The Crack of His Bat
I’ll never forget where I was the evening of April 8, 1974. I was in the stands at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, along with 53,774 other cheering fans. It was the night of the Atlanta Braves’ home opener against the Dodgers, and Henry Aaron was chasing Babe Ruth’s career home run record, which had stood for almost four decades.
Dodgers pitcher Al Downing walked Aaron on his first at bat. Aaron’s next chance came in the fourth inning. Downing put his first pitch too low, into the dirt. His second delivery was right down the middle—right in Aaron’s sweet spot. Aaron took his first swing of the evening. I can still hear the crack of the bat.
The ball sailed in a high arc as Aaron took off running. The ball cleared the glove of Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner—then cleared the left center field fence. The crowd exploded in cheers as fireworks exploded overhead. A couple of overeager fans clambered over the wall and ran along with Aaron, cheering him on. His teammates poured out of the dugout and surrounded him, whooping and backslapping. Even Aaron’s mother ran out onto the field and hugged him.
To this day, few people realize the obstacles Aaron faced on his way to breaking Ruth’s record. Those were racially turbulent times, and bigoted fans resented an African-American trying to break Babe Ruth’s record. Aaron received more than a hundred thousand hate letters and death threats, but he refused to be deterred.
It took a man of courage to break Babe Ruth’s home run record—and Henry Aaron was the man.
Ernie Accorsi
Earthy Advice
My friend Ernie Accorsi was the general manager of the NFL’s New York Giants for a decade. Before that, he served as the general manager for the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts. He told me about his first day as a general manager in the National Football League, April 1, 1970.
He had just arrived in the Colts’ office when the player personnel director Upton Bell walked up to him and introduced himself. Bell looked rumpled and hurried, and his words were brief: “Welcome to the Colts. Nobody in this league has any guts.” Actually, he used a different anatomical reference, but “guts” is close enough. “If you have guts,” Bell added, “you will excel in this league.” Then he hurried out of the room.
Accorsi never forgot Bell’s earthy advice. During his years in the NFL, Accorsi always demonstrated courage—the courage to take risks and to take responsibility for unpopular decisions.
A prime example was Accorsi’s 2004 move to acquire Eli Manning as the Giants’ quarterback. Manning was the most coveted player in the 2004 NFL draft, but the San Diego Chargers had the first pick. So Accorsi worked out a deal with San Diego. The Chargers would draft Manning, the Giants would then draft Philip Rivers from North Carolina State and would send Rivers plus three draft picks to the Chargers in trade for Manning. It was an audacious trade—and a controversial one. Sportswriters and fans said Accorsi was out of his mind, that he had given away the store—and during Manning’s first three seasons with the Giants, the critics appeared to have a point.
Toni Monkovic of the New York Times observed that when Accorsi retired at the end of the 2006 season, he was “in danger of being known as the man who threw his legacy away” by giving too much to San Diego in exchange for a rookie QB who didn’t pan out.5 But the very next season, 2007, Manning led the Giants to victory in Super Bowl XLII—and another victory in XLVI to cap the 2012 season.
As Monkovic concluded, Manning “fulfilled the destiny that Accorsi had laid out before him . . . [when he] made his big, bold, gutsy draft-day deal that set this incredible chain of events in motion: the trade that finally landed him his championship quarterback and brought Eli Manning to New York.”6
Accorsi had guts, and as Bell had predicted, Accorsi excelled in the NFL.
Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say
I interviewed General Richard B. Myers about his approach to leadership, and he said, “I grew up in America’s heartland, in Kansas. My teachers and coaches were part of the ‘greatest generation.’ Many of them served in World War II and Korea. They were not boastful about their service; they were simply men and women of quiet integrity. By their actions and through their words, they taught me that integrity means being true to one’s values and principles. It means saying what we mean and meaning what we say. It means holding fast to our honor so that we are trustworthy and incorruptible. To be a leader and a role model, you must be a person of integrity, a person who does what is right.
“I remember working for my dad in his business for six months while I was waiting to go into the Air Force. I think those six months shaped me more than any other one experience in my life. My dad taught me how to deal with customers, superiors, and subordinates. He made honesty and integrity the foundational principles of his business practices. He asked me this simple question: ‘Are you going to be honest, shade it a little, or be dishonest?’ Whenever I face a moral decision, I remember that question.”
Total Honesty
Bill Denehy was a Major League Baseball pitcher in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He once shared with me how he learned the value of living a life of moral principle, character, and honesty.
“I didn’t spend much of my early and middle years thinking about character issues,” he said. “But on June 15, 1992, I checked into a clinic for drug and alcohol abuse. In rehab, my recovery group taught me about my need to build character. Recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous expose your flaws and show you the changes you need to make. Addiction makes people selfish, and I was no exception.
“Not long before I went into rehab, our family was on vacation in Connecticut. My daughter Heather asked me if we could play catch, but being the selfish addict I was, I put it off. We never played catch during that vacation. The day before I went into rehab, I was at one of Heather’s softball games, and I said to her, ‘Is there something we haven’t done that you’d really like to do?’ She looked at me with sad eyes and said, ‘Let’s play catch sometime, Dad.’ You’d think that a former pro ballplayer could at least play catch with his daughter, but I had never done it.
“In November 1992, I was out of rehab, and Heather and I finally played catch. We had a great time, and I finally discovered what I’d been missing because of my selfishness.
“You can’t overcome addiction without total honesty. You can’t lie to yourself and pretend everything is all right when it isn’t. You have to address your destructive behavior, your wrong attitudes, your character flaws. Going into recovery opened my eyes to the defects in my character.
“I had sponsors who took me through the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The fourth step required me to take a ‘searching and fearless moral inventory’ of myself. A lot of my character defects came out at this point, and I had to address them. My sponsors helped me to overcome the anger and blaming I had developed growing up.
“The twelfth step is that you become a sponsor and a mentor, and you carry the message you’ve received to other alcoholics who need direction and help. Since I went into recovery, I’ve sponsored dozens of people. I keep my sobriety by giving it away.”
George W. Bush
“Tim, You’re Forgiven”
I once had former Bush White House official Timothy Goeglein on my radio show to talk about his book The Man in the Middle. Goeglein had spent nearly eight years in the Bush White House as a deputy to Karl Rove. I asked him to describe George W. Bush for me.
“He’s a man of deep integrity,” Goeglein replied. “He says what he means and means what he says. George W. Bush is a rare politician. He’s the same in private as he is in public.
“While working in the White House, I wrote a column for my hometown newspaper. It wasn’t a political column. It was about all the other things I love and enjoy in life. And I have to confess that I began plagiarizing those columns.
“One morning, I came back from breakfast and turned on my computer, and there in front of me was an email from a reporter asking if I had plagiarized a recent column in my hometown newspaper. I fell to my knees and said, ‘God, help me.’ I knew that my life as I had known it was over. I wrote back and told the reporter that it was true.
“I had embarrassed the president. I had embarrassed my colleagues. I had embarrassed my wife and children and all the people who had invested so much in me. I confessed it, and I resigned that afternoon.
“In the political world, when you embarrass the president, there’s a kind of divorce that takes place. You get cut off, shunned. I expected that, only that’s not what happened to me. Instead, the president’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, told me that ‘the boss’—President Bush—wanted to see me. I went to the Oval Office, expecting my woodshed moment. I entered the Oval Office, closed the door, and turned to the president. I said, ‘Mr. President, I owe you—’ and I was about to make my apology. But he wouldn’t even let me apologize. Before I could get the words out, he said, ‘Tim, I forgive you.’
“I said, ‘But Mr. President, I owe you—’ He interrupted me again and said, ‘Tim, I’ve known grace and mercy in my own life, and I am offering it to you now. You are forgiven.’
“I said, ‘But Mr. President, you should have taken me by the lapels and tossed me into Pennsylvania Avenue. I’ve embarrassed you—and after all you have given to me and my family.’
“‘Tim, you’re forgiven,’ he said again. ‘Now, we can spend the next few minutes together talking about all this, or we can spend the next few minutes here talking about the last eight years.’
“Then President Bush did something extraordinary. He asked me to sit in the chair of honor below the portrait of George Washington, in front of the fireplace, the place where dignitaries sit. And we had a good talk. Then we prayed together, and we embraced. And I thought, ‘This is the last I will ever see of George W. Bush.’ Only it wasn’t.
“As I was leaving, President Bush asked me to bring my wife and sons to the Oval Office so he could tell them what a great father and husband I am. And sure enough, a few days later, my wife and sons came with me to the Oval Office. The president embraced them, gave them gifts, and we had a wonderful time together. And we’ve been invited back to the White House a few more times. George W. Bush extended to me the greatest mercy and forgiveness I ever could have experienced, and I am everlastingly grateful.”
Louis Armstrong
Radiant
In 1955, I was fifteen, my sister Ruthie was twelve, and my dad was an organizer of a fund-raising concert in Wilmington featuring the great Louis Armstrong. Summertime in Delaware can be as hot as blue blazes, and there was no air-conditioning in those days.
Ruthie and I went to the concert, and Armstrong performed all his great hits: “St. Louis Blues,” “All of Me,” “Heebie Jeebies,” “Mack the Knife,” and more. He puffed out his cheeks when he blew his horn and popped his eyes wide when he sang in that gravel-road voice. He was energetic and joyous, and the sweat poured down his face as he performed.
After the show, my dad said, “Kids, would you like to meet Mr. Armstrong?”
Ruthie and I said, “Sure!”
So we went down to his dressing room. Dad knocked on the door, and Armstrong invited us to enter. I’ll never forget that sight. There was Armstrong himself wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, completely drenched in perspiration, a fan blowing air across him as he slathered a greasy salve on his lips. Though he was hot, perspiring profusely, and physically spent, his eyes and smile were radiant. He was happy to greet his young fans.
We chatted with him for a few minutes, and I got to see, at an early age, what it looks like when a performer works hard and gives everything he’s got.
Bob Johnson
Needed: Hardworking Young Leaders
Bob Johnson, founder and CEO of Black Entertainment Television (BET), once told me, “I look for young people who are not afraid of hard work. I want them to get in the trenches with me and not just be nine-to-fivers. I want young people who will look at their job as a mission. Call them ‘go-to guys,’ because no matter what the assignment, they’ll get it done. Give me three hardworking young leaders, and I will change the world.”
Andy Seminick
A Work Ethic That Wouldn’t Quit
Andy Seminick spent most of his career with the Philadelphia Phillies as a player, scout, coach, and manager. I first met him when I was a young Phillies fan hanging around Shibe Park. I played for Seminick during my minor league career with the Miami Marlins, and he managed or coached ninety players who got to the major leagues, including Ferguson Jenkins, Mike Schmidt, and John Vukovich.
I became acquainted with John Vukovich in 1967 when I was the general manager of the Spartanburg Phillies. A few years ago, Vukovich shared a story with me about playing for Seminick in the Pacific Coast League.
“Andy Seminick was old-school,” he told me. “He had a cast-iron work ethic, and he expected everyone to keep up with him. When I played for him in the Pacific Coast League, we’d play a game in Hawaii, then take an all-night flight back to Portland, Oregon, then take a bus to Eugene. Everybody on the team was lagged out because of the travel and the three-hour time difference. But we didn’t go home. We went straight to the ballpark—Andy’s orders. We put in a full day of batting practice and infield.
“Andy was older than the rest of us, and you’d think he’d want to get some sleep. Nope. He didn’t need sleep, and he figured the rest of us didn’t either. And nobody complained. We all knew that Andy had caught in the 1950 World Series with a broken ankle. So no one dared to tell that guy, ‘I’m tired.’”
Andy Seminick had a work ethic that just wouldn’t quit, and he exemplified that work ethic to his players.
Billy Graham
A Big Heart for People
It was 1962, and Billy Graham was at the height of his fame as an evangelist. I was a senior at Wake Forest, and Graham was on campus for two days. So I took my Wollensak tape recorder and went to see him. We had a fascinating conversation. Graham was a big sports fan and had always wanted to be a baseball player. He talked about his baseball background and all the sports he loved to play in his youth and the many athletes he had known. It was one of my best interviews ever.
Graham was on the Wake Forest campus just as our basketball team was heading for the Final Four, so basketball fever was high. We were going up against Ohio State University, headlined by John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas, in the first game of the Final Four. Graham spent time with Coach Bones McKinney and saw the team bus off as it left to take our players to the airport. As the team boarded the bus, Bones said to Graham, “Billy, I hope you’ll be praying for us.”
“I will, Bones,” Graham said, “but you’d better play good defense on Lucas and Havlicek.”
Ten years after my first encounter with Graham, I was the general manager of the Chicago Bulls, and I had become a Christian, so I finally understood Graham’s message. He was coming to Chicago for an evangelistic crusade. At his invitation, I went to the McCormick Center and shared my faith before an audience of more than forty thousand people. I later spoke at another Graham crusade in Syracuse, New York.
Every time I was in Graham’s presence, I was impressed by two seemingly contradictory facts. First, he has an imposing presence. He’s a tall man with striking features, piercing eyes, and an aura of personal magnetism. Whenever Graham enters the room, conversations stop and people take notice. Second, he is a gentle, self-effacing, humble man. If he were not as humble as he is, the personal magnetism of the man would be overwhelming, perhaps even dangerous.
The people who know Graham best all seem to have the same impression of him. He is a figure of greatness wrapped in an almost luminous humility. I once had his youngest daughter, Ruth, on my radio show in Orlando. As we talked, I asked her about her illustrious father. In her rich North Carolina accent, she said, “My daddy knows who he is, a flawed human being. In Daddy’s mind, he’s still just a farm boy from Charlotte, North Carolina.”
I once attended a leadership training session at the Billy Graham Training Center in Asheville, North Carolina. I chatted with Graham’s longtime music director, Cliff Barrows. He described Graham as “a servant-leader with an enlarged heart—a big heart for people. With Billy it’s never about power and prestige. It’s always about others.”
Vin Scully
A Matter of Perspective
While conducting research for a book on Coach Vince Lombardi in early 2014, I had the privilege of interviewing eighty-six-year-old Vin Scully, the legendary play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers. Just a few days before I spoke with him, he was honored as the grand marshal of the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day in Pasadena. It had been a thrilling day for Scully and his entire family, including his children and grandchildren.
“But I want to put it all in perspective, Pat,” he said. “Twenty-four hours after I rode down Colorado Boulevard as grand marshal of the Rose Parade, I was pushing a cart down the aisle at Ralph’s Supermarket.”
Player of the Year and Servant of All
Our phenomenal rookie shooting guard Victor Oladipo was named the Sporting News men’s college basketball player of 2013 and was the second pick overall in the 2013 NBA draft. When we played the Knicks two days before Christmas 2013, Oladipo played in the first half but sat out the second half.
What did Oladipo do when he wasn’t playing? He served as a kind of self-appointed assistant trainer, distributing water during the time-outs. He was, as he put it, “helping to keep the guys hydrated.”
Watching Oladipo serving his teammates, I thought, Wow! Here’s the number two draft pick in the entire league, and he’s serving his teammates as a water boy. That’s a guy who has true humility—and true greatness.
Michael Jordan
Respect
In 1996, the Magic played the Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals of the NBA play-offs—and were dispatched in four games. It was the year Michael Jordan returned from his foray into baseball, and he was focused and unstoppable. Before game three in Orlando, I was outside the visitors’ locker room chatting with the Bulls’ team physician, Dr. John Heffernon. I asked him, “Twenty years from now, what will you remember most about Michael Jordan?”
“Aside from the fact that he’s the most competitive human being ever to walk the earth and has no fear of failure,” he replied, “what I’ll remember most is that he respected everybody the same. It doesn’t matter if you are the president or the ball boy, the pope or the equipment manager. He treats everyone with respect.”
Brooks Robinson
“Nothing Worse than a Swelled Head”
Third baseman Brooks Robinson played his entire twenty-three-season career with the Baltimore Orioles. He hit 268 career home runs and earned the league MVP Award (1964) and the World Series MVP Award (1970).
He once told me, “In my first big league game, I went two for four and knocked in a big run. I was eighteen years old. After that game, I ran back to the hotel to call my dad. I was thinking, Man! I should have been in the majors all along! Well, on my next eighteen times at bat, I went oh for eighteen, including ten strikeouts. Being humbled like that was the best thing that could happen to me. There’s nothing worse than a ballplayer with a swelled head. That dose of humility gave me a more realistic perspective, and it made me a better baseball player and a better person.”
Alvin Dark
A Lesson in Humility
Alvin Dark, a longtime major league shortstop and manager, told me about a lesson he learned during the 1949 season. “I was with the Boston Braves,” he said, “and we were playing in Pittsburgh at Old Forbes Field. Johnny Cooney was the manager of the team, and late in the game he took me out for a pinch hitter. I went absolutely berserk! I took my bat and went into a little room behind the dugout. There was a wooden wheelbarrow in that room, and I started smashing that wheelbarrow to bits with my bat. It sounded like a rifle shot every time I hit that thing. I was totally out of control.
“After the game, I sat on a stool in front of my locker. My teammate Eddie Stanky sidled over to me and said very quietly, ‘So you’re Babe Ruth, huh? Not allowed to pinch-hit for you, huh?’ I could have pinched Stanky’s head off, but he was right. I learned a great lesson in humility that day.”
Talent versus Character
Marvin Lewis is the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals. He once told me about a hard lesson he learned as a coach at the university level. During the recruiting season, Lewis heard about a talented junior college linebacker who was being courted by several universities. He asked his assistants and scouts why they had not suggested recruiting this player. To a man, they all agreed that this young player was a bad apple. He was loaded with talent, but he was arrogant and uncoachable. “Steer clear of him,” they said.
“But I didn’t listen,” Lewis admitted to me. “I recruited the guy based on talent alone. Turned out he was nothing but trouble. Even worse, his bad character and bad attitude infected two other promising players, including a talented freshman. What a rough year that was! I learned my lesson. Talent is important, but character is essential.”
The Content of His Character
My Minor League Baseball career came to an end in the summer of 1963. So I packed my belongings and prepared to trek from Miami to Bloomington, Indiana. My goal was to complete a master’s degree in physical education at Indiana University. I called my mother and told her my plans. “Mom,” I said, “I’m going to visit you in Wilmington before I head to Indiana.”
“Pat,” she said, “instead of you coming to Wilmington, why don’t we meet in Washington, DC? Carol and I are going to the March on Washington to hear Martin Luther King Jr. He’s giving a speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28.”
I wasn’t surprised. Mom was a lifelong Democrat and had been active in social causes for as long as I could remember. She had spoken glowingly of King ever since the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. I agreed to meet Mom and my sister Carol in DC. I’ll always be grateful to Mom because—thanks to her—I became a witness to history.
Mom, Carol, and I were in the vast crowd before the Lincoln Memorial on that hot, humid day. I saw actors Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, and Charlton Heston give stirring speeches about justice. Mahalia Jackson sang “How I Got Over,” Bob Dylan sang “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” and Peter, Paul, and Mary performed Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
But the main event was King. We stood about fifty yards away from him off to one side but close enough to make out his expression as he spoke. I didn’t grasp the historic importance of his speech at the time, yet my emotions were stirred as King’s words wafted over the crowd like a cooling breeze. It was not a long speech, just a little over seventeen minutes. Yet his words set our nation on a new course of freedom and justice.
Near the end of the speech, Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”
And I heard King say, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Less than five years after he spoke those words, King was felled by an assassin’s bullet, but the dream I heard about that day still lives.
Watson Spoelstra
On the Celestial Curbstone
Watson “Waddy” Spoelstra was a sportswriter for the Detroit News from 1945 to 1973. He covered the Detroit Lions and Tigers for years, and he described himself as a “hard-drinking hell-raiser.”
In 1957, Spoelstra’s eighteen-year-old daughter suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. He went to his knees and offered his life to God if he would spare her life. Spoelstra’s daughter recovered, and he kept his promise and committed his life to Christ. He was mentored in his faith by Detroit Lions defensive end Bill Glass.
During his sportswriting days, Spoelstra noticed that many baseball players were unable to attend church because of the game schedules. When he retired from sportswriting in 1973, he founded an organization called Baseball Chapel, which provided pregame chapel services to the players. He got a great lift when baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn not only okayed the chapels but also gave Spoelstra ten thousand dollars to get the organization started.
I served on Spoelstra’s board for a while, and he was like a kind old grandfather. He’d say to me, “I’m going to get to heaven first. I’ll be on the celestial curbstone waiting for you.” Since Spoelstra’s death in 1999, I’ve often thought of him in heaven waiting for me on that celestial curbstone.
James Dobson
No Fear of Death, But . . .
I first met James Dobson during an interview about a book I had cowritten. I appeared on his radio show a number of times and have built a nice friendship with him. Dobson is a great sports fan, and he loves to talk basketball and play basketball.
One year, I had the responsibility of coordinating the chapel service for the all-star weekend in Denver. I invited Dobson to be our speaker at the event, and he accepted. I sat with him at one of the ballgames the Saturday night before he spoke. We had a couple of hours to talk about sports, life, and spiritual matters.
At one point, I asked him if he feared death.
“No, I don’t fear death itself,” he said, “but I do fear all you have to go through before you die. I fear poor health, suffering, old age, illness, the loss of vigor. I’m not looking forward to that part of life, but I have no fear of death itself.”
Stu Inman
“I’m Ready”
In 1969, Stu Inman helped build the Portland Trail Blazers expansion franchise. He drafted the legendary Bill Walton and was the architect of the Trail Blazers’ 1976–77 NBA championship team (the team that knocked our Philadelphia 76ers out of the NBA finals). Inman was my friend for almost forty years.
In early 2007, I picked up the newspaper and read that Inman had died of a heart attack at age eighty. He had passed away in his Lake Oswego, Oregon, home. I called his widow, Eleanor, and she told me, “Stu was in his closet, getting dressed to start the day, when he simply collapsed. I rushed to his side where he lay on the floor, and his last words were, ‘Lord, I’m ready.’ He was gone before the paramedics could get there.”
Inman was a man of faith, and his faith carried him safely into eternity with his Lord.
John Wooden
Coach
In July 2000, I checked my voice mail and heard a message that changed my life. “Mr. Williams,” the caller said, “this is John Wooden, former basketball coach at UCLA.” Coach Wooden went on to give his personal recommendation for a UCLA trainer who had applied for a position with the Magic. Then he added, “I enjoy reading your books very much. Good-bye.”
I returned his call, and we had a wonderful chat. It was the first of many happy encounters I would have with Coach John Wooden. Months later, when I asked his blessing on a book to be called How to Be like Coach Wooden, he left another voice mail, saying, “Mr. Williams, this is John Wooden, former basketball coach at UCLA. I received your letter and though I’m not worthy of a project like this, if you would like to write this book, you go right ahead.” Wooden was a one-of-a-kind human being, a sports legend who seemed completely unaware of his fame or, at least, completely unfazed by it.
Our friendship grew, and I produced more books about Wooden’s life and philosophy. During the last decade of his life, I had many inspiring visits and conversations with him. I also interviewed hundreds of people who knew him.
On several occasions, I went to Wooden’s condo in Encino, California, to pick him up. At five o’clock sharp, we’d head out to the Valley Inn in Sherman Oaks—Wooden’s favorite dining spot. As we chatted over dinner, I was amazed by the depth of his wisdom and the quickness of his gentle sense of humor.
Then we’d return to his condo, and he’d recite his latest poem while the Mills Brothers harmonized on his old-fashioned phonograph. Wooden didn’t like digitized music—nothing but velvety smooth vinyl for him.
If the light on his answering machine was blinking, he’d check the machine to see who had called. He often received calls from former players. Some called to ask advice. Others just called to say hello. His players clearly loved him. And why not? He certainly loved them.
Wooden’s beloved wife, Nell, died on March 21, 1985. After her death, he began a tradition of writing a love letter to Nell on the twenty-first day of each month. He told her that he loved her and looked forward to seeing her again. He sealed each letter in an envelope and set it on the pillow on Nell’s side of the bed. Once, when I was at his condo, Wooden showed me his bedroom, and that little bundle of love letters was right there, tied with a yellow ribbon.
On Friday, June 4, 2010, Wooden went to be with the Lord—and with Nell. A number of Wooden’s players visited him in the hours before he passed away. One was Jamaal Wilkes, who went to see Wooden the day before he died. Wilkes later reported that Wooden got out of bed and shaved, saying, “I’m getting ready to go see Nellie.”
It was an incredible privilege for me to get to know Wooden during the final decade of his life. I got to see him take his victory lap, and he left a deep imprint on my life. Though I was never one of his players, I often found myself wanting to please him, wanting to make him proud of me.
In fact, I still do.
Wendell Kempton
Lots of Balloons
Wendell Kempton was a Christian leader, a Bible teacher, and a friend to many leading sports figures. He was a chapel speaker at three Super Bowls and a World Series. The list of athletes, coaches, and sports executives he mentored includes Joe Gibbs, Mike Schmidt, Julius Erving, Bobby Jones, and Pat Williams. I got to know him when I was the general manager of the 76ers. His teaching was a source of strength for many of our players.
Once, I talked to him about death and eternity. “Wendell,” I said, “I don’t want to die. I know as a Christian I shouldn’t feel that way, but I can’t help it. I look forward to heaven, but I have no interest whatsoever in dying.”
“Pat,” he said, “that’s perfectly normal. But you need to understand that there are three kinds of grace God gives to us in this life. First, he gives us saving grace when we commit our lives to him. Second, he gives us living grace—the drive, focus, and energy for living each day so that we can do our work with zeal and enthusiasm. Third, he gives us dying grace. When the time comes for you to leave this world, God will prepare you for it, and the transition will be easy.”
That conversation gave me comfort.
In late 2007, at age seventy-five, Kempton began to make the transition from living grace to dying grace. He noticed a growth on his arm and began experiencing flu-like symptoms. He went to the hospital, where tests revealed that his body was riddled with a previously undetected cancer. He had only weeks to live. It was time for him to say good-bye to his wife, Ruth, and their six children and twenty grandchildren.
It was a blessing that Kempton had the time and the strength to plan his own funeral. While he was dictating his funeral plans to his son Tim, his six-year-old granddaughter Audrey tiptoed into the room.
“What are you doing, Pop-Pop?” Audrey asked.
“I’m planning a party,” Kempton said.
“Will there be balloons?”
“Yes, indeed!”
Kempton had one of his associates call me. “Pat Williams knows all the sports people in my life,” he said, “and Pat will make sure they all come to the funeral.” When I got the word, I asked six of Kempton’s friends from the sports world to speak.
By Saturday, January 5, it was clear that Kempton’s fight was nearly over. His oldest son, Stan, stayed with him through the night. Before sunrise on Sunday morning, Stan remembered that one of his dad’s favorite Sunday morning greetings was, “Good morning, it’s resurrection day!” So Stan leaned close to his dad’s ear and said, “Dad, it’s resurrection day. It’s Sunday morning, your favorite day of the week. You’ve done your job, and you’re going to your eternal reward. Get your best sermon ready, Dad. You’re going into glory.” With those words, Stan ushered his dad from this life into eternal life.
Kempton’s funeral was held on January 11, 2008. I introduced the six men who had come to talk about his influence on their lives: Bobby Jones, Mike Schmidt, Bob Boone, Garry Maddox, Terry Harmon, and Doug Collins. They shared how Kempton had introduced them to the Lord or helped them grow in the Lord.
It was clear to me that God gave Kempton all three kinds of grace. His “going-home party” was a great celebration of a life well lived and triumphantly completed.
And just as Kempton promised, there were lots of balloons.