doing the little things

Today it dawned on me -- I'll never be great at my job. I look at some of the people around me and shit, they are great at their job. Naturals. Skilled. Smart. Creative. Resourceful. Passionate. Focused.

But me, I'm a plodder. A banger. A scrapper. A bench player with a positive attitude. On my good days, I'm Kurt Rambis. On my bad days, I'm Bob Thornton. I try, I care, I hustle, and at the end of the day I usually have made some positive contribution to the project. My greatest strengths: a willingness to tackle thankless but necessary shit, and an ability to marginally boost the esprit de corps in a grey room full of toiling humans.

Are those things valuable? I guess. But would the company be better off hiring a hotshot in my position, a more talented dude who perhaps doesn't do as many things as I do, but does the things that he does much better than I do? Maybe. If he was a dick, maybe not.

In sports, there has always been a tendency to overvalue "intangibles". Sportswriters make careers out of hyping marginal players who appear to hustle more than superstars, even though in this case "hustle" usually translates as "fail." And fans identify with the less spectacular players because they embody every weekend warrior's own struggle with the limits of his natural talent. Do these lesser players, the guys who look funny in their uniforms, the Scalabrines and Ecksteins of the world, in fact hustle more?* And does it matter? Sensible people have begun to realize that it is mainly results that win games and championships. Results that can be measured through the rational analysis of statistics. In other words, stock your team with assholes who produce and you will usually win.

But don't you also need good locker room guys, people who keep things lighthearted and play practical jokes and hit .230? Of course you do. But the sad truth is, they are easy as hell to find. And therefore easy to replace.

I'm guessing it's the same in your office.

***

I'll get you an answer shortly to the NBAruindat challenge from the other day. Some of you have pretty much got it, although I don't know if anyone stated it specifically.

One weekend during my freshman year in college, I tagged along with my roommate as he went back to his hometown of Marshfield, Wisconsin. He took me to several house parties full of his old high school friends, and I got terribly, terribly drunk, as only freshmen can. At the last of these parties, I saw a grisly sight in the garage that overwhelmed my fragile, booze-addled city boy brain. For 10 points, what was in the garage?

* For now we won't complain about how often "whiteness" is translated to "scrappiness" by the aging white sports media.