Shoe Dog (40 page)

THOUGHTS OF ASIA
always lead back to Nissho. Where on earth would we have been without Nissho? And without Nissho's former
CEO
, Masuro Hayami. I got to know him well after Nike went public. We couldn't help but bond: I was his most profitable client, and his most avid pupil. And he was perhaps the wisest man I ever knew.

Unlike many other wise men, he drew great peace from his wisdom. I fed off that peace.

In the 1980s, whenever I went to Tokyo, Hayami would invite me for the weekend to his beach house, near Atami, the Japanese Riviera. We'd always leave Tokyo late Friday, by rail, and have a cognac along the way. Within an hour we'd be at the Izu Peninsula, where we'd stop at some marvelous restaurant for dinner. The next morning we'd play golf, and Saturday night we'd have a Japanese-style barbecue in his backyard. We'd solve all the world's problems, or I'd give him my problems and he'd solve them.

On one trip we ended the evening in Hayami's hot tub. I recall, above the foaming water, the sound of the distant ocean slapping the shore. I recall the cool smell of the wind through the trees—­thousands and thousands of coastal trees, dozens of species not found in any Oregon forest. I recall the jungle crows cawing in the distance as we discussed the infinite. Then the finite. I complained about my business. Even after going public, there were so many problems. “We have so much opportunity, but we're having a terrible time getting managers who can seize those opportunities. We try people from the outside, but they fail, because our culture is so different.”

Mr. Hayami nodded. “See those bamboo trees up there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Next year . . . when you come . . . they will be one foot higher.”

I stared. I understood.

When I returned to Oregon I tried hard to cultivate and grow the management team we had, slowly, with more patience, with an eye toward more training and more long-term planning. I took the wider, longer view. It worked. The next time I saw Hayami, I told him. He merely nodded, once,
hai,
and looked off.

ALMOST THREE DECADES
ago Harvard and Stanford began studying Nike, and sharing their research with other universities, which has created many opportunities for me to visit different colleges, to take part in stimulating academic discussions, to continue to learn. It's always a happy occasion to be walking a campus, but also bracing, because while I find students today much smarter and more competent than in my time, I also find them far more pessimistic. Occasionally they ask in dismay: “Where is the U.S. going? Where is the world going?” Or: “Where are the new entrepreneurs?” Or: “Are we doomed as a society to a worse future for our children?”

I tell them about the devastated Japan I saw in 1962. I tell them about the rubble and ruins that somehow gave birth to wise men like Hayami and Ito and Sumeragi. I tell them about the untapped resources, natural and human, that the world has at its disposal, the abundant ways and means to solve its many crises. All we have to do, I tell the students, is work and study, study and work, hard as we can.

Put another way: We must all be professors of the jungle.

I TURN OUT
the lights, walk upstairs to bed. Curled up with a book beside her, Penny has drifted off. That chemistry, that in-sync feeling from Day One, Accounting 101, remains. Our conflicts, such as they
are, have centered mostly on work versus family. Finding a balance. Defining that word “balance.” At our most trying moments, we've managed to emulate those athletes I most admire. We've held on, pressed through. And now we've endured.

I slide under the covers, gingerly, so as not to wake her, and I think of others who've endured. Hayes lives on a farm in the Tualatin Valley, 108 rolling acres, with a ridiculous collection of bulldozers and other heavy equipment. (His pride and joy is a John Deere JD-450C. It's bright school-bus yellow and as big as a one-bedroom condo.) He has some health problems, but he bulldozes ahead.

Woodell lives in central Oregon with his wife. For years he flew his own private airplane, giving the middle finger to everyone who said he'd be helpless. (Above all, flying private meant he never again had to worry about an airline losing his wheelchair.)

He's one of the best storytellers in the history of Nike. My favorite, naturally, is the one about the day we went public. He sat his parents down and told them the news. “What does that mean?” they whispered. “It means your original eight-thousand-dollar loan to Phil is worth $1.6 million.” They looked at each other, looked at Woodell. “I don't understand,” his mother said.

If you can't trust the company your son works for, who can you trust?

When he retired from Nike, Woodell became head of the Port of Portland, managing all the rivers and the airports. A man immobilized, guiding all that motion. Lovely. He's also the leading shareholder and director of a successful microbrewery. He always did like his beer.

But whenever we get together for dinner, he tells me, of course, his greatest joy and proudest accomplishment is his college-bound son, Dan.

Woodell's old antagonist, Johnson, lives slap in the middle of a Robert Frost poem, somewhere in the wilderness of New Hampshire. He's converted an old barn into a five-story mansion, which he calls his
Fortress of Solitude. Twice divorced, he's filled the place to the rafters with dozens of reading chairs, and thousands and thousands of books, and he keeps track of them all with an extensive card catalog. Each book has its own number and its own index card, listing author, date of publication, plot summary—and its precise location in the fortress.

Of course.

Scampering and prancing around Johnson's spread are countless wild turkeys and chipmunks, most of whom he's named. He knows them all so well, so intimately, he can tell you when one is late in hibernating. Beyond, in the distance, nestled in a field of tall grass and swaying maples, Johnson has built a second barn, a sacred barn, which he's painted and lacquered and furnished and filled with overflow from his personal library, plus pallets of used books he buys at library sales. He calls this book utopia “Horders,” and he keeps it lighted, open, free, twenty-four hours a day, for any and all who need a place to read and think.

That's Full-time Employee Number One.

In Europe, I'm told, there are T-shirts that read,
Where is Jeff Johnson?
Like the famous opening line from Ayn Rand,
Who is John Galt?
The answer is, Right where he should be.

WHEN IT CAME
rolling in, the money affected us all. Not much, and not for long, because none of us was ever driven by money. But that's the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.

I bought a Porsche. I tried to buy the Los Angeles Clippers, and wound up in a lawsuit with Donald Sterling. I wore sunglasses everywhere, indoors and out. There's a photo of me in a ten-gallon gray cowboy hat—I don't know where or when or why. I had to get it all out of my system. Even Penny wasn't immune. Overcompensating for the insecurity of her childhood, she walked around with thou
sands of dollars in her purse. She bought hundreds of staples, like rolls of toilet paper, at a time.

It wasn't long before we were back to normal. Now, to the extent that she and I ever think about money, we focus our efforts on a few specific causes. We give away $100 million each year, and when we're gone we'll give away most of what's left.

At the moment we're in the midst of building a gleaming new basketball facility at the University of Oregon. The Matthew Knight Arena. The logo at half court will be Matthew's name in the shape of a torii gate.
From the profane to the sacred . . .
We're also finishing construction on a new athletic facility, which we plan to dedicate to our mothers, Dot and Lota. On a plaque next to the entrance will go an inscription:
Because mothers are our first coaches.

Who can say how differently everything would have turned out if my mother hadn't stopped the podiatrist from surgically removing that wart and hobbling me for an entire track season? Or if she hadn't told me I could run
fast
? Or if she hadn't bought that first pair of Limber Ups, putting my father in his place?

Whenever I go back to Eugene, and walk the campus, I think of her. Whenever I stand outside Hayward Field, I think of the silent race she ran. I think of all the many races that each of us have run. I lean against the fence and look at the track and listen to the wind, thinking of Bowerman with his string tie blowing behind him. I think of Pre, God love him. Turning, looking over my shoulder, my heart leaps. Across the street stands the William Knight Law School. A very serious-looking edifice. No one ever jackasses around in there.

I CAN'T SLEEP.
I can't stop thinking about that blasted movie,
The Bucket List.
Lying in the dark, I ask myself again and again, What's on yours?

Pyramids? Check.

Himalayas? Check.

Ganges? Check.

So . . . nothing?

I think about the few things I want to do. Help a couple of universities change the world. Help find a cure for cancer. Besides that, it's not so much things I want to do as things I'd like to say. And maybe unsay.

It might be nice to tell the story of Nike. Everyone else has told the story, or tried to, but they always get half the facts, if that, and none of the spirit. Or vice versa. I might start the story, or end it, with regrets. The hundreds—maybe thousands—of bad decisions. I'm the guy who said Magic Johnson was “a player without a position, who'll never make it in the
NBA
.” I'm the guy who tabbed Ryan Leaf as a better
NFL
quarterback than Peyton Manning.

It's easy to laugh those off. Other regrets go deeper. Not phoning Hiraku Iwano after he quit. Not getting Bo Jackson renewed in 1996. Joe Paterno.

Not being a good enough manager to avoid layoffs. Three times in ten years—a total of fifteen hundred people. It still haunts.

Of course, above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons. Maybe, if I had, I could've solved the encrypted code of Matthew Knight.

And yet I know that this regret clashes with my secret regret—­that I can't do it all over again.

God, how I wish I could relive the whole thing. Short of that, I'd like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so that some young man or woman, somewhere, going through the same trials and ordeals, might be inspired or comforted. Or warned. Some young entrepreneur, maybe, some athlete or painter or novelist, might press on.

It's all the same drive. The same dream.

It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I'd tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I'd tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it. If you're following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you've ever felt.

I'd like to warn the best of them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bull's-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bull's-eye. It's not one man's opinion; it's a law of nature.

I'd like to remind them that America isn't the entrepreneurial Shangri-La people think. Free enterprise always irritates the kinds of trolls who live to block, to thwart, to say no, sorry, no. And it's always been this way. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. They've always fought uphill, and the hill has never been steeper. America is becoming less entrepreneurial, not more. A Harvard Business School study recently ranked all the countries of the world in terms of their entrepreneurial spirit. America ranked behind Peru.

And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn't mean stopping. Don't ever stop.

Luck plays a big role. Yes, I'd like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.

Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your Tao. And since no one has ever adequately defined Tao, I now try to go regularly to mass. I would tell them: Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.

In what format do I want to say all this? A memoir? No, not a memoir. I can't imagine how it could all fit into one unified narrative.

Maybe a novel. Or a speech. Or a series of speeches. Maybe just a letter to my grandkids.

I peer into the dark. So maybe there is something on my bucket list after all?

Another Crazy Idea.

Suddenly my mind is racing. People I need to call, things I need to read. I'll have to get in touch with Woodell. I should see if we have any copies of those letters from Johnson. There were so many! Somewhere in my parents' house, where my sister Joanne still lives, there must be a box with my slides from my trip around the world.

So much to do. So much to learn. So much I don't know about my own life.

Now I really can't sleep. I get up, grab a yellow legal pad from my desk. I go to the living room and sit in my recliner.

A feeling of stillness, of immense peace, comes over me.

I squint at the moon shining outside my window. The same moon that inspired the ancient Zen masters to worry about nothing. In the timeless, clarifying light of that moon, I begin to make a list.