CHAPTER

2

Back to Brooklyn

To get at the heart of the matter, we went back to Brooklyn. (As this leadership journey evolves, keep in mind that, like many stories and certainly most memories, we will not follow an exact linear timeline. Rather, we will traverse places, times, and themes, blending and connecting one with the other with the goal of creating a fuller and richer tapestry.)

As we pulled up, finding a parking place in front of the diner, there was no mistaking this legendary landmark on the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush Avenue extension, with its bright orange awnings and vibrant orange script lettering announcing, as if in a neon memory from days gone by: Junior’s. Inside, it was easy to imagine that we had been transported back in time as we opened the large glass doors and walked through the bakery section, showcasing strawberry, blueberry, Brooklyn Crumb, and every kind of cheesecake imaginable.

Herb and I slid into one of the bright yellow, green, and orange Naugahyde-upholstered booths, as I described to him how the framed, autographed photos on the walls announced that this was a must-stop eating spot for presidents, movie stars, and, of course, the Brooklyn Dodgers. A waiter in a white shirt with black slacks, vest, and bow tie handed us enormous red-and-white-striped menus that looked like they had not changed since some of the Dodgers first glanced at them nearly seven decades ago. I read highlights from the menu to Herb, including: a mile-long deli sandwich, Tai wings, potato pancake sandwiches, several kinds of Reubens, Jamaican jerk chicken, mac and cheese pie, Hungarian goulash, fresh brisket of beef, big meatballs with spaghetti, a roasted half-chicken, Virginia ham, baked meatloaf, and Junior’s Junior Menu for Your Small Fries. Herb’s smile could not have been wider as he said, “Boy, this is so Brooklyn!”

We each ordered a slice of chocolate swirl cheesecake and a Fox’s U-Bet Brooklyn Chocolate Egg Cream (which has no egg and no cream—just U-Bet syrup, milk, and seltzer) as Herb started to reminisce. “Junior’s opened in 1950,” Herb said. “Prior to that, the same family had a diner here that was not this large and fancy, but was where the Dodgers would come after a game when I was a kid. And you could talk with any of them. All you had to do was buy them a sandwich, a cup of coffee, or a piece of cheesecake. So, when I was just shy of 11 years old, my father was given tickets for us to see the Dodgers play the Giants. My father made custom shoes for the wife of the police inspector in charge of the Polo Grounds, which is where the Giants played, and he was very appreciative and heard that I was a big Dodgers fan.”

This was in 1940, a year before the Dodgers would win their first pennant in decades. (For those unfamiliar with Brooklyn, I hesitate to spoil the suspense, but they went on to fall to the New York Yankees in five World Series matches, eventually turning the tide. But we will come to that in due time.) The annual ritual of building hope and expectations, only to lose in a heartbreaking way, became a familiar pattern for long-suffering fans, as “Wait till next year!” became the unofficial slogan of the Dodgers.

For Herb, though, as he was just about to turn 11, this was his year. The police inspector not only got tickets for Herb and his father, but they also got to meet some of the players just before the game. “Pee Wee Reese was there,” Herb said, “along with Dixie Walker, Dolph Camilli, Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons, and, of course, the manager, Leo Durocher. I could rattle off everyone’s name, but they wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “But those are great nicknames. They all sound like they could step right out of a Damon Runyan story.”

“They do. Then, referring to me, Pee Wee Reese said, ‘This little kid. Would he like to sit in the dugout with us?’ And all I remember was nodding, smiling, then letting out a hoot, and saying, ‘You bet!’ “ Herb paused, then added, “And that’s how it happened.”

Actually being in the dugout, as a little kid, would not have given him the best view of the field, even if he were not blind. (Herb had lost his sight the year before, which we will delve into in just a bit.) But being in the dugout with his heroes gave him much more than a view of the game. What it really gave him was beyond every kid’s dream. It wasn’t even something he had ever dreamed about. Yet here he was. In the dugout. At the beginning of a game. With his heroes getting ready to make another comeback. He had questions he was dying to ask them about trades that had been made and decisions on the field. But he held back and just savored the experience. Herb had been invited into the inner circle of his favorite team. They were batting, then taking the field. And the innings were flying by. His heroes were all around him, being real, honest, playing with everything they had, playing the game like there was nothing else going on in the world. He got an insider’s view of how the team members connected with each other. Meanwhile, he was listening to the broadcast of the game on his little transistor radio. Whenever there was some commotion in the dugout, he would ask what was going on. Generally, Pee Wee Reese was the one who would lean over and explain to Herb what had just happened.

Herb remembers being there when Dolph Camilli hit a home run, and everyone was jumping up and down, screaming. Leaning in to his transistor radio, amid the raucous sounds all around him, Herb could just barely hear Red Barber, who announced the play-by-plays for the Dodgers, say, “Back, back, back.” Then, full of excitement, he declared, “It is a Bedford Avenue Blast. We are sitting in the catbird seat.”

In those days before television, radio was what everyone gathered around to hear about the outside world. For Herb, though, radio became more than that. It was a lifeline. As a young blind child, he had a special connection to radio. Listening very closely, he learned about sports, politics, and, most particularly, how to tell stories full of color and imagery that tapped into the listener’s imagination.

As the players in the dugout were still cheering ecstatically, Camilli leaned down and patted Herb’s head. That same hand had just grasped a baseball bat and hit one out of the stadium. For Herb, being in the dugout with the Dodgers was a sanctuary.

After the game, Pee Wee Reese asked Herb if he’d like to hang out with the team in the dugout again some time. Herb nodded enthusiastically and said, “Yea. I mean, sure, thanks.” Then Reese told him which gate to come to about an hour before the next home game, so that he could be escorted down to the dugout during batting practice.

Later that day, Herb went back home and played punch ball in the street in front of his apartment with a few of the guys in the neighborhood. Because there weren’t enough kids to play all the positions, they played without a pitcher or a bat, and with plenty of “invisible” men. “You just punched the ball with your fist, then ran to first base—or got tagged out,” Herb explained. Interestingly, he never told any of the kids that day about being in the Dodgers dugout. “I’m not sure why,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t want them to tease me, or think I was just making it up, or get jealous. And I didn’t want them to think that I had just done something that they could not do. It was clearly something special. But it seemed otherworldly. As if it was not quite connected to the world I was living in.”

Rubbing Shoulders with Heroes

At the next home game, they got Herb a seat right behind home plate. Enthused about the game, as it was about to begin, he started telling the woman sitting next to him about all the players, reciting each of their statistics, which he knew by heart. “She kept asking me questions, and I kept telling her all about the Dodgers,” he said. “She bought me a hot dog and soda, and we spent the whole game talking. She asked me what my name was and I said, ‘Herbie,’ which is what they used to call me when I was a kid. And I asked her who she was and she said, ‘Betty Grable’—the Hollywood actress who, in three years, would pose for an iconic bathing suit poster that would make her the number one pinup girl of World War II! As we got up to leave after the game, she kissed me goodbye on both cheeks. When I got home, my mother took one look at me and asked where I was in her thick Polish accent; so it sounded like, ‘Ver vor you?’ I told her, ‘At Ebbets Field.’ And she said, ‘That’s where you got the lipstick on your cheeks?’ Then I just started laughing and told her that Betty Grable kissed me. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Betty Grable. And I suppose she’s going to marry you tomorrow, right?’ “

A few weeks later, Red Barber had Herb on his radio show called “My Favorite Kid.” “It was fun, just for a few minutes,” Herb recalled. “We talked about the last game, each of us exchanging impressions about the players and statistics about the team that we knew by heart.”

Barber is considered by most sports announcers to be one of the ultimate role models. “I’ve heard tapes of Red Barber in the 1930s and ‘40s,” Bob Costas told the Los Angeles Times, “where he tells you there’s a line single to left-center and he tells you how many times it bounced before the center fielder picked it up. You needed that then. Today, even the very good announcers will very rarely describe a guy’s stance or the peculiarities of a guy’s windup, because they’ve been subconsciously influenced by television even though they’re on the radio.”

Herb’s ability to paint a verbal picture certainly comes from listening very closely. When I was at his house once for a Super Bowl party, he had the television on, as well as the radio. When I asked him why, he said, “Close your eyes and just listen to the television. Then try to tell me what is happening.” After a minute or two, it was clear that I couldn’t describe the game to him. “Sports announcers on television assume you just saw the play, so they don’t describe it to you. Instead, they’ll fill the time with comments and statistics about the team or a player. The best radio announcers, however, not only tell you what is happening, but they paint a picture, so you get an appreciation for the story they are telling. That’s why their voices are so important, and, at its best, their work often rises to the level of great art.”

I can’t help thinking that Herb may be hearing the same things we are all hearing, but paying a different kind of attention. It is as though the volume is turned up on each and every sound for him—because his hearing has to compensate for what he is not able to see. As a result, he often hears subtle cues that the rest of us might miss. It is interesting to consider that since he has to depend so much upon his hearing, Herb might actually be hearing better than the rest of us. This begs some questions: How can you, as a leader, hear more? Are you accurately hearing messages people are trying to tell you? What might you not be hearing? Are you open to hearing everything you need to? Sometimes, as leaders, we can inadvertently send the message that we are too busy to be bothered hearing certain things. Are you hearing what is important from everyone in your organization? Are you listening closely enough to your customers? Are sending the message that you are open to hearing about what might be going wrong, as well as what is going well? Are you taking the time you need to truly listen?

We’ll return to the Dodgers, as they set the tone for Herb’s childhood, fighting with everything they had, always coming close but not quite close enough, promising to come back again next year, finally winning a world series, then, unforgivably, leaving Brooklyn.

For now, however, just consider Herb as a kid growing up in that insular borough in the shadow of Manhattan. He would talk with his friends and his parents about what the Dodgers had to do to win next year. But then, he would also talk with the team’s captain and shortstop, as well as the radio broadcaster who called play-by-plays for the team.

It is no wonder that the team’s “wait till next year” spirit infused him. In many ways, the ability to rub shoulders at an early age with his sports heroes gave Herb the confidence to share his ideas and speak up for his beliefs. It was a world where heroes lived on the same street, or around the corner. They were approachable, grew up in the neighborhood, and were thrilled to be asked for their autograph.

That is amazing to consider: growing up in the same neighborhood as your heroes. Teenagers today may feel a certain connection with their sports or music heroes when they send a tweet or post a message on Facebook. They can dream of being invited backstage by Beyoncé to one of her concerts and then, after the concert, being kissed by her and asked if they’d like to go to a party with her. The truth, though, is that their heroes live in completely separate worlds, as if on Mount Olympus, so any possible connection with them is purely electronic. Herb was able to commiserate with his sports heroes about a missed opportunity or a lousy call by an umpire during a game earlier that day. And he cheered with them whenever they won. His heroes were like anyone else in the neighborhood, just a whole lot better at baseball. So there was an underlying message that Herb’s dreams, like those of his heroes, could become real.

Seeing a Top Team in Action

Team sports certainly teach young children essential values—about cooperating, connecting, having a sense of camaraderie, knowing the importance of practicing, giving it your all, being part of a team, knowing how to win, knowing how to lose, having a positive attitude either way, and, ultimately, belonging to something bigger than yourself.

For Herb to have been able to experience such teamwork at the highest level undoubtedly instilled in him a deep sense of belonging and of confidence.

On the one hand, it is easy to see that being in the dugout with the Dodgers filled him with a sense that anything was possible. He had been taken under the wing of his heroes, accepted as part of the tribe. On the other hand, however, he didn’t want to tell his friends because he thought he’d be ostracized. That’s an interesting dilemma to carry into adulthood.

How has it affected him? How does he carry that experience with him now?

“In one sense, I am no longer awestruck by anyone. I see us all as equal in some ways, and special in other ways. We all are unique, and we all are similar. We all are different, and we all are alike. We can all be heroes and human, at the same time. I still have role models, people I respect and look up to. But I don’t see them as being on a pedestal. I was certainly very pleased to meet President Obama and President Carter at different times. And I love that Vice President Joe Biden told me, ‘What do you mean Mr. Vice President? To you, I’m Joe.’ Still, whether they are royalty or presidents of countries, they are real people, with real talents, as well as real problems,” Herb reflected. “So, I’m certainly not afraid to talk with anyone. We all have interesting stories. I’m just trying to make those connections.”

Having been in the dugout with his heroes from his ultimate childhood dream team, Herb says, “I’ve experienced what can be at its very best. I’ve been with a team that showed what was possible. They connected with each other. They were there for each other. Pee Wee Reese put his arm around Jackie Robinson while a crowd shouted racial slurs, just to show everyone what he and they were all made of.” He reflected, then added, “So now, I can sense when a team is working together and when there is conflict. I can feel it deep inside. I can sense that whenever we are with one of our clients. Ultimately I am drawn toward teams that ‘get it.’ And when teams are not in it together, I find it intolerable.”

Questions to Ask Yourself About Confidence