My alma mater won the national basketball championship last night, and as enjoyable as the game was the commentary afterwards, which repeatedly noted the team's togetherness and unselfish play.
I went to my first – and probably my last – opening day game yesterday. There was a 50-50 chance of my not attending because, in the morning, I heard on the radio that there was a 50-50 chance of the roof being closed. I left the house with a book, and a fallback plan to spend a quiet afternoon reading in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel.
Getting on the exit ramp for Little Havana I could see the stadium, its roof closed. I headed for it anyway, hoping to harangue anyone I saw – club official, parking attendant, traffic policeman – about the absurdity of closing the roof on a partly cloudy day in the high 70s.
Stopped at a stop sign, I looked up to a miraculous sight: the roof slowly opening. I felt like Charlton Heston. It was as if Derek Jeter had seen me coming and said to his team: “Oh, no – if we keep the roof closed Swick’s gonna blog about us. Open it up, boys!”
I parked in the lot of St. John Bosco Church, where a man I assumed was a member of the congregation demanded $20. (In the past I’d given a small donation.) After walking a few blocks I joined a long line of Cubs fans waiting to buy tickets, the cheapest of which went for $37. I told the ticket seller that there had been $30 tickets online, which I hadn’t purchased (I didn’t mention) because they came with a $4.95 “convenience fee.” (A writer, I thought that a very poor choice of adjective.)
By the time I entered the stadium, over $50 the poorer, the Cubs had runners on first and second. I had missed the player introductions (putting me further behind in my acquaintance with the Marlins), the ceremonial first pitch, and the disastrous first real pitch, which my friends in Section 26 later told me had been smacked out of the park. On the bright side there was bunting (the decorative kind) and sunshine giving the field a glorious green glow. And the home run sculpture still gladdened center field.
The sight of people sitting in every section of the stadium was also uplifting until I went in search of lunch. I was used to walking up to the counter and ordering my heavily-breaded fare; at worst, standing behind a half dozen people. Yesterday the lines at virtually every concession impeded traffic in the walkway. I am willing to pay high prices for mediocre food but not to stand in line to pay high prices for mediocre food.
It was even hard to find a spot in my usual perch by the outfield bar. In the fourth inning I squeezed behind a group as they juggled sodas and hot dogs while searching for tickets to show the attendant – one advantage of a nearly-packed house – and joined my friends in Section 26. We were four, then three, then two, then one row away from sitting in the sun. It was, I had to admit, a beautiful South Florida afternoon, even for a hungry man surrounded by Cubs fans.
After 12 hours at the Miami Open on Saturday I needed a break, so Sunday I went to a polo match. Our friend Don is a fan – not just of the sport, but the quiet pageantry that surrounds it – so we drove up to the International Polo Club in Wellington to watch Colorado play Audi. The second name made me wonder if sponsors of the sport had taken the advertising on players’ shirts – as one sees with Qatar Airways and FC Barcelona – to a new level by simply renaming the team.
After buying our tickets we walked across the field to see the people having a pre-game lunch on the patio of a low-slung building bearing the name of Veuve Clicquot. The females especially, many in sunhats, reminded me of the society women one sees shots of at the Kentucky Derby. There must be something about horses and hats. Yes, the horses run outdoors, but so do football players.
Then we walked down the sideline and looked at the horses. There were dozens of them, not just the requisite eight, because, as Don explained, substitutes are sent in regularly. I was reminded that the Derby is often called “the most exciting two minutes in sports,” and those thoroughbreds aren’t stopping and starting and constantly changing direction.
We passed a canopy under which a dozen mallets had been laid. They made me think of the Peter de Vries novel in which one of the characters, a polo writer, discovers late in his career that the players hit the ball with the whole mallet, not the end.
A woman came over and asked if we would like our picture taken. She raised horses, she told us, that she brought down for the season from Aiken, South Carolina. “How many horses do you have up there?” someone asked. “Eighty,” she said.
On the way back to the stands, we passed parked pick-up trucks and SUVs. Next to one truck a Great Dane reclined, its back to the field. I wondered if it was out of resentment that there were four-legged creatures bigger than it.
We found our seats and the game began, after the singing of the national anthem. (Ours only, not also that of Argentina.) When the action was far away, we would talk like at a baseball game, but when the ball rolled over in our vicinity the sound of pounding hooves and the shouts of riders, the smack of mallet on ball, sent our hearts racing.
At halftime all the spectators left their seats and walked onto the field, where plastic glasses were provided and champagne was poured by handsome young men in polo shirts.
On Key Biscayne Saturday morning, sitting in the long line of cars waiting to turn into the parking lot, I thought: I won’t miss this. The line continued as we inched our way past fields and scrubland. The Miami Open is the only sporting event I’m aware of where the earlier you arrive, the farther away from the stadium you park.
I had not experienced this parking injustice (one that Hard Rock Stadium should eliminate) for a few years, as I had used the media lot. Last week I was told that I would not be able to receive a media pass this year for the first Saturday because Roger Federer was scheduled to play, and the demand was too high. I tried not to hold it against him.
As is my custom, I wandered the outside courts – found Petra Kvitova practicing on a court next to Juan del Potro – but then headed into the stadium for the Agnieszka Radwanska and Simona Halep match. Earlier, climbing the stairs to check the location of my seat, I had peered down at Halep sitting on a couch next to her coach Darren Cahill in the outdoor players’ lounge, which is now visible only from above as a wall was built a few years ago, Trump-style, to block the views of gawking fans.
My seat was two rows from the top. The players far below were still quite visible, as well as the Miami skyline and sailboats out in Biscayne Bay. Here’s where Hard Rock is going to fall far short.
A group of Polish fans one section below were loudly rooting for their countrywoman, so I moved down in their vicinity. Perhaps their cheering helped, as Radwanska won in an upset.
I had to vacate my new seat for the Federer-Kokkinakis match; by the second set the stadium was standing room only. The people who had paid nearly $100 – in some cases more – to watch the number one player in the world witnessed him scatter forehands and lose his number one ranking. And just like that, the Miami Open, in its swan song on the island, lost its marquee draw.
In the evening, there was a tribute to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, with the school’s tennis players gathered on the court. I thought they looked unusually tall until I realized that standing among them were a number of professionals. One of them, Nick Kyrgios, won the first of the night matches. I watched it from a corporate suite a friend had invited me to, directly across the court from the media room. Seeing it reminded me of balmy afternoons sitting there with Bud Collins, the man who had gotten me my first media pass, and his lovely wife Anita. It pleased me to think that Bud would have approved of what I had written in a preview to this year’s Open in City & Shore:
“There is something beautifully apt about a tennis tournament on a subtropical island. Flying balls, swaying palms. A summer game played within a lob of the beach. (Topspin and undertow.) Everyone – players, ball kids, fans – getting good leg tans.”
Except of course for Bud, in his always colorful trousers.
A few days before meeting Caroline Wozniacki I attended an event with Monica Puig. It was an assignment – to write a profile of the tennis player – but I wasn’t allowed to interview her. This was not Puig’s decision but the WTA’s. I was told that I could email my questions to the WTA (through the PR firm hosting the event) and that they would be passed on to Puig.
Luckily for me, the evening included a Q&A with the player. And I got to chat with her briefly, mostly about her dog. I came away from the meeting, as after that with Wozniacki, impressed by the young woman’s poise, friendliness, and dedication. The next day I emailed my inquiries, thinking of Vladimir Nabokov, who always insisted that would-be interviewers submit their questions in writing.
Today, Wozniacki plays her first match at the Miami Open – against Monica Puig. Having met – and liked – both of them, I am understandably torn as to who to root for. Though the journalist in me realizes that if Puig loses, she’ll have more time to answer my questions.
Memories of the Miami Open – which started as The Lipton more than three decades ago – as it begins its final year on Key Biscayne:
“Checking the electronic schedule in the middle of Crandon Park that first Saturday, I realized that it resembled a departures board at an international airport that, for some strange reason, was displaying surnames instead of destinations: Van Roost. Likhovtseva. Dragomir. Li. Enqvist. Costa. Philippoussis. Campbell. Prieto. Vinck. Appelmans. Halard-Decugis. Sawamatsu. Brandi. In that septet of singles matches (only a small sampling of the long day’s duels) you had, I figured, the representation of at least a dozen countries and possibly five continents. The world was spread out on hardcourt before me.”
….
“Tennis globalism was beautifully captured a little while later when Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden met Leander Paes of India. It would be difficult to think of two more diverse countries, yet there on the same court, in vaguely similar outfits (Bjorkman’s decidedly baggier) and with almost identical weaponry, the two men stood separated only by a net. During one of the changeovers – as if underscoring the benign exoticism of the meeting – a giant iguana scurried across the court.”
from “Love on the Key” from A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler.