Eye on the real prize

Okay, I just love Derek Fisher.  One of the Lakers’ most senior players, he is my favorite not just because he’s great, but because he plays (and lives) with so much heart, so much love—and you can just see it and feel it.

Wherever the series goes (and obviously I hope it goes to the Lakers), playing away in Boston is a tough place to win a game on the road.  Kobe may be the “star,” but he was cold last night and Fisher won that game for his team.

In the post-game interview, standing on the court, Fisher had tears in his eyes as he expressed how much he loves his team and helping his team win.  We all have our heroes, but I can’t relate to Kobe in his often super-human skills and somewhat remote emotional presence; however, Fisher is a person I can look to and say, “I want to be more like him.”

Baseball, sex, math and OCD

I’ve never been much of  a baseball fan, perhaps owing to my Ferdinand-like experiences out in right field as a child, yet as we make our way into the classic fall days of the pennant race it seemed like a good time to talk baseball.

At some sort of strange mystical level, I am intrigued that the American pastime is founded on the shapes of the diamond (a symbol of the individual self) and the sphere (a symbol of the totality of the individual and collective SELF).  I grew up in Chicago, on the north side, and the Cubs might also account for my lack of enthusiasm about baseball (despite the romance of the Cubs, let’s face it, they simply never win, and that’s easier to deal with as a grown-up—and even then, not for all grown-ups—than it was as a kid).  To cap things off, my first game down at Wrigley Field went to twenty-seven innings (some would call that a classic game, for me that was a whole lot of nothing happening for a very long time).