Somerset as Stand-In: Making the Team – Michael Jordan & Jack Kerouac

About eight innings ago (several decades in non-Baseball years) there was an Elementary School Carnival.

Photo: flickr.com by Håkan Dahlström, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Basketball

To properly clinch the pennant requires strategy…i.e., you either need to impress the girls by winning prizes or you need to impress your pals by also winning prizes.

Given it was a tad early to have interest in little ladies, I went with — The Baseball Hat Raffle.

Essentially, this was a lottery in which you paid your shekels, drew a folded slip of paper, and if your number matched you got to pick your team from a display of shiny new Baseball helmets.

The Eternal Game

The Yanks were my fellahs and Mantle was my idol.

Being an affluent tyke, I had a wad of cash ready. (It would be indiscreet to reveal the amount. Money has a vastly different value now.) Thus, commence to squander it, I did!

My intention, if not my expectation, was to casually stroll up to the stand, fork over some dough, grab a ticket, soon to be waltzing around the Carnival with my Bronx Bombers cap gleaming under the lights.

How it worked out?

I gave one ticket, I gave two tickets, I gave ten tickets, I gave twenty tickets, I gave every ticket…then I bought more — without success.

Even one of the three ladies (two manned the sideshow, I was trying long enough one eventually changed shift) felt so badly for me she purchased a few tickets and tried in my favor.

No winner. Other children came and went. A few won on their first try. I was on my fiftieth. At least.

I never even saw the rest of the Carnival, remaining at that single booth all night…

Michael Jordan — Cut From The Squad

Michael Jordan is akin the Babe Ruth of Baseball. Like him or not, that's his place in Basketball.

He scored an average of over 30 points a game, which is the highest in NBA (National Basketball Association) history. Likewise, he scored an average of over 33 points a game in the Playoffs, also the highest in NBA history. Not to mention 5 MVP (Most Valuable Player) awards during his career.

Jordan began playing ball around age 12, but three years later at 15, Michael was infamously "cut” from the High School Basketball team his Sophomore year. (Revisionists claim this was not a "cut” since the kid was sent to the Junior crew…but no one ever actually sent down would describe it as anything else.)

The reason for the attenuation was his Coach believed Jordan, then five feet ten inches tall, was overly diminutive. In addition, Coach felt Mike was not ready for what Varsity ball entailed, citing a lack of experience.

Jordan describes himself being shocked as well as shamed by the fact a good friend had taken his spot.

It was then Mike truly made a commitment to the game — after he went home and cried about his predicament. (People always leave this part out, but it's among the most important aspects…serious setbacks can and will have serious emotional repercussions which must be recognized as such.)

Reputedly, for a year Jordan would practice hours in the school gymnasium before attending classes each day. He became an outstanding member on the Junior squad. The boy grew four inches.

By the time he made the Varsity team the following season, Mike was prepared for his position — scoring 35 points that first game, later named a national All-American, and playing in the State Championships.

A million kids since have been told to "Be Like Mike” in showing dedication to your goals…but there is another story.

Jack Kerouac — Injured On The Sidelines

Jack Kerouac was the most notable, arguably most significant, representative of the Beat Generation.

Before that, he was just a kid playing ball.

In 1940, when he was 16 years old, Kerouac enrolled at Columbia University; located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and one of the eight Ivy League schools.

Joining the Football team, Jack competed on scholarship, having been an All-Massachusetts State leader.

Unfortunately, Kerouac incurred an injury in only his second game — that being a broken leg.

His reaction was the antithesis of the above. Indeed, according to a student who shared a connecting room, the classmate "bemoaned his fate, lay on his back in his sack all day, wouldn't attend classes, and just stared at the ceiling”.

To their credit, friends attempted to rouse Jack from his lament, with their fellow player only to "turn on his side, close his eyes, and refuse to talk”.

His Coach intervened to enlist more teammates to encourage Jack to rally; inviting him out to dine with them, to the movies. Nothing doing.

Then Coach took another tack — shouting. Nothing. Kerouac did not eat. Refused to sit Final Exams.

During that Summer the boy labored in a war plant. He returned for his Sophomore year at Columbia, even making the Varsity squad on the reserve backfield, yet never played any games.

He dropped out entirely a few weeks later. He went to sea. Joined the Navy. Tried another school. Quit.

It was not until 1950 the first Kerouac novel, The Town and The City, was published and even that in "conventional” style. Only in 1957 was his seminal work, On The Road, printed to immediate acclaim.

The Lesson Is Not Binary

Anytime I try to help someone with these stories they inevitably draw the wrong conclusions.

Life is not binary. There is not a Correct and an Incorrect path. Often they are interchangeable.

It would have been as mistaken for Jordan to depart school as for Kerouac to persist in school. There is value in realizing both where you do — and do not — belong in this world.

Sometimes when meeting failure you SHOULD "double down” to work harder…but sometimes when meeting failure you should NOT continue to "beat your head against a wall” when it isn't right for you.

Knowing the difference is formidable but not knowing there is a difference is fatal.

When any boy repeatedly stumbles at a task the first question must be whether that is a task to which that particular boy is suited in the first place.

Demanding someone "try harder” is a cruel mantra utilized by unintelligent people, frequently to the detriment of innocent lives.

Wear Your Hat With Pride

Speaking of the School Carnival, I never did win that Yankees hat. When they were all gone, I disappointedly hoped for another team. I never won those either. I went home entirely hatless.

No, it did not spark a rage in my soul…but it did seem inherently unfair somehow.

Except some things aren't meant for you. And some times you are meant for greater things.

It applies to your career, your interests, as well as (on the exceedingly rare occasion) when a Lolly Girl rejects you in spite of your devastatingly handsome visage (not that such a slight ever happened to me).

Today I could purchase — if I still wanted — a real helmet, worn by Mick himself, maybe in a Series game.

Only I don't want it. Or any other. I grew up.

The moral here, which you need to teach your little boys, is that sometimes you should be Michael Jordan with his perseverance…but sometimes you should be Jack Kerouac with his peregrination.

Telling a child to "keep trying” is futile and stupid when the Universe is telling him something else.

Incidentally, I went on to play for the school team and even won the "big one” in terms of trophies for individual achievement. Yet by that juncture I already knew there was more to Life than swinging a stick.

Not everything is intended for everyone — make sure to explore the entirety of the Carnival.

Guy Somerset writes from somewhere in America