The magic of teammates

Plus my weekly shareables: how (not) to make chili, the joy of museums, and 24 hours in a diner

I’m not sure David Lynch ever heard of Bob Uecker, or vice versa. But they ended up with a cosmic connection of sorts—they happened to die one day apart this week, Lynch on Wednesday, Uecker on Thursday. My social media feeds bounced back and forth between them as people posted their obits and shared memories of both. One was a revered filmmaker who made some of the most disturbing movies and TV ever made. The other was a broadcaster known for his beer commercials and talk-show jokes. But they had something deep and important in common.

They were great teammates.

We still don’t understand a lot about how teams work. The year Alix and I were at Harvard, we spent some time with Richard Hackman, a psychology professor who devoted his life to studying teams. Richard (who died in 2013) was a fun lunch companion—a basketball nut who volunteered with the Harvard women’s team for years. He said teams often fail for simple reasons—the team members aren’t clear on what they’re supposed to be doing, or the team gets too big to manage.

I’ve been on some great teams, from a church-league softball squad to a big metro newsroom. I’ve also been on some teams that never quite meshed for one reason or another. It’s not just talent, or even leadership. There’s something more.

One of the clips that got passed around after David Lynch died was a video of Angelo Badalamenti, who wrote the scores for much of Lynch’s work—TWIN PEAKS, BLUE VELVET, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, THE STRAIGHT STORY. In the video, Badalamenti shows how Lynch helped him come up with Laura Palmer’s theme for TWIN PEAKS:

Lynch had a vision for his movies and shows, but he left a lot of the details—even the big ones—for his collaborators to decide. When actor Justin Theroux asked Lynch questions about his role in MULHOLLAND DRIVE—”Why am I there? Who’s the cowboy? What’s going on? What reality are we in?”, Lynch replied: “You know, I don’t know, buddy. But let’s find out.”

(The punchline to that joke being that NOBODY, including the audience, knows what’s going on in MULHOLLAND DRIVE.)

Many critics think Lynch is one of the all-time great directors. Nobody ever thought Bob Uecker was one of the all-time great ballplayers. He played six years in the majors (1962-67) and his career batting average was .200, known among baseball fans as the Mendoza Line—as Wikipedia puts it, “the supposed threshold for offensive futility.” There’s another stat called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, which tries to gauge how many wins a single player might be responsible for compared to a replacement-level player—somebody called up from the minors, for example. Uecker’s lifetime WAR was -1.

But as my friend Joe Posnanski wrote in his tribute to Uecker, the mediocre catcher was a deeply loved teammate.

Dick Allen, who could be prickly as a ballplayer, cried when Uecker was traded from Philadelphia. Bob Gibson, one of the most feared pitchers in history, held hands with Uecker in the St. Louis Cardinals’ 1964 team photo. (The team fined both of them and took another photo. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Uecker was white and Gibson was black.)

Phil Niekro, the Hall of Fame knuckleballer, credited Uecker with saving his career. The knuckleball is as hard to catch as it is to hit, but Uecker told Niekro to keep throwing it, even as they piled up the passed balls and wild pitches. This led to Uecker’s classic advice on how to catch a knuckler: “The best way,” he said, “is to wait for it to stop rolling and then pick it up.”

Niekro’s pitches made Uecker look bad. But Uecker didn’t care. The team was better for it.

This is the X-factor, I think, the thing that’s hardest to measure, the thing that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet. Sacrifice. Maybe it’s being willing to look bad. Maybe it’s being willing to share credit. Angelo Badalamenti is renowned for writing Lynch’s scores, even though Lynch was at the very least a co-writer. Phil Niekro won 318 major-league games, but he might never have made it without Uecker chasing down all those wild pitches.

Lynch was at the top of the organizational chart and Uecker was at the bottom. It didn’t matter. Great teammates figure out what others do well and make sure they get to do it. Even if it means giving up something of themselves.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. My weekly for WFAE was about yet another attempt to overturn an election—this time a Supreme Court race in North Carolina.

2. If you’ve ever read the comments on New York Times recipes, you know just how insane people can get about them. This Megan Neary piece captures it perfectly. “Did you consider the people who don’t like chili? The people who are vegetarians? The people without tastebuds? The people who don’t know how to turn on stoves? What about all those folks?” (McSweeney’s)

3. Another excellent food story—24 hours in a New York City diner. Some of the best experiences in my life have happened in diners at 3 a.m. (NYT)

4. And now, back-to-back museum stories. First, my friend Megan Greenwell on the joys of regional art museums. (You will also want to preorder Megan’s upcoming book BAD COMPANY, on how private equity destroys America.) (Defector)

5. Museum story #2: The security guard at the Met who has one of his sculptures in a new exhibition. (NYT)

6. We watched CONCLAVE on movie night this week and really enjoyed it—spectacular acting all around, especially by Ralph Fiennes as the cardinal tasked with managing the selection of a new pope. Many juicy twists and turns that I am not about to reveal here.

7. We finished off the final two-episode season of VERA this week … this show was a favorite of Alix’s mom, so it was a bittersweet to see it end. But it ended well.

8. We’ve now started RIDLEY, which features a retired detective who helps out on cases and moonlights as a jazz singer. Not bad, but this is the first time we’ve used the SKIP INTRO button—Alix decided the intro is too long.

9. Jason Isbell has a new solo album, FOXES IN THE SNOW, coming out in March—just him and an acoustic guitar. They’ve pre-released the opening track, “Bury Me.” It’s a gem.
   

10. I’ve got a deep soft spot in my heart for “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” originally by Bonnie Raitt (and written by former NFL defensive tackle Mike Reid). I’ve even taught the oral history from time to time. So a new version is always going to catch my ear. This one, from Vince Gill and Maggie Rose, strikes all the right notes of melancholy.
    

    
    

    

Upcoming events:

• Feb. 8: Savannah Book Festival (I’m speaking at 2:20 p.m., just before my bud Joe Posnanski)

• Feb. 22: Southern Voices in Hoover, Alabama

• March 30: Distinguished Speaker Series at Lanier Library in Tryon, NC

• April: DOGLAND paperback tour (dates TBA)

Have a great weekend, everybody…

—TT