failed and said i can do better than that. marks get set on this episode, you re about to find out all the reasons you can t do better than that. woo! for a touchdown, a sharpshooter from the midcourt. we re looking at the spirit of america. i grew up resenting sports. when you re a black kid who everybody knows is going to be over six feet tall, every conversation goes to you play basketball. i only did in eighth grade. i went the whole season without scoring a point, like dennis rodman, but without the rebounding and hair. when i lived in chicago, i discovered michael jordan. now i m the guy who quotes the last dance like it s a new book of the bible. i took it personally. but that s the thing about sports. we often take it personally. i m somehow a grown man who hates adults for no good reason. john starks! sports give us a place to unload all of our unchecked f-u on everybody, from little leaguers to hall of famers. and if there is one city that revels in
for a small city, it s got a big chip on its shoulder, although boston sports fans would say it s a big championship, and lots of them. this is a sports town. yeah. from the celtics to the red sox. if you re born in boston, you are raised to be a boston sports fan. how you doing, sir? good. how you? good. i heard you were in there. no, i was in there. what happened? they threw me out. why did they threw you out? because i said let s go tk! but no matter where you go, in a single moment an athlete can go from the g.o.a.t. to a goat. their reputation and value is always up for debate. so i m going to do some word association. you tell me how you feel about these words. tom brady. he s the g.o.a.t. i love tom brady. i used to love tom. okay, what happened? until he decided to leave us. you re going to outgrow boston, but tampa bay? that s his most impressive
your value too. and then i found my value again. if i had realized that i was learning this confidence, this resiliency when i had got injured, i think i would have come back even stronger. that s the end game of beat the streets and wrestle her. it isn t just about getting better at the physical. it s about building self-worth, character and mutual support systems through wrestling. it technically is the only varsity level sport that teaches you self-defense equivalence. actually, when i moved to boston, someone tried to mug me. i like that started with someone tried to mug me. that already tells you how that went. instinctively, i just arm dragged them. oh, that was awkward. and as she pushes back against the idea that a wrestler s worth is only worth their performance and abilities, sees a real shift in the minds of her athletes. are you ready? oh! sports in general is changing
bill russell, i say at work all the time. i ve never heard that before. my dad used to say that all the time. if you got a statue, you got to be somebody important. there are lots of people with statues that don t deserve statues. don t get me going with that. be thank you is boston. bill russell does have a statue, but he should have two. one for winning all those championships and another for being mentally tough enough to deal with boston s legendary racism while he did it. two back-to-back racist incidents at fenway park have now shaken the baseball community. i think because it runs so deeply, it s so baked into the cake of boston sports. the nba finals with bill russell, number six brilliantly spearheading the celtics. bill russell is the single greatest winning player in all of professional team sports. he was never known for his scoring or flashy play. he was just the ultimate team player. he was a team player off the court too. because even though he had hi
boston! i got to help. ah, the fans. a group of people who turn a bit of fun into the struggle for the immortal soul of a city. so i m going start with some fans who are more like me, who are in it more for the thrill of victory part than the crushing your enemies and seeing them adrenaline before you part. what is your sports fandom? mets fan. oh. oh, hey, what s that face? it s not about them, it s about the suffering. there is so much. this is my friend mae graham, a boston globe columnist for over two decades. and this is renee s friend. i m from minnesota, but i transferred my fandom to the red sox. she s got that midwestern thing. she did that, and i m a new yorker. i m a mets fan. i m not playing that. can t even go into the boroughs. i couldn t go in my house and visit my family. man. well, let s start because, you know, big nba fan, ufc fan.