Where have you gone Joe DiMagio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you

It was about fifteen years ago that I pretty much lost interest in professional sports. A few years earlier, my eldest daughter had been born and we moved out of the city and away from our friends that would call us up and ask if we wanted to go see a Yankees or Mets game. The major league baseball strike of 1994 removed most of my remaining interest in professional sports as the illusion of it being about sportsmanship was removed illustrating that it was just another large entertainment corporation.

I’ve always liked buying local, so we went to some New Haven Raven’s games and greatly enjoyed the games. The latest illusion stripping event is the revelation that Alex Rodriguez, ‘A-Rod’, used performance enhancing drugs while he was in Texas. In interviews he spoke about his high salary and his feeling that he needed to perform at his peak for his new team and new fans.

Texan billionaire R. Allen Stanford is also accused of using illegal performance enhancements on his product, certificates of deposit similar to how Bernard L. Madoff is alleged to have used performance enhancements with his hedge fund.

Amidst all of this, I heard a report on NPR the other day about Don Meyer. A few days ago, courtside in a wheelchair, after he lost one of his legs in a car crash and fighting liver and intestine cancer, Coach Meyer passed Bobby Knight as the winningest coach in college basketball. Unlike Coach Knight, whose foul mouth on the sidelines in Indiana brought him national acclaim, many of us never heard of Coach Meyer coaching teams like the Northern State Wolves or the Lipscomb Bisons.

Yet perhaps, it is Coach Meyer that wears the mantel of Joe DiMaggio. Perhaps he is the coach that our nation should be turning its lonely eyes to. During the interview on NPR he seemed uncomfortable with the attention. For him, he was simply trying to be a good coach, helping the kids on his team go from a fifth place record of 13 wins and 14 loses to being tied for first place with a 20 and 8 record two years later. Coach Meyer spoke about simply trying to take life one game at a time.

Perhaps more importantly, he spoke about what it really takes to be a good leader. He spoke about being a servant-leader. Your role as a leader needs to be about serving the folks you are leading, and not about seeking glory for yourself.

For too long, our heroes have been performance enhanced characters like Alex Rodriguez, R. Allen Stanford, Bernard L. Madoff or Coach Knight. Instead, we need to be looking at a different type of performance enhancement, the kind that Coach Meyer does by simply helping his players be the best they can be, without taking any shortcuts.