Part of the madness of March is rooting for teams you never gave a thought to before. Last night I became a big Oakland University fan – they were playing perennial powerhouse Kentucky, and I never do brackets – all the while believing the school was in located somewhere in the Bay area. (Googling just now, I saw that the school is in Michigan.) The number of three-point shots that went in, for both teams, was incredible in the second half, but the Golden Grizzlies (love that name) hung on to win 80-76. And, sitting at home, conforming to the psychological tenor of the month, I felt enormous joy for a school I thought was somewhere else.
I’ve been going to the Miami Open since it was the Lipton – held in the balmy confines of Key Biscayne – and yesterday I saw something I’d never seen at the tournament: a player smashing his racket during a practice session. It was Alexander Bublik, at the end of his hit with Gaël Monfils, and, heading to his chair, he tossed the mangled racket to fans in the stands.
Every team I rooted for in the NFL playoffs lost, a perfect record explained only in part by my lifelong love of the underdog.
But in tennis, the man I was pulling for to win the Australian Open, the red-headed, mild-mannered, soft-spoken Italian with the unlikely name of Jannik Sinner, lifted the championship trophy, two days after defeating the hot-headed, racket-smashing defending champion Novak Djokovic.
So, sportswise, a not entirely lost weekend.
The Phillies in the playoffs resembled the month of March: They came in like lions and went out like lambs. Students of the game, which include undoubtedly some of Philadelphia’s most faithful fans, know that power hitters get hot – and then they cool off. In the case of the Phils, who boast a lineup rife with power, they got hot in unison and then chilled together – regrettably, uncharacteristically, but in a way predictably, in their home ballpark. Fifty thousand screaming fans cannot force a bat to make contact with a slider. Last night in the first inning Bryce Harper, the multi-million-dollar first baseman who was supposedly going to carry his team to a world championship, struck out swinging at two unhittable pitches. Previously in the first inning, on the first pitch, he had hit a towering home run, and trotted around the bases like a pinstriped superhero, a man in total control of his destiny. Last night he looked like a flailing mortal. In the city of Rocky, he became Casey.
My mother died in 2018 and I still get the urge to call her - never more so than in October when the Phils take out the Braves.