During the long rain delays at the French Open - all the matches were washed out yesterday, the first time that had happened in 16 years - I've been wondering what Bud Collins would have made of the zebra outfits worn by a number of the women as well as the men. I think he would have approved of the pattern, but bemoaned the lack of color.
Sunday morning Hania asked a question that one rarely hears in South Florida in May: "Is it too cool to have breakfast on the balcony?"
It wasn't. It was perfect. I saw in the paper that the Marlins were playing at 1 o'clock. "I'm going to the game," I told her. "They have to have the roof open today."
"Do they close it because of the sun?" Hania asked. I smiled. Having grown up in Poland, she knows nothing about baseball.
About two hours later I parked illegaly next to a closed-roof stadium.
"Do you work for the Marlins?" I asked a young man wearing credentials.
"Yes," he said.
"Why on earth is the roof closed today?"
"I don't know. You'd have to ask baseball operations. It's an ownership decision."
"Loria has ruined - among many other things - outdoor baseball in Miami!" I fumed.
Then I got in the car and drove away, thinking maybe Hania knows more about baseball - at least Marlins baseball - than I give her credit for. Before getting on I-95, I picked up two arepas at Doggi's on Coral Way.
Monday was a similarly idyllic day. Around 4 o'clock I called the stadium, and eventually talked to a pleasant woman who told me that the roof would be open for the 7 o'clock game.
"Why did they close it yesterday?" I asked.
She told me that the decision to close the roof is based on a set of variables: rain probability, temperature, and wind speed. So that's it, I thought, they don't want anything affecting Stanton's home runs. How else to explain - other than a surfeit of sun - indoor games on beautiful afternoons?
I drove down to Little Havana for the second straight day, saw that the roof was indeed open, and bought a ticket. The Marlins, despite unseemly exposure to fresh air, won 4-1. Stanton, far from being affected by the wind, actually contributed to it, striking out three times.
Yesterday, after an interview in Aventura, I continued on to Miami. The Marlins were playing an afternoon game and I told myself: If the roof is open, I’ll cheer them on. It was a warm but not hot day with low humidity and only the slightest chance of rain.
From the SW 7th Street exit ramp I could already see that the roof was closed. I continued on and stopped for lunch at Viva Mexico on SW 12th Avenue. My tacos were considerably cheaper than they would have been at the game, and I got to eat them outside.
When Marlins Park was being built in Little Havana, I had great hopes. I liked that it was going up in the city, even though it would mean a longer drive from my home in Fort Lauderdale. The first game I attended, making my way through the homey streets, I was reminded of going as a child to Connie Mack Stadium in North Philadelphia. I didn’t realize then that this new stadium would mean the end of outdoor baseball (at the professional level) in Miami.
The last few years, I knew to go to games early in the season if I wanted to sit outside. (The quick switch to air-conditioning, I heard, was at the behest of the players – those floundering millionaires – not the fans.) So far this year, the roof has been open for one game only. You could perhaps understand the strict shut-in policy if the team were winning in their climate-controlled confines, but they are – after yesterday’s victory – an abysmal 2-7 at home. (Maybe some fresh air would do them good.) You wonder why Loria spent the money to construct a retractable roof when he could have simply built a domed stadium.
Then you remember that it wasn’t his money that he spent.
In the spring of 1971 I was a freshmen at Villanova and, with many of my classmates, I made my way to the Field House to welcome the team back after its loss to UCLA in the NCAA final. When he took the podium, senior forward Clarence Smith read Rudyard Kipling's poem If.
I arrived early, picked up my one-day press pass, and wandered around the outside courts, where some players were practicing in the morning heat. About twenty to eleven I made my way over to the grandstand. A vounteer in a yellow Lacoste shirt was already at her post.
"So this is your spot?" I asked her.
"For the last 19 years," she said.
"You must like tennis."
"I like watching the people." Though she did criticize the way fans handed pens to players in seeking their autographs: usually with the point facing forward. "That could cut somebody's hand and cause an infection and then lots of people would be out of their jobs."
A woman walked past carrying a microphone and headed toward the umpire's chair. Then a man and a woman came through, carrying an ice chest. Fans were told to keep hydrated. Two tall women with thick blond braids arrived, and stood in the shade waiting to be introduced. The Czech, Petra Kvitova, had a sedate, old-fashioned graciousness, even - later on the court - when she wiped the sweat from her face and arms.
I left the match before the end of the first set and walked to the food court to grab a quick lunch. As I ate, I watched all the people (like the volunteer) and thought of Bruce Matheson, the man whose family gave this land to the city and is opposed to improvements to the facility. (The family retained the right to veto any changes to the land.) A man sitting at a nearby table wore a cap that had the name "Federer" stitched across the back and I wondered: What would possess a grown man to wear a hat bearing someone else's name? The only way I would wear a Federer cap is if Federer wore a Swick cap. And perhaps not even then.
It was now high noon so I retreated to the stadium and climbed to the top terrace reserved for the media. A French journalist was eatng lunch with a Japanese journalist who, the Frenchman said, had written the definitive book on Nishikori.
"Journalists and athletes have a strange relationship," the Japanese woman said. "We know so much about them, and they know almost nothing about us."
"It wasn't always like that," the Frenchman said. "I used to hang out with the French players. Years ago. We'd be out drinking till early in the morning. I knew things about them I could never write - not even today - and they knew things about me.
"Players were more open-minded then. Today they all have agents. A guy is 150 in the world and he has an agent!"
I watched the Agnieszka Radwanska match from the life-saving shade of the press box, thinking of the days I used to sit there with Bud Collins. How Bud would have admired the crafty Pole's drop shots.
A little after three I finally ventured out again. Walking past the outdoor player's lounge, I noticed that a high white wall had replaced the low chain-link fence.
"The players wanted it," the man guarding the entrance told me. "Gives them more privacy."
So they can talk about deals with their agents, I thought.
"But people can stll look down on them," the guard said, motioning to the fans standing by the railing of the stadium's second level. "Perhaps next year they'll add a canopy to block their view."
I made my way to Court 10, where the top row was completely in the shadows.
"What language are you speaking?" I asked the shaded couple next to me.
"Serbian," they said, adding that they'd come to see the doubles match featuring Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic. "Mladenovic's mother and my mother played volleyball together," the woman told me.
The players arrived, Mladenovic in a colorful tennis dress that looked to be made from swaths taken from various quilts. It gave her a clean, feminine, hobo look. Amazingly, her sneakers matched the dress.
I left the match before its completion to attend happy hour up on the press terrace. While I was munching my chips and hummus, a woman appeared from the media center and announced that Rafael Nadal was about to give a press conference. Nadal had retired from his match a short while earlier due to dizziness. It wasn't quite like an alarm at a fire department - when half-eaten burgers are left on plates - but a number of reporters abandoned their dips and headed down the steps. I followed them.
Nadal was already seated behind the microphone when I entered. He never seems particularly pleased with life, but now he appeared wretched, with a kind of tacit, accusatory rage. As if we were all part of the reason for his current misery. If looks could kill, there would have been lifeless bodies strewn throughout the interview room.
Answering questions, he was curt, barely intelligible, and always begrudging, even when a young woman asked, in a voice of genuine concern, sounding more like a mother than a reporter: "How are you feeling now?" I was tempted to ask for the microphone and say: "Nadal, you're young. You're talented. You're famous. You play a game for a living that earns you more money than everyone in this room has combined. OK, you're losing your hair, but your life is great. Cheer up." But I didn't think it my place with a one-day press pass. And I didn't want that murderous stare on me.
A more lasting memory from the day came after lunch, when I wandered over to the practice court behind the Stella Artois Center Court Lounge. I didn't recognize the man practicing until I spotted a small boy clinging enraptured to the fence. He wore a red, green, and white striped T-shirt and a red, green, and white striped cap and carried a similarly tri-colored flag. Then I realized that the player was the Bulgarian, Grigor Dimitrov. As he left the court, a small crowd, including the boy, surrounded him for autographs. He hurriedly signed caps, scraps of paper, fuzzy green balls. The boy, who had been one of the first at him, returned to the bleachers to show his mother his treasure. As Dimitrov extracted himself from his admirers, he spotted the boy standing near his mother and in one quick motion tossed him a wrist band. The boy retrieved it, and the disbelieving smile that lit up his face soon transferred to his mother and then to his father. I wished Bruce Matheson had been there to see it.
Well, hasn't tennis become the rage? The year began with allegations of players throwing matches - or at least points - in a betting scandal (just in time for the Australian Open). Then Maria Sharapova was temporarily dismissed from the tour for using a banned substance. This past weekend at Indian Wells, the tournament CEO said in a press conference that women tennis players are "riding on the coattails of the men" and suggested that they should "get down on their kness" and thank Nadal and Federer. Everyone responded with indignation, it seemed, except Novak Djokovic, who tweeted something about female hormones before holding the obligatory press conference to say that he had misspoken.
In the middle of all this, Bud Collins died.
Which brings us to the Miami Open, now threatened with extinction. When I started going down to Key Biscayne - when the tournament was called the Lipton - it was considered the "fifth slam," in other words, the most important and prestigious tennis event after the three Opens (Australian, French, U.S.) and Wimbledon. Then as its name changed a few times - with variations on Sony-Ericsson - it started being eclipsed by Indian Wells, a place that distinguished itself in 2001 by crowd slurs against the Williams family after Venus withdrew from a match with Serena. The Williams sisters, understandably, left Indian Wells off their tennis schedules for the next 14 years. Yet large sums of money were spent to enlarge the grounds, making the tournament a fan and player (except for the Williams) favorite.
The same thing has not happened at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne. The facilities are aging, and not expected to improve because of resistance, according to New Times, from the man who gave the land to the city. The tennis world, just like the baseball world, is attracted to new stadiums and state-of-the-art facilities, so the thinking is that the Miami Open will soon pack up and move elsewhere, just as MLB teams did for spring training. A tournament that has never had a mark against it, that is - like its home city - a bridge between the two Americas, and that finally bears the name of that city (and not some nonsporting corporation), is under threat, while one that has a reputation for racism, and now sexism, thrives.
It would have made Bud Collins weep.