R.I.P., John Simon

My friend and former colleague John Simon passed away Sunday night (November 24) at age 94. John was a brilliant litterateur, a critic of steadfast standards and ideals, and the smartest, most erudite and well-read man I ever knew.  

I first met John in the mid-1970s at New York magazine. I was taking classes in late afternoon and early evening at Columbia University for a graduate degree in English and working full time during the day as assistant arts editor at New York. It was a job that paid me to read, which included the critics’ essays. I looked forward to those assignments every single day. 

My responsibilities at New York were to work closely with the Lively Arts department, the magazine’s so-called “back of the book.” I would have first read, which included fact-checking and line editing, on all the reviews submitted by the magazine’s critics: Judith Crist (Film), Simon (Theater), Alan Rich (Classical Music), Thomas B. Hess and later John Ashbery (Art), Gary Giddins (Jazz), Marcia B. Siegel (Dance), and Nik Cohn (Rock). Later on, Molly Haskell and David Denby wrote about film, Tom Bentkowski about recordings, and John Gabree about rock. 

During my four-year term, a few of the arts beats changed. I arrived in 1975 as Crist, relieved of her post as film critic, was leaving. My first assignment was to edit her last column: a review of the re-release of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The following week, Simon moved from covering theater to film. It was a dramatic shift in temperament, tone, and erudition. Crist was less a critic than a long-time reviewer for New York and TV Guide. She was, let’s say, less demanding and more accommodating in general to film—a movie fan—than the acerbic and brilliant Simon, a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard with an uncompromising ferocity for excellence. To be fair, it was John who reminded everyone that Judy pointed out in her review of the film that Krakatoa was west, not east, of Java.

One week after the transition, readers loyal to Crist wrote impassioned letters to editor-in-chief Clay Felker protesting her departure. Simon took great joy in reading aloud some of the more vitriolic objections that arrived in the mail. I remember one missive very clearly, thanks to the exuberant theatrical relish with which Simon read it: “Going from Judith Crist to John Simon is like going from Pollyanna to Martin Bormann.”

Later that year, in his review of Howard Zieff’s film Hearts of the West, Simon wrote, “And then, as Tater, there is Jeff Bridges, clearly the most—or should I say only?—gifted member of the acting Bridges clan, and getting better all the time.” Shortly after that appeared in print the magazine received a handwritten letter from Mrs. Lloyd Bridges in which she defended her husband and her older son, Beau, and disputed John’s assessment of their thespian efforts.

I also remember a separate and more incendiary reaction to another Simon review two years later. New York editor-in-chief John Berendt had been brought in by the magazine’s publisher at the time, Joe Armstrong, to replace Jim Brady, installed temporarily by new New York owner Rupert Murdoch after Murdoch deposed Felker, the magazine’s visionary founder and editor, in a hostile takeover. Simon had just appeared on the Stanley Siegal morning TV show in the spring of 1977. When the host asked John what he thought of the new play The Shadow Box, by Michael Cristofer, John said it was “a piece of shit.” The one-sentence denunciation went out over the airways uncensored. 

What an outcry after that! The Broadway League, which represented New York theater owners and producers, was furious. Its principals took this as the final straw in their dealings with Simon, whose often scathing theater reviews they were frustrated by, seeing in Simon an adversary to their promotional and commercial efforts and, ultimately, their bottom line. The League decided from then on to withhold John's opening-night seats. (Each of the city’s drama critics always received a pair of opening-night tickets to the latest Broadway productions.) Because I regularly requisitioned those seats for John from each production's P.R. people, I was involved in the dispute. 

Armstrong and Berendt and Murdoch's lawyer, Howard Squadron, naturally were brought in on the case. As I recall, the argument went something like this: The League could not legally withhold Simon’s first-night tickets and thus compel him to purchase them while it provided the complimentary tickets to his theater critic colleagues. It was discrimination in that it unfairly denied only Simon access to do his job.

After whatever backstage wrangling took place to restore Simon’s seats, Squadron called me to advise me of the settlement and to have me relay the message to Simon that the League, as a symbolic way of showing its disapproval of him, would henceforth hold the seats not in Simon’s name but in the magazine's. Squadron then told me parenthetically, “You know, he [Simon] just brings this on himself.” 

“That’s not for you to say,” I replied. 

I'm still somewhat amazed that the 24-year-old me had the sang-froid and the political uncorrectness to say that to him, but in my naiveté I was defending my colleague. And then Squadron started yelling at me. How dare I speak to him like that! Who did I think I was? Did I know who I was talking to...? In his agitated state, he hung up and immediately called Berendt to complain about me. Berendt, somewhat awkwardly, then came down to my desk to offer a half-hearted chastisement. Order was quickly restored but the incident gave new meaning at the time to the Lively Arts department, and it cemented my fellowship with Simon.

I enjoyed my relationship with all of the critics. Reading their copy and working and collaborating with them daily on the edits was an invaluable supplement to my more formal education. I was being paid (although not handsomely) to read superb critical thinkers, surely the smartest formula for any editor or writer. Before and after work, I was enjoying some of the greatest fiction ever written. Between the required reading for my classes and whatever other literature I had on hand, John would always take note of the novels that accompanied me during my daily commute to and from the office.

I remember some of the titles: The Old Curiosity Shop (which edition he reverentially paged through), A Hero of Our Time and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (which he deemed two of the great works of world literature), Anna Karenina, Far From the Madding Crowd, Oblomov, The Trial, The Pastoral Symphony, and The Heart of the Matter. One day he noticed Francois Mauriac’s Le Noeud de Vipères (The Vipers’ Tangle) on the side of my desk. “Yes,” he noted. “That is the correct [English] translation.” 

John was never dull, and he took pains to insure that his copy never was. I learned early on from him how playful language could be in the hands of a linguist. John was born in Yugoslavia in 1925 and was fluent in Serbo-Croatian, German, and Hungarian by age 5. He later learned English, French, and Italian. I had my American Heritage dictionary close at hand—and increased my vocabulary—while reading his copy as he hovered nearby. If I chuckled over a passage, John was delighted. “Yes, yes. That was good, wasn’t it?” he would say. 

He liked wordplay and puns, which oftentimes involved one or more of his learned tongues. John once used the word “schemata” in a review only to have a copy editor innocently change it in the final version to “schmatta,” believing that she was rescuing John (who was uncharacteristically unavailable to discuss the decision) from a typo or a misspelling. John had a small fit when he read his review in the magazine. He had the final word, though, writing a correction for the following week’s issue and attributing the error in his copy to a “Schmatta Hari” who had infiltrated his work.

John would very neatly write out his first drafts in a tiny longhand on yellow legal pads, editing as he wrote and later transcribing the essay onto a triple-carbon set character by character on a manual typewriter. It was that version that I first read, from which he made additional revisions and corrections.

There were editorial disagreements with John over what I thought were harsh physical descriptions of Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, and Sammy Davis Jr. in his original drafts of reviews of those actors' performances. His fellow critic Charles Thomas Samuels wrote, “Simon shows himself a powerful demolition machine for a culture besieged on all sides.” The composer Ned Rorem, in his introduction to Simon's On Music, called John “among our country's leading artists.” And the filmmaker Bruce Beresford wrote, “[Simon] seemed to me to have more knowledge than it was possible to acquire in a lifetime, yet he was no pedant... I find John's critical writing immensely entertaining even when I'm not in agreement... More importantly, I find his reviews full of insights and perceptions that make reading a collection [of his reviews] as exciting as reading a gripping novel.” I could not agree more.

John had his favorites—in film (Bergman, von Sydow, Bujold, Wertmuller, Malick), in theater (Shakespeare, Buchner, Wilson, Shanley), in criticism (Agee, Macdonald, Warshow, Tynan, Samuels), in music (Britten, Janacek, Satie), and in literature (Voltaire, Graves, Wilbur, Auden)—and anyone who read John regularly knew he could be as effusive in his praise as he was devastating in his condemnation. For example: 

Of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Molière’s The School for Wives, John wrote, “Wilbur makes Molière into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one.” 

He called René Clément's film Forbidden Games “a masterpiece,” citing the acting: “Even the smallest part is letter-perfect...and that of Paulette, by Brigitte Fossey, incomparable.” 

John said Debussy's opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was “one of the flawless diamonds of the repertory, and certainly one of the most beautiful and influential.” 

He called Beth Henley “a new playwright of charm, warmth, style, unpretentiousness, and authentically individual wisdom.” Of her play Crimes of the Heart, he wrote, “[It] bursts with energy, merriment, sagacity, and, best of all, a generosity toward people and life that many good writers achieve only in their most mature offerings, if at all.” 

He said “technical expertise and profound artistic and intellectual integrity make the films of Ingmar Bergman works of art.” Of the sublime Max von Sydow's performance in Bille August's “very good film” adaptation of Martin Anderson Nexo's Pelle the Conqueror, John wrote, “But the concluding words of praise must go to Max von Sydow. There is a scene near the end where his misery is shot almost entirely from the back, his face only briefly,  partially visible. Yet there is more ineffable wretchedness in that rear view, as [his character] Lasse weeps in terminal defeat, than other actors could give us in full frontal closeup and twice the amount of time.”

When John would return to the office after a screening, Around Town Editor Ruth Gilbert or I would always ask him, “How was the movie, John?” More often than not he would wrinkle up his nose and curl his lips in distaste and denounce the film in strong language to describe his revulsion for the plot and/or the performances. Occasionally he would throw a small crumb of praise to the filmmaker and respond in his thick Serbo-Croatian accent, “It was not without merit.” To which Ruth would exclaim, “A rave!” Childish? Silly? To be sure, but entertaining nonetheless, and unforgettable. 

I left New York in 1979 to become editor-in-chief of Condé Nast’s Street & Smith’s Sports Group. “I never even knew you liked sports that much,” said John, an avid tennis fan. We kept in touch intermittently over the years, chatting over the phone or meeting for lunch in midtown. I reminded him of his comments about my past reading choices, and always asked him for recommended books. Among those he chose were The Cloister and the Hearth, a historical novel about Erasmus, by Charles Reade; The Woodlanders, a Wessex novel by Thomas Hardy; and Evan Harrington and Diana of the Crossways, by George Meredith. 

During one lunch at an east side restaurant in the summer of 1986, a persistent fly could not be shooed away from our table.

“Did you write something nasty about Jeff Goldblum (the star of the then-current film The Fly)?” I asked him. “Have you seen that?” said John, who proceeded to inveigh against the production.

“No, I have not,” I told him. "You might have to see it, but I don’t.”

When John was fired by New York after 37 years, I wrote to him to express my sympathies. He was touched, and responded so warmly that his critics undoubtedly would not have recognized the heartfelt sentiments he expressed in appreciation. I cherish that letter. More recently, that is to say about seven years ago, I accompanied him, at his invitation, to an Off Broadway production of New Girl in Town. During lunch before the matinee, we talked about our career paths and families. Some time after that he called to invite me to another play. But because that date was just two nights before my daughter’s wedding, I had to decline. Alas, we never did reschedule.

Rest in peace, John.

            

            

             

            

            

Children in Crisis

Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s groundbreaking and heartbreaking Last Witnesses, first published in Moscow in 1985 and translated for the first time into English this year by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II. Tale after tale in the book reveals the daily and cumulative effects of the war and the trauma inflicted on the lives of the children, rived suddenly and unexpectedly away from their families and in many cases orphaned. The collection of horror stories compiled here is further evidence of what Hannah Arendt referred to as “the banality of evil.” 

In her review in the New York Times from August of Last Witnesses, Sana Krasnikov wrote, 

“Of the myriad horrors that befell these children—starvation, witnessing ghastly violence—none are as damaging, in this book’s portrayal, as being wrenched away from a parent. The parent is a pillow between the child and the horrors of the world. And it is here that Alexievich makes a case for why children bear war’s greatest burden. The loss of a parent is not merely the loss of a caretaker. Those, the stories suggest, can be replaced. For a child the loss of a parent is the loss of memory itself. Tell me about the day I was born, a child asks. Tell me about when I was little. Parents are our witnesses, our record, to those years that are otherwise lost to the amnesia of early childhood."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," wrote Santayana. The words would seem to apply to our current administration and its heartless policy of separating migrant children from their families on the southern border of the United States. 

The Washington Post on October 29 ran an editorial, "Only now do we understand the true cruelty of Trump’s family separation" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/only-now-do-we-understand-the-true-cruelty-of-trumps-family-separation/2019/10/29/8294ef9e-f9cf-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html). 

"Imagine, if you can," reads the editorial, "the suffering visited upon [at least 5,460 children, including more than 500 of whom were 5 years old or younger] … by the administration’s cavalier brutality and incompetence — the anguish of little girls and boys removed from their parents for weeks or months because of a president lacking a conscience and a government whose data systems were not suited to the task of reunification. Those wounds won’t heal easily, or ever.”

The editorial in the Post adds, "Only now, 16 months after a federal judge ordered migrant families reunified, has the scale of the administration’s cruelty become understood. Most Americans thought the policy detestable. It was far worse than they imagined ... Incredibly, having shattered so many families, the administration threw up its hands and declared the task of reuniting them beyond its capabilities." 

The Post called the policy "a stain on Mr. Trump, on the government he leads, and on America."

Why We Miss Mariano Rivera

Five years after retiring from the New York Yankees, and in his first year of eligibility, Mariano Rivera was elected to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. He was inducted during ceremonies in Cooperstown today (July 21). In 19 seasons, all with the Yankees, Rivera was a 13-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion. He set the MLB career record with 652 saves. But Mo is missed today as much for his brilliant success as for his elegant professionalism. For example:

• He never shot an imaginary arrow into the air after the final out.
• He never threw a jagged bat barrel at Mike Piazza.
• He didn’t drink beer and eat wings in the dugout when he wasn’t pitching.
• Cameron Diaz didn’t feed him popcorn at the Super Bowl. 
• He never carried an unlicensed handgun in his sweatpants into a nightclub and shot himself in the leg.
• He never shimmied and pirouetted off the mound.
• George Steinbrenner never called him “a fat pussy toad” or referred to him as “Mr. May.”
• He didn’t hold a press conference to announce that he was taking his talents to South Beach.
• He never backflipped off the mound and spiked the ball.
• He didn’t marry a Kardashian.
• His obliques were not hidden beneath layers of fat.
• He never had to testify before Congress about steroids or HGH.
• He never angrily untucked his jersey at game’s end. 
• Suzy Kolber didn’t have to ward off his attempt to kiss her.
• He never guaranteed a victory.
• He never blew on his finger and mimed holstering a gun after a third strike.
• He never said of the Yankees, “The ship be sinking.” 
• He didn’t name his children “North” or “Apple” or “Ivy Blue.”
• He never “liked” something on Instagram while sitting on the dugout toilet.
• He never bro-hugged Jerry Jones or Chris Christie.
• He didn’t point to heaven, pound his heart, or emit a primal scream.
• He never referred to the “changing landscape of sports.”
• He didn’t belittle the inane questions asked by beat reporters.
• He never spoke about himself in the third person.
• He was never less than a credit to his number, his team, and his profession.

Happy birthday, Tom Jones!

Happy birthday, Tom Jones! (No, not the ageless and indefatigable Welsh singer.) The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, was first published on February 28, 1749 in London. It’s not unusual to consider the novel one of the masterpieces in world literature.

Coleridge believed it to be one of the three most perfect plots (with Oedipus Tyrannus and The Alchemist). “How charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is,” he wrote. “To take him up after [Samuel] Richardson is like emerging from a sick room heated by stoves, into an open lawn.” Gibbon called Tom Jones “that exquisite piece of human manners.” Maugham named it among the 10 best novels in the world.

Fielding, a gentleman, a lawyer, and a journalist, also managed a small theater, during which time (1728-37) he wrote mostly forgettable plays (Love in Several Masques, Pasquin, Tom Thumb). He later took up the novel, and as the critic Kenneth Tynan noted, “England, according to George Bernard Shaw, was thereby deprived of its finest playwright between Shakespeare and himself.”

In 1741, Fielding wrote Shamela, a parody of Richardson’s moralizing epistolary work Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (considered to be the first modern British novel). A year later he continued the parody in Joseph Andrews (whose title character is intended to be the brother of Pamela), which Fielding labeled a “comic epic poem in prose,” satirizing, among other professions, the clergy, doctors, and lawyers. The following year he wrote another novel, Jonathan Wild.

In The English Novel, Walter Allen, in 1954, wrote, “Yet as fine as Joseph Andrews and Jonathan Wild are, they scarcely prepare us for so great an achievement as The History of Tom Jones, which, after two centuries, remains among the handful of supreme novels.”

In his dedication in Tom Jones to statesman and former schoolmate George Lyttleton, Fielding wrote, “I have employed all the wit and humour of which I am master in the following history, wherein I have endeavoured to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices.” Fielding drew on his experience as a dramatist to impose structure, pacing, fully realized major and minor characters, plot, dramatic conflict, and resolution in his work at a time when the novel was still in its infancy.

Indeed, in Tom Jones Fielding created a panorama of British life in the country, on the roads and inns, and in the city as well as an unforgettable good-hearted hero, a British Candide of sorts. A foundling cast out into the world, Tom is beset by misfortune and disastrous circumstances caused by assorted nefarious characters and exacerbated by his own indiscretions and intemperance. His picaresque adventures and his subsequent coming of age are described in 208 highly readable chapters among 18 sections in one of literature’s great epic comedies.

The intrinsically sweet nature of Tom is a contrast to the smarmy, hypocritical villainy of Blifil, his half-brother and rival for Sophia Western, the embodiment of beauty and virtue.

In 2003, Jonathan Yardley, in the Washington Post, wrote an appreciation of Tom Jones, calling it “as fresh as ever.” He wrote: “If Fielding is merciless in his exposure of hypocrites, quacks, poseurs, opportunists, social climbers, and schemers, at its heart Tom Jones is a romance, a celebration of innocence and virtue.”

In 2019, the novel seems no less fresh.

Take smug entitlement. In the chapter titled “The Adventure of a Company of Officers,” Tom is mocked for his sincere nature and his lack of formal education:

Northern now winked on Adderley and whispered to him slyly, “Smoke the prig, Adderley, smoke him”; then, turning to Jones, said to him, “I am very glad, sir, you have chosen our regiment to be a volunteer in; for if our parson should at any time take a cup too much, I find you can supply his place. I presume, sir, you have been at the University; may I crave the favor to know what college?”

“Sir,’ answered Jones, “so far from having been at the University, I have even had the advantage of yourself, for I was never at school.”

“I presumed,’ cries the ensign, “only upon the information of your great learning——”

“Oh, sir,” answered Jones, “it is as possible for a man to know something without having been to school as it is to have been at school and to know nothing.”

Take the hypocrisy of those in authority. Do you recognize anyone in Fielding’s description of the prejudiced, profane, irascible, sport-loving Squire Western?

A country booby [who] had not the least command over any of his passions; and that which had at any time the ascendancy in his mind, hurried him to the wildest excesses.

Squire Western is a harmless fool who dotes on his daughter:

Sophia never had a single dispute with her father, till this unlucky affair with Blifil, on any account, except in defence of her mother, whom she had loved most tenderly, though she had lost her in the seventh year of her age. The squire, to whom the poor woman had been a faithful upper-servant all the time of their marriage, had returned that behaviour by making what the world calls a good husband. Her very seldom swore at her (perhaps not above once a week) and never beat her: she had not the least occasion for jealousy…for she was never interrupted by her husband, who was engaged all the morning in his field exercises, and all the evening with bottle companions.

Does the sanctimonious Blifil, who hides his hypocrisy and self-centered hopes beneath a cloak of seeming piety and virtue, remind you of anyone in Washington today?

What about the smug tutors Square (the “Philosopher”) and Thwackum (the “Divine”), who espouse different but equal types of moral and religious philosophies? Fielding wrote: “Square held human nature to be the perfection of all virtue, and that vice was a deviation from our nature in the same manner as deformity of the body is. Thwackum, on the contrary, maintained that the human mind, since the Fall was nothing but a sink of iniquity, till purified and redeemed by grace.” They spend more time arguing about theoretic abstracts than in practicing morality.

Fielding offers an apology for the two men:

I would rather have buried the sentiments of these two persons in eternal oblivion than have done any injury to either of these two glorious causes…. A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy, and I will say boldly that both religion and virtue have received more real discredit from hypocrites than the wittiest profligates or infidels could ever cast upon them; nay, farther, as these two in their purity are rightly called the bands of civil society and are indeed the greatest blessings, so when poisoned and corrupted with fraud, pretence, and affectation, they have become the worst of civil curses and have enabled men to perpetrate the most cruel mischiefs of their own species.

For those of us distracted and sickened by the daily foibles, treachery, and hypocrisy of our own government leaders, we can find some respite in the prescription offered by Fielding in Tom Jones: “to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices.”

R.I.P., Patrick Baumann

Patrick Baumann, the long-time secretary-general of FIBA, the international basketball federation, died of a heart attack yesterday (October 14) while attending the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. He was 51.

"Nobody was more dedicated to the growth of basketball than Patrick,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver. “He loved the game and recognized its power to transform people's lives." 

As secretary-general of FIBA, Baumann presided over the world governing body for basketball from the organization’s Geneva headquarters. Founded in 1932, the nonprofit FIBA comprised 212 national federations and is recognized by the International Olympic Committee, as the authority in the sport. Baumann, who had been a player, coach, and referee in Switzerland and Italy, joined FIBA in 1994 and was appointed secretary-general in 2002. 

I spoke with Baumann when he stopped in New York in July 2005. Here is that interview:

Q. What is FIBA’s mission?

Baumann: To promote the game of basketball worldwide and to create opportunities for everybody to play internationally.

Q. What’s new at FIBA?

Baumann: We have entered into a new era with the results on the court, which indicates to us that the game has truly grown globally. We have South Americans and Europeans at the same level as the USA, and that is really a new chapter in the history of basketball. FIBA is a 73-year-old baby, and it’s grown. The membership is more than 200 countries, and now we can say that we have 10 or 12 countries that are able to compete at the same level.

Q. That was certainly proved at the last Olympics, and in the disappointing show by the U.S. team.

Baumann: I don’t think it’s disappointing. From the perspective of FIBA, it’s the natural result of a 10- or 12-year coming together of the best players playing with the rest of the world. It’s the natural course of things, and I think that’s what makes sports exciting. 

Q. Tell me about “FIBA World Basketball,” a 26-minute weekly basketball magazine television show.

Baumann: We will start that in October. We would like to educate the world that basketball is played every week around the globe. And the best way to do this is through a weekly television show. We found a very good partner in Australia that is willing to take the investment because he believes in our sport and he believes in the opportunity for such a show, and I think this will be a perfect promotional vehicle for our sport. The key point for us is that an African country or an Asian country can see it and can start comparing where it stands with the rest of the world.

Q. You also have a new referee program to deal with different interpretations and styles of officiating throughout the world.

Baumann: It’s very difficult to have a standard uniformity to refereeing. The referee on the court is every much an individual as any player and has his way of looking at the game, of looking at how to apply the rules of the game. Our national federations are creating referees every year. For example, there are more than 9,000 referees in France. Out of them are about 20-25 international referees at the top level. We need to evaluate them, make sure that they find the right common language so when they go to international competitions, there is a uniform standard of refereeing.

Q. How do you assess the state and health of the game today?

Baumann: I think it’s one of the healthiest sports in the world. It has not reached the excesses of some other sports.

Q. What do you mean by excesses?

Baumann: I think that when there’s too much money, there are a lot of scandals, a lot of problems with refereeing that suddenly come along. Betting is behind the scenes. Clubs go bankrupt. We’ve seen this unfortunately. It is a European problem. I think that our sport is growing slowly but surely. 

We haven’t had too many doping problems. We do not have economic or financial scandals. We see the people keep investing, and grow their investment, in our sport, whether it’s in Asia, South America, Europe or here in the United States. We are really a healthy game and a healthy sport. We have also achieved in the Olympics with spectatorship and audience, which prove that our sport is well loved by the fans. 

Q. What is the biggest challenge in your position?

Baumann: To keep the world together. In the basketball world there are a lot of people that have different interests and a lot of organizations that do not have exactly the same interests. For sure you have those who have purely economic interests and use basketball as a tool for that. And then you have those who just do it on a voluntary basis, and that’s the majority of those that are practicing basketball around the world. 

We have to take care somehow that these very large groups of volunteers, of people who just love the game and are every day on the court and are forming young players, that they still get motivated in spite of the fact that maybe others are earning millions from the game and may like to go around and say it’s their game. That’s the difficult part. And we’re a political organization at the same time, so it’s a tricky thing to keep the world together.

Q. You have said, “Rather than speaking about achievements, we should speak about the challenges which are ahead of us,” one of which you identified as “finding the right balance between basketball as a business and the integrity of the sport.” Is that a delicate balance? 

Baumann: That balance depends on the people. I think that it’s very much something that depends on the human beings driving the game. And if they’re able to maintain their passion for the game and not overcommercialize it and look for the last cent out of everything, I think that balance can be achieved.

Q. You identified another challenge as “the development programs for high-level competition without neglecting the promotion of grass-roots basketball.” How do you address that challenge? One criticism of the game in the U.S. is that there has been a depreciation of fundamental skills. 

Baumann: It’s very tempting for a young coach in a small country. He’s got 12 kids and his goal is to win. So, the first thing he will try to do it set those kids on a court and simply play a zone. These poor little kids have a feeling that they know how to play basketball, but when they go to the next level, they realize that they are missing everything. In the key basketball schools, in Europe mainly or in countries like Serbia Montenegro and Lithuania, at 14 years old, either you have the skills or you’re gone. 

It’s extremely important for coaches to raise their quality standards so that they understand that the fundamentals are key and that the tactics, which they usually use when they are not so skilled as coaches, are for a later stage in the development of the players. Our role is to try to make a transfer of that knowhow that is in certain countries and move it around to other countries.

Q. The last Olympics revealed a fundamental excellence in skills and teamwork from a number of countries.

Baumann: I think it has changed. The U.S. player — I like to see him play. He still is, because of his athleticism, the quickest in execution of fundamentals. The difficulty is to put it together into a team. There is still a very good school of fundamentals in the U.S. Of course, it has probably declined a little bit. You see that now suddenly there are equal levels of skills or maybe there are more players in Europe that are more skillful than athletic. But 10 years ago, it was different. You can see it now with the three-point shooting.

Q. Marty Blake, director of scouting for the NBA, talked about “Basketball Without Borders,” in which the NBA goes into different countries and tries to help young people with basketball and non-basketball topics. FIBA is also involved with that program. 

Baumann: That’s a life experience. It’s a way of going into areas which will have difficulty in entering into the big world of basketball and giving the kids a feel for what the opportunity is in our sport. And at the same time having the opportunity for those kids in a more difficult situation to see that there is a level that they can reach and at the same time they can learn something from that experience. 

At the camps are drills and technical things, but at the same time it’s a life experience for them to be together with kids from other countries, to integrate different cultures, different mentalities and learn matters of life, whether it’s learning to read or learning matters on health and prevention. It’s a combination of a pure basketball camp with also an educational environment and integration.

Q. You have been with FIBA since 1994. How have the game and the business changed since then?

Baumann: The players have become more performers and so the game has become more interesting. With the play, level to level, a bit more equal, it makes the competition more interesting at the international level and therefore the interest has grown. Certainly the introduction of professionals in the Olympic movement helped very much. 

On the business side I would say we’ve grown in popularity and we’ve grown in generating revenues, from the club side in particular. It has become very much a business in Europe. And we see now that the investments of both broadcasters and sponsors is growing in our sport, maybe not at the same level as soccer is, but it’s definitely growing. 

The achievements of a league like the NBA helped us very much. There’s a will to emulate around the world the league mechanisms or systems like the NBA, and that helps grow our sport. It brings other investors into it. The economics of a league in Europe compared with the United States are still a little different. You do not yet have a purely business approach in Europe. 

So, you don’t find too many owners of teams in Europe who have the same kind of business approach as owners have here [in the U.S.]. Many times the owners in Europe feel that their personal investments and the promotion that they take from that investment turn up being on the first side of a newspaper all the time 

Q. You mentioned soccer. Are you making inroads, if that’s the right word, on soccer?

Baumann: It’s an interesting question. We compare ourselves to soccer in the sense of how are we managing our sports. Everybody does, whether it’s a league or a club or the international federation. But we compare ourselves to them in order to see whether the business courses that we are putting in place are similar to those that soccer puts in place and whether we are managing our sports in the same professional way. And I think this is the biggest change in the past 5-6 years: that we are getting more and more professional. Are we learning from the soccer experience how to become more professional? 

Now, from there, to generate the same kind of revenues, I think that there is a big difference in the rest of the world. In the U.S. I understand that soccer has a different position in the ranking of the sports. You have 80,000-spectator arenas for soccer while basketball we have 10,000. So the relationship between 1 to 8 is something we will never be able to match.

Q. You mentioned management of the sport and learning from soccer. Do you take some of the best practices from soccer and think that might work for FIBA?

Baumann: We do. We have a good relationship with FIFA, whether it’s on the commercial side or the political side. We learn from each other. We have gone probably further than them in branding our own federation, which is an exercise we did two years back. We have a new brand identity. We’ve given it a different look, and we’ve changed it into something unique in international sports families. There is a global mark [logo], and each one of the continental governing bodies has a [logo] across the family of branding.

Q. The New York Times reported that the number of international players on opening-day rosters in the NBA increased from 29 in 1997 to 81 this past season. A record seven international players competed in the NBA Finals. That points to the global growth of the sport.

Baumann: This is for us the best for the promotion of the game. At the same time, my European colleagues say, “Well, all those players are leaving from Europe to go to North America to play in the NBA. That’s bad. We’re losing the best talent.” But at the end it demonstrates a system of organized leagues and the possibility of creating a competition which generates consistent revenues. 

Most important is that the players performed well in the finals of the NBA. This was viewed all over the world and is excellent because the NBA is doing a great job in making sure that the rest of the world sees what’s happening in the United States and at the same time these same players go now in September to play for the European championship to qualify for the world championship. This is a perfect complement. If Tony Parker goes back and plays with a shirt “France,” it’s for the whole country, and that’s a big difference between any other country and the U.S.

Q. The national pride in the team.

Baumann: The national team is so important. The Spain/USA game last summer in Athens was not a very nice experience for Spain. But you had half of the population of Spain watching that game. That is a huge number.

Q. Nobody got much work done that day.

Baumann: (laughing) That national pride is wonderful. You enter a gym with a venue of 12,000 spectators to see Greece against Turkey. Or you go to see Uruguay vs. Argentina. It’s amazing. The emotions are so high. It’s just great. 

Q. Peter Holt of the San Antonio Spurs said the biggest crisis facing sports today is the image issue: “the image of [the] players, the image of the league itself, the image of professional sports.” Is image an international concern? 

Baumann: Yes, it is. As an international federation, we have to be a guardian for the integrity of our sport. We are the guardian to our players worldwide, to the international community, and we have to make sure that our sport is not involved in any scandals, does not have any doping issues, violence on the court, or any other troubles and that we do not have an exaggeration or overcommercialization of our sport. That is our daily role. We are extremely happy that there is no threat any more of a lockout in the U.S. A lockout in the U.S. may be seen purely as a domestic issue, but it has an impact on our sport and the rest of the world. 

Q. What’s been the best new idea in basketball? 

Baumann: Giving a new look to the ball.

Q. Jerry West said that what he would not miss in the game if they were eliminated were the dunk and the three-point shot.

Baumann: I would not disagree with him. The dunk is a nice part of the game, but for a purist and for those who have really grown up with the game, this is kind of the cherry on top of the pie. And the international [three-point] line is not as far away from the basket as in the NBA, so we see that it is actually getting too easy to shoot three-pointers. Teams tend to change their tactics. You drive to the basket and then pass the ball out. It’s almost against the spirit of the game. The spirit of the game is to drive to the basket and make a basket. It’s not to pas the ball out. It’s not a shooting contest. 

Q. Does the game need any rule changes?

Baumann: Not any major changes. The international rules are flexible enough to accommodate the philosophy of any coach. We are moving away from ball-control games with low scores and are now playing with more fast breaks and trying to be more athletic. And this is with the same set of rules. 

Of course, we’ve changed [the possession clock] from 30 seconds to 24 seconds, and that has increased the pace. In the women’s game we’ve moved to a smaller ball. We’ve made some adaptations in order to improve the game itself and the speed of the game. But at the end of the day, I think it’s in the hands of the coach and the players. They are the driving force on how our game is played. 

The beauty of the global game is that, for example, the Japanese team, small but extremely quick players who try to shoot from outside, for one game they can beat a [superior] team. 

Q. The different matchups and the strategic moves and countermoves hold a special fascination.

Baumann: Right. Of course, coaches have their big influence. Where we have to be very careful is when the coaches tend to control a little bit too much of the game and leave less freedom to the players. There must be the right balance. I think we have this. The Athens games were a perfect example of how one coach may outcoach his opponent and at the same time leave the freedom to his players.

Q. The U.S. finished sixth in the 2002 World Championship and third in the 2004 Olympics. USA Basketball has made Jerry Colangelo its first managing director of the senior national team. He will oversee the selection of the coaches and players and his first team will compete in the 2006 World Championships in Japan. What’s your opinion on the hiring and what his mission will be?

Baumann: I have a lot of respect for him and I think it’s a great step forward for USA Basketball. But it’s going to be very difficult. It’s an honor to be in charge of this and to represent the country, but it’s also a big challenge because that’s not going to be sufficient to hire Jerry Colangelo in that position. 

There will definitely need to be good scouting and advice coming from the rest of the world, wherever it can be taken, in order to really adapt to what will be the opponents’ plays and styles. It’s also going to be very difficult for him to convince players to really commit for three summers in a row. This is probably the biggest challenge that he will be facing.

This is not something specific to the United State; this is a challenge that everybody faces. In general, you see that today Argentine is Olympic champion. And if you look at the history of those players, you’ll see that have gone through a school since their junior times and you see that they have grown up in a national team at the various age levels. It’s going to be very hard for the United States to match that. 

Q. You referred earlier to the individual speed and athleticism of the U.S. players, but it’s the gap at the national team level that has been reduced if not eliminated, correct? 

Baumann: There is no more gap between the top national teams. I’m certain the U.S. will have the right coach for the national team, but it will be facing talented coaches and talented teams on the other side. But I think the key thing is that people have lost the respect, in a sense of fear, of playing against the United States, so people are now free to play their game. And that’s good for the game, from our perspective.

Q. You have been a player, coach, and official. I would imagine that all of that has been valuable to you in your decision-making nowadays.

Baumann: All of that, yes. It still helps to keep the contact with the grassroots level — and that’s something I miss because I don’t have the time anymore to be there — because that’s where basketball is being created, at the very lowest levels. But now I’m seeing [the game] from the other side. I can see the finals of the Olympic games, the finals of the NBA and the European championship. It’s interesting to see how all that movement at the grassroots level actually can lead to those big plays of those great players. 

Personal:

Date and Place of Birth: 8/5/67 in Zurich, Switzerland

Education: MBA, University of Chicago; master’s degree in sports administration management, University of Lyon; law degree, University of Lausanne

Q. How would you describe your management philosophy?

Baumann: Basketball is a team sport. It’s all about the team: the right people, the right environment, the skill people and particularly motivated people that really like what they do. 

Q. What’s the best call you have made in your position?

Baumann: To be able to rebrand FIBA.

Q. Greatest competitors?

Baumann: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Drazen Petrovic

Q. Smartest players?

Baumann: Maria Powell of Brazil and Tim Duncan

Q. What are you reading?

Baumann: Winning, by Jack Welch and The Empire of Shame, by Jean Ziegler 

Q. What’s a typical day off like?

Baumann: To play with my kids and try to help out my wife, who’s basically taking care 364 days for the rest of the house. 

Favorites:

Piece of music: The music of Vangelis

Author: Dante

Movie: The Godfather

Vacation spot: Barcelona

Quote: “To be or not to be.”