Another quick book review, which is (apologies) far grumpier than I feel about the book, but once you start writing out your thoughts, sometimes these things happen…
——
Sally Jenkins's new book, The Right Call, sits squarely at the nexus of several genres (and marketing categories) of books that I am unlikely to read: business; management; self-help. It's the kind of book that gets featured prominently in airport bookstores — the kind that C-Suite types like to buy for their aspiring underlings with a wink and a nod and "read this to learn how to be a leader (or an innovator or whatever)." And I'm sorry, but I just can't stand those sweeping proclamations and stories that are too pat by half — you know, the Malcolm Gladwell sort of shtick, where the path to success involves "grit" and "innovation" and not a lucky set of circumstances or (more often) inheriting a million dollars.
So I shouldn't review this book, because it's not the book for me. It is, no doubt, the kind of book that's probably a perfect gift for someone you know. No shade.
I didn't hate The Right Call. Indeed, there were parts of it that were quite enjoyable — listening to how Diana Nyad and her coach Bonnie Stoll worked together on the former's swim from Cuba to Florida, for example. But this is because Jenkins is an award-winning sports journalist, who is clearly comfortable writing about almost any sport, as she does here: basketball, football, tennis, surfing, swimming.
Jenkins argues that there are practical lessons that we can draw from athletes and apply to our daily lives, and many of these are just what you'd expect: work hard, particularly on the things you suck at (and really understand what you suck at — most of us, Jenkins contends, suffer from "unconscious incompetence"); take the shot, and be ready to fail; trust your teammates; and so on. To a great extent, much of the advice here feels practical because it's drawn from practices — the day in and day out grind of sports practice, from the psychological and physiological repetition of training.
Jenkins reminds us that great athletes aren't "born," they're "made," and as such all of us have the potential for excellence. Michael Phelps' body isn't that different, statistically speaking, from his competitors; he just trained really goddamn hard. Tom Brady's scouting report, if you'll recall, said he was too skinny; he lacked great stature or strength; he was knocked down too easily. He wasn't "born" to be greatest quarterback of all time (god that sentence was painful to type). He got lucky, and he worked really hard blah blah blah.
But here's on place where I always stumble with these sorts of books, even ones like this one that emphasize the team, the community, the group; that insist "don't be a dick," "winning isn't everything," and so on. These kinds of books always seem to ignore key structural issues that enable certain people to excel — even as Jenkins seems to offer some lessons on how you too can "be like Mike." (There are — spoiler alert — no tips in The Right Call on how to be like Mike.) I don't doubt that Brady or Phelps and others are a hard workers. But they are also employed by or funded by organizations that, quite literally, are invested in their health, their growth, their winning. They have vast support networks that the rest of us don't have. They are committed to their performance in a way that, frankly, most of us won't be because it's not worth it.
And I know, I know, we can look to the good in sports (and we certainly love to love star athletes), but damn, there's just so much bad right now that makes me sort of shudder at using it as a model for making "the right call": the rampant sexual abuse in gymnastics, the eating disorders in distance running, the pay inequalities in soccer, the transphobia in track and swimming, and on and on and on.