It was quite a ten days…from Normandy to London then back here for the Cricket World Cup on Wednesday. While there were many cultural, emotional, familial, and business learnings, here are four visuals of note in best practices to share.
Sports unifies on the darkest days. Amidst the emotions going through the exhibits and beaches the day before the eightieth anniversary of D-Day I saw this framed exhibit… a glove and a bat. In the narrative it talked about how one thing…baseball…served as a salve for the troops once they got past the horrors of that day and awaited the next steps to recapturing Europe. The most popular GI’s were the ones who were able to have brought some baseball stuff along…and let’s not forget they had Yogi Berra and some others amongst the troops who landed…because as it said in the captain…”They all craved a little sense of normalcy amongst the horror they had witnessed…and baseball, a simple game of catch…calmed a lot of shattered nerves and passed the time.’
Give a coat While traversing towards Trafalgar Square to watch some of the MLB Experience, I saw this on a construction site. It was out there by the workers to subtly help out those who needed a little extra but maybe were too prideful to enter a shelter. One of our guides told us these hanging spots, as well as refrigerators that operated on the honor system along sidewalks…were some of the welcome additions of outreach during the Pandemic, and they continue on. Maybe there is a tie to some stadia that could make sense here as well.
Signing the wall. While maybe a visit to Wimbledon in early June may seem counterintuitive, for us it was a welcomed quiet part of the trip to go behind the scenes before the chase of the Fortnight begins. You get to see all the little things that The All-England Club does to make it special. Maybe the coolest is the signing wall. Every player signs it every year…a rite of passage literally. I have always felt every building should have a signing wall…what a way t mark the time in a tangible format.
Lastly, a special meaning for USA and India for me. Wednesday I was lucky to score a ticket and that all valuable parking for India and the upstart US in the final NY game of the ICC World Cup. It was a beautiful morning with 35k in a stadium built in Long Island’s Eisenhower Park…a stadium which came from Las Vegas where it was the central part of the F1 race there and soon will be returned…with little trace it was ever there. Beyond the experience of cricket on Wednesday was a reminder of the last time India and the US met in a team sport here in the States. October 2OO1 at Joel Coliseum in Winston Salem, North Carolina. It was the once postponed Davis Cup match between the two nations and was the first international team sporting event n US soil post 9/11. I may be the only person who was at both, and given my stop in Normandy last week, the significance of that event at Wake Forrest was not lost on me. Both Davis Cup and Cricket were joyous celebrations of sport, and healed lots of rough edges for all, just like a game of catch on the beaches of Normandy did for some GI’s.
Quite a few days…so lucky to have been at all.
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