Please come wet your toes in the pool of insanity with me

You may be wondering why my last few posts have been about the awesomeness of sports.  Well, first of all it is because sports are awesome and anyone who disagrees is a big banananananana head.  Second it is because of October. 

For those who are not sports peeps, October is the best month for sports.  Hard core basketball dudes will say I am wrong and that either March (college) or June (NBA) is the best.  Followers of fine football will be fuming, and fabricate fibs that January/February is the best.  Hockey….I just can’t seriously discuss hockey (don’t worry, they are all Canadadaaddaddaians who will cheerfully still be nice to me even though I trash their game). 

The reason October is the best is because baseball is winding down, with the ultimate culmination occurring with the World Series; football is just getting into its groove where games really start to matter; and basketball is just starting.  Every aspect of sport can be seen, experienced, cherished, blah blah blah all in one month.  It rocks.

Today’s discussion from the world of sports is the idea of excellence vs. greatness.  First some definitions.

Excellence: The grown up word for doing it the best.  People like to see excellence.  The best example of excellence is the San Antonio Spurs.  Watching them play reminds me of doing a very specific drill to learn how to run an offense.  In this drill, the offense would run its plays, or sets, or whatever it was supposed to do without any defensive players on the court.  You just worked on going to the right spots, making the right passes, getting the good shots.  Then doing it again until you can run the offense in your sleep.  That is the Spurs.  It is like the defense is not even there.  They just do their thing, and make it look easy.  That is excellence. 

Greatness: The grown up word for Legen------------(if swung that way I would totally be into to NPH)------dary.  Greatness is like porn.  Hard to define but you know it when you see it (thank you Supreme Court for helping with my analogy).  Greatness causes people to lose their minds (in the good way, not the need a lobotomy way).  The San Francisco Giants are a great example of this.  This is a baseball team that is not really all that good.  They have a few good players (for the locals who are fuming at my only referring to the better players as good, look at Mad Bum’s stats in the regular season.  Good, not great), a really good manager, and a good front office.  But something happens to them if they somehow find themselves playing in October.  They become magic.  Maybe that is what greatness really is.  When someone(s) transforms themselves, and/or performs in such a way that can only be described as magic. That is greatness.

People who strive for, and succeed at, excellence see the universe of rules that governs their world.  They know the goal.  They have a plan.  They execute the plan.  They achieve the goal, and they do it better (in whatever way better is defined within that world) than everyone else.  Excellence is doing it the right way perfectly.

People who achieve greatness look at the rules of the specific universe and gafaw (in order to truly understand a gafaw, imagine a man standing in the face of a hurricane that is throwing hot lava.  As the fit hits the shan, the man leans his head back and lets out a booming sound from deep down in the cockles of the soul.  The sound is a cross between a laugh and a threat.).  They toss the rules aside and proceed to achieve the goal in a way that no one has ever heard of before.  If excellence is doing it the right way, then greatness is creating the right way.  Most attempters of greatness go mad.  Those ones that don’t, become legends.

Which do you want to be, excellent or great?

On the day of my wedding, a certain coach for whom I have great respect (despite the fact that he broke the rule.  The one rule.  There was only one, and it was broken and only I picked up on it and I won’t tell anyone what it was except for a certain other person who played a sport for which I have absolutely no respect but he/she/it is sworn to secrecy and you can tell how important this sentence is because I am not degrading it with any CJ punctuation or any of that cuz I am lazy #youth(wow that was a cool rant that had inside rants from no less than 3 of my different worlds in which I live))()()()(j)(u)(s)(t)(b)(e)(c)(a)(u)(s)(e) wished excellence upon my marriage.  That wish always felt just a little bit off to me.  It is like wearing a shirt that is just 1/6 of a size too small.  For the most part it fits, but is just ever so slightly off.  I think that my offness stemmed from the fact that I have absolutely no desire for excellence.  Really.  I am being serious here.  If I ever end up excellent at anything, it was not intentional and I apologize.  What I want, what I desire, what I yearn for is greatness.  I have not achieved it yet….then again maybe I have.  Or maybe i’VE already gone mad.  I will let my autobiographer decide if he ever gets around to actually writing the book.

When I look at Cole and Logan (Ollie is a little t0o young for me to determine how his life is going to go.  As a general rule I like to let kids have 5-6 years of carefree happiness before I decide who they are, and who they will be), I see one kid who will undoubtedly be great, and one who will surely be excellent.  I am enjoying watching them play it out.

Fine, an update on boring medical stuff.  Cole is doing well.  Hair is funky.  Labs are good.  This week we actually have a rare week where not one single medicine is required for an entire 5 days.  Pretty cool.  Next week we start another round of treatment, but in the meantime raise your glasses and take a quick drink cuz they are watching you. (Side note: The best part of my blogging experience is letting my computer try to spell check my post.  I did not know that computers could sigh in exasperation, but come to find out they can.)