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It worked for Patti LuPone, and me too
How anger made me a star
Dan Rottenberg
In my last column I suggested that (a) anger is a counterproductive emotion and (b) some folks are just temperamentally angry, regardless of the state of the universe. (See "My anger and me.") Not so, several presumably angry readers have scolded me.
Reader Joseph Glantz, for example, points out that if James Gordon Bennett Jr. hadn't been so short-tempered, he wouldn't have founded the Newport Casino, now home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. John McEnroe's famous temper, Glantz adds, may have helped him win some tennis matches. (See October Letters.)
Our contributor Robert Zaller, meanwhile, credits the righteous anger of Jesus for driving the moneychangers out of the temple. Zaller also cites the anger of Gandhi and Martin Luther King for successfully driving the British out of India after 200 years and Jim Crow out of the South after 300 years.
But most of these examples prove my original point. Jesus did indeed drive the moneychangers out of the temple— and into the Catholic Church, which today is one of the few institutions in North America, outside of casinos, where you can legally play Bingo for money prizes. If Jesus hadn't been so impulsive, he might have come up with a more effective long-range plan for shielding religion from commerce.
As for Gandhi and King, some of us would argue that they succeeded where others failed not because of their anger but precisely because they found rational and constructive ways to overcome their anger.
LuPone's audition
Still, as both Glantz and Zaller point out, without anger there would have been no Boston Tea Party, and consequently no American Revolution, and consequently no modern democracy, which I concede is a good thing. So is the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
The actress Patti LuPone, in her new memoir, says her state of heightened emotion and suppressed rage during an audition enabled her to win the plum lead role in the Broadway production of Evita. So let us stipulate: Anger is indeed a useful tool for actors who must portray angry characters. And I ask you: Where would modern civilization be without John McEnroe?
Indeed, in my haste to condemn anger, I neglected to examine the critical role that anger has played in my own life. As I look back upon my long career as a journalist, author, editor and researcher, I realize in retrospect that I owe my most significant achievement to anger, and only to anger.
A pathetic football player
On my high school football team, you see, I was a terrific place-kicker but in all other respects a truly pathetic player. My physical deficiencies were partly responsible—I was neither very big, nor very fast, nor very strong— but the real root of my problem boiled down to this: I lacked the killer instinct.
I had no aggressions to work off, no desire to hurt anybody, no hunger to prove my manhood. I was just a nice guy who loved the sport. Consequently, aside from my kicking chores I never got into a game unless our team was ahead by at least three touchdowns, and more likely four or five.
Still, when I entered Penn I tried out for the varsity and, to my astonishment, made the team. But here again, I never got into a game for any purpose other than kicking; in all other respects I had no business there. (Some of my Penn teammates were so large that on hot afternoons I would stand next to them just to be in the shade.)
The gulf that separated me from my teammates was epitomized on the day before the opening game of my junior year, when the coach put us through our assignments for kickoffs. These assignments, essentially, called for ten huge guys to race down the field at top speed while I, the kicker, hung back as the safety.
After we had run through this drill two or three times, I asked the head coach, John Stiegman, "Why can't I run down the field with everyone else?"
Stiegman eyed me with a bemused smile and replied, "Because, if you run down that field, you'll get waffled."
Moment of truth
Nevertheless, two weekends later I found myself in Hanover, New Hampshire, kicking off to start the second half of a hard-fought game against Dartmouth. A heavy rain was falling, and as I approached the ball amid the swamp-like conditions, I lost my footing. So instead of kicking the ball 60 yards downfield, I sent it about 60 yards up in the air.
In that moment I was so furious at myself that I forgot my customary caution as well as my assignment to hang back as the safety. Instead, I dashed down the field like a madman, oblivious to the Dartmouth goons lurking before me. In one of those inexplicable flukes that sometimes occur in sports, the entire Dartmouth team got out of my way. The ball landed some 30 yards downfield in the hands of a Dartmouth back, who took three steps before I angrily crashed into the poor bastard and drove him to the ground.
My victim revealed
That was the only tackle I made in my college career, and indeed it equaled the total number of tackles I made in my high school career. But like Lincoln after the Gettysburg Address, in that moment I thought myself a failure. Only with the passage of time have I come to appreciate the magnitude of my achievement that day.
After the game, you see, I learned that the player I had tackled was Bill King, the Dartmouth quarterback. Two months later, after Dartmouth finished that 1962 season undefeated and untied, Bill King was unanimously voted the first team All-Ivy quarterback, as well as an honorable mention All-America. Ten years later, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I, in which Penn and Dartmouth and the rest of the Ivy League competed, was divided into a lower and upper tier. Ten years after that, the Ivy League was demoted to that newly created lower tier.
So here it is, nearly 50 years after that fateful afternoon, and here am I, the worst player on my high school football team, telling my grandchildren that I once tackled a Division I All-America in an NCAA football game— something no Ivy League football player of the past 30 years will ever be able to tell his grandchildren. And I owe it all to…. yes, that's right: my anger.♦
To read responses, click here.
Reader Joseph Glantz, for example, points out that if James Gordon Bennett Jr. hadn't been so short-tempered, he wouldn't have founded the Newport Casino, now home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. John McEnroe's famous temper, Glantz adds, may have helped him win some tennis matches. (See October Letters.)
Our contributor Robert Zaller, meanwhile, credits the righteous anger of Jesus for driving the moneychangers out of the temple. Zaller also cites the anger of Gandhi and Martin Luther King for successfully driving the British out of India after 200 years and Jim Crow out of the South after 300 years.
But most of these examples prove my original point. Jesus did indeed drive the moneychangers out of the temple— and into the Catholic Church, which today is one of the few institutions in North America, outside of casinos, where you can legally play Bingo for money prizes. If Jesus hadn't been so impulsive, he might have come up with a more effective long-range plan for shielding religion from commerce.
As for Gandhi and King, some of us would argue that they succeeded where others failed not because of their anger but precisely because they found rational and constructive ways to overcome their anger.
LuPone's audition
Still, as both Glantz and Zaller point out, without anger there would have been no Boston Tea Party, and consequently no American Revolution, and consequently no modern democracy, which I concede is a good thing. So is the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
The actress Patti LuPone, in her new memoir, says her state of heightened emotion and suppressed rage during an audition enabled her to win the plum lead role in the Broadway production of Evita. So let us stipulate: Anger is indeed a useful tool for actors who must portray angry characters. And I ask you: Where would modern civilization be without John McEnroe?
Indeed, in my haste to condemn anger, I neglected to examine the critical role that anger has played in my own life. As I look back upon my long career as a journalist, author, editor and researcher, I realize in retrospect that I owe my most significant achievement to anger, and only to anger.
A pathetic football player
On my high school football team, you see, I was a terrific place-kicker but in all other respects a truly pathetic player. My physical deficiencies were partly responsible—I was neither very big, nor very fast, nor very strong— but the real root of my problem boiled down to this: I lacked the killer instinct.
I had no aggressions to work off, no desire to hurt anybody, no hunger to prove my manhood. I was just a nice guy who loved the sport. Consequently, aside from my kicking chores I never got into a game unless our team was ahead by at least three touchdowns, and more likely four or five.
Still, when I entered Penn I tried out for the varsity and, to my astonishment, made the team. But here again, I never got into a game for any purpose other than kicking; in all other respects I had no business there. (Some of my Penn teammates were so large that on hot afternoons I would stand next to them just to be in the shade.)
The gulf that separated me from my teammates was epitomized on the day before the opening game of my junior year, when the coach put us through our assignments for kickoffs. These assignments, essentially, called for ten huge guys to race down the field at top speed while I, the kicker, hung back as the safety.
After we had run through this drill two or three times, I asked the head coach, John Stiegman, "Why can't I run down the field with everyone else?"
Stiegman eyed me with a bemused smile and replied, "Because, if you run down that field, you'll get waffled."
Moment of truth
Nevertheless, two weekends later I found myself in Hanover, New Hampshire, kicking off to start the second half of a hard-fought game against Dartmouth. A heavy rain was falling, and as I approached the ball amid the swamp-like conditions, I lost my footing. So instead of kicking the ball 60 yards downfield, I sent it about 60 yards up in the air.
In that moment I was so furious at myself that I forgot my customary caution as well as my assignment to hang back as the safety. Instead, I dashed down the field like a madman, oblivious to the Dartmouth goons lurking before me. In one of those inexplicable flukes that sometimes occur in sports, the entire Dartmouth team got out of my way. The ball landed some 30 yards downfield in the hands of a Dartmouth back, who took three steps before I angrily crashed into the poor bastard and drove him to the ground.
My victim revealed
That was the only tackle I made in my college career, and indeed it equaled the total number of tackles I made in my high school career. But like Lincoln after the Gettysburg Address, in that moment I thought myself a failure. Only with the passage of time have I come to appreciate the magnitude of my achievement that day.
After the game, you see, I learned that the player I had tackled was Bill King, the Dartmouth quarterback. Two months later, after Dartmouth finished that 1962 season undefeated and untied, Bill King was unanimously voted the first team All-Ivy quarterback, as well as an honorable mention All-America. Ten years later, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I, in which Penn and Dartmouth and the rest of the Ivy League competed, was divided into a lower and upper tier. Ten years after that, the Ivy League was demoted to that newly created lower tier.
So here it is, nearly 50 years after that fateful afternoon, and here am I, the worst player on my high school football team, telling my grandchildren that I once tackled a Division I All-America in an NCAA football game— something no Ivy League football player of the past 30 years will ever be able to tell his grandchildren. And I owe it all to…. yes, that's right: my anger.♦
To read responses, click here.
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