Greatness in Action

When I was a junior in college, my then-girlfriend kept telling me that she wanted to see the Bolshoi Ballet when they visited town. Wanting to impress her, and fearful that I might not be able to find another girlfriend, I mustered my pennies and bought her two tickets for her birthday.

There was just one problem that I hadn’t considered: She wanted me to join her. It certainly wasn’t for my charming company or my potential as arm candy. Perhaps she thought that I’d love the dancing as much as she did. Frankly, I expected her to take her mother or a female friend. She could have taken another dude for all I cared. That’s how little I wanted to go to the ballet.

Being dutiful and slightly fearful I went, albeit with a bad attitude. I may have fallen asleep. Shortly thereafter I may have snored and/or drooled.

I haven’t been back to the ballet in the ensuing 30 years, and I don’t really intend to go, but I am sorry that I didn’t try to get everything I could out of the experience. World-class dancers doing what they did best, and I couldn’t get one nugget of enjoyment out of it – that’s kind of sad.

I’d like to think that I’ve become more open-minded since then. I’ve learned not to say “Your favorite music sucks,” but rather that “I don’t understand it” or “It doesn’t appeal to me.” I’ve tried things – for example, fly fishing for trout – that I might have spoken of derogatorily in the past, and I’ve learned that I can appreciate them, or even love them.

Most of all, I’ve learned that even if a particular brand of greatness exists, even if it doesn’t resonate directly with me, I can still celebrate it.

But when that greatness is in my comfort zone, or even my wheelhouse, it gives me a case of the feels. As I wrote in one of my Bassmaster columns over the weekend, what we saw at Lake Murray was nothing short of greatness across the board, with anglers utilizing everything from their primal instincts to multiple forward-facing sonar screens to get the job done. Whether it was the herring spawn or the shad spawn or something else altogether, they had it completely dialed in. Lost in the hubbub over the top ten was the fact that most of the guys down the leaderboard had it dialed in, too, just not to the nth degree.

The competition level at BASS as well as at BPT is so ridiculously high these days, that anyone (save for the Jeff Cobles and David Kilgores of the world, and their ilk) who says, “I could be competitive out there if I just had the time and the money” is either stupid, a liar, or willfully blind. It’s like saying, “I could get away from an NFL pass rush if I just had time to train,” or “I could throw a 100mph fastball if you just let me warm up and gave me a lifetime supply of Icy Hot.”

There was a time when even at the tour level just catching a limit each day would keep you in the hunt. It was possible to “12 pound ‘em to death.” Those days are over. On the one hand, it’s sad to see once-dominant figures like Clunn and Nixon and Fritts no longer be as consistently competitive as they once were – but at least that can be partially explained by age. When it comes to guys in their late 30s through late 40s who a decade ago made the Classic on autopilot and now have to hope to make it every second or third year, that’s a bigger deal. Just ask the guys who caught 16 or 17 pounds a day at Murray and didn’t make it to Saturday. The state of our sport is strong, and it’s becoming harder to contend every day.

That’s why they play the games, and that’s why we watch ‘em (and also, it’s cooler than the ballet).