Back when people read magazines there was a phenomenon known as the “Sports Illustrated jinx,” which assured that no team heading into playoffs wanted to find its picture on the SI cover.
That superstition has now been replaced by the “Swick jinx.” Lately, every team I root for loses. In the baseball playoffs, I threw my support behind the Tigers, the Cubs, and – of course – the Phillies. I am now pulling for the Brewers, who last night lost by one run to the Dodgers after loading the bases in the bottom of the ninth. Of course they did.
In college football, my favorite teams are Florida, Florida State and – the one I’ve been a fan of since childhood, when my uncle taught at the school – Penn State. (The Nittany Lions, for you non-sports fans, began the season with a single-digit ranking and last week fired their coach after three straight losses.) Likewise, I’ve been a lifelong fan of the Eagles, who I hope (hoped?) will/would meet the Bills in the Super Bowl. Both teams, after excellent starts, lost their last two games. The only team that seemed immune to my jinx was the Florida Panthers – until last night, when they lost to the Philadelphia Flyers.
If you have to be sick, there is perhaps no better time than the first week of October. You schlep through the morning, eat lunch, and then settle on the couch for the buffet of baseball that awaits. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there were games at 1 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock – nearly 12 hours of non-stop baseball. And not just any baseball; playoff baseball, in which every pitch, every at-bat throbs with significance. And the early games gave you the unparalleled sight of a sunlit outfield, shadows falling across the infield, the ancient architecture of the sport.
In travel I’m a fan of the unsung, and in sports I tend to support the underdog, so I was rooting for the Bills even before I went to Buffalo this past spring, where I visited the landmark City Hall and found a “Go Bills” sign stuck to a window – four months before the start of the season.
Easter Sunday I attended mass at St. Casimir’s Church. The priest, a large man in flowing robes, slowly made his way up the steps of the pulpit to give the sermon. As he took his position before the standing congregation, my eyes moved from his white goatee to his imposing form to the banner unfurled on the pulpit below him: “Christ Is Risen.” A spotlight illuminated the words and also the letters on the back of the blue jacket worn by the boy in the front pew: BILLS.
I hope his parents allowed him to stay up and watch the end of Sunday night's game.
Carlos Alcaraz, once again #1 in the world, is a pleasure to watch, and not just for the way he hits the ball.
Serving for the match yesterday at the U.S. Open, he had two championship points, both of which he lost. He returned to the baseline to serve at deuce, knowing that if his opponent, Jannik Sinner, won the game, the fourth set would be tied (5-5) and they would in all probability go to a tiebreaker, with Sinner holding the momentum.
Alcaraz won the next point, on an easy put-away at the net, and as he walked back for his third championship point, his face was briefly lit by a smile. I have watched a lot of tennis in my time (see the essay I posted on Friday) and I had never seen any player smile before a championship point. Bjorg, McEnroe, Agassi, Sampras, Federer and Nadal almost never smiled during matches; Djokovic does, from time to time, but never at a crucial point in a match. Alcaraz is blessed with exceptional talent and the even rarer ability to enjoy it – in the moment. He is the Say Hey Kid of tennis.
I wrote for Literary Hub about the surprising connections between writers and tennis players (just in time for the U.S Open finals): https://lithub.com/failing-better-on-the-tennis-player-and-the-writer/
“This is one of the great sports stories of 2025,” the announcer gushed after the 18-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko upset Naomi Osaka to win the National Bank Open in Montreal last night. Then, rather than letting its viewers enjoy the moment – the crowd’s embrace of its new star, the on-court interview, the joyous trophy presentation – Tennis Channel switched to the men’s final being played in Toronto (which was not concluding but in the middle of an unmemorable first set). So we got to watch one of the year’s great sports stories but we didn’t get to bask in its afterglow – we didn’t get to hear the words of the winner. The ceremony, for some of us, is just as important as the play it celebrates.