I won a seat on the Internet last week. It cost me $100.
It’s (1) the new golf. For me, in an odd way, it tends to be a place where I can get some peace. Most poker players are so into their own hand and what they’re doing that they’re not going to bother you.
I play in a home game with Tobey Maguire and a lot of other actors, and it’s interesting to a lot of other actors because it’s about trying to recognize strength and weakness in other people and to represent something you don’t have.
The best feeling in poker is winning with the worst hand.
A lot of it’s acting. Most of the time I think I’m pretty hard to put on a hand. I’m hard to figure out. I work pretty hard at it. Most people assume I’m some bonehead actor, you know what I mean? So, I probably get paid off that much more than other people would. They think, “Well, he can’t have anything; he’s an idiot.”
Athletes always want to be actors and actors want to be athletes. There’s not a guy on that team (2) that doesn’t want to be in movies, as far as I can tell.
Fenway, it’s the best park in baseball. Even people who aren’t Red Sox fans would say it.
To put the Fisk home run in “Good Will Hunting”–and then they got the footage and then we got to meet him and he had seen it–that was one of the coolest things.
Cubs and Red Sox fans always have a huge affinity for one another.
Let me tell you my theory on that (3). The Cubs are always such a perennial last-place team that they’re never expected to do anything. What they don’t have that we have is a constant raised expectations, then dashed. It’s not like a woman saying, “I don’t like you; leave me alone.” It’s a woman saying, “I do love you. No, I’m leaving you for another man. I do love you. No, I’m leaving you for another man.” That’s worse.
I love the fact Clemens left New York and is on fire. Unstoppable. All of a sudden, he’s pitching like a 20-year-old man. I know it burns the Yankees. I only wish Houston played the Yankees in interleague because you know he’d no-hit the Yankees. You just know he would.
I sympathize with athletes. In some ways, athletes are probably even less equipped to deal with it (4). As an actor or a director or writer, you go through so much rejection when you’re starting off that you really cultivate a kind of thicker skin. You’re used to it. But as an athlete, you’re the best guy in the league, you’re the best guy in Babe Ruth, you’re the best guy in high school, you’re the best guy in Senior Babe Ruth, you’re the best guy on the college team, you’re the best guy in Triple A, and then you’re playing pro ball and someone’s booing you? And sportswriters are beating you up like they beat up Pedro (5) all the time in the Globe? That’s hard to take. That’s hard for me to take, and I’ve gotten used to it.
Larry Bird is still my absolute favorite all-time athlete, bar none. I’ve still never met him. I don’t know that I’d want to. I’d be intimidated. He’s such an idol in my mind.
Gigli”? What are you going to say? That was such a spectacular Bill Buckner-in-’86 kind of a thing. Or like that kid in Chicago.
(1): Poker.
(2): The Lakers.
(3): Comparing the heartbreak suffered by Cubs and Red Sox fans.
(4): Criticism.
(5): Martinez.
