The legacy of your work has a value harder to compare with pure money, so we should try our best to incorporate that in our professional decision making.

I’m not a professional athlete. That may surprise many of you.

Still, without any real awareness of the experience, I find myself scratching my head whenever a big name, well-paid professional athlete chooses more money over legacy. In most cases, it seems ill-advised.

I understand that with injuries threatening livelihood, athletes are smartly coached to get what upfront money they can as soon as they can. And I understand that there is often a mind-boggling amount of money on the table, but they seem to be facing on only one axis of success.

When Albert Pujols signed a quarter of a billion dollar, 10-year contract with the major market Los Angeles Angels, leaving the devoted St. Louis Cardinals after 11 seasons, I wasn’t surprised. (In fact, the Pujols’s wife seems more surprised, saying they had never wanted to leave St. Louis but the club wouldn’t offer a long enough, guaranteed deal.)

But if the celebrated and beloved Pujols becomes a target for boos and taunts, he’ll have to assess how much money an attack to his legacy is worth.

After watching Alex Rodriguez do similarly, leaving the Texas Rangers after a spectacular 2003 season for more than $250 million from the New York Yankees, and then becoming the most hated player in baseball, I was curious. Then, when LeBron James left his (nearly) hometown Cleveland Cavaliers to take his talent to South Beach for the Miami Heat and became the most vilified star in the NBA, I was certain.

There are enormous legacy and reputation ramifications for taking the money and leaving somewhere else.

Jayson Werth took a seven-year $126 million deal with the lowly but growing Nationals that he felt his Phillies should have offered him in his 30s. It seemed he was less than pleased when pitcher Cliff Lee took less money to focus on his legacy.

Lee helped build something — though they fell short of a championship. Similiarly, LeBron could have built Cleveland. Pujols could have been remembered as one of the greatest players and most philanthropic stars in a baseball hungry city. Instead they both went to better paying markets with a different kind of fan base.

Lessons are to be had here for all of us. The money is not at those levels, but the sense that pursuing money only ignores how you will be remembered.

And that’s worth something too.

Ill State of Mind by NeeKo ft. Deanie Marie, as I previously shared.

Goin’ Back to Philadelphia, PA- A Tribute to the Phillies by Bobby Burnett

This is played in the ballpark after a Phillies home win

Fightin’ Phils by Richie Rosati 2008

Fightin Phils Anthem – Tone Love

Parading Down Broad Street

Listen here.

“Phillies Go Hard” by Jakk Frost

Others listed here.

I was paid by Metro to parade around a rainy Center City Philadelphia last Wednesday wearing a Yankees hat, ahead of their World Series matchup with the Phillies, who won that first battle.

Diane Allman took a second glance at the only piece of Yankees memorabilia for sale at the Moell’s at 16th and Chestnut streets, turning up her nose at the Derek Jeter shirt. [Source]

See how the clip appeared in print here, and check that Thursday New York edition, which ran the experience of a reporter who dressed as a Phillies fan in Manhattan.

It’s one of those experiences that remind you why freelance writing can be a sweet gig. Below some background and extras from the story.

How seriously fans take their teams, particularly in the big and rugged East Coast cities, is a question that is often asked, so the Metro staff wanted to find out for themselves. I got this e-mail forwarded to me from my editor that preceding afternoon:

We’ve got Brayden to go out in Phillies gear tomorrow and record his experience. But to fully conduct the experiment, we need someone to wear Yankees stuff in Philly and see how much more vicious one city is vs. the other. …can you set that up for tomorrow morning?

After a few minutes of thought, I took the gig.

Despite the rain and a slow first 20 minutes, it turned out to be a fine experience. I put the hat, which I borrowed from a friend, on my head at Dilworth Plaza of City Hall, walked through and down South Broad Street and down Walnut Street to Rittenhouse Square, back up 19th Street and east down Market Street back toward City Hall.

In the drizzle and mist from 11 a.m. to just before 1 p.m., I got lots of glances and rolled eyes, but I didn’t have so much as a word said to me the first half hour I walked around City Hall.

My editor asked that I remain “a perfect gentleman,” instigating nothing, so I went on that way. Walking down the Avenue of the Arts, just about 11:30 a.m., a bicyclist whizzed by on the street, gave a small yelp that caused me to turn and there he flipped me the middle finger.

I had a story.

My counterpart in New York was sticking to Manhattan — more people and perceived to be less passionate about the Yankees than in perhaps the Bronx — so I did the same and remained in a compact central portion of Center City, rather than South Philly or the Northeast where I’d expect quite more of a response, though fewer street walkers.

Despite what I expected, it was around Rittenhouse Square — the ritzy Center City nighborhood — where I got the most response. A young woman dressed in Phillies gear,  pair of 30-somethings, two construction workers and others who didn’t even make it into my story.

After any audible or clear response to me, I engaged them, telling them I was a reporter trying to gauge the response from Philadelphians.

I’d explain it was happening in New York, too, and, usually after a laugh, these people would tell me what more vicious things they would have done if…the circumstances were different.

The lesson? Big cities are never as violent against opposing teams as people suggest, particularly in their most cosmopolitan hearts and certainly on a rainy weekday morning.

Still, I feel like I need to display my Philly love after parading around town in their competition’s garb, so I’ll share this actually fantastic Philly Version of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” has been making the rounds on the local blogosphere.

Written and performed by local cat NeeKo and featuring a hot hook from a Deana Marie, it’s getting a lot of play for its timely Phillies reference. Like 35 seconds in: “Yeah I’m talking REPEAT, heat like Hamels/utterly amazing, Charlie wrote the manual.”

While I don’t think nearly as good, you might also check out more Phillies-centric tracks “Unstoppablee (Guerilladelphia)” by Kuf Knots from the Hustle and “Phillies Go Hard” by Jakk Frost and featuring a hook by Freeway. In an entirely different genre, how about a Phillies polka created the last time the Phillies and Yankees met in the World Series — 1950.

Second page of Philadelphia and New York editions of Metro on Oct. 28, 2009.

As I normally do for a story, last Monday I publicized on Twitter and Facebook and my instant-message status and through e-mail that I needed sources for a story for Metro, the free daily newspaper with editions in Philadelphia, New York City and Boston.

Looking for Yankee fans living in Philly and Phillies fans living in NYC for a story. Who can help me out? [Source]

Just a few hours later, after wading through the responses, I had more than a dozen examples and more trickling in.

Last Wednesday, the day that the Phillies would win the first game of the World Series against the New York Yankees, I had a small package on the rivalry’s fandom, highlighted by small profiles of three fans in each city that cheered for the opposing team.

Like pictured above, see how the print version looked in Philadelphia and in New York. As always, below some background and extras that weren’t fit to print.

ONE PHILLIES FAN IN NEW YORK CITY

I had a longer conversation with Andrew Goldstein, a supervising writer at Spike TV who grew up in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia, but now lives in Manhattan. He turned out to have graduated from the same university as I did and worked at The Temple News.

During that conversation, he shared some gems aplenty that didn’t have a place in my structured clip:

• “Everyone knows my Philly-sports allegiance, so I end every e-mail to an old boss — who is a huge Mets fan – with “go Phils!” just to piss him off.”
• “I posted a Facebook update after the Yanks blew game five: ‘not everyone can close it out in five like the world champs.’ I got like 20 replies. So yeah, I’m just as much of an instigator as Mets/Yanks fans.”
• “I used to call [Philly sports talk radio station WIP] 610 as a kid with an assumed name and age. I was Earl from Ridley just to talk Phils and Eagles. Other kids dated, I sat home and chatted with Rob Charry.
• “There’s a Philly bar called Wogies in NYC with more than a passable cheesesteak. It’s this tiny joint and was just impossible to get into last year during the World Series. [My friends and I] ended up across the street in a bar that became the overflow Wogies-Phils crew bar. We watched every game there. Cut to after the Phils win, we trash this guy’s bar. I say to the owner, ‘dude, so sorry for you bar, you’ve been so nice to us all week.’ He says, “Are you kidding me? You just paid my rent for three months. I’m a Phils fan for life.’ We may opt for apartment veiwage in all honesty due to that reason.

ONE YANKEES FAN IN PHILADELPHIA

I found Eric Walklet, a Bucks County software developer originally from Connecticut, through a friend, whose friend is Walklet’s girlfriend. Some of his stuff that didn’t get in:

• “I’d also love to put a Yankees license plate frame or bumper sticker on my car, but I’m afraid I’ll park it in Center City and come back to see it on cinder blocks.”
• “But I’m not very aggressive about it like some New York fans, so I think I’ve avoided the worst of it. No bar fights or broken noses.”

Boxing legend Joe Frazier is again the focus of a story of mine, though this time I’ve filed a Frazier piece for SportsIllustrated.com, likely the most recognizable brand in sports reporting for a half-century.

“Smokin’” Joe Frazier is still fighting.

The former heavyweight champion of the world is 65 now, and his mind isn’t nearly as quick as his fists once were. His days are often spent traveling for appearances, doing interviews and signing autographs. He maintains the same workout routine he had in his prime, and he still rises at 4 a.m., restless and beholden to a schedule he no longer has to keep. [Source]

Go read the full story, comment and then come back here for some of the backstory.

This comes less than a week after I filed an audio report for WHYY on Frazier. When filing that story, I found it so interesting that when I brought up Muhammad Ali to Frazier, for the first time in at least three interviews, he was delicate with the issue. He expressed sympathy, compassion and what seemed like a genuine interest in helping.

Despite accounts of the documentary coming out while the Frazier and Ali rivalry remained hot, it now seems it has all but died. Frazier is even appearing in a documentary about Ali, even though it appears again to be playing into the Ali mythology.

I knew I had another story that was too big for my WHYY piece – particularly considering their audience wouldn’t much care about the specifics of an old boxing rivalry — even if it’s likely the most celebrated in the sport’s history.

I rushed a series of friends and colleagues to get a contact, spruced up some old notes and packaged it with some of my latest interview.

I pitched an editor who wanted the piece, particularly with the time-hook of the documentary. In less than a week, I filed the story, made requested revisions, filed out paperwork, signed a contract and had my very first story for a national brand. I hope it’s the first of many.

On a completely unrelated note of serendipity, Sports Illustrated is coincidentally just as old as WHYY; both were launched in 1954. Magic, eh?

New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Eagles in November 1960. (Photo by George Silk)

Everyone in this country, I figure, ought to be watching the again flourishing NFL rivalry between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants in today’s NFC divisional playoff contest.

So who would be scrolling the Internet? Still, this game made me think about how newspapers are losing ground for which they need to fight harder – local sports.

This morning I picked up my Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer – great cover issue and unique takes on the Eagles-Giants game. In years, past that was anyone’s source of local sports news – more than anything else. While TV beat newspaper news coverage, no one beat their sports coverage.

But in another long list of fights the Internet has handed newspapers, here comes that tried and true sports coverage. Last month Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA, wrote that professional sports teams need newspapers. But there are so many options in the world.

Many newspapers have smartly made devoted pages to their local sports teams – like the Inquirer has for the Eagles. But they still just make the very bottom of  a Web search for “Philadelphia Eagles.“  They’re beaten by NFL.com, PhiladelphiaEagles.com, SportsIllustrated.com, ESPN.com, even Sportsline.com and Answers.com.

The New York Post has made some more progress for the Giants, and the Baltimore Sun for their hometown Ravens, but many are even further behind.

Could datelines help? Surely more linking out and hoping the same in return could help, but what else? Perhaps there needs to be more evergreen content. Why not have a package on the team’s history and players, something that would warrant widespread linking in?

As it stands now, unless you’re pulling sports page out of your own newspaper – like I did this morning – you might not find yourself at a newspaperdotcom to see the latest or broadest news on your favorite or competing sports team.

Here’s a preview to check out as this much-hyped Eagles-Giants game warms up.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY5omA2F118]

Photo from Life magazine archive hosted by Google here.

Runners near the Naval Yard finish of the 2007 Broad Street Run.

I never was a runner.

I played basketball in high school, something with which I’ve kept up a bit. I wasn’t a runner.

Still, I am – fairly early on – throwing my hat in on this year’s Broad Street Run, the busiest 10-mile run in the country, to be held this year on May 3, 2009. Who is with me?

Since I am no runner by admission, I will be following the first nine weeks of Hal Higdon’s half marathon training schedule for a novice. So, in the last week of February, I will begin a slightly modified form of his regimen. Beginning two weeks ago though, I have been taking short runs every other day, interspersed with stretching and, my favorite, basketball (cross-training, son)!

Really, this is all about commitment, considering I probably have never run more than four or five consecutive miles in my life.

If you haven’t heard of the Broad Street Run, you really should. The largest 10-miler in the country is an amble down Philadelphia’s most famed main thoroughfare, Broad Street, from Somerville below East Oak Lane in North Philadelphia all the way to the Naval Yard in (really) South Philly. Here is a neat post from the 700Level on the 2007 BSR, from whom I am using the above photo.

Since “Complete a Marathon” is on My Life To-do List and I am not getting any younger and certainly not in any better shape, I am thinking of pointing this in the direction of that goal, but I am not making that promise yet at all. Don’t worry, I am not that naive.

Now, I am posting this here because I knew I couldn’t hide from a promise made here. However, because this is more personal, future updates of less magnitude will happen over at my personal blog, My Life To-do List, where this is cross-posted. Any bigger updates, if there are any, or, you know, if things just get slow, I’ll post here. So, don’t worry, if you simply don’t care, you won’t have to hear about it.

Photo courtesy of the 700Level.com.

Why Can't Us?

Tonight is game three of the American baseball World Series. The Philadelphia Phillies are tied with the Tampa Bay Rays one game to one in the best of seven game series.

But out of these playoffs, a rallying cry has been born. Too bad some are embarrassed by it.

It began as a caller’s remark just last Thursday.

In short order, a local sports blog and one of the nation’s leading sports blogs began singing its praises as a Phillies rally cry.

Then, T-shirts and mugs were designed to get out the message, and hundreds of items have already been sold, raising money for charity.

Then it spread to radio, Facebook, print and ESPN. [Inquirer]

I have to buy one of these. Why the hell haven’t you?

Looking for the best city to cheer for the blue team over the red team?

Forbes magazine begged for attention as it often does with a new list. This gets personal, ranking 29 sports metro areas in the country by winning percentages and ticket prices compared to cost of living.

What do sports fans spend the most time grousing about? Above all else, it’s lousy teams or high ticket prices.

Woe is the fan forced to put up with both at once. Who wants to pay premium prices to sit in the stands and watch the losses mount? Fans in Miami know about that. Over the past year, the city’s four major sports teams–the Dolphins, Marlins, Heat and Panthers–have combined to win just 40% of their games while fans have forked over money for tickets and accouterments at the seventh-highest rate among 29 major sports metros.

As the Inquirer points out today, Philadelphia was neither among the 10 worst nor the three best – no others were ranked.

Worst

1. Miami
2. San Diego
3. Indianapolis
4. New York – “the second-highest prices in the country for teams that lose just over half their games, the Super Bowl champion Giants not withstanding.”
5. Cincinnati
6. Kansas City
7. Charlotte
8. Tampa Bay
9. Cleveland
10. Pittsburgh – “The Penguins reached the NHL finals last season, while the Steelers went a solid 10-6, but baseball’s Pirates are always rebuilding. The area’s median income is 20% below the average of the 29 major sports metros.”

It’s nice to be reminded that Philly does have a rich sports tradition – its own struggles aside – particularly when compared with New York and Pittsburgh. Still, Philly wasn’t ranked among the best.

Best

1. Detroit – “only No. 17 in costs for a .612 winning percentage for its four teams, including the Stanley Cup champion Red Wings” (Good for Detroit, because they were recently listed by Forbes as among the 10 fastest dying cities)
   
2. Houston – “third-cheapest prices for a .565 winning percentage”
3. Bay Area – “so-so teams, but a high-income market with the ninth-lowest costs”

Of course, for every list Forbes does, the same evaluation is the result. Provocative, but mostly pointless and intellectually shallow – like something you could figure out at a bar – and a frustrating attempt at amping their page clicks, as there isn’t a single list, but rather necessary to click through each brief description. Lame Forbes. Plus, Yahoo Sports did the same damn thing in April, and the list doesn’t take into account changes or trends – their math only used last year’s successes, not over the past five years, perhaps.

Hey, though Chris Wink has a Twitter page, friends rag on me for not using it. I may not update, but I do follow – where I found this story, courtesy of Phillysports on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Ball Hype.

LAST WEEK ESPN RANKED THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS MEN’S BASKETBALL PROGRAMS of the modern era, since 1984-85.

It came as no surprise that Temple University, my alma mater, was among them – ranked 20th.

20. TEMPLE OWLS, Atlantic 10
Positives: 13 conference titles (6 regular-season, 7 tourney); 15 20-win seasons; 17 NCAA berths; 5 Elite Eights; 6 NITs
Negatives: 1 losing season; 0 first team All-Americans; 0 Final Fours
Total points: 179
Did you know? The 2007-08 season was the first 20-win season for Temple since the 2000-01 season, but the Owls have been respectable in that downturn, falling under .500 just once (2006-07). The Owls have five Elite Eight appearances since 1985, a tally that helps them fly up the charts, but we’d be remiss not to mention that they are 0-5 in those chances to reach the Final Four.

I was an avid fan myself. The same research ranked the Atlantic 10 the No. 8 conference in the country of the modern era.

Image courtesy of PBase. Source. See Top 10 here.