Winning by Losing

The New York Times

December 12, 2009

By Doug Glanville

It is true: I am a New Jersey Nets fan, and it goes back a long time. Years ago, Buck Williams and ...

So far, this hasn´t been a season to remember, as the Nets set a record for most losses to start a season 18 although they have since improved to 2-21. It´s one thing to be a fan from the safety of far-away Chicago, but an entirely different spin comes into play when the head coach is a high school friend of mine.

I should say "former head coach." In late November, 16 losses into the streak, the Nets fired Lawrence Frank, who was my Little League teammate and a fellow Teaneck High School graduate. As a coach, he was known for his tireless work ethic and complete absorption in the art of coaching, even conveying the time of birth of his daughter in terms of time remaining in the quarter of a playoff game. I remember going to a game years ago in Phoenix and hearing a Nets opponent describe Lawrence´s long hours of preparation as "amazing." That means a lot coming from an opposing player.

He was crafty way back when he was 10. My brother coached our Little League team at one point and helped groom little Lawrence, then a baby-faced Tommy John imitator who also managed to go an entire season without striking out at the plate. It was remarkable to hear about his ascension to the N.B.A. without his ever having made the high school team. Although: in the basketball leagues we played in before reaching high school, there he was running picks, never standing still, always getting himself open with enough time to get off a left-handed shot that seemed to take minutes to load but, since he had shaken his defender so effectively, the shot was often uncontested, and very accurate.

We didn´t stay in close touch after high school graduation, but I followed his career and reconnected with his "to be" wife (also a Teaneck graduate) along the way. Then, in 2005, when I was fighting to make the Yankees, an interviewer asked me about the coolness of potentially playing in close proximity with another Teaneck High grad Lawrence Frank. The reporter wanted to know: would we hang out? But it was not to be; I didn´t make the team.

So my memories run deep. Unfortunately, the Nets inauspicious start also took me back to something else: my being part of the 1997 Cubs 0-14 start.

We could not buy a win, even though every game was close.

The schedule pitted us against the Atlanta Braves and the Florida Marlins for the first 10 games of the season. Good teams, but far from perfect. Looking back, I realize that these two teams had probably the best pitching staffs I faced in my entire career. If we weren´t looking at a Cy Young winner (Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz) we were up against pitchers who got plenty of Cy Young votes (Kevin Brown, Al Leiter). So before we knew it, we were staring at first place from the basement.

Of course, no one let us forget how each loss was bringing us closer to ignominious history. Chicago radio personality Dave Kaplan vowed to eat, sleep and shower at a McDonald´s across the street from Wrigley Field until we won. Many days later, he was happy to finally get out of there, and I´m sure his cardiologist was even happier.

What was amazing to watch was how losses bred losses. It was almost as if it took over the culture of the team. You began to expect to lose. You knew that even with a comfortable lead, you would soon be the victim of bad luck; it was almost like a curse. And it became like any other self-fulfilling prophecy: that fielding error would happen in the ninth, that runner would trip on his shoelace before he could score and tie the game, that star player would slip on a loose batting glove and fall down the dugout stairs and miss a few games.

How do you stay positive in the midst of nothing going right?

During the Nets dismal start, Lawrence managed to do just that. He patiently talked to the press, expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to coach and the gifts in his life, especially for a hungry young coach, like the rare tenure of 10 years working for the same organization. He was home after games, and he was coaching the local team from his childhood. Not a bad start to a head-coaching career.

I had the good fortune to play six years for the Phillies, five of them consecutively, following four years of college in the City of Brotherly Love quite a run in one place. Even so, the time came when I had to uproot, because my best chance for a starting role was in Texas. I had to leave the safety of Philadelphia, although I continued to live there in the off-season.
Lawrence is now faced with a similar challenge. (An even tougher one: fortunately for me, the most unstable part of my career came before I had a family of my own. Plus, I was a player, so I wasn’t on the endless clock that coaches are on.) To stay on the head-coaching track, he must leave at some point, weighing school systems, family time and whatever position in the coaching hierarchy he gets offered. It could take him anywhere at any time, a hard space for any family.

I did hear from Lawrence earlier this week. This is a good time to reconnect, before the chaos begins anew, and we compared notes about transitioning periods during a life in sports. He also mentioned the Nets charity softball game something he´d tried (and failed) to get me to play in each year as a ringer, and which now is no longer an option. This time, I promised to play in his next team´s charity softball game although under an alias.

I remain a Nets fan but, even more, a Lawrence Frank fan. I wish my former teammate and his wife nothing but the best during this time of patience and tough decisions. He will win again, just as my 1997 Cubs finally ended the streak in game 15 against the New York Mets, in New York. I know from experience the
space he is in and I am sure a new kind of streak will begin for him, one that will be framed with a greater sense of appreciation for home cooking and living the passion. It just will take a little waiting for that season of life to arrive.

New York Times 12/12/2009
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