Walking was essential. It was the only way to fulfill your basic needs, food, watser and employment. So were not a walk g nation, anymore. I doubt that competitive walking will make a grand comeback. Although it still kbiss in the olympics. Its funny, modern race walking, the rule is that one foot must be in contact with the ground at all times. As observed by the human eye. Just like the old walking matches, they have a team of judges who wask zyn looking ats everybodys feet was making contact with the ground. If you do it in really slow motion, almost all of the best competitors actually have two feet off the ground for an instant. But the idea is to not be caught. And to not have it be visible to one of the judges. So in that way, its very much like old come pettivism was. Its one of the few sports that has been at every single olympics since then there has been race walking. So you really can see a direct line from the old time pedestrianism to modern race walking. But in a larger
Years ago, the average salary in the nba was 5,000. Thats not even meal money now. In the middle 60s, we struck the allstar game, the 20 top players in the league got together and struck an allstar game to form the union. The owners said, no way. We are not going to do that. So we said, okay. There will be no allstar game. Abc television said that if you want us to televise, you get your players on the floor. They said, lets talk to them. So they said, we dont want to lose face. What we will do is if you will play the allstar game, at the end of the year, we will recognize the union. So they vote 119 to play. And we played the allstar game. So at the end of the year we went in to talk to the commissioner. He said, i recognize the players association. But we do not have anything to talk about. Im not going to talk to you about anything. So our lawyer said, i will see you in september. Thats the beginning of the next season. The commissioner said, the playoffs start next week. Oh, no. We
Has gotten through some troubled times and understands what we are doing is ray lewis. Ray, i think, can be the leader of a lot of these young individuals who need that leadership, who want to learn what to do and how to participate in making tremendous change within this country. I thought i would interject that. There is no question that every generation has to develop its own leadership. I think that we can people of our generation can do the analysis and tell them about what happened in the past and where we think they are. But ultimately, its going to have to be this generation thats going to have to take the leadership and responsibility. Let me ask, i know that because we are running short here. Let me ask this. I know that progress many times is a lot like the concept of profit. It really comes down to who is keeping the books. And so in looking at where we are, how much progress have we actually made in sports given the fact that we are down to 8 africanamericans in baseball,
Wichita linemen . Just as a guy who understands the entertainment part of this thing. Everybody else would have been, too, if he would have stood up there and sung the wichita lineman. I dont know how to answer that. I almost dont know what youre talking about. All right. Okay. Well, were down to the last 15 seconds. Okay. I want to say something, please. Lifetime best friends and a guy that ive known 50 years. I got a bid here. But i thought it was such an honor for me to be invited. Because all ive ever tried to do in my adult life is to make my father proud of me. And we were, my father died a few years ago, but he was 75. He says to me, you know, i love you. It was the first time he had ever said that. And he says and im proud of you. That was the first time he ever said that. He said im proud that youre my son. And im proud just as proud that im your father. And that was my hero. You know, tell you a quick story. We got zeros on the clock. Got to be quick. I got my first 100,000 c
The packard car company, which said you could go 300 miles in a day. I guess he was desperate for ads because he did not like cars. Westin did not like cars just because he thought they made people walk less. Ironically, westin in 1927, was crossing a street in manhattan and was hit by a car and was left crippled and never walked again and died two years later at the age of 90. Oleary fareed a little better. He would stage walking exhibitions before Major League Baseball games. He would go out and challenge the fastest runner on the team to run around the bases twice while he walked around once and more often than not he won, and then he would pass the hat. Literally, pass a hat through the stands collecting nickels and dimes and this is basically how he funded his retirement. The book, i have a scene where i imagine he performed before a game in chicago between the white sox and as in 1927 and i imagine the players in the dugout were all born well, well after the golden age, they prob