Category: sports
(I'm off to Baltimore tomorrow, followed by a few days in DC, so this will be my last post until next Thursday.)
The cover of Sunday’s New York Times Book Review carried an essay by Pete Hamill on the noble beauty of baseball in 1950s New York. It was disguised as a review of the new Willie Mays biography, but it talked almost as much about the Brooklyn Dodgers – and the pain of lost youth – as it did about The Say Hey Kid. Indeed, toward the end of his hackneyed elegy, Hamill confessed that his despair over the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles caused him a crisis of faith so great that he gave up watching baseball and never saw Mays play as a San Francisco Giant (which he did for 14 years, at the peak of his career).
Reading this confession, I felt pity for Hamill and exasperation at the Book Review. Why on earth would you pick to review a book about a brilliant athlete someone who missed that athlete’s glory years? Then it hit me: It is the NEW YORK Times Book Review, Hamill is a NEW YORK writer, Mays began and ended his career in NEW YORK. Who cares what he accomplished someplace else? And who cares what anyone outside of the five boroughs might make of those accomplishments? As usual in publishing, it’s all about New York.
The only way the evening could have been improved upon is if the entire Canadian women's hockey team had skated onto the ice and presented Kim Yu-Na with a cigar and a Molson.
It's the most frequently asked question of these Olympics, at least from the American commentators. And the most annoying, at least to me. It's presumptuous. It's lazy. (Don't know anything about the sport? Just ask the victor about his emotions.) It's pop-psychology practiced in a sporting context.
Happily, we're all in touch with our feelings these days so no one balks on getting asked the question. And the answer is always the same, a rambling exaltation that mixes, in varying measures, joy, disbelief and gratitude.
"How meaningful was it for you to skate for your country tonight?" A gold medal to the first athlete who asks back: "Why do you assume that it was meaningful?"
Strange experience last night switching back and forth between the Olympics (men's figure skating) and the Westminster Dog Show. Skaters and canines both strutting their stuff, looking their feathery and furry best.
Skating has suffered a loss in popularity over the last few Olympics because of a lack of star power (no such problem for the dog show), and last night I came up with a solution.
After all the programs have been completed, the skaters should all be brought back onto the ice to stand with their trainers. A judge, selected by the others, would then walk - slipping and sliding - from one to the other, sizing them up, adjusting their posture, checking their teeth. He would ask them all in turn to do another lap on the ice, perhaps requesting a second double axel. Then he would go to a table and write down the name of the winner - imagine the suspense - before announcing it to the crowd. The victorious trainer would then be interviewed while the newly-crowned skater, standing oblivious by her side, begged for a treat.
Tonight I'm flying to Minas Gerais for five days, but just because I will be out of the country this weekend doesn't mean I'm going to shrink from my responsibilities as an American. The following story can be read now or saved till Sunday.
In 1999 the Super Bowl returned to South Florida, and the sports editor asked me to write some color stories for the Sun-Sentinel. I was given a pass that didn't entitle me to a seat but allowed me to wander around the stadium.
In the press tent before the game I wrote my first story on a laptop. Dave Barry sat three tables over, and I remember watching him, as I searched for words, typing without pause. He had no notes, and he kept his eyes on the screen as his fingers danced atop the keyboard. I wondered what he was writing and concluded that it was probably his next book, while his wife, a sports writer for the Herald, covered the game.
I finished before kick-off, successfully sent my story to the newsroom, and went in to roam. It was with a feeling of great elation that the electricity in the stadium only amplified. I was positively giddy. Walking down the steps behind one end zone, I spontaneously reached into my bookbag and grabbed my pocket Webster's. (Unused to laptops, I had brought it along as a reference tool.)
"DICTIONARIES!!" I cried, holding it high in classic vendor fashion. "GET YOUR DICTIONARIES HERE!!"
People looked up from the pre-game festivities in astonishment. I felt a small part of Super Bowl history.
I got up at 6 yesterday morning, just in time to see the third-set tie-break and the presentation of the trophies.
The beauty of watching Federer at the top of his game is that you get not only to see great shots but - when the match is over and the microphone in place - to hear good lines. All tournament long he'd been brilliant and loose, coming up with responses - to both opponents and interviewers - that defied probability. He repeatedly rose above the relentless bludgeoning (to use McEnroe's term) of modern tennis and the deadening cliches of modern athletes. He was as deft with his quips as he was with his drop shots.
Yesterday, in accepting his trophy, he became the first player in ages to describe his emotions with the words "over the moon."
It was especially gratifying to hear remembering that, after last year's final, he seemed to be on the downward slope, replaced by the indefatigable and barely intelligible Rafael Nadal. This year's Open was a victory for athletic and linguistic grace.