Deja New, Too
By Don Barone"Oh, don't you worry, you'll find yourself,
Follow your heart and nothing else.
And you can do this, oh baby if you try,
All that I want for you my son is to be satisfied."
Don BaronePart of the J Todd Tucker "Pit Crew" at Lake Guntersville, Ala. From left, J Todd, mom Tracy, sister Teryn Tucker-Nicholson and dad Butch.Dateline: Room 255
I remember the wrinkles.
The coarseness.
I remember the smell.
A safe bouquet.
I remember the metal.
Rings to twirl.
I remember the height.
Looking up, looking down.
I remember direction.
This way or that.
Of all my memories, these I cherish the most.
Of being a young child, and holding my mother's hand.
Mothers & sons, family & fishing
There she stood.
In a crowd, but all alone.
Motionless, except for her head.
And eyes. Even protected under a visor you could watch her eyes scan the area. Right, left, straight ahead, left, right.
Again, and again.
A mother's eyes looking for her child.
I watched as she looked. People would come by to say hello, and for an instant she would smile and glance at them, but then the eyes would start moving and refocus.
On the lake. Where her child was.
Next to her stood a sister with beginner mother's eyes. Several months pregnant, she stood on the hot Alabama pavement, hands moving constantly from the small of her back, to cradling her unborn child.
But the eyes never left the lake. Where her brother was.
I watched the hat.
If a guy doesn't tell you how he feels, watch his baseball cap. The more movement up top, the more things are churning inside.
I watched the hat almost cover the eyes, then brim up as it sat halfway back on his head. I watched slight adjustments, right, left, then both right and left as he snuggled it down.
But when he took it off and played with it in his hands, that's when I followed his eyes.
To the lake, where his son was.
To win without family, is a hollow victory.
Winning is nothing without family.
You may high five a guy in the crowd, but all the time you are looking over his shoulder for your family.
They are the first one in the seats, the last to the exits.
They cry when you win, they cry when you lose.
And for Bassmaster Elite rookie, J Todd Tucker, "They are everything to me; I call them my 'pit crew' because they work just as hard as I do for me to be successful."
J Todd is a big guy, with a big face, big smile, big heart and BIG family.
At one event I counted 14 various Tuckers: a niece was helping him online; Uncle Buf, a huge man from Oklahoma with bear claw hands and a mother's eyes, drives the truck that launches J Todd's boat; an Aunt from St. Louis cooks meals for just about anyone who walks by; a sister from Washington D.C., yells at a computer screen, "Where's J Todd ... SHOW ME J TODD."
A brother-in-law sleeps in a lawn chair.
When you live like this in a crowd, fishing a crowded spawning bed is no big deal, but as a rookie and facing the best of the best in the Elites, having your own pasta-packing pit crew is a good thing.
"I'm never far from getting constructive criticism whether I ask for it or not. They certainly humble me whenever I need humbling," he said.
J Todd has been fishing with his father, Butch Tucker, since he was about 5. "Back when we lived in Kansas he won a tournament at our local bass club," Butch told me, while adjusting his cap, "He was 9 years old."
Behind him, J Todd just smiled.
"I never remember him not having a fishing pole in his hands." I have no idea who said this, or frankly, why they said it, but other than me, the only people there were Tuckers of some sort, so let's just say that quote came from Tucker Collective.
"I have this picture," J Todd told me as I was eating double, triple chocolate cheesecake with chocolate syrup and chocolate shavings on top -- so if I only got part of this quote right, you can understand why -- "of me sitting out by the garage in the back yard all pouty. I was 5 years old and mad that my father wouldn't take me fishing with him."
Butch Tucker spent years tournament fishing on trails like the Redman and Mid-Am Pro Bass and now takes to the water occasionally when his echo cardiology business allows, but is mainly on land watching, helping, teaching J Todd.
J Todd: "My father is my best friend. We live about 20 yards from each other in a house I built for him in my backyard. He stays there during the week while my mother is working in Florida, then he goes down there to be with her during the weekends."
And then there is Landon, J Todd's 14-year-old son.
"I got married young, way young." Doing the backward child's age math, BOTH J Todd and I figured out he was married right around the age of 20. I ask, "Were you old enough to drink a toast at your wedding ... ?"
J Todd just smiles.
I interviewed -- actually attempted to inteview -- Landon, and got the normal teenage answers … "Yes," "No," "Uh huh," "He's great," "Yep," "It was cool," nod head several times ... then I asked this, "Landon ... do you like to fish?"
And in a flash a cell phone came out, teenage thumbs blazed and suddenly, thrust way too close to my face for me to ever read was a cell phone photo of Landon holding a huge fish.
A digital answer that told me I was looking at the third generation of Tucker Fish.
J Todd Tucker
I'm going to be upfront with you here ... I like this kid (I can say kid because I have socks older than his 35 years of age) and his "Big Fat Greek Wedding"-like family.
Normally, I don't do well with strangers -- friends are used to me by now, strangers are just sort of baffled. So on a dark, humid Virginia night I walked up some stairs of a rented house and onto a porch filled with Tuckers.
I gave Tracy "Call me Mom" Tucker (I'm about as old as she is, but I obeyed) some 'Thank You for inviting and feeding me wine' I bought in a gas station on the way, and sat down amongst the Tucker crowd.
Tracy was sitting pretty much at the head of the pack, and was explaining to me who all was there, which I pretty much forgot after who all said, "hey db" to me.
And then at about exactly 2 minutes and 10 seconds into me meeting them and them meeting me Tracy said this directly at me, "If you have had yourself fixed, it don't work."
DB just smiles.
I'm thinking I should have brought more than gas station wine.
It seems that while explaining to me she has an older daughter, Lory (who may be in her early 40s but trust me I wasn't writing ANYTHING down at this point), J Todd who is around 35, "and daughter Teryn who's 21."
DB: "Oh ... ohhhhhh."
You gotta love a family that upfront.
You also gotta love a guy who takes his 3-legged dog named Sam, hunting. "In the offseason I work as a guide on quail hunts, I run bird dogs, got 150 head of bird dogs down at the Southern Woods Plantation, Sam got shot once in an accident but still hunts like crazy."
J Todd also has sold irrigation stuff to farms and was a former, "Cattle Fitter." I asked him several times, "A what ... what ... huh ... how do you spell that?"
As best I can figure it out was that for some reason cattle need grooming, and cattle fitters do that, whatever THAT turns out to be. I'm guessing there are lots of "formers" in that biz.
Why you NEVER get travel advice from a rookie
Frankly, looking back, I have no idea why I ever said this to J Todd, "So dude, do you know a nice place to stay in BLANK (you should know that for fear of sending my kids' college fund to lawyers who like to sue, and sue me in particular, I will NOT be naming anything that could possible come close to making me have to dial 1-800-get-out-of-contempt-of-court)."
J Todd did, which was a problem.
But it was $165 A WEEK, what would you have done.
So I booked it.
A couple of weeks later, right before I was to show up at the $165 a week joint, back up on that rented house deck, I hear J Todd say this, EXACTLY: "DB, if you're headed to that motel there you might want to do what I do, when I get there I take the mattress off the bed and lean it up against the wall and then I use my blow up air mattress to sleep on."
In between leaving the Tuckers' rented deck and getting to my rented deck, that motel reservation got canned … no offense dude, but I never cancelled my original reservation at the Comfort to begin with. Just in case.
But you would have thought I learned ... I did not.
"DB, do you want to go out to dinner?"
"Sure ... where?"
"My favorite Mexican restaurant ... best Mexican food EVER."
"Sounds good dude ... what the name of it?"
Silence from J Todd's end of the conversation.
"J Todd ... you there ... ?"
"Uh-huh."
"What's the name of your favorite Mexican restaurant that you want me to meet you at?"
"Ah (big pause) DB, it has a green neon sign."
Turning chaos in calm
In competition there is a moment in time where chaos reigns.
Where everything around you is out of control. Willy-nilly like.
In that vortex, greatness begins.
You either step up, or step out.
Champions are just that because they can do two things like no one else. They can take chaos, and make it calm, and they take risks.
While others take a knee, they take a chance.
Risk.
Competition, at its core, is about risk.
If at the professional level you are not willing to risk it all, don't play. Buy a ticket and watch.
All or nothing is all I've got. I have only one switch, all out or off.
Consistency gets you social security, two cars and a white picket fence.
Swinging for the fences gets you immortality.
Four times in his career, Babe Ruth led the league in ... STRIKEOUTS. With 8,399 times at bat, Ruth hit 714 home runs and had 1,330 strikeouts.
Babe Ruth craved the long ball, not the grounder.
J Todd: "To be a competitor you have to be a risk taker, you have to be a leader not a follower."
Risk. At Smith Mountain Lake, J Todd had 2 minutes left to get back to check in ... AND HE STOPPED TO FISH.
"You play until zero, zero, zero on the clock. With my last cast, MY LAST CAST, I hook a 5-pounder, I cull a 2-pounder, so I pick up an extra 3 POUNDS and get in with 45 seconds to spare."
On the third day of that tournament J Todd fished until the last possible second ... and then some.
"I was fishing up until 11 minutes before I had to check in and I was 10 miles from the ramp. I sort of misjudged the amount of boat traffic and the waves. I told the Marshall, 'You're just going to have to hang on' and I took off. I would have been all right but I had to back off the throttle once because the entire motor came out of the water and cut itself off, so we had to wait and restart it. That hurt."
J Todd came in 1 minute late and got a penalty, finished in the money at 26th for the tourney. Back on the rented deck after his shower when he came out to sit down I took off my watch and handed it to him saying, "Dude, you might need this in the future."
Later Butch and I talked as fathers of athlete sons and while hoping he doesn't do it again, there was a sense of pride in that he went for the Hail Mary pass ... and lost ... but he went down trying for the win. You can't teach that.
J Todd: "At the end of this season I will be a better fisherman. I'm going to learn how I'm being beat, and I will FIX IT. I have hours and hours of DVDs and videos of winning tournament pros, and I watch and take notes just like a football coach."
After the last bite of the strangely intoxicating double chocolate cheesecake, I asked J Todd what I thought was a very simple question, a throw-away type question, all I had in my hand was a fork.
DB: "J Todd, when you started this season as a rookie, how many top 50 checks did you think you would collect for the nine events?"
J Todd: "All of them."
At which point I put the fork down and picked up the pen and wrote exactly this: SWINGING FOR THE FENCES.
"And be a simple kind of man,
Be something you'll love and understand."
Simple Man
Lynyrd Skynrd
— db
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