Originally aired on Carolina Week, then ABCNews on Campus.
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Author Archives: Sam Rosenthal
How about ‘The Life of Rosenthal?’
Sports. Illustrated.
Two words that changed my life.
Not because the magazine sparked my interest in sports, not because it made for excellent bathroom reading material, and not because the Swimsuit Issue mingled body paint with 3-D goggles.
No, Sports Illustrated changed my life because the back inside page ran a column by Rick Reilly.
Whenever SI popped up in my mailbox, I always flipped it over to that last page and read the “Life of Reilly,” spellbound, before ever looking at the cover. Outside of schoolwork, I read books as often as I wore women’s clothing (usually once a year during Spirit Week), but I devoured all of Reilly’s books. “Did you read what Rick Reilly wrote?” I always asked my dad.
About the same time, I read an SI article by some Tim Crothers guy about Matt Doherty’s first win against Duke as UNC’s head coach (keep that in mind).
Professional baseball scouts stopped calling after Tee-ball, so instead I dreamed of becoming the next Rick Reilly. From high school to now, I have been “Newspaper Boy,” distant relative of Quailman. I spent three years writing for the Eastern Voyager and joined The Daily Tar Heel sports desk my first semester at North Carolina.
This year, the DTH gave me a weekly sports column – just like Rick Reilly (except he has more money, and I more hair). It has been one helluva semester writing the Wednesday’s Special for you.
In addition to my column, I took a sportswriting class this spring. Early in the course, my professor handed one of his own stories to the class – a Sports Illustrated article about Matt Doherty’s Tar Heels driving back to Chapel Hill after beating Duke at Cameron. This time around, that Tim Crothers guy who wrote it sat before me in Carroll Hall, taking us behind the scenes.
“They call this school?” I thought. “I guess those out-of-state tuition hikes are worth it.”
The class brought out my personal best work; interviewing Dewey Burke one-on-one for my final was as pleasurable as a Bojangles’ chicken biscuit (though I’ll never eat the recording). And because my column ran on class days, I picked Crothers’ brain on every bite of Green Eggs and Sam.
Weekly advice from a Sports Illustrated veteran? I kept imagining it was all a dream, that I would wake up one day to find my hand in a bowl of warm water and my roommates taking Polaroids. If you told me five years ago that I would be here today, I would have given your foolish keister a wedgie.
But here I am, the semester in the books, my columns on the pages. I’ve never learned so much about myself or my writing before. One of my favorite books – W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge” – raises the idea that we never know how truly happy we are during certain parts of our lives until we reminisce later on. That said, I know that I will look back on this year someday as one of the happiest of my lifetime.
For that, I offer my sincerest gratitude to my readers – many people who I know, many who I don’t, all who I appreciate. I find it easy to express my feelings in writing, but I never know the right words when I’m eating chicken tenders at Joe’s Joint and you tell me how you and a friend sit down every week to read my column.
Once, my friend Bonnie stopped me on the street while walking with her boyfriend and whispered in my ear, “He loves your columns. He always asks me, ‘Did you read what Sam Rosenthal wrote today?'”
I still call my dad almost weekly asking if he’s read Rick Reilly’s latest piece, so that made my day (slash lifetime). “I think I’m gonna blush,” was the best I could stammer.
This column is my “Thank you” note to anyone who has ever given me feedback, good or bad.
Whether or not I go on to become the next Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin or Tim Crothers, I will always cherish this year. I call it Wednesday’s Special because seeing my column in print every week made the day just that for me.
I’ve waited all year to write it:
I hope you liked Green Eggs and Sam.
Contact Sam Rosenthal at samrose24@gmail.com.
by by Athletes can be at home in class, too
Once upon a freshman or sophomore year, Kelly Davies approached me, her mind ill-at-ease.
Davies, a volleyball player, needed to vent about a former Sports Desker’s article, which struck her as, um, a teensy bit insensitive.
“There was some opinion piece about what student-athletes should be taking at Carolina,” Davies rehashed with me last week. “And it said that they should be taking a modified – what does modified mean? – exercise and sports science curriculum.
by by Gone in (less than) 9.7 seconds
Mind-boggling.
What a terrific term. Makes you smile just to say it.
In the sports world, we seldom encounter true mind-bogglers – feats stupendous enough to flummox you worse than Paris Hilton holding a paper that reads “turn over” on both sides.
At the Beijing Olympics, we encountered one such diamond in the rough: the number 9.69.
As in 9.69 seconds, or the time it took Jamaica’s Usain Bolt to run the 100-meter dash.
Nine-point-six-nine. Turned that sucker over in my head a million times (felt just like Paris). Nine-point-six-effing-nine!
Do you realize how fast that is?
For perspective, 100 meters equates to 328 feet, 1 inch. So on average, Mr. “Lightning” Bolt covered 33 feet, 10 inches every second of the race.
Look at a spot about 30 feet away from you, and imagine being able to get there in a single second. That’s so fast it makes Barry Sanders look like Barry White.
Yet Bolt actually slowed down at the end of the race. Dragged his feet, threw out his arms in celebration and still became the first man to run the hundred in less than 9.7 seconds.
Consider my mind thoroughly boggled.
But 9.69 was merely the first world record Bolt set in Beijing (breaking his own mark, of 9.72 seconds). He followed up his 100-meter insanity with an equally ridiculous run in the 200 meters.
Bolt crossed the finish in 19.30 seconds, breaking Michael Johnson’s world record from the 1996 Atlanta Games by 0.02 seconds. You probably remember when Johnson set that record; people deemed it unbreakable.
Bolt broke it while running into the wind, this time without letting up at the end. Nobody else in the race fared the slightest chance of beating him; it was Bolt versus Johnson all the way. And as he surpassed the first man to win the 200m and 400m at the same Olympics, Bolt also became the first to sweep the 100m and 200m since Carl Lewis – and Bolt alone won both events in world record time.
Then, in the 4×100 meter relay, Bolt earned another gold medal. He ran the race’s third leg faster than an electrical current and, along with his fleet-footed Jamaican teammates, obliterated the field en route to another world record finish of 37.10 seconds (0.30 seconds faster than the U.S. team in 1993).
Oh, and Usain Bolt turned 22 in Beijing. Makes a certain 21-year-old feel like, well, an underachiever.
But IOC President Jacques Rogge lambasted Bolt for over-celebrating and not congratulating his competitors. Rogge said, “That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” in response to Bolt’s claiming “I am No. 1” and his catch-me-if-you-can attitude.
There’s something to be said for that. Upon reviewing Bolt’s races, the Jamaican jackrabbit certainly could have acted more sportsmanlike. After Johnson set his 200-meter world record, he hugged the other racers in appreciation.
But in this age of egocentric superstars, sportsmanship often goes by the wayside whether we like it or not.
And you know what? Bolt is No. 1. Catch him? They couldn’t. No matter how Rogge perceives a champion, he cannot deny that Bolt indeed is one.
So let’s put “Lightning” Bolt’s performance into context:
Sprinting must have been one of humanity’s earliest forms of competition. Some dude probably turned to another dude and said, “Hey, see that spot over there? Bet I can get there before you.” So easy a caveman could do it.
That said, we have no knowledge of anyone, ever, being better at getting to a spot 100 meters or 200 meters away than Usain Bolt.
You know the aphorism “There’s always a bigger fish?” Well, right now, in the ocean of sprinting – one of the oldest oceans in the world of athletic competition – Bolt is the Kraken, Moby Dick and Leviathan rolled into one. There has never been a bigger fish.
Mind-boggling.
Contact Sam Rosenthal at samrose24@gmail.com
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