Over the past 3-4 weeks, I’ve gone back in time.  That’s what good books do for you.  They grab your attention and share details that fire your imagination.

When you’ve lived through the years that a writer covers, the words on the page and the mental images that go along with it remind you of those times.  You re-enter that period with your memories.

Both books I reread center on sports:  “Behind the Mask” by Bill Freehan, and “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton.  Plimpton’s penned his in 1966 and Freehan wrote his in 1969.

Given the baseball  (Freehan) and football (Plimpton) subjects of the respective books, you wouldn’t think the memories they dredged up go far beyond the lines.  But they do because like any good read, they make you pause and consider more than the action itself.  Neither author started his project with that goal, I’m confident. 

Instead, Freehan wanted to give his catcher’s view of the Detroit Tigers the year after they won the World Series and Denny McClain racked up 31 victories as a pitcher.  Plimpton’s goal was odder:  He chose to quarterback the Detroit Lions, probably first foray in modern (depending on how you now choose to define “modern”) history into experiential journalism.  Today, you see imbedded journalists all over the world, and reporters taking on insider jobs and coming back to write about their experiences.  But back in the 1960s, what Plimpton did was pure novelty, and he did it to find out what football felt like firsthand and relay it an audience.

Plimpton and Freehan both captured that rawness of their on-the-spot view of pro football and baseball.  The warts, the statements players made with no worry about consequences, team camaraderie, race relations, the battle with between owners and players over wages all come to the forefront in both books.  You feel the era and see the seeds being planted that led to the mega-media enterprise most professional sports now occupy in the eyes of much of the public.

It’s easy to say it was a simpler time in the 1960s.  Reporters were not hanging over every word, cameras in the players’ faces, commentators waiting to turn the shortest statement or captured video into an “incident” that becomes news. 

Instead, both books give you unconstrained behind-the-scenes quotes and some wild stuff that went on in the days before Twitter and Instagram.  Players today probably still engage in similar behaviors, but the microscope is so heavily focused on their activities that the slightest deviation from what a player is “supposed” to do gets massive coverage, which in turns ratchets down some of the amusing and idiosyncratic behaviors that can be so fun to read about in sports.  Just ask Johny Manziel.  You get caught doing anything “different” and you have a ton of explaining to do.

We’ve lost something in the ensuing years, and it saddens me in many ways.  You don’t hear about the joking or pranksters, the frank discussions that do occur between teammates, something that bonds them on and off the field.  We don’t hear about guys like Alex Karras, who had an incredible sense of humor, and kept his teammates loose with goofy stuff he did.

I’m not sure pro athletes get to be themselves these days unless they keep a tremendously low profile.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but the ice they skate on is much thinner in 2015 than 1969.

I wouldn’t trade my flat screen for a black and white 12-inch TV screen.  But I would trade the non-stop chatter and useless banter for just being able to watch the guys play without distractions.  We can’t go back.

A good friend of mine died two weeks ago – Ron Grandon.  It might sound odd saying that because he was 25 years older than me, served as one of my bosses for 10 years, and in 2015 there seem to be fewer people you call “friends” from your workplace and who aren’t close to you in age.  He transcended that. 

He was a friend, mentor and boss, not asking for any of those titles, just fitting into those roles as a human being.  That’s a rare find today – someone who means so much to you just because of his humanity.

That was Ron in a nutshell.  He had your back covered.  It’s that simple.

He taught me not to quit on a dream, and that stays with me to this day.  Some dreams go quietly away, and you do forget them, but others resurface and reignite; sticking with it becomes a defining moment in your life.

Ron lived out many of his dreams, none more poignant to me than his building a concrete boat from scratch and sailing it.  You read the word “concrete” correctly.  If I hadn’t worked with him during the time he was building it and towing it down to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland to launch it, I wouldn’t have believed it either.  It floated, it sailed and the engine ran.  I still picture him putt-putting away from the dock the day he launched it, at the helm of this rounded dome painted white and some type of aquamarine.

It was almost a decade-long effort, but he got it done.  That also sums him up, “He got it done.”  I live by that motto many days:  “Get it done.”  If everyone in the world did that, we’d all be in a better place.

I’m not sure how long it was after I started as an Assistant Editor on the newsletter that he began showing me pictures of the initial stages on his boat, and babbling about what he’d finished over the weekend.  It sounded hare-brained and hopeless.

But he slogged on, weekend after weekend, giving me updates, talking about his trips to specialty shops and hardware stores to get the exact materials he needed so it would float buoyantly and survive the pounding he expected it to take when it hit the open sea.  I’m sure I shrugged or ignored him, while slowly growing intrigued, finally riding my bicycle over to his house occasionally on weekends to lend some muscle to one of his tasks.

It didn’t seem to advance much between my visits, but isn’t that the way with many projects?  He didn’t quit.  His wife, I’m sure, thought he was nuts, but that didn’t deter him.  You have to wonder how much people scoffing at you fuels determination.

Slowly it began to take shape.  The hulls got sealed.  The rudder went on.  He impaled the mast.  He found a sail.  It all fit together.

He never preached about what he was going to do with it, or the sense of pride and accomplishment he had to have felt.  It was enough to just do what he was doing – take on a challenge and slog away and one day it would be done.  It should be enough for all of us – to put pride into our work and see it through to the end.

One of Ron’s favorite compliments after you worked your butt off on a story was to say to you, “That’s a pro job.”  How much better can it get than someone you respect and look up to telling you that your writing is at the top of the game?  How much better would the world be if we would just do a “pro job” on our work each day?

You were a pro, Ronnie, and we’ll remember you, and play it forward.

Why is accepting praise so hard?  I think if you went around asking people how they respond when someone gives them positive, constructive, timely and specific feedback, most would say, “It embarrasses me.”  Or, “I don’t know what to say.”

That’s odd given how many employees in today’s workforce feel un- or under-appreciated in their jobs.  Multiply that by the number of other areas where you don’t get supportive feedback (a coach from a sports team, something in your personal life or even from friends), and you would think there’d be a craving for kind words.

I started studying this phenomenon on a professional level about 15 years ago.  Working in Nebraska at the time, we were going through a business culture change and a lot of literature on positive reinforcement came across my desk.  I read it all and started to apply it.

One of the things that stood out then, and to this day still stands out to me, is that for positive feedback to be useful to the recipient of the praise, you have to be specific and timely.  It’s not okay to say, “Great job.”

What happens when someone says that to you? Sure, there is a quick, “That’s nice” thought in your head.  But then you speculate, “What did I do a great job on?  What is he talking about? “

You actually have no idea what the person referred to (though you could probably make an educated guess) because all he said was, “Great job.”  You may think your ongoing application of new engineering principles on a steam pipe at the coal-fired power plant was what he referred to.  But what if it was the presentation you gave on safety procedures dealing with loading and unloading rail cars?  You have no idea.

For the most part, when you are on the receiving end of generic praise like this, you smile nod, and get a slight happy feeling before it rapidly fades away.  In contrast, you know exactly what you did well when someone says, “You know, Doris, that document you put together on our security practices is well-researched and makes several relevant points that will help us improve our operations.  Way to go.”

If Doris receives this feedback the day after she sends the document to her boss (or soon thereafter), the criteria for timely and specific feedback are met, and Doris will likely feel great about her contributions.  That will make her feel like a more integral part of the larger enterprise.


Do this regularly and effectively, and you get buy-in from employees and coworkers.  Apply it in non-work-related situations and you build long-lasting friendships.  People feel good.

So why don’t we do this more often?  I’m not arguing that no one does this.  But in a consistent manner, few of us follow these simple practices.

For some reason, it is far easier to criticize, vent or just accept things the way they are.  Since not much has changed at the company the past three years, “Why make the effort to do something better?”  We don’t praise because “that’s the way things are supposed to be.”

When even the most minor thing goes wrong, we criticize it, because we expect things to go right.  It’s possible we struggle accepting praise because of this:  1) When things go right, we perceive they should go right and don’t deserve praise; and 2) our natural inclination is to criticize, so most of the time we don’t believe praise is justified.

I’m going to keep on verbally supporting people when I see them do good things.  If we raise the next generation this way, maybe we won’t be overly critical when things go wrong, and happier when things go right.  Go for it.

This has probably happened to you: You or your spouse or significant other left the house for the supermarket.  You got six minutes down the road and remembered, “Dang, I forgot the grocery list.”  You may have even gotten all the way to the store, picked out a cart that didn’t have wobbly wheels and begun pushing it before you realized the list was still back on the kitchen counter where you left it.

Eons ago, you had to reconstruct that list from your memory to the best of your ability.  You came home with less than expected, but the items significantly lodged in your memory – those weekly constants – were in the brown bags.  No more.

With today’s memory slippage, lack of attention spans and general not following through on things we start, forgetting the shopping list happens more frequently than it did 25-40 years ago.  We start doing something and another chore intervenes.  Suddenly we are out the door, in our cars, down the road, and think, “Ooops.”  

That’s, of course, where the smart phone comes into play.  It has become our memory retainer, from email addresses and phone numbers to photos and shopping lists.

You don’t need to remember because it remembers for you.  And I think that helps cause a large part of our forgetting.  Because we are not focused, we allow things to slip away.  “Eh, who cares?  I can always call someone at home and get it.”

That’s not a conscious thought.  At the same time, when you have several incidents of getting somewhere and realizing you left something necessary at home, and know you can push ten numbers to get an answer and the information you want, then subconsciously you stop focusing as intently.

This has taken on new dynamics as phones have increased the number of functions available.  For example, the most useful change the past five years or so is the ability to take a photo and text it to someone.

Take the lost shopping list.  If you get to the supermarket, what’s the easiest way to recapture everything on your handwritten note?  Call home and have someone take a photo of it, then text it to you.  It’s so much easier to admit your forgetfulness when it is so easy to correct.

That’s a major reason you see so many people with phones to their ears or in front of their faces as they wander down the frozen food aisle looking for Stouffer’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans.  When the shopper can’t find it, and before he gets too frustrated, he can take a photo, send it to his wife at home, who then texts back, “It’s not Stouffer’s.  It’s Swanson’s.  It’s in the blue box, not the red one, two spaces over.”

How did we survive 15 years ago?  We wrote notes, sure, but then we had to actually remember to tuck them in our wallets or put them in our purses and bring them with us when we left the house.

Forgetfulness could be a good thing, particularly when it comes to food we buy.  Having to use our memory rather than a smart phone image cuts our consumption.   In an overweight nation, that’s the silver lining when leaving the grocery list next to coffee pot.

And, if you have to reconstruct it from memory, maybe the French Vanilla ice cream, Cocoa Puffs and barbecue potato chips will be what we forget, and fresh broccoli, pears and Brussels sprouts will be what we remember to buy.  Oh wait, WHAT WAS I THINKING?  Better put your smart phone in your pocket now or your waist line is in big trouble.