At lunch the other day I asked my friend Dave, who is knowledgeable about the game of basketball, what he thought of Caitlin Clark. He had his criticisms: she doesn’t like to shoot once she gets inside the 3-point line, and she doesn’t play defense. But he was impressed by her passing, and the way she filled arenas that had previously been practically empty. Jordan, he said, couldn’t even take credit for that, as people watched the NBA before his arrival on the scene.
And Dave had asked himself if anyone else in sport had ever done that, and he thought of one person: Mia Hamm. And she did it in a sport that was so unpopular in America that no one paid much attention when it was played by men.
Now, I didn’t hear or read all the commentary about the phenomenon of Clark, yet what I did hear and read didn’t include any mention of Hamm. The human tendency is to believe that one’s age is exceptional – it’s why athletes are continually given the label GOAT – and the conviction is infinitely aided by an ignorance of history. Today, when we are bombarded with so much news and information, it’s easier than ever to lose sight of the past, and think that our times are unprecedented. When in fact they’re simply self-absorbed.
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.