Eric Berry’s Importance:
The George Bailey Effect
Laddie Morse
If you’ve never heard of Geroge Bailey then you’re probably not willing to watch really old black and white movies, like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” even at Christmas time. However, that flick has held it’s value through the decades, even though it was made in 1946. You can call me a putz if you want but, I bleat like a sheep every time I see it. Still!
Now, if you’ve never seen the movie, it details the life of a guy, George Bailey, from childhood to married with children and shows how a town of friends can pull together when one good man goes down for no fault of his own. Sound familiar? Not even a little bit? Well, I think it does. By that, I mean the loss of Eric Berry to Hodgkins Lymphoma for a year. Plus, his recovery has many eerily similar connections to the main character of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Purpose
One thread that successful NFL organizations have, is a common sense of purpose. What’s the purpose? Look at it from the New England Patriots standpoint. If you asked what their common purpose is they’d say _______ . It’s not a difficult “fill-in-the-blanks” question. The answer is simply, winning the Super Bowl. Pure and simple, those players have a “feeling” that they will be getting a real shot at going to the Super Bowl each and every year.
So what does that have to do with Eric Berry? Well, when someone’s “life purpose” comes to the forefront of an organization like the Kansas City Chiefs — who have floundered for decades without any real expectations of going to the Super Bowl — having a player on your team that seems to have destiny on his side… effects… and affects… everyone around him. Anyone else having images of Justin Houston lifting his shirt and showing the world the #29 on his white t-shirt — Berry’s number — as if to say, I’m playing for this guy? Now, THAT’S, purpose.
Kansas City Chiefs players have to be thinking… I’m with him. If the Chiefs don’t re-sign Eric Berry, that feeling goes away immediately and leaves an incredibly huge “reason for being” hole in the middle of team. Many have questioned the Chiefs identity. I know they’re referring to the offensive identity but there is also something called a group identity and Eric Berry is in the center of it.
Eric Berry is like the Jackie Robinson of this team and you just don’t dump a Jackie Robinson. Robinson was a diabetic from a young age but he hid his disease and it cut his career and life short (btw… Mary Tyler Moore, who passed away this week also had diabetes).
Determination
In “It’s a Wonderful Life” Geroge Bailey is one of the most determined characters you’ll ever witness. Over and over again, his determination helped so many of is friends and neighbors overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and gave them a place to live through his Building and Loan company which his father started. Now, Eric Berry hasn’t done anything like that has he? Not really but Geroge Bailey had his own moment of disaster and it was those same friends who came to the rescue. By overcoming Hdogeskins Lymphoma and laying so much of the reason for his success on his mother and father who never allowed him to give up and encouraged him in his darkest moments, Berry became the living definition of “determination.”
Now, when a player like, Allen Bailey, or Justin March-Lillard, or Jaye Howard, or Derrick Johnson goes down, do you think they feel — “more” or “less” — like they can overcome their injuries, because of what Eric Berry has conquered?
Eric Berry is like the Sean Elliott of the NFL and you just don’t say too-da-loo to a Sean Elliott, who made a comeback with the San Antonio Spurs in 2000 — after a successful kidney transplant — and before they won championships in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014 (that kind of determination can have a lasting effect).
Residual Effects
If you’re a parent you have been through the process of impressing upon your child the importance of choosing their friends wisely. Sometimes there’s just no way to tell the effect we’re having on others. Some of you may recall last July shortly after I began ArrowheadOne and race became an even bigger issue than normal because of events in the news… I chose to ask an ex-student of mine, Angela Terrell — a strong black woman — who was a student of mine 26 years ago when she was in 1st grade, to write a piece for the site on race relations. What many people don’t know — and I didn’t either until 9 years ago — is that she was impacted by me as a small child then when she found me on Facebook nearly a decade ago, she shared with me how I had encouraged her in her writing… and now she’s working towards a degree in writing. I will also share with you that as a teacher of 39 years, you can go a lifetime and never know that you had a positive impact on a student’s life in any way. So, bumping into Angela was a George Bailey moment for me as well.
Now, Eric Berry’s story has been so publicized that we may take for granted that every single one of his teammates — and ex-teammates like Husain Abdullah — are dealing with a living legacy… but from Berry’s standpoint, he may not even be aware that he’s having that kind of major effect he’s having on everyone around him. You can call that a residual effect and right now the Chiefs have it in spades… because of Eric Berry.
Eric Berry is like the Teddy Bruschi of the Chiefs and you just don’t mess with fate or destiny. Bruschi is thought to be the only NFL player to suffer a stroke and then return to full active duty.
Hope
Probably the biggest gift that Eric Berry gives his teammates and the organization is… hope. While many Chiefs fans are feeling hopeless right now, you can bet that the team is already gearing up for 2017. Some fans sound like they’re ready to jump — no, dive — off the bandwagon and others are licking their wounds from shooting off their mouths too much on Twitter or at their local bar. Me? I wore one of my Chiefs t-shirts proudly today and bumped into another Chiefs fan at the store — here in Dallas — and this stranger and I carried on a long conversation about our excitement for our team. Sure, I think the team still needs to revamp their offensive line — as in BUILDING A JUGGERNAUT OL — but I have returned to my hopeful self… in no small part due to the story that Eric Berry has asked his agent to get busy in contract talks with John Dorsey. If Berry is already proclaiming he wants to return to the Chiefs again in 2017, that’s reason alone to have hope. Personally, I can’t wait to see him ring somebody’s bell (“so an angel can get his wings” — I guess you’ll have to see the movie before you get that one).
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