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.
It was a sad end to the baseball season for Florida’s teams. On the bright side, the Marlins and the Rays both made the playoffs, but they were both swept in games that had almost identical scores: 4-1 and 4-0 for Tuesday’s contests, and 7-1 in yesterday’s. By scoring that one run yesterday, the Rays were saved from the ignominy of breaking the Los Angeles Dodgers’ record of 34 straight scoreless innings in playoff games. This from a team that this season won its first 13 games. Their record gave them home field advantage, such as it was, as only 19,704 people showed up for the first game, the lowest attendance at an MLB playoff game in 104 years. Granted, it was an afternoon game, during the week, in perhaps the unloveliest stadium in the majors. The Marlins, on the other hand, played at night before a crowd of raucous Philly fans (is there any other kind?). Perhaps the sight of a packed stadium awash in red and deafening with decibels was so alien to them that it affected their play.
Coming upon the tennis court the other evening, on my walk around the island, I found two pickleball games in progress: a women’s doubles match at one end and a mixed doubles match at the other. I am not a fan of pickleball; it lacks the athleticism and esthetics of tennis; no running, no soaring flights of fuzzy yellow balls. Even the sound is inferior: instead of a pleasant pong there is an irritating clank. But as I watched the women try to cool themselves between points, I had to admit that the paddle works better than a racket as a fan.
The men’s final on Sunday was an improvement over the women’s final on Saturday in terms of quality and – for many fans – outcome. Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian who is possibly the most beloved tennis player in the world (even the women she beats adore her) was once again overcome by the occasion and lost, this time to an unseeded Marketa Vondrousova in a match of head-scratching unforced errors.
The men’s final was a more fitting tug-of-war between the old guard – 36-year-old GOAT Novak Djokovic – and the still-not-able-to-drink-in-the-U.S superstar Carlos Alcaraz. One of the elder’s service games, which he ultimately lost, lasted almost 27 minutes – the length of some sets. Neither player was giving an inch, which meant fewer of the unforced errors that marred the women’s final. When they occurred, they were generally committed by the Serb, who, at the end of one game in the fifth set, smacked his racket against the net post, leaving a dent in the wood and a fine example for his two young boys watching from the player’s box. It was impossible to imagine Djokovic’s two old rivals – Federer and Nadal – exhibiting such behavior on the hallowed Centre Court (or any court for that matter). Djokovic became the only player that I’m aware of to intentionally cause destruction to the All England grounds, though this act went unmentioned in the post-match interview, during which Djokovic was as gracious as always in defeat. But his temper in the heat of battle – he also at one point blew sarcastic kisses to the pro-Alcaraz crowd – is a major reason he doesn’t get the love and respect that his rivals did, a love and respect he so desperately wants.
We’ve reached that point in the tournament – not just Wimbledon, but pretty much any of the majors – at which every player I root for loses. Yesterday it was Swiatek, Pegula, and Rublev; today, I suspect, it will be Jabeur, Eubanks, and Keys.
I’m hoping that writing this I’ll be proved wrong, but I don’t even think a blog post will help.
Browsing through Instagram last night I came across a long post from the Polish tennis player Magda Linette. She began by talking about the people who ask her if she doesn’t get homesick, traveling to tournaments around the world. Her answer to them is that this is the life she’s chosen for herself. She added that when she’s back in Poland, she sees Ukrainians (over a million refugees are now in her country) and she wonders about them: Have they found a new life in Poland? How much do they miss their country? And she realizes, in a way she hasn’t always, how lucky she is, how lucky so many of us are.
The war, she writes, is not being covered by the media the way it once was, yet horrible things are happening all the time. She closes with a passionate declaration of support for the Ukrainian people and the hope that someday they will find peace and happiness in their homeland.
It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever read or heard from an athlete.