Jeremy Lin = Hope

The Jeremy Lin Column
For: Le Herald de Paris
By: Chuck Balls


Jeremy Lin. I’m surprised you made it this far. In my entire life’s history of sports - one that begins with the Cardinals v. Red Sox World Series of 1967 with Bobby and Ted Kennedy watching from Fenway in the coolest Ray-Bans in the history of Ray-Bans - I’ve never seen anything like the Jeremy Lin phenomenon. Who compares to Lin-Mania? In baseball, the closest I can think of is Vida Blue or Mark ‘the Bird’ Fidrych, In hockey, only the great Montreal Canadiens’ goaltender of the 1970s Ken Dryden comes to mind and even then the Canadiens under their General Manager Sam Pollock were a shrewd outfit, so how bad could a Cornell University grad be as a back-up to Rogatien Vachon?

Basketball...basketball like football bears no surprises. Both are scouted to the point of plastic bag over the head suffocation. Who would one truly pick as a surprise star in football? Joe Montana or Tom Brady? One was the quarterback at Notre Dame (when the Irish were still good) and the other at Michigan (when the Wolverines were still good). That they didn’t freeze at the line and let loose a slowly rolling line of drool on their center’s butt really should not have come as a shock.

Nor should Tebow, who is the closest thing to the beatification of Jeremy Lin. Tim Tebow was and is a highly scouted and borderline highly-rated quarterback from the football factory that is the University of Florida. There was debate over whether Tebow, with a  throwing motion that resembles a grown man tossing his first paper airplane since childhood, could make it as an NFL quarterback. The existence of the debate indicates that the positive outcome is not entirely unexpected.

There really is no way of describing the Lin Phenomenon in anything other than hyperbolic terms. A player whose public consciousness was non-existent at the start of the shortest month of the year who is its biggest star by the end is unique. Unique means something. Is there an etching of the zeitgeist in the world of Jeremy Lin?

Jeremy Lin rolls to the hole...

I suspect there is. Hell, that’s why I’m writing this story. At rock bottom line, the fame of Jeremy Lin - profession: point guard, New York Knickerbockers - is a triumph of man over machine and it couldn’t have come at a better time. We live in a time where we are told that this must be bailed out, that a minimum wage must be slashed, that pensions must be revisited, that this country or another must be bombed because,,,well that’s what we’ve been told, Now whether one’s taxes are less than a billionaire’s, investments vanished like a summer candle or your son is suddenly on a frontline, you have some doubts. You wonder whether there is some alternate vision of the world, one where the experts are Wrong. To paraphrase Paul Simon, Where have you done Jeremy Lin/A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Jeremy Lin graduated from Harvard. Harvard. The school where smart people go. I could Google search and perhaps find another pro athlete who came from Harvard, and there may be one, but that would deny the uniqueness of the moment. It’s Harvard. No one scouts Harvard unless they have press box seats for the Pats the following night.(BTW, I did Google this - the next most famous Harvard Crimson alum athlete is Baltimore Ravens’ center Matt Birk. Oh.)

We need to know that smart people are wrong sometimes, otherwise what is the point of democracy? Whether Jeremy Lin goes on to a Hall of Fame career with two rings like Walt ‘Clyde’ Frazier is beside the point. If he loses his jump shot and makes 12 turnovers a game starting tomorrow is bedside the point. He reminded us that you can beat the odds, beat the scouts and beat the experts. God love him.