💪 Finkel's Fast Five 119 - May 8, 2020

Welcome to Finkel's Fast Five #119. Thanks for reading and subscribing! Congrats to Eric V. for winning last week's "Forward the FF5 to Friends" raffle. A copy of the excellent biography Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy is on its way!

ONE

STRENGTH - There hasn't been any live team sports for two months. It sucks. But what if I told you that records were still being broken by individual athletes and that the biggest and strongest and most bad ass individual athlete on earth just broke one of the hardest strength records to break? Is that something you'd be interested in? Hell yes, it is.

Standing at 6'9" and weighing 425 pounds, most people know Hafthor Bjornsson as the guy who played "The Mountain" on Game of Thrones. He's also a serious power lifter and this week he attacked the holy grail of the sport: the deadlift record. The video is bare bones and awesome. It's just Hafthor, standing barefoot, with a bar holding over a half-ton on it below him (1,104.52 pounds). The yell he lets out after lifting what amounts to the weight of two adult African lions off the ground is sick. You gotta see it.

TWO

TRAINING - I hate running. I force myself to run sprints once a week so I can stay in good enough shape for basketball and life in general, but overall, the idea of going for a run is something I loathe. Typically I swim three days a week to get my cardio, so I'm covered. But with my beloved pools closed since March, I have decided to take drastic measures and start doing the thing I hate.

My first order of business was to stop calling it "going for a run" and to start calling it "road work" like I'm a professional boxer. Feels cooler. Feels tougher. I like road work. Seems like something I'd be into. The second order of business was to find the right app so I could track my progress, see how far I was running and to help me find new routes. I did my research and I signed up for the Nike Run Club app. Now, I have to be completely honest: I really like this app. I'm sure you hardcore runners reading this have one that you like, but for what I needed, it's perfect. Gives me time, pace, mileage, maps my route, syncs music, gamifies each run, gives me badges, etc... All the bells and whistles and a little Kevin Hart pump up speech to wrap it up after every run. I have no marathon or running aspirations. Just want to do some road work twice a week and get 5 miles done in a half hour or so... Right now I'm not even close (my fastest mile so far is about 8:30). Let me know if I'm missing any hacks with this app.

THREE

LONGFORM - I think the best investigative journalism stories combine a compelling subject, preferably with some notoriety, with a unique mystery that has lingered in the public for a while that nobody has bothered to solve. Like this piece...

...which finally tackles a topic that baseball fans, card collectors and general sports fans have been curious about since the 90s: What is Don Mattingly's actual birthday and why does his birth certificate differ from the date on some of his baseball cards? It's a silly thing, I know... But early in his career it had huge ramifications... Was Mattingly's .345 batting average as a 22-year-old the highest for that age since Ted Williams and Stan Musial? Or not? Was his first year of pro baseball as an 18-year-old, which is rare, but happens... Or was he actually 17??? There is a large ripple affect for this story and writer Sam Miller did a great job unraveling the goofiness and greatness of his search for the truth. A really fun read.

FOUR

FINKEL DE MAYO - Many of you know what Finkel De Mayo is, but since we have new friends subscribing and joining us every week, I'll explain it quickly: Finkel De Mayo is an absolutely legitimate, respected, widely-regarded international holiday that honors the achievements of Finkels all over the world on May 5th.

I am in charge of selecting and writing up a piece on each year's FDM showcase and it is always a wonderful honor. Last year, I interviewed Sean Young, the actress who played perhaps the most famous Finkel of them all, Ray Finkle/Lois Einhorn, in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. You can read that here. Two years ago I interviewed New York Times bestselling author, Michael Finkel, who had Jonah Hill play him in a movie. And the first year of Finkel de Mayo I interviewed the Michael Jordan of Magic: The Gathering, Jon Finkel, in A Tale of Two Finkels....

Aaaaand for the 2020 Finkel De Mayo showcase, I wrote about the late, great WWE Hall of Fame announcer and wrestling media legend, Howard Finkel, AKA, Finkus Maximus, AKA, The Fink. Enjoy!

FIVE

A great line that I came across at the exact moment I needed it this week:

“Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston guy)

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