I don't know if it says more about this year's kick-off party for the Sony Ericsson - or more about me - but the only players I recognized were Slavic women.
Jelena Jankovic sat with friends, frequently flashing her winning smile, while the Poles - Agnieszka and Urszula Radwanska, and Caroline Wozniacki (a Polish-Dane) - took to the dance floor. It was rather sweet to see Agnieszka dancing next to Caroline, who beat her at Indian Wells less than a week ago. Polish sisterhood.
I was tempted to go up to them and say something stupid. "Dobry wieczor" (Good evening) or "Co slychac?" (What's new?). Poles usually melt whenever a foreigner says something in Polish, but I had an inkling that wouldn't be the case this time. And besides, the music was so loud they wouldn't have had the slightest idea what language I was speaking.
Szkoda.
I was so irritated by Pete Hamill's "review" of the new Willie Mays biography that I wrote a letter to The New York Times Book Review.
Yesterday the Book Review ran three letters about the review, none of them mine. One was from a man in San Francisco writing about home runs and Candlestick Park (they don't name stadiums like they used to). The other two were from New Yorkers. The first began: "My eyes welled up with tears as I read Pete Hamill's beautiful review..." and ended with the words "which might be the difference between Harlem and the Bronx." The second ended with the sentence: "That was New York."
As in the review, the greatest baseball player in history took a backseat to the vainest city in the world.
(I'm off to Baltimore tomorrow, followed by a few days in DC, so this will be my last post until next Thursday.)
The cover of Sunday’s New York Times Book Review carried an essay by Pete Hamill on the noble beauty of baseball in 1950s New York. It was disguised as a review of the new Willie Mays biography, but it talked almost as much about the Brooklyn Dodgers – and the pain of lost youth – as it did about The Say Hey Kid. Indeed, toward the end of his hackneyed elegy, Hamill confessed that his despair over the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles caused him a crisis of faith so great that he gave up watching baseball and never saw Mays play as a San Francisco Giant (which he did for 14 years, at the peak of his career).
Reading this confession, I felt pity for Hamill and exasperation at the Book Review. Why on earth would you pick to review a book about a brilliant athlete someone who missed that athlete’s glory years? Then it hit me: It is the NEW YORK Times Book Review, Hamill is a NEW YORK writer, Mays began and ended his career in NEW YORK. Who cares what he accomplished someplace else? And who cares what anyone outside of the five boroughs might make of those accomplishments? As usual in publishing, it’s all about New York.
The only way the evening could have been improved upon is if the entire Canadian women's hockey team had skated onto the ice and presented Kim Yu-Na with a cigar and a Molson.
It's the most frequently asked question of these Olympics, at least from the American commentators. And the most annoying, at least to me. It's presumptuous. It's lazy. (Don't know anything about the sport? Just ask the victor about his emotions.) It's pop-psychology practiced in a sporting context.
Happily, we're all in touch with our feelings these days so no one balks on getting asked the question. And the answer is always the same, a rambling exaltation that mixes, in varying measures, joy, disbelief and gratitude.
"How meaningful was it for you to skate for your country tonight?" A gold medal to the first athlete who asks back: "Why do you assume that it was meaningful?"
Strange experience last night switching back and forth between the Olympics (men's figure skating) and the Westminster Dog Show. Skaters and canines both strutting their stuff, looking their feathery and furry best.
Skating has suffered a loss in popularity over the last few Olympics because of a lack of star power (no such problem for the dog show), and last night I came up with a solution.
After all the programs have been completed, the skaters should all be brought back onto the ice to stand with their trainers. A judge, selected by the others, would then walk - slipping and sliding - from one to the other, sizing them up, adjusting their posture, checking their teeth. He would ask them all in turn to do another lap on the ice, perhaps requesting a second double axel. Then he would go to a table and write down the name of the winner - imagine the suspense - before announcing it to the crowd. The victorious trainer would then be interviewed while the newly-crowned skater, standing oblivious by her side, begged for a treat.