gigantic prick, just the worst kind of on-court bully. One of my favorite memories was pump-faking him and blowing by to hit a game-winning layup while he was absolutely lining me up to smack the ball into the next county. Suck it, dickface.

Meager, mine. Let's hear about yours in the comments. Or better yet, post it up for the betterment of the count. And if you don't have great sporting stories, how about the best musicians you've ever been on a bill with? Or the best sportswriters you've shared a press row with? Or the best drinkers you've ever bellied up to a bar alongside? You've got options, people.

Gheorghasbord

I have no fewer than three post concepts in the works, and I think you'll quite enjoy them. At the same time, I have a fuckton of interesting and consequential real world things happening, and I think you'll quite, well, find them fascinating if and when they transpire. In any event, they're keeping me from making headway on any of the extremely (note: sorta) noteworthy post concepts underway.

It's not keeping me from sharing all kinds of nonsense to keep this train moving, though.

Let's start with youth being served. 

Lamine Yamal is four days from turning 17. He's started every match at the Euros for Spain, recording three assists in four matches leading into yesterday's semifinal against France. Les Bleus took an early lead on a sublime back post header by Randal Kolo Muani from a Kylian Mbappe pass. Fewer than 10 minutes later, Yamal did this (go to the 3:00 mark, unless you want to see all the highlights), making him the youngest men's player ever to score in a Euro match:

As you know from years of watching this space, one of our collective dreams is to buy a piece of property with enough buildings on it to create a compound for all of the Gheorghieverse to live in harmony and/or visit. Dave should visit. Rootsy and I both follow the Instagram account @old_house_life to keep our eyes on promising properties. Like this one. A 9,000 square foot building with great bones in a pretty part of Western Massachusetts for 200 grand? We could do worse. 

We'll close today with a mini version of What the Kids Are Listening To. In the case of mine, Chappell Roan is blowing the hell up. Here's what the Wikipedia says about Roan's cultural impact:

Roan's success has led her to be called a "queer pop icon", "a superstar in the making", and a "visionary performer". Roan has been credited with leading a "lesbian pop renaissance" on the music charts and within the cultural zeitgeist. Roan's music brought the concept of compulsory heterosexuality into the forefront of mainstream pop music. She has been praised for her "unapologetic authenticity" and "expression of her queerness and femininity" in her music and live performances, inspiring young women to embrace their own sexuality. She has also been applauded for her image "rejecting the male gaze" within the pop landscape. Roan has been praised for her "punkish" attitude towards the status quo for queer performers and applauded for "rewriting the rules of lovelorn pop." Rolling Stone described watching Roan's performances as "like watching Michelangelo craft the statue of David in real time."

That's a lot. But according to my kids, Roan's caught lightning in a bottle, with her fiercely unique and absolutely female-first perspective a counterpoint to the stultifying tete a tete at the top that sees over-the-hill rams feebly butting against one another to see who gets to run the world. The kids, I think, would prefer a Femininomenon. And if you think this ain't your thing, just listen to the audience. It's theirs, for sure.

A Less Than Thoreau Examination

It’s a safe bet that mostly monks and scholars would consider the life and writings of ruminator extraordinaire Henry David Thoreau a breezy summer read. Here at the satellite branch, however, we occasionally get lost among the stacks and emerge with something different. 

Hank D. was a 19th century American essayist, naturalist, abolitionist, free thinker and unlikely Employee of the Month best known for wandering the woods and influencing movements that knotted the knickers of not one but two empires. His signature works are “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience,” unaligned efforts that may have more in common than at first glance. His most well-known line might be, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” which he wrote without an inkling of Vanderbilt University football or Buffalo Sabres fans. 

Thoreau read and thought broadly, and his writings are sprinkled with references to classic Greek and Roman literature and Chinese and Hindu teachings and philosophy. He influenced a slew of writers, among them Hemingway and Yeats and Upton Sinclair and George Bernard Shaw, and a legion of naturalists and ecological writers and advocates. He has spawned biographies and entire college courses devoted to his life and work. I don’t have the expertise to provide more than a snapshot and a suggestion that he’s worth at least a glance if you have the time. 

“Walden” was a result of 26 months spent living by himself in a cabin he built next to a pond near Concord, Mass., on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” he wrote, “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

Like many who question the status quo, Thoreau was often viewed as eccentric during his lifetime and more widely appreciated after his death. He wasn’t anti-capitalism but thought the pursuit of material wealth more hamster wheel than path to prosperity. He wasn’t anti-social but at times through his writings it’s easy to infer that he was more enamored with the concept of human beings and their potential than with actual people and relationships. “The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind,” he wrote. “Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?” 

If Hank D. was disappointed that people often chased wealth and status over personal growth and fulfillment, he was downright salty about government control and the institutional practice of slavery. “A government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it,” he wrote in “Civil Disobedience.” “Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? – in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have the right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.” 

Thoreau was a staunch abolitionist and vocal critic of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, which was prompted by the U.S. annexation of Texas and expanded the national footprint from the Rio Grande River to the Pacific Ocean. He viewed the war as imperial over-reach as well as potential new territory for slavery to be implemented. He wrote of the natural “friction” within the machinery of government – inefficiencies and even small, tolerable injustices. “But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer,” he wrote. “In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.” 

Mohandas Gandhi encountered Thoreau’s writings while noodling a resistance movement against British imperialism, first as a young man living in South Africa and later in his native India. According to author and historian George Hendrick, on a 1931 train trip in France with ACLU chairman Roger Baldwin, Gandhi carried a copy of “Civil Disobedience” and told him the essay “contained the essence of his political philosophy, not only as India’s struggle related to the British, but as to his own views of the relation of citizens to government.” 

Martin Luther King took cues from Gandhi to form his own version of non-violent resistance as part of the Civil Rights Movement, which indirectly led him to Hank D. In his autobiography King wrote, “I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.” 

Thoreau didn’t live to see the end of slavery in America. He died in 1862 at age 44 after a bout with bronchitis. He believed that people and their institutions could be, should be, better. It required work, or at least a shift in thought and priorities. Give him the last word: “I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.”

Hey Baby

Gheorghle: The Dumbest Quiz Game

Several of your favorite Gheorghies (and Dave) are in a group chat solely dedicated to sharing daily results of various online quiz games we complete. We do the Wordle, the Worldle, Connections, The New York Times mini crossword, Bandle, and Framed nearly every day. Some folks add the Quordle and Strands. It's a lot. 

We're also continually scouring the interwebs for new games to play. I do Immaculate Grid for baseball, even though most days it reminds me how much I've forgotten about trivia I once knew about ballplayers. Dooger shared some really dumb one about checking boxes the other day. There will be more.

In addition to participating in brain gaming, I'm quite prone to expressing myself in absurdly random ways when I'm alone. Sometimes just in my head, and sometimes aloud. Today, we're combining the two things for your amusement and participation.

In the spirit of collective mental exercise combined with whimsy, I'm pleased today to introduce The Gheorghle. The concept is simple. I list a handful of thoughts that pop into my head or things that come out of my mouth, and you have to guess the context. Points are given completely subjectively by me for accuracy and comedic value, not necessarily in that order. I'll reveal the actual inspirations for the phrases at some point, via some means.

Herewith The Gheorghle #1:

1. Fuck, Fergie Jenkins is Canadian!

2. Merde

3. Golf balls!

4. PEPE LE PEW!

5. Who are these new frens?

Answer in the comments. Or in the group chat. And enjoy!