I've never interviewed Andy Murray, but I know people who have, and I've attended a few of his press conferences. The general consensus has always been that he is a fairly uninteresting young man. But there is something about him - perhaps the combination of being soft-spoken in a British accent - that made me think there was something more there.
Apparently there isn't. In Sunday's New York Times he was quoted as saying: "I never read. The paper or anything. I watch a lot of movies and TV series and stuff. But I never, never read."
That last line turns a calm admission into something of a boast. My first thought on reading it was: How can you not read? Not read anything? Then I remembered an article about Sonny Liston. The reporter, I think for Sports Illustrated (we're going back to my youth here), was riding in a car with Liston and it became clear that the great boxer couldn't read the signs along the highway. He was illiterate, and being so caused him enormous shame and sorrow.
Murray, by contrast, can read but chooses not to, which is even more pitiful.
One of the lines carpeting the stage for the closing ceremonies last night, and requiring a degree in English literature to decipher, was Samuel Johnson’s, “When a man tires of London he tires of life.”
I grew a little weary watching, though, and wondered why John Lennon’s Imagine (“Imagine there’s no countries…”) was sung at the end of an Olympics where virtually all of the winners, in a now almost obligatory act, draped themselves in their national flags. Much more appropriate would have been Ralph McTell’s Streets of London, dedicated to all the athletes who failed to win a medal.
Though the long ceremony allowed me to reflect on some of the fortnight’s highlights. I thought of Ashton Eaton (did you just say “Who?”) and of how the decathlon is the Olympic equivalent of travel writing in that you have to excel at a number of disciplines. And of how decathletes get overshadowed, just like travel writers, by the flashy specialists. (The last page of the Miami Herald's sports section today features pictures of nine American gold medalists, including a tennis player and two beach volleyball players, but not the world’s greatest athlete.)
One of my lasting memories of the games will be seeing Matt Lauer sitting with his colleagues atop a sightseeing bus and looking abashed, as if he were Wilfred Thesiger joining a tour group.
And I was disappointed that Jim Cantore, visiting London’s oldest pub, gave us the name of the barmaid who poured him a beer (Hanna), but never told us where she was from. I have a good idea – having met my own Hanna across the bar of a London pub – and suspect that a Polish immigrant didn’t fit NBC’s idea of merry old England. But aren’t the Olympics about international understanding? Imagine there’s no editors.
The beauty of the U.S. women's gymnastics team - apart from their winning gold - is their resemblance to the Olympic rings.
Everybody's talking about the parachuting queen, but I got a bigger kick out of the children's choir singing in pajamas, and the kids jumping up and down on hospital beds. Not to mention the Czech Olympic team marching into the stadium in wellies.
Today John Isner played at Wimbledon in his trademark Lacoste attire, though the crocodile on his shirt had red and white stripes and white stars against a blue background on its tail. Which was pretty funny, though maybe not to the French.
As soon as I heard that Giancarlo Stanton was not going to make it to the All-Star game, I lost interest in the contest. But I turned it on last night anyway and, watching the introductions, I noticed that the absence of any Marlins did allow for a certain uniformity of tastefulness in team uniforms.
Perhaps Major League Baseball could ban any Marlins from participating in the game until the team changes its gaudy logo.
Late in the match yesterday between Ireland and Spain the stadium in Gdansk filled with song. Thousands of people, many of them dressed in green, joined voices, not in taunting celebration - their team was losing 4-0 - but in communal exultation at being Irish, abroad, alive. Who knows, perhaps even a bit inebriated. I hated to see their team lose, because its exit from the tournament meant the loss of the world's greatest fans.
In 1994, when the World Cup was held in the U.S., I covered the scene in Orlando, where Belgium, Mexico, Holland and Ireland played their matches. Everyone was unanimous in their affection and praise for the Irish fans, one of whom told me that if anybody in their group starting getting belligerent, they took care of him themselves.
Of course, being a fun-loving fan is a lot easier when little is riding on your team. But the Irish set an example, especially in a tournament that has seen fights between supporters, of tolerance and - to borrow the byword of Euro 2012 - respect. They demonstrated that taking pride in one's nationality doesn't mean denigrating another's. In the final minutes yesterday, the players kicking the ball looked silly and insignificant, while the singing of the fans had a fine and meaningful beauty.