Sometimes in life you’re only as good (or bad) as those with whom you
surround yourself. The classic example is a college football coach being
only as good as the assistant coaches he hires (Lane Kiffin will test this
theory like it’s never been tested before). In radio, sometimes your show
has stretches where if you don’t have a good producer, the show won’t work,
on-air talent be damned.
I think back to the first year we were on the air, and John Harris and I
wanted to end the show one day (a day that happened to be the birthday of James
Gandolfini’s, a/k/a the actor who played Tony Soprano) by playing
Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” just like the final scene of The Sopranos, complete with the
impromptu cutoff about three minutes in during the refrain. We had it all
timed out with the exact moment that our producer, Kyle Manthey, needed to
press the PAUSE button to end the song and the show; it was gonna be totally
sweet!
One problem — at the exact moment that the PAUSE putton needed to be pushed
on the song to end the show, Kyle’s hands suddenly became possessed by evil
spirits, or he forgot how to work a computer, something happened and
basically our big finish paying homage to the best television show of
all-time went KAPUT.
I stared at Kyle through the glass into the control room, and he had the
same look on his face that Cameron had after his dad’s Ferrari went out the
back window of the garage in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He knew he’d
messed up, and all I could do was stare at him and say…”Dude, all you had
to do was push one button….that’s it….one button….”
It was one of those “make him feel about three inches tall for messing up
something my four-year-old niece could have properly executed” moments. To
be fair, we now have a Kyle-proof version of the Journey classic that
automatically cuts off at the right moment in time, and since then Kyle has
executed flawlessly. Kudos, Taskmaster!!
I bring this up because, again being fair to Kyle, we’ve all had those
moments where one small “fail” ripples into something bigger than it should
be. With that in mind, say hello to Dutch speed skating coach Gerard
Kemkers. He is the coach for world-class Dutch
speed skater Sven Kramer. He had his “all you had to do was press one
button” moment yesterday.
The story goes like this — as Kramer sped around the track on his way to shattering
the world record in the 10,000 meter speed skating event earlier this week,
on the 17th lap Kemkers hollered at him to change lanes. I guess in speed
skating there are certain times you’re supposed to change lanes during a
race or something. Whatever. Well, it just so happened that that was NOT
one of the times Kramer was supposed to change lanes or something ilke that,
and by following his coach’s “advice” Kramer got himself disqualified from
what would have been a record-setting performance and a four-second runaway
gold medal winning race.
Kramer described the snafu, “Usually, I don’t want to blame anyone else, but
this time I can’t do anything else. I wanted to go on the outer lane then
just before the cone Gerard shouted ‘inner lane,’ I thought he’s probably
right and went to the inner lane.”
Bad idea, Kramer. In fact, a REALLY bad idea. The worst decision by
someone named “Kramer” since Cosmo Kramer decided to cook for 185 Jewish
singles in Seinfeld.
In a way, this was even worse than Kyle Manthey’s producer fail of “all you
had to do was push one button,” because Kramer actually would have been
better served by Kemkers doing absolutely nothing. Imagine that — if
your coach were duct-taped and tied to the bench, you’d have had a better
chance at breaking the world record in your sport. You suck, Kemkers.
Oh but don’t worry….it’s not like the Olympics only comes around every
four years or anything. Oh wait….
The real losers in this whole thing, the true tragedy of it all, are the
gamblers who threw down on what was apparently the lock of the century in
Kramer. Admittedly, I’ve only cared about speed skating three times in my
life — Eric Heiden’s gold medal motherload in 1980, Dan Jansen’s story of
redemption in 1994, and now the Kemkers Fiasco of 2010 — so I have no idea
if Kramer is all that, but apparently he was a monster favorite. So don’t
cry for Kramer….cry for the guy who thought he could pick up an easy $100
to feed his kids by risking $2,000 on Kramer. That guy just got Kemker’ed
out of food money. That guy’s the real loser in all of this.
After the race was over and the DQ finish confirmed, the winner by default,
Lee Seung-hoon of South Korea, was seen kissing the ice and acted like he’d actually won the thing. Lee, you didn’t win a damn thing; you were handed
the gold medal on a silver platter by the single most shameful instance of
coaching incompetence in the history of Olympic sports. Take your medal,
that’s fine, but save the over the top celebration.
The question now is “Where does Kemkers go from here?” I’d love to see him
show up as a celebrity third base coach for one of those independent league
teams and watch runners get thrown out by 50 feet at home plate. Let’s
just hope no one hires him as a crossing guard for an elementary school.
I’d hate to see dozens of little kids get run over by oncoming traffic.
Listen to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from 3-7 p.m. weekdays on the Sean & John Show, and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2010.
