#MIDDLEBURY
By Mark Vasto
There are times when you meet a guy and just instantly like him. It’s part instinct, part intuition. Your bloodline has survived long enough to see you into the world; while you’re in it, you tend to gravitate to the people who will make living in it a little more comfortable.
Kevin Plank, the founder and CEO of Under Armour is just such a man. I know. He played softball for me.
Let me explain. I attended the University of Maryland and first met Kevin Plank at the world-famous Bentley’s on College Park’s Route 1. A childhood friend was dating a guy who lived with Plank, and when his house had a vacancy, at her urging, he vetted me at Bentley’s. Plank looked like a guy’s guy – not a pretty boy, definitely a tough guy. He smiled a lot, was engaging, had a strong handshake and emanated a sort of uncommon stature.
Plank was unlike any college kid I had ever met, and living in his house with a motley crew of ACC wrestlers, football players, a baseball player (me), hockey player and potato chip-salesman’s son, plus the women who loved us – all of us had girlfriends, so we were kept well in check – was as great an experience as I’ve ever had. But it’s also where I had the privilege of witnessing Plank in action as a businessman.
My first night living there, Plank grilled me about the Grateful Dead. He had heard there was a marketplace in the parking lots, and I, no stranger to the scene, explained it to him in great detail. Within a few days of the show, hundreds of T-shirts were delivered to our house, assembled accorded to size and sold at the next few Dead shows by Plank and his team.
Before Valentine’s Day, he was the guy who drove to the docks of Baltimore and negotiated for a huge shipment of roses for pennies on the dollar. He came back to College Park, built a call center in our living room (beer on tap), and hired us to take orders after he had plastered the campus with fliers touting $19 roses by the dozen. The guy was 21.
He invented Under Armour out of necessity. He was a stocky, Irish kid who played football very hard, and he sweated a lot … an awful lot. I think one day he weighed the T-shirt under his pads, and it contained about 11 pounds of water weight. That led him to invent Under Armour, and his salesmanship after graduation took him over the top. Ever since, he has done nothing but champion the American worker and add a great deal of excitement to the world of sports.
But when he expressed enthusiasm for our president’s economic agenda, a bunch of people did the mindless #hashtag thing and tried to create uproar. This, to a guy who has done everything he can to return jobs to Baltimore, to keep his company as American as ever … a guy who consistently gives back to his community, a guy that shakes your hand and means what he says.
Bashing Kevin Plank? Not on my watch. Plank said he wants to create jobs and thinks Trump can help. Personally, I can’t wait for the day he runs for president. Protect our house, Kevin. You always have.
Mark Vasto is a veteran sportswriter who lives in New Jersey.
(c) 2016 King Features Synd., Inc.
