Sublime

asked myself: What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.

we have to operate within the limits and structures of each country, each economy; we can’t simply pay whatever we wish to pay. In one country, which shall be nameless, when we tried to raise wages, we found ourselves called on the carpet, summoned to the office of a top government official and ordered to stop. We were disrupting the nation’s entir

The day after I turn pro, Philly gets a call from Nike. They want to meet with me about an endorsement deal.

Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.

Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

I got into the habit every night of phoning my father from my recliner. He’d always be in his recliner, too, and together, recliner to recliner, we’d hash out the latest threat confronting Blue Ribbon. He no longer saw my business as a waste of my time, apparently. Though he didn’t say so explicitly, he did seem to find the problems I faced “intere

If I had any doubts about Blue Ribbon’s management team in 1976, they were mainly about me. Was I doing right by the Buttfaces, giving them so little guidance? When they did well I’d shrug and deliver my highest praise: Not bad. When they erred I’d yell for a minute or two, then shake it off. None of the Buttfaces felt the least threatened by me—wa

fealty—that

Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, and I didn’t want that. More than anything, that was the thing I did not want.