Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

Today I learned that my former Gunn and Dartmouth schoolmate Alan Eagle ‘83 has cowritten a book about the great Bill Campbell, “Coach”.   I’ve written a couple times briefly about Bill Campbell here based on our chance meeting the week he moved to California and I was selling cars at my father’s Cupertino lot.  Actually I semi-seriously sent a query to a literary contest about wanting to write about Coach, “the man who shaped five billion cell phones”.  I definitely talk him up, probably once every week or two it comes up; I love the part about people think Columbia sucks in football but when he was there they were champs;  I mean as a player not as a coach.  Or that his brother Jim “soupy” Campbell was arguably the better athlete and that there is a shrine to him at the Old Pro bar

Alan Eagle might still  be best known as the voice of Dartmouth football from the WDCR broadcasts, in those circles.

When I was visiting colleges with my father in the spring of 1981 Alan showed me around Dartmouth which sort of sealed the deal as  it was the only school I had an actual host.  We had hamburgers at his house, fraternity, I guess I didn’t realize I was invited to come back later for late night beers. I remember freshman year playing some basketball with he and his brothers including Michael Golub who works for the NBA but is not very tall.

I don’t really see Alan that much these days,  pretty rarely.  I remember seeing his name in the New York Times about the fact that he wouldn’t let his kids use computers even though he was a high-tech executive.

This is probably a little bit off the mark but my recollection of high school was that Alan was a little higher in the pecking order than Jon Rosenberg.  Rosenberg I think had a growth spurt after graduating and eventually became a  very good pick-up basketball player   I am pretty sure that after Alan got an MBA and worked for a few start -ups Jon recruited him for Google and they have worked together in communications for years which is why this book is not surprising. Stacey Savides between Mac and I at Gunn, the tennis champ, though #2 in her family, was another early Googler and now is an angel investor in pediatric dentistry— owns the candy store, the former Mini Mart behind Terman (now Fletcher) .

My Campbell stories are quaint and fairly trivial— I was certainly not a high-tech exec but I look forward to seeing Alan and gauging his reaction to my story.

In my 10 weeks selling cars – compared to my father doing so for 40 years – and my grandfather for 44 years* – I sold to Bill Campbell, Nolan Bushnell, Neil Brownstein, Curt and Carl Hatton —  Los Altos and Stanford intermural football legends. Neil was a classmate of Bill and when I told him the story we dug up the deal so that they could re-connect he got on the phone and said “Bill,  it’s Neil!”

“Last time I saw Campbell it was at the old Pro and I reminded him how we knew each other and I mentioned that the football coach Ben Parks had died and I thought there should be some kind of a tribute to him and he nodded but obviously he had a lot on his plate already and maybe knew he was dying himself  Ben Parks who used to run 50 laps and his 50th birthday

It’s possible that the very day I met Alan eagle known as Mac or Mack was in 1975 the day it snowed and Nathan Shedroff and Daniel Shedroff and I were in a snowball fight with Alan Eagle and Michael Brownrigg, the one running for assembly whose nickname was “Ferbs”.

I’m probably repeating myself from other posts here but Allen also was famous for writing little clips to sports illustrated in the one about when Maccabi swing the bat it was like the SF earthquake over again or that sing the swimsuit issue was like getting a letter from home   I followed suit years later by claiming that Sean Green was going to make me convert. Joc Pederson  almost has actually. Plus there’s something about Clay Kershaw iPhone interesting to watch his little hitch.  That plus the fact I first noticed it while sitting in dead mountains living room Dan who was once Terry is my neighbor and Dan who was the Howard Gossage award winner the year I really really wanted to be in advertising. I sent Jeff could be a mock award with goose Gossage.

I tried to fly like an eagle but instead read my story about Peking lame duck my friend. (“ i’m in love with my czar “).

The last time I saw a Mac was at a city of Palo Alto Tuesday night in the parks Tuesday not  Saturday do note  And they ended up selling his friend Sue or Debbie a share of my 49ers tickets before I eventually just Abandoned them.  Although I do have a pretty good offer to buy my way back in for a partial series this year.

Campbell worked on Wall Street, coached at Columbia, was at Kodiak and then came to Apple as a VP in marketing in 1983 the year eagle graduated from Dartmouth —he spun off to found Claris software and was also chairman of Intuit TurboTax before also coaching numerous CEOs.  Alcor in Lee Bullinger eulogized at his week which was at the old Pro and Phyllis and I watched from the sidewalk   I exchanged a greeting with gore as he hopped into his limo after his little speck.

I said “good luck sir “and he said “good luck to you “.

Getty image of Alan Eagle at the 92Y posing with Joc Pederson maybe

* this cannot possibly be true but is apocryphal: my father sold cars from 1944 to 1988 and my grandfather and namesake Morton B Weiss sold from 1919 to 1963 each exactly 44 years! Or that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, in plastic alto.

edit to add, or NB:  our guest muse this morning is Alan and my fellow Dartmouth alumnus or alumna Keshia Naurana Badalge ‘14, The essayist and editor (she and Mac were both in the DAM authors column).

and1:

this calls to mind Hilleary Hoskinson the former lacrosse captain who co-wrote a book about Joe Montana and business strategy or mindset:

Andand, weeks later: Mac, Jon and the Google CEO named Schmidt  we’re on the radio with my literature professor Dr. Michael Krasny and missed your cries many red part of my email on the air; John later rift off of it plugging “the old pro”. It was not a parent that Mac connected the dots back to me although how many people would he have known with Chevy dealerships in Cupertino? Here is an exciting vine mostly audio:

Holy quit digging!! Alan Eagle was also known in our circle for letters to Sports Illustrated; one was about how to a California boy in New Hampshire winter the swimsuit issue was like a letter from home; the other was something about Willie McCovey’s swing being like an earthquake.