Speaker 1: Pushkin early nineteen sixty five, Harold Silvester was a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old basketball star in a segregated New Orleans school system.
Speaker 1: He played for Saint Augustine High School. They were the
Speaker 1: best high school basketball team in Louisiana, at least the
Speaker 1: best in the league for black kids. They never faced
Speaker 1: the white kids, so no one can actually say who
Speaker 1: was the best. But the priests who ran Saint Ogg
Speaker 1: were pushing for integration. They wanted to challenge the state's
Speaker 1: best white team, Jesuit High also in New Orleans. And finally,
Speaker 1: our principal advice principle, we're able to negotiate this game.
Speaker 1: That's Harold talking about one of the most intense basketball
Speaker 1: games ever played. You know, we played on a Friday.
Speaker 1: Malcolm X was assassinated that Monday, you know, and we're
Speaker 1: playing and what our skunsilers the first integrated athletic contest
Speaker 1: in the history of the state of Louisia. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I had that kind of cloud, you know over it.
Speaker 1: Some of the white parents protested, and two of the
Speaker 1: Jesuit starters refused to play. The priests decided that they
Speaker 1: needed to play the game in an empty gym nobody
Speaker 1: was invited except parents and faculty, you know, So that
Speaker 1: was a kind of sparse crowd. It was the sort
Speaker 1: of game that they make movies about, and they did
Speaker 1: much later. It was called passing Glory. So we'll scrolling
Speaker 1: you people out there and fall fall, the fall, and
Speaker 1: you gotta put it in you playing these guys. Then
Speaker 1: how come you're playing I'm like they made out of porcela.
Speaker 1: You scared to bump up against the Mics team. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you something, they don't rob off. Harold Sylvester
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest players on his team and
Speaker 1: the best. He usually did the intimidating, but the white
Speaker 1: guy who was guarding him was a different beast. Billy
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald was his name. Harold knew him by reputation. I
Speaker 1: certainly knew who he was, Yeah, because he was you know,
Speaker 1: he had a couple of other cats, you know, were
Speaker 1: the big guys. Man. It didn't matter that there was
Speaker 1: no crowd. Billy Fitzgerald played like the whole world was watching,
Speaker 1: with a fearlessness Harold had never seen. He was among
Speaker 1: the toughest players I've ever played. Kids. You know, you
Speaker 1: know that once his mind is on something, he's on
Speaker 1: the lenny. When you say he was tough, like, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? Like? Was he physical? What was it
Speaker 1: like to be against him? Anyway you can think it tough?
Speaker 1: Was Bill Fitzgerald? His demeanor, the look on his face
Speaker 1: always felt like he was going to bite your head off. No, no,
Speaker 1: no question. You know, if the competition with Billy, you
Speaker 1: know you in for sight of your life. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to better characterize the same. Two black priests
Speaker 1: who set up the basketball game against the white kids
Speaker 1: had a plan for Harold Sylvester to integrate big time
Speaker 1: Southern college basketball. Tulane University had never had a black
Speaker 1: basketball player. There was still a wall between black athletes
Speaker 1: and white southern college sports. The priests wanted Harold to
Speaker 1: help knock it down. But when he got to the
Speaker 1: other side, he found something more intimidating than the color barrier.
Speaker 1: He found Billy Fitzgerald, the intense white guy from the
Speaker 1: Jesuit High school, had gone on to play for Tulane.
Speaker 1: Now they were teammates, and being Billy Fitzgerald's teammate was
Speaker 1: almost worse than playing against him, because now he was
Speaker 1: wearing you out every day. There were two anything that
Speaker 1: books to make sure that you were playing you're very best. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He always assisted that you you're all you know. And
Speaker 1: I think those of us to put alongside of him
Speaker 1: as well as against him, you always respected that. If
Speaker 1: Dylan was a wild he gave it everything you heared.
Speaker 1: So he had the capacity to scare his teammates. You did.
Speaker 1: I've got a special interest in Billy Fitzgerald, as you
Speaker 1: might be guessing, But Harold Silvester is his own story too.
Speaker 1: After Tulane, he left New Orleans and made a career
Speaker 1: as an actor. You've seen him in something an officer
Speaker 1: and a gentleman maybe or married with children. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, he wrote the script for Passing Glory, the
Speaker 1: movie about that basketball game played without a crowd. The
Speaker 1: movie took certain liberties, like just about every film set
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, the actors all sound like they're from Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and there seemed to him to be no way to
Speaker 1: capture the intensity of the character based on Billy Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: So Harold and Ventnor for him a scary racist dad.
Speaker 1: You get off that floss on someone for him to fight?
Speaker 1: Are you coming? Or do I have to drag you off.
Speaker 1: But I check go through life, you know, without talking
Speaker 1: about the tough people that I've known, you know, and
Speaker 1: he is amongst the toughest. And so so when I
Speaker 1: leave that to plug into that tough reservoir, I go
Speaker 1: to Bill Fitzgerald. You know, he's not a forgettable guy.
Speaker 1: Not a forgettable guy. Harold assumed that Billy Fitzgerald would
Speaker 1: go on to become a professional athlete. If I told
Speaker 1: you he was going to end up being a high
Speaker 1: school coach, would that have surprised you? It would have,
Speaker 1: But you could imagine it. I can imagine, and I
Speaker 1: can imagine if I knew how tough he was, then
Speaker 1: I would have gone somewhere else, to school, that is,
Speaker 1: to any school where Billy Fitzgerald was not the coach.
Speaker 1: Harold knew enough to be scared. I did not. I'm
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis, and this is against the Rules. A show
Speaker 1: about various authority figures in American life. This season is
Speaker 1: about the rise of coaches. This episode is about the
Speaker 1: power of a coach to change a life, in this
Speaker 1: case mine the winner of nineteen seventy three. Billy Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: takes us by some prize we know nothing about him
Speaker 1: except that he plays baseball for an Oakland A's minor
Speaker 1: league team. Yes, baseball, but for some reason, he's spending
Speaker 1: the offseason coaching eighth grade boys basketball at our school.
Speaker 1: Our practices are easy, sort of like recess. The eighth
Speaker 1: graders practices are not. Coach Fitzgerald is this six foot
Speaker 1: four inch man with the face of a street fighter.
Speaker 1: He hollers at the eighth graders for three straight hours,
Speaker 1: then runs them till they drop. As they lay gasping
Speaker 1: around his feet, he pulls a book from his back
Speaker 1: pocket and reads them quotes from Bobby Knight, the scary
Speaker 1: basketball coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. Let you hear, Let
Speaker 1: you hear. Bobby Knight just threw his chair were across
Speaker 1: a three throw line. There's a good chance Bobby Knights,
Speaker 1: but a jackets this basketball game. Seventh graders all know
Speaker 1: who Bobby Knight is, but this new coach seems bigger
Speaker 1: and scarier. After a few days, one of my teammates says,
Speaker 1: oh God, please don't ever let me get to the
Speaker 1: eighth grade. But eighth grade is inevitable. So is Billy Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: He and his wife have a son and decide that
Speaker 1: minor league baseball is no place to raise a child.
Speaker 1: We don't know any of that. We don't know about
Speaker 1: the wife, we don't know about the kid. All we
Speaker 1: know is that this terrifying man is no longer the
Speaker 1: eighth grade coach, but the head baseball and basketball coach
Speaker 1: at our high school. The Isidore Newman School. Newman's one
Speaker 1: of those small, wealthy private schools that every American city
Speaker 1: has at least two of, one of them called Country Day.
Speaker 1: Our school is not the most obvious place to create
Speaker 1: a training camp for Spartan Warriors, but that's what this
Speaker 1: new coach sets out to do. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: tell you everything that happened over the next five years,
Speaker 1: in part because I've already written a little book about
Speaker 1: it called Coach. But I want to tell you two
Speaker 1: stories incidents, really, just to give you a flavor. First incident.
Speaker 1: It's two years later, and Billy Fitzgerald has just become
Speaker 1: my coach. I'm now fourteen years old and a total mess.
Speaker 1: To say that I'm troubled isn't quite right. Inert is
Speaker 1: more like it. My teachers can't understand why I have
Speaker 1: zero interests in what they're saying. My own mother one
Speaker 1: day breaks down and more or less admits that I'm
Speaker 1: ruining her life. And my mom's great. It's not her fault.
Speaker 1: I just don't much care about anything except performing the
Speaker 1: occasional acts of vandalism. The only human being on the
Speaker 1: planet that I don't feel I can safely ignore is
Speaker 1: my baseball coach. I'd quit playing baseball a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: but Fitz found me at school one day and asked
Speaker 1: me to come out for his summer team. I'm one
Speaker 1: of the younger players, and he's new to me. He's
Speaker 1: indeed tough, He's indeed scary when he wants to be.
Speaker 1: He suspends kids who break the rules, no matter how
Speaker 1: good they are. He never lays a hand on a player,
Speaker 1: but he breaks all kinds of things, especially after games
Speaker 1: that don't go well. No object in the locker room
Speaker 1: is safe. He destroys an ancient wall clock with a
Speaker 1: catcher's mitt and a big orange water jug with a
Speaker 1: single swing of an aluminum bat. He takes us out
Speaker 1: onto a hard field at ten o'clock at night after
Speaker 1: a game. There we slide until our uniforms are red
Speaker 1: and brown with dirt and blood. Then he declares that
Speaker 1: they aren't to be washed until we meet his expectations.
Speaker 1: Ten games later. Our uniforms are so filthy that people
Speaker 1: will come to our games just to see them. We
Speaker 1: look less like a team than a cult of insane
Speaker 1: rich kids who refuse to bathe. But now, once, and
Speaker 1: I really mean not once, do I have the feeling
Speaker 1: that this was about anything but me and my teammates.
Speaker 1: Coach Fitz never talks about himself. He never tells us
Speaker 1: how close he got to playing in the big leagues
Speaker 1: for the Oakland A's, for example, other people talk about it.
Speaker 1: His young players spend lots of time swapping stories about him,
Speaker 1: crazy stories which everyone repeats his gospel. Then, in high school,
Speaker 1: Fits refused to ride the team bus after they lost
Speaker 1: and instead walked many miles across the city of New
Speaker 1: Orleans in his catcher's gear. That rusty stab who went
Speaker 1: on to have a famous big league career, made the
Speaker 1: mistake of taunting Fits, and Fitz ran out onto the
Speaker 1: field and beat the crap out of him. Then there
Speaker 1: was the most incredible story, the one we love the best,
Speaker 1: that during a college basketball game, Fitz had not only
Speaker 1: singlehandedly kicked Pete Marevich's ass, but also beating up Marevich's dad,
Speaker 1: the LSU coach, in the same brawl. To this day,
Speaker 1: Pete Marevich holds the college hoops scoring record. Getting into
Speaker 1: a fight with him, well, it felt then like getting
Speaker 1: into a with Lebron James would now. It made Fits
Speaker 1: a legend in our minds. The incident that summer night
Speaker 1: that I want to tell you about. It's made possible
Speaker 1: by all these other stories. Our baseball teams actually very good,
Speaker 1: but we're playing the only team in the league that
Speaker 1: might be better. I'm the new young pitcher, and I
Speaker 1: really don't belong in the game. Our older, better pitcher
Speaker 1: has it all under control, but his fate would have it.
Speaker 1: Fits is forced to pull our older pitcher in the
Speaker 1: last inning with one out and us up two to one,
Speaker 1: and them with runners on first and third and lots
Speaker 1: of grown ups in the stands screaming and yelling and
Speaker 1: going bat shit crazy. I'm not an imposing sight. I've
Speaker 1: not so much hit puberty as delta a glancing blow.
Speaker 1: I look like a scoop of vanilla ice cream, maybe
Speaker 1: with pickup sticks jutting out of the sides. The other
Speaker 1: team has facial hair and muscles. They're actually laughing and
Speaker 1: dancing with glee. As I walk out to the mound,
Speaker 1: Fitz just stands there, looking like he wants to punch someone.
Speaker 1: The situation's terrifying, but strangely, I'm not terrified because Coach
Speaker 1: Fits is on my side, and he's by far the
Speaker 1: most terrifying thing in the entire city. And he looks
Speaker 1: at me and says, there is no one I'd rather
Speaker 1: have in this situation, which is total bullshit, but such
Speaker 1: is the force of the man that I believe him
Speaker 1: every word. Then he hands me the ball and says,
Speaker 1: stick it up their ass. Before he leaves me out
Speaker 1: there alone, he nods towards the kid with a little
Speaker 1: mustache on third base and says, pick his ass off.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the words for how I felt just then,
Speaker 1: but I did later. I'm about to show the world
Speaker 1: and myself what I can do. The strength of this
Speaker 1: coach was inside me like a superpower. I picked the
Speaker 1: kid's ass off third base, then stuck the ball up
Speaker 1: the ass of some other kid, and we won. But
Speaker 1: that's not the full magic of this moment. The magic
Speaker 1: is what Billy Fitzgerald uses it to do. After the game,
Speaker 1: he gives a little speech to the team about the
Speaker 1: nature of courage and how if you want to know
Speaker 1: what it looks like, you just need to watch me pitch.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing myself being described in an entirely original way
Speaker 1: and wanting to believe it that incident is more the
Speaker 1: beginning of a longer story than the end, because what
Speaker 1: that coach did in that moment is to hand me
Speaker 1: the start of a new identity by giving me a
Speaker 1: new narrative. I was no longer this pointless human being,
Speaker 1: this nightmare of inertia. I was brave, a hero, almost,
Speaker 1: and I ran with it. Four years later, when the
Speaker 1: letter arrives saying that I'd gotten into Princeton, I run
Speaker 1: to the school to find Coach Fitzgerald to let him
Speaker 1: know not to say look what I did, to say,
Speaker 1: look what you made it possible for me to do.
Speaker 1: At any point in the decade after my high school graduation,
Speaker 1: you could drop in to see Billy Fitzgerald at the
Speaker 1: Newman School and feel that you were basically in the
Speaker 1: same world that I grew up in. You know, if
Speaker 1: we were in practice, you know he would he got
Speaker 1: to a point where he didn't have to tell me
Speaker 1: to go run a line, Gerald, I would just go
Speaker 1: and run it myself, because I knew that was the
Speaker 1: next thing out of his mouth. Philip Skelding played basketball
Speaker 1: for coach Fitzgerald in nineteen ninety. Okay, I'll just go run,
Speaker 1: you know, and beat him to it. Save his breath,
Speaker 1: you know, which is kind of like that whole like
Speaker 1: internalizing his voice thing. A few years later, Philip would
Speaker 1: win a Rhodes scholarship then go on to become a doctor.
Speaker 1: But he's talking about when he was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: just another kid trying to meet this coach's great expectations.
Speaker 1: One night, his team lost in the championship game of
Speaker 1: a tournament. It was a game they all knew they
Speaker 1: should have won. So this bus ride was just a miserable,
Speaker 1: quiet experience, I'm sure, with all of us just pouting
Speaker 1: in listening to our walkman's and trying not to laugh
Speaker 1: too loud if anybody said anything, because that would have
Speaker 1: just sent him off the handle. But we got back
Speaker 1: to locker room, and we would get into the locker
Speaker 1: room like always and sit around and wait for a
Speaker 1: while while he collected his thoughts. It was like sitting
Speaker 1: at the base of Vesuvius watching the smoke, waiting, and
Speaker 1: he came in and we had gotten a trophy for
Speaker 1: winning a second place, which was a pretty big trophy. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: maybe two feet tie off the table there and they're
Speaker 1: just sitting on the table, and he came in and
Speaker 1: paint around a little bit like he was typically going
Speaker 1: to do when jingled the coins in his pocket, and
Speaker 1: pause every now and again and just make eye contact
Speaker 1: with one of us and then probably like you know,
Speaker 1: do like a halfway side xho and keep the pacing going.
Speaker 1: And he did that for a minute or two to
Speaker 1: build a suspense, and then he just said, y'all know
Speaker 1: what I think a second place and he picked up
Speaker 1: the trophy. You felt the heat before you saw the fire.
Speaker 1: Everyone in that room felt it. I bet everyone in
Speaker 1: that room still feels it. I remember it like yesterday.
Speaker 1: There was a humongous trophy. It was really nice. That's
Speaker 1: Randy Livingston. He was on that team too. He'd go
Speaker 1: on to become Gatorade National Player of the Year, the
Speaker 1: best basketball player in the entire country. He'd played for
Speaker 1: eleven years in the NBA, but Fitz never treated him differently.
Speaker 1: He treated him as just another identity to be created.
Speaker 1: He literally smashed that trophy into pieces and just said,
Speaker 1: we're not playing for second place, and I will never
Speaker 1: forget the head. You know, back in the day that
Speaker 1: had the man on the top of the trophy and
Speaker 1: he's in a shooting or he's in a standing position.
Speaker 1: The head of that trophy miss one of the players
Speaker 1: head by inches and it would have wiped him out.
Speaker 1: That's how forceful he smashed that trophy. The little man
Speaker 1: on top of the big trophy went flying through the air.
Speaker 1: Different kids reacted differently to the eruption. That was a
Speaker 1: memorable one because I think there were some kids who
Speaker 1: maybe left a team over that. In fact, but I
Speaker 1: thought it was great. I didn't want to be second
Speaker 1: place either. Several kids actually told their parents about the
Speaker 1: trophy that Fits had demolished. Something had changed. These moments
Speaker 1: were no longer just things that happened between a coach
Speaker 1: and his players. A third party had entered the conversation.
Speaker 1: It must be some level of just just discomfort with
Speaker 1: that much intensity, because it is really intense. I mean
Speaker 1: he was a really intense guy then, but I know
Speaker 1: there are some kids who left the team or whatever
Speaker 1: had issues or the parents, you know, speaking for their kids.
Speaker 1: So I'm not letting you play for that guy. He's
Speaker 1: a maniac. But for me and many of others, I
Speaker 1: think it more kind of stealed our resolve. I mean
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, this is this is something we can do.
Speaker 1: We can do better than this, we can do better
Speaker 1: than this. That was how I had felt. But now
Speaker 1: some kids didn't feel that way, and they must have
Speaker 1: sensed that the coach was vulnerable. Because if you took
Speaker 1: his most dramatic moments and you replayed them in your
Speaker 1: family kitchen, they felt different than they had in the
Speaker 1: locker room. Taking anything out of context can make it
Speaker 1: different in terms of how people interpret it. And I
Speaker 1: think we had essentially signed up for it, and we
Speaker 1: had all, you know, voted with our feet and said like,
Speaker 1: we're okay with this. We want to you know, work
Speaker 1: together as a team and see what we can accomplish.
Speaker 1: Would did you do? What did you do with the
Speaker 1: pieces of the trophy? So yeah, the little man who
Speaker 1: is at the top of any basketball trophy, that's just
Speaker 1: sitting there with a ball getting ready to shoot, he
Speaker 1: went flying intact, but he separated from the trophy and
Speaker 1: went flying off and landed in the lap of the
Speaker 1: guy next to me, and we stuck him up on
Speaker 1: the ducting of the air conditioning that we could all
Speaker 1: reach as tall guys, and we just tapped him on
Speaker 1: the way out the door every time for the rest
Speaker 1: of the season, a sort of a reminder, let's just
Speaker 1: play our best game, touching the little man on the
Speaker 1: way out the door. They played better and better. They
Speaker 1: end up winning the Louisiana State championship, which shocked even them.
Speaker 1: Then they do it again the next year and the
Speaker 1: year after that. Their higher standard becomes second nature, but
Speaker 1: only for the players who stayed and let the coach
Speaker 1: work his magic. The players who left, well, they missed out,
Speaker 1: but they gave you a hint where the world was heading.
Speaker 1: More than a decade passes, it's now two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: I get two phone calls about Billy Fitzgerald, one right
Speaker 1: after the other, David Pointer calling from Michael David. The
Speaker 1: first comes from a former Newman basketball player named David Pointer.
Speaker 1: How are you? He set out to raise the money
Speaker 1: to remodel the school Jim and name it for coach Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: Because it's fitz David finds the fundraising easy. You know,
Speaker 1: fitz didn't sit down and put on a blackboard the
Speaker 1: values that he thought he needed to impart upon us.
Speaker 1: And maybe ten years later we finally figured out what
Speaker 1: those values were. Former players said things to David. He
Speaker 1: taught me life. Parents said things to David like he
Speaker 1: did all the hard work all in. Couldn't agree with
Speaker 1: you more. Can't believe the school is letting you do it,
Speaker 1: Which brings me to the second phone call from a
Speaker 1: former teammate of mine. He said he'd heard that the
Speaker 1: Newman School was on the verge of firing Billy Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: Some parents had complained to the headmaster. The headmaster was sympathetic.
Speaker 1: How did Newman get itself into the position where it
Speaker 1: listened to those parents? Oh, fundraising. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: Newman in particular to you. No, I think it's money
Speaker 1: gets money. It was the money, but it was more
Speaker 1: than the money. It was about what people think coaches
Speaker 1: are for. I flew back to New Orleans to try
Speaker 1: to make sense of the situation. Eight parents of current
Speaker 1: players had formed a coalition. A few of them were
Speaker 1: rich people who might give the school a lot of money.
Speaker 1: They'd gone to the headmaster to complain, but not about
Speaker 1: anything Coach Fits had done. That was one of the
Speaker 1: strange things about the situation, because it turned out coach
Speaker 1: Fits it sort of mellowed. His days of breaking trophies
Speaker 1: were now over. His crime seemed to be that he
Speaker 1: held kids accountable, suspended them when they violated training rules,
Speaker 1: for example, or pointed out that they put on ten
Speaker 1: pounds of fat when they promised to lose fifteen. The
Speaker 1: other odd thing was that one of his teams had
Speaker 1: just won the Louisiana State baseball championship. In sports, it's
Speaker 1: almost a natural law. Winning teams are happy and losing
Speaker 1: teams are not. After the fact, everyone says the team
Speaker 1: won because of its great chemistry. But which usually happened
Speaker 1: is that winning has just made everybody like each other more.
Speaker 1: But here was a team that had just won it
Speaker 1: all and it was falling apart. It was Marti Gras
Speaker 1: time at the time. I remember her. You know, there
Speaker 1: was drinking going on. There were young kids that were
Speaker 1: doing things they shouldn't have been doing, just like anywhere.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Blish was a junior on Newman's winning baseball team
Speaker 1: that year. It was a Lord of the Flies situation
Speaker 1: and he was Ralph Piggy and a few of the
Speaker 1: other younger players were on his side, but scared to
Speaker 1: say it because the older players, the seniors, were in revolt.
Speaker 1: You know, as high schoolers, we signed training rules that
Speaker 1: said we wouldn't drink like that's that's asinine to begin with, right,
Speaker 1: So anyway, so we signed training rules to not drink
Speaker 1: alcohol at sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years old. You mean
Speaker 1: it's asinine because you shouldn't have to sign a document exactly,
Speaker 1: like who should be drinking like that in public? Who
Speaker 1: should be drinking like that? Whatever? That's not you know, right,
Speaker 1: it's not my kids or whatever. But my point is is,
Speaker 1: like fits did held people accountable for for rules broken?
Speaker 1: And yeah, was there some vulgarity involved? Of course? Was
Speaker 1: there some talks where they were intense? Absolutely? So, yes,
Speaker 1: this is New Orleans and coach Fitz asked his students
Speaker 1: to forego their god given right to get shitfaced during
Speaker 1: Marty Raw. But this kid, Jeremy Blish, he wasn't some
Speaker 1: anti social leader of a child temperance movement. He just
Speaker 1: wanted to commit to really work hard at something. His
Speaker 1: dad was a five foot six inch cardiologist. No one
Speaker 1: in his family had ever played sports, but Coach Fitz
Speaker 1: was teaching him how to push himself as he had
Speaker 1: never done before. And looking back, I had no idea
Speaker 1: what my identity was, right, I mean, we're we still
Speaker 1: look for these things every day. But it was a
Speaker 1: perfect opportunity to put your foot down and say, no,
Speaker 1: this is what I want to do. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: Jeremy Blish and my identity is I want to go
Speaker 1: play college baseball. You know, I want to put myself
Speaker 1: in the best position to try and play college baseball.
Speaker 1: So I took a chance. I took a chance on
Speaker 1: an identity that at that point I had no tangible
Speaker 1: feeling of what it was. Coach Fitz had something important
Speaker 1: to say to his players, and Jeremy was internalizing it.
Speaker 1: The message was always the same, and it was always consistent,
Speaker 1: don't be good, be great at the end of the
Speaker 1: phone call. Until years ago, until I was in pitching
Speaker 1: in San Francisco for the ace, don't be good, be great.
Speaker 1: Jeremy wound up not only going to Stanford on a
Speaker 1: baseball scholarship, but being a first round draft pick of
Speaker 1: the New York Yankees, he would one day pitch in
Speaker 1: the big leagues. On his high school team, he was
Speaker 1: by far the best player. In a normal environment, his
Speaker 1: teammates would have been following his lead. But this was
Speaker 1: no longer a normal environment. Now I want to tell
Speaker 1: you my second story about Coach Fits, or second incident.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy six, nine months after I've established myself
Speaker 1: as a hero in my own mind, I'm now a
Speaker 1: high school sophomore pitching for the varsity baseball team. Early
Speaker 1: in the season, during Mardi Gras break, I leave New
Speaker 1: Orleans with my parents. We're going on a ski trip
Speaker 1: and I'm going to miss a week of practice. There's
Speaker 1: no written rule that says you can't do this. It's
Speaker 1: school break, but I sense an unwritten one. Coach Fits
Speaker 1: is not pleased. The day I return, he throws me
Speaker 1: right into a game against a really good team. The
Speaker 1: look on his face as he hands me the ball says,
Speaker 1: I hope it goes well if you're out there, but
Speaker 1: it really shouldn't. It doesn't go well. I can't find
Speaker 1: the plate up to that moment. Fitz has not said
Speaker 1: one word to me about my ski trip. But as
Speaker 1: I throw ball three, I hear his voice. Where was
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis during Marty Gras the voice booms from our dugout,
Speaker 1: I try not to look at him, but out of
Speaker 1: the corner of my eye, I can see him pacing,
Speaker 1: jangling the keys in his pocket. I walk the first
Speaker 1: batter and the second. Now he's really hollering. Everyone else
Speaker 1: was at practice, but where was Michael Lewis? The other
Speaker 1: team can hear him, The people in the stands can
Speaker 1: hear him. More to the point I can hear him,
Speaker 1: and all I can think is, please, don't say skiing, Please,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you where Michael Lewis was skiing. He packs
Speaker 1: into that single word an idea that usually requires an
Speaker 1: entire speech for him to convey. Privilege corrupts. You're always
Speaker 1: doing what money can buy instead of what duty demands.
Speaker 1: You're always skiing. You're living your life as if nothing
Speaker 1: matters so much that you should suffer for it. But
Speaker 1: now something does matter to me so much that I
Speaker 1: will suffer for it. Baseball, or more exactly, coach fits.
Speaker 1: He's pouring himself into me. And even the fifteen year
Speaker 1: old me, in rare moments of clarity, even I can
Speaker 1: see the positive effects. But there in the dugout, my
Speaker 1: coach is still on a roll. Can someone please tell
Speaker 1: me why Michael Lewis thinks it's okay to leave town
Speaker 1: and go and go. Please don't say skiing again. That's
Speaker 1: my final thought before the one hopper back to the
Speaker 1: mound hits me in the face and knocks me out.
Speaker 1: When I come to, I'm looking up at Coach fits.
Speaker 1: My nose is broken in five places. But I do
Speaker 1: not feel wronged. I feel cared for in a new
Speaker 1: way by this coach. I mean he cares enough to
Speaker 1: save me from a lifetime. I was skiing on the
Speaker 1: way to the hospital. I tell my mother that the
Speaker 1: next time the family goes skiing or any place else,
Speaker 1: they'll be going without me, and she just smiles because
Speaker 1: I think she kind of gets it, all right. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about what happened between the time I
Speaker 1: left Newman School and the time I came back, what
Speaker 1: had changed parents. In the middle of the crisis with
Speaker 1: his state championship baseball team back in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: I found Billy Fitzgerald in his office alive. Surprisingly, parents,
Speaker 1: parents and the culture. So how many games did your
Speaker 1: mom and dad come to? Well, how many games did
Speaker 1: in that period did the parents come to? Well, not
Speaker 1: only did they come to the games and you sit
Speaker 1: on the sidelines and on the fences, but they were
Speaker 1: coming to practice, and they were wanting to know what
Speaker 1: you were running and why you were running it, why
Speaker 1: are you calling that pitch? If he sounds more relaxed
Speaker 1: then you expected, it's in part because he truly had mellowed.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, he'd always had the ability to
Speaker 1: seem extremely calm, which was why it was so unsettling
Speaker 1: when he wasn't all of a sudden. You have parents
Speaker 1: doing things they weren't doing before. It's not only that,
Speaker 1: it's the assumption that they know how to coach. So
Speaker 1: they got more and more involved in their kids little
Speaker 1: league and you know, bitty league basketball and whatever else,
Speaker 1: and so they became these experts where they thought that
Speaker 1: it was their right to say, well, you know, my
Speaker 1: son ought to be hit, and third, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he crushes the ball. It just got crazy. So what's
Speaker 1: the price the kids pay for this? Oh my god? Well,
Speaker 1: They're caught literally in the middle, and there is absolutely
Speaker 1: no way out. The kid was trapped, you know. And
Speaker 1: I tried to tell kids, Look, I love my dad,
Speaker 1: but I knew my dad didn't know everything about everything,
Speaker 1: and you have to decide, you know, for yourself, how
Speaker 1: you're going to manage this, and they couldn't. Obviously I
Speaker 1: had questions, and I'm sure you do too. What I
Speaker 1: wanted to know was what happened each time he was
Speaker 1: hauled into the headmaster's office. What happened in there at
Speaker 1: the same time he's being memorialized on the school gym.
Speaker 1: Walk me through what that looked like if I was
Speaker 1: a fly on the wall just watching what happens in
Speaker 1: those meetings. So I walk in and it's just the
Speaker 1: two of us, and I intentionally walk in under the
Speaker 1: guise of you are going to remain calm, you are
Speaker 1: not going to raise your voice, you are going to
Speaker 1: have a civil conversation, but you are going to set
Speaker 1: the record straight as well. Then I basically am listening
Speaker 1: to the headmasters say that several parents have come in
Speaker 1: and one parent says you said his son was fat.
Speaker 1: Another says, you belittled my son in the baseball meeting
Speaker 1: that you had after the last game of the season,
Speaker 1: and it goes on. It's a kind of a rap sheet.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a rap sheet. I'd present the
Speaker 1: other side of the story, but the other side never
Speaker 1: left the shadows. No one who wanted to coach fired
Speaker 1: ever confronted him in person or in writing. They're a
Speaker 1: bunch of well to do people used to having their way,
Speaker 1: and so they took their case straight to the higher
Speaker 1: court where money could buy a decision. They never even
Speaker 1: tried to grapple with the coach himself or what he
Speaker 1: stood for. My job, as I perceived it was, Look,
Speaker 1: I've got to educate you on how to swing, how
Speaker 1: to throw, how to work a hitter, you know, But
Speaker 1: I'm also teaching you that, hey, you know you're going
Speaker 1: to strike out, You're gonna fail in life, and you've
Speaker 1: got to find a way to deal with the failure
Speaker 1: and use the failure to get better and to be successful.
Speaker 1: So I didn't feel like I could let anybody off
Speaker 1: the hook. Well, the minute you let them off the hook,
Speaker 1: you lose the ability to teach them about the failure exactly.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the big issue, and not letting them
Speaker 1: off the hook makes them uncomfortable, right, and making them
Speaker 1: uncomfortable is what nobody is comfortable is nobody wants see us.
Speaker 1: The office in which i'd found Coach fits all those
Speaker 1: years ago, Well, it looked more like a closet. The
Speaker 1: gym was still under construction, and plaques with inspirational quotes
Speaker 1: were stacked in a box by his desk. I pulled
Speaker 1: one out, Victor Frankel's famous line, what is to give
Speaker 1: light must endure burning? Coach Fitz laughed, but not a
Speaker 1: happy laugh, and said we won't be putting that one
Speaker 1: up again. Before I left him, I couldn't resist asking
Speaker 1: about the stories about him we'd told his kids. Was
Speaker 1: it true? Did he really walk home across New Orleans
Speaker 1: every night in his catcher's gear after his team lost?
Speaker 1: Had he really gone after Rusty Stab? And did he
Speaker 1: really fight Pete Marovitch with Marevich's dad hanging from his back?
Speaker 1: I got about halfway through trying to fact check my
Speaker 1: middle school life, and then he started to laugh at me.
Speaker 1: What fool would walk across New Orleans in his catcher's gear?
Speaker 1: He asked, why would he get in a fight with
Speaker 1: Rusty Stab? They went to the same school, and fitz
Speaker 1: was in the eighth grade when Stab was a senior.
Speaker 1: Billy Fitzgerald was scary enough in real life, but we'd
Speaker 1: made him even scarier because we needed him to be
Speaker 1: of one thing. I am totally certain if I'd never
Speaker 1: met Coach Fitz, I'd have never become a writer. It
Speaker 1: would have felt too risky, too hard. But I became
Speaker 1: a writer, and eventually I wrote up the story of
Speaker 1: Coach Fitz, first for the New York Times magazine and
Speaker 1: then as a little book. Writing's hard to predict. You
Speaker 1: work on something and then you throw it out there
Speaker 1: at readers or listeners, and either they get what you
Speaker 1: mean or they don't. A long time ago, Coach Fitz
Speaker 1: sent me a poem that makes a connection between writing
Speaker 1: and pitching. It's called The Pitcher by the American poet
Speaker 1: Robert Francis. Here's how it ends. The others throw to
Speaker 1: be comprehended. He throws to be a moment misunderstood yet
Speaker 1: not too much, not errant, errant, wild, but every seeming aberration, willed,
Speaker 1: not too yet still still to communicate, making the batter
Speaker 1: understand too late. A picture, like a writer is delivering
Speaker 1: a message. Both want the message understood, if in different ways.
Speaker 1: That essay I published about Coach fitz made the batter
Speaker 1: understand too late, and it generated this fantastic outrage not
Speaker 1: towards the coach who pushed kids harder than they ever
Speaker 1: been pushed, towards the people hoping to get the coach fired.
Speaker 1: They got run out of town. More or less. The
Speaker 1: headmaster left the school too, and the school created a
Speaker 1: committee to find a new headmaster and put Billy Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: in charge of it. This is where it all started,
Speaker 1: right here for us eighth grade, nineteen seventy two. So
Speaker 1: another decade passes. Twenty fourteen brings the retirement ceremony for
Speaker 1: coach Billy Fitzgerald. Hundreds of people fly or drive to
Speaker 1: the Newman School. So many people turn up that they
Speaker 1: need to move it outdoors. The ceremony is held on
Speaker 1: the same basketball court where I first watched him holler
Speaker 1: and read from the collected works of Bobby Knight, just
Speaker 1: around the corner from the gym now named for Billy Fitzgerald,
Speaker 1: that you're going to coach, teacher, co worker, and athletic director.
Speaker 1: The four of us are here tonight to tell you
Speaker 1: that you've been a great father. People get up and
Speaker 1: say what he meant to their lives. Thank you. Then
Speaker 1: it's the coach's turn at the podium and he talks
Speaker 1: about coaching. I happen to believe that coaching is teaching
Speaker 1: in its most perfect and rewarding form, no matter the sport,
Speaker 1: coaches give information, wait for a response, and then give
Speaker 1: feedback that response. But as my career progressed, I came
Speaker 1: to believe that coaching means finding ways to awaken our
Speaker 1: students to new and different possibilities. You can see this
Speaker 1: awakening in students eyes as they begin to reach those possibilities.
Speaker 1: So I'm a firm believer in Gerda quote. Treat a
Speaker 1: man as he is, and he remains as he is.
Speaker 1: Treat a man as he can and should be, and
Speaker 1: he will become as he can and should be. This
Speaker 1: has been an incredible run and I can't thank you enough.
Speaker 1: Thank you, coach. It's really not a job for just anyone.
Speaker 1: Oh anyone can step into the role, of course and
Speaker 1: call himself a coach. But it's like a tight rubber suit.
Speaker 1: It takes on the shape whoever's in it. It hides nothing.
Speaker 1: It expands and contracts with the character of the person
Speaker 1: who wears it. In this case, the man makes the clothes.
Speaker 1: This is a strange thing, man. The things that I
Speaker 1: remember about Bill. One of the things that I remember happened,
Speaker 1: what maybe five years ago. Harold Sylvester had gone back
Speaker 1: to New Orleans for a funeral of her friend. He'd
Speaker 1: walked into the church and found himself face to face
Speaker 1: with the man who had seared himself into his imagination
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty five in a basketball game played
Speaker 1: in an empty gym, and Bill came up, and you know,
Speaker 1: we chat up a little bit, and he said, yeah, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I am a little sorry for the way things went down.
Speaker 1: You know back in the day. What was he apologizing for.
Speaker 1: He was apologizing for the times. But he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for what you had to go through. And
Speaker 1: when he said it, I was surprised. I don't remember
Speaker 1: ever having a conversation about race. And I always thought
Speaker 1: that Bill was fair. You know, I have no qualms,
Speaker 1: you know about his toughness or his attitude or whatever
Speaker 1: it was. I admired him. But bottom line is the
Speaker 1: fact that he said it. Lady who could rise a March.
Speaker 1: You know, in my opinion, he was a good guy.
Speaker 1: He's a good guy to have as a friend. I'm
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis. Thanks for listening to Against the Rules. Against
Speaker 1: the Rules is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The
Speaker 1: show's produced by Audrey Dilling and Catherine Girodo, with research
Speaker 1: assistance from Lydia Jeancott and Zooe Wynn. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Julia Barton Mio o'bell is our executive producer. Our theme
Speaker 1: was composed by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by Stellwagon Sinphonette.
Speaker 1: We got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our show was
Speaker 1: recorded by tofur Ruth and Trey Schultz at Northgate Studios
Speaker 1: in Berkeley. Special thanks to the Isidore Newman School for
Speaker 1: providing audio for this episode. As always thanks to Pushkins
Speaker 1: founders Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell. We're down there on
Speaker 1: the baseline and all of a sudden, Billy were asked
Speaker 1: back and punch Us Bogs in the head. You know,
Speaker 1: he just knocks the shit out of him. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying I'm looking around, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: they gonna Remi's pretty big, and and you know, my
Speaker 1: four black friends were gone, you know, And and I'm
Speaker 1: there sensitive by myself, and so so all I see
Speaker 1: is Billy hitting peak and then the lsu Ben's rising
Speaker 1: up and coming at us um. And that was it
Speaker 1: what precipitated this, Like, why did Billy punch Pete Merrims,
Speaker 1: I asked, Billy, you know why not? We we had
Speaker 1: heard that story. We had heard a story where he
Speaker 1: had gotten in a fight, start a fight with Pete
Speaker 1: Marrivage and that there was you know, that he was
Speaker 1: punching marriage and Press Marriviach was on his back and
Speaker 1: it was just like and and I went and asked
Speaker 1: him about it because I knew about it when I
Speaker 1: was playing for him. It was like part of the
Speaker 1: legend of Billy Fitzgerald. And he said, and he said
Speaker 1: to me that never happened. Holy shit, So it did happen.