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BRUCE BAUMAN
RAJ BAHADUR
MONICA CARTER
PAUL CULLUM
DENNIS DANZIGER
KENNETH DEIFIK
KATHERINE DUNN
SAMANTHA DUNN
ROBERT EISELE
COLIN FLEMING
TOD GOLDBERG
JOHN HARLOW
ELOISE KLEIN HEALY
CAROLYN KELLOGG
ANNE-MARIE KINNEY
JONATHAN LETHEM
KARA LINDSTROM
CHRIS LOWRY
ANTHONY MILLER
LOU MATHEWS
DWAYNE MOSER
RICHARD PEABODY
KATY PETTY
RICHARD RAYNER
NINA REVOYR
BRAD SCHREIBER
CHRISTOPHER SORRENTINO
LISA TEASLEY
RICHARD TERRILL
LYNNE TILLMAN
DAVID L. ULIN
OSCAR VILLALON
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER
ALAN ZAREMBO
DANTE ZIGA-WEST
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Published by
in association with the MFA Writing Program
calarts.edu
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS
BLACKCLOCK
12
editor Steve Erickson
sports editor Bruce Bauman
assistant sports editor David L. Ulin
managing editor Michaele Simmering
assistant managing editor Kyoung Kim
poetry editor Arielle Greenberg
associate editors Sara Gerot, Courtney Johnson, Joe Milazzo,
Mark Skipton, Ashley Tomeck
editorial assistants Diane Arterian, Nikki Darling,
Mallory Farrugia, Elizabeth Hall, Emily Kiernan, Katie Mandereld,
Douglas Matus, Chrysanthe Tan
roving geniuses and editors-at-large Anthony Miller,
Dwayne Moser
art director Christopher Morabito
cover illustration Hatnim Lee
guiding light/visionary Gail Swanlund
founding father Jon Wagner
Black Clock 2010 California Institute of the Arts
Black Clock / issn 1941-9465
Black Clock is published semi-annually under cover of night by the
mfa Writing Program at the California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia CA 91355
Thank you to the Rosenthal Family Foundation
for their generous support
One-year subscriptions (two issues) can be purchased for $20 at
www.blackclock.org
Editorial email: info@blackclock.org
For distribution please contact Disticor at (631) 587-1160
Printed by Westcan Printing Group, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
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RI CHARD TERRI LL
Found Poems
LYNNE TI LLMAN
The Unconscious is Also Ridiculous
RAJ BAHADUR
Bambino Calls His Shot
BRAD SCHREI BER
George Blanda Ate My Homework
NI NA REVOYR
Charlie and Me
DENNI S DANZI GER
Hoop Schemes
CAROLYN KELLOGG
Stroke
OSCAR VI LLALON
The Roar
LOU MATHEWS
Racing in the Streets
ELOI SE KLEI N HEALY
The Season
SAMANTHA DUNN
The Tortilla Construction Handbook
CHRI S LOWRY
Crickets Crashing Continents

ANNE- MARI E KI NNEY
Zizou Prsident
LI SA TEASLEY
Beach Volleyball is Church
KATY PETTY
Fathom
ROBERT EI SELE
Catch and Release
ALAN ZAREMBO
Going Fast
JOHN HARLOW
Wii the People
KARA LI NDSTROM
My Own Private Ashtanga
RI CHARD RAYNER
Shoot the Ref
DANTE ZI GA- WEST
This Is Not a Sport
COLI N FLEMI NG
Dare Me to Breathe
JONATHAN LETHEM
CHRI STOPHER SORRENTI NO
Poem by Harris Conklin / Reply by Ivan Felt
KENNETH DEI FI K
The Horse Finds His Own Way Home,
Even Without Clues
TOD GOLDBERG
Welcome to Thousand Palms
MONI CA CARTER
The Retirement Plan
RI CHARD PEABODY
Shirts and Skinjobs
DAVI D L. ULI N
Member of the Tribe
PAUL CULLUM
Why I Hate Sports

KATHERI NE DUNN
Listening
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER
Poem for Jim Zorn
FOUND POEMS
Richard Terrill
I make starting lineups from my older cousins football and baseball cards
unstack them, unstick them, breaking brittle rubber bands.
I fan them on the table, study the winning combinations:
Jackie Robinson, Doak Walker, Sid Luckman, Pee Wee Reese.
The DiMaggios, Dom and Joe. The poses are obvious as merlot:
gritting linemen, vaulting backs. One shortstop stretches like an old boot.
Some years shots are black and white, and one series has dyed the athletes
in bright primary colors, no shades or tints, only faces in natural gray.
All the cards are worth good cash, but I dont care.
I copy down the language on the back:
Sid Hudson pitcher: At one time most feared.
Had blazing fastball good curve. But arm suddenly went dead in 47.
What happened that season? Or in 48?
It doesnt say, and thats whats good.
Charles Golden Boy Trippi: Everybodys All-American, all-time halfback
who has gained more yardage in the newspapers than on the eld.
Hugh Bones Taylor, Washington Redskins: Caught 25 passes,
511 yards and 6 touchdowns
though plagued by mysterious fever throughout his rookie year.
THE UNCONSCI OUS I S ALSO RI DI CULOUS
Lynne Tillman
One, she can jump very high, leap
over subway turnstiles, she can rise and fly over stairs or over crowds
anywhere. She can fly up
ights of stairs, with no effort, and land wherever she wants, gracefully,
weightlessly. She can do this whenever she wants. This is her secret gift, but she is cautious and does not use it.
Two, she is an amazing short-distance runner. Her high school gym teacher watches her, during a baseball game,
run to rst base, clocks her speed, and selects her to compete in the hundred-yard dash. She stays for practice every
day after class. Her heart beats wildly in her young chest as she plants her shoe at the starting line and the gun goes
off. She runs as if the devil is chasing her. Her legs carry her so fast, she's in the air, galloping. Her high school record
is never defeated.
Three, she is a tennis player, a great champion in her prime. At the age of eight, her tennis chops were recognized,
and her parents sent her to tennis camp. She had great instructors, who encouraged her, and her parents became her
biggest fans and enthusiasts. They did everything they could to let her play tennis. They moved to a warm climate.
They found her tutors and the best coaches, former pros. Her main coach thought she could win the Open, if she kept
her head down and fought for it. By thirteen she was in the juniors, winning trophy after trophy. She liked winning.
When she was down two or three games, she came back. When she was down a set, she came back. She had no fear
of failure, she took the court condently. She didnt worry that her friends would hate her for being better at tennis
than they were. She was a competitor.
Her life was as simple as the lines on a tennis court.
The fantasy ends there, always.
Actually, she thinks that life as a pro would become monotonous and grim. That she could not hit the ball and
practice her serve hour after hour, day after day. She thinks the women on the tour are tougher than she could ever
be, and she doesnt know what shed talk about with them, after tennis. She avoids the sun, and believes sunscreen is
futile when sweating. Shed worry about skin cancer and other injuries. Mostly she thinks shed go crazy playing all
the time. And, Andre Agassis recent confession that he hated playing tennis, that every match was torture for him,
has devastated her. She loves, loved, Agassi.
No matter. She maintains the belief that, if her parents had recognized her gift and gotten her a great coach, she
could have won the Open, and maybe a Grand Slam. The fantasy returns every year, with the Open, Wimbledon, the
French Open, and the Australian. In it she is twelve, young and lean, her hair is pulled back from her thin, intent face.
Her baseball cap shades her nose and cheeks. She is playing against two friends, two guys who cant return her serve.
Her backhand is erce.
She replays her winning games and the feeling of lifting the trophy above her head to a roaring crowd. Shes
crying. She wins and wins. Her life is tennis.
9
BAMBI NO CALLS HI S SHOT
Raj Bahadur
Baseball historians are no different. But on this, theyre in accord: If
theres one thing George Herman Babe Ruth loved more than a good
American hot dog, it was a good American whore.
Didnt matter the town, the time of day or time of year. Married or
not, the Babe loved the ladies, and the ladies loved the Babe.
Too bad he expired before putting memoirs to paper. Lucky for the
fans, a few of his escapades have been passed down from generation to
generation with little lost along the way the sort of escapades that give
rise to legend. This is one of them. (Now might be a good time for the
kids to leave the room.)
October 1, 1932. The Yankees were in Chicago, playing the Cubs
in the World Series. It was a crucial Game Three. Cubbies being Cubbies,
the Yanks were up two games to none. The Babe didnt wake until 10:30
that morning. It had been a long night, even for the Babe. When he
realized the lateness of the hour, he sat bolt upright. Then he kicked
a couple whores out of his bed. Groggy yet overjoyed, they went their
merry way. But not before a gracious Bambino had given them a couple
of autographed balls, and they, in turn, autographed his, using that by-the-
book script no longer taught in school, the kind that looks like calligraphy
compared to todays penmanship.
Usually, he would run and show Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse.
Gehrig, look at my balls! The product of strict German parenting,
Gehrig would blush and skedaddle in a t of pique.
Not this morning. Gehrig would have to wait. Those whores do
work up the appetite, mused the Babe. He picked up the phone and
called down for room service. Hey there, kiddo, he hollered, its the
Babe. How bout sendin me up some chow. Thats all he needed to say.
Having stayed in the same Chicago hotel for years, the kitchen staff knew
precisely what the Babe meant by chow: two dozen eggs fried in butter,
a pound of home fries, two pounds of bacon (rare), eight slices of toast,
a pitcher of orange juice, a couple quarts of java with fresh cream and
sugar.
And a whore.
Historically speaking,
historians rarely agree on anything.
1 1
Yes, sir, Mr. Ruth, chirped the room service
operator. Well get on it right away. Ten minutes,
tops.
Just enough time to pretty myself up. Harh. The
very idea of Babe Ruth trying to pretty himself up may
seem humorous to the contemporary reader. To the Babe,
too. Oh, screw it, he said, sprinkling token tap water
on his armpits, face and groin. Then he patted himself
dry. Good enough, he mumbled. Im Bambino, not
Valentino. Suddenly, a knock. That was quick, said
Babe as he opened the door.
No food. But there stood his whore. Hi, Mr.
Ruth. My names Bubbles. You sent for me? she said
demurely.
Yes I did, little lady and call me Babe. Entrez vous.
Heres the weird part: Bubbles name really was
Bubbles yet another case of somebody living up to her
moniker. Let this be a lesson for all prospective parents.
Name your daughter Trixie, a Trixie is what youll get.
Bubbles did her level best to look good for the
Babe; her short-cropped blonde hair was pressed
close to her head in the style of Miss Crabtree (June
Marlowe), the schoolmarm from the Little Rascals for
whom Chubby Chaney had a chubby, Jackie Cooper
had a bone. She wore a fur that had seen better days.
(Frankly, you couldnt tell which animal or animals it
came from; being the Depression, it was all she could
afford.) Complementing the ensemble was a fancy
string of pearls shed conned out of one of her johns. It
had belonged to his wife, before the threat of blackmail.
And that was it. Beneath her wrap of piecemeal
pelts, Bubbles was buck naked much to the Babes
delight. Well, well, little lady, he chortled as she
removed her coat. I like a gal whos rarin to go!
By the looks of that Louisville Slugger, she replied,
youre roundin third and headed for home yourself, big
boy!
Ohhhh, looks like I got me a sassy one! Babe
guffawed, throwing back his head. Yeah, fat and sassy.
Though today shed be called corpulent, by Thirties
standards Bubbles was t for duty. Just then, Bambinos
stomach started to growl, and he knew with food
delivery only a few minutes away, he better get down to
brass tacks. He doffed his black silk pinstripe bathrobe
with the Yankee logo (a souvenir of his trip to Japan),
revealing his two most prominent features: his gut and
an erection.
Legs spread wide, Bubbles lay down and assumed
the position of her trade. The Babe spat into his hands,
vigorously rubbed them together, and with a wink and
a whoop ung his girth atop the businesslike Bubbles.
The sound of their collision presaged the invention
of naugahyde. Then without missing a beat, Babe
slowly began to grunt Take Me Out to the Ballgame
(composed by Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees
Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer) to a backing of
syncopated bedsprings, a twist neither Norworth nor
Von Tilzer had ever imagined. Babe had this thing about
mumbling the classic tune while copulating; it was like
his own private shot clock. When he got to root, root,
root for the home team, he knew it was time to nish up.
Bambino, a master of the quickie? Among his
many talents. How do you think he polished off so
many whores? The whores didnt care. Theyd just been
done by the Babe. And the Babe didnt care. Hed just
polished off another whore. The Bambino was nothing
if not stat-conscious.
Bubbles had endured worse. Like a real ballplayer,
she too had worked her way through the minors before
making it to the Show. As far as she was concerned,
Bambino was Valentino. Take me out with the crowd...
he sang, his fat hairy ass bobbing up and down. Buy me
some peanuts and Cracker Jack. His tempo increased.
Ditto his blood pressure. I dont care if I, ugh, never get
backlet me root, root, root for the home team... and
with that Bambino suddenly pulled out.
Hey, big boy, whats wrong? said Bubbles, miffed.
Nothin, hon, said Babe. Then he did something
unorthodox. He moistened his right index nger in his
mouth and drew a tiny x three inches just to the left of
the perplexed Bubbles navel. Then, while still carrying
the tune, he stepped backwards exactly ten paces, which
hed divvied up with all the precision of a master surveyor.
If they dont win its a shame.... He took the rst four
steps. For its one, two, three strikes youre out... he
sang, taking steps ve through seven. At the old....
Step number eight. Ball.... Step nine. G-a-a-a-me!
Step ten.
Babe stopped dead in his tracks, sucked in his gut,
took a deep, deep breath, gave his turgid bat one single
mighty jerk, and proceeded to shoot his Ruthian load in
a high, gonad-purging arc. It landed splork all over
the confused Bubbles abdominal ab and soon spread
like hot syrup on pancakes, but not before hitting the
exact spot that Babe had marked with an x.
Bulls-eye! hooted the Babe, spitting a wad of
tabacky juice all over the carpet. He broke into that
stumpy-legged home run trot of his, naked, around the
perimeter of the room, shaking hands with a oor lamp
and an end table posing as rst- and third-base coaches.
Nondescript owers on faded pink wallpaper doubled as
fans. When The Babe calls his shot, he calls his shot!
Thats the most amazing thing I ever seen! chimed
Bubbles, retrieving her gum from the bed post while
mopping herself up with the blanket.
1 2
no. 12
Kid, thats nothin, Babe shouted, rounding third.
If I didnt have a game in a couple hours, you and me,
wed break some records! Suddenly, and for no apparent
reason, the blood began to drain from Babes face. A
couple hours! he remembered. I got a game in a couple
hours! Hon, youre gonna hafta leave. Babes got a team
bus to catch and its takin off in ve minutes.
Hey, what gives?! Bubbles protested.
Dont worry, Ill leave the money on the dresser.
Babe huffed and puffed, tugging on his shirt. And you
can have my breakfast when it comes.
Thats it? she whined. No hug, no kiss, no smack
on the ass?
Aw, shucks, little lady, said Babe, Im forgettin my
manners. Say what you will, the Babe was a gentleman.
You want an autographed ball? he offered.
How romantic, Bubbles retorted.
Jeez. Women, thought Babe. I got it! he said.
How bout I hit a homer today, just for you?
Yeah? Bubbles said excitedly.
You bet. When I step up to the plate and point to
center eld, thatll mean the Babes ready to hit one out.
And Ill be thinkin of ya!
Gee, Babe, youre swell.
No problem, little lady. (People often ask, whats
with the Babe always calling his whores little lady?
How is this your business? But fair question. Babe
wasnt good with rst names. Guys, if youre not good
with rst names, youd be smart to do likewise. Its like
bunting. Thats something they just dont teach in the
minors. Learn from the Babe. WWBD.)
Bubbles lay there like a beached street diva, reveling
in her good fortune. She couldnt wait to tell her hooker
pals. Soon, though, her dreams of glory were interrupted
by some rather rude pounding and giggling on the other
side of the wall. Hey, whats that? she asked, as Babe
stuffed himself into his pants.
Uhh, thats, heh... Babe stammered. Mice. Youd
think being the Yanks an all, they could afford a better
dump.
Mice? said an incredulous Bubbles. Giggling mice?
Even as hookers go, she was more savvy than most.
Hell, I dont know, Babe stuttered, maybe its
some kids wantin an autograph. You know how the kids
love the Babe.
Yeah, right, she said, not having any of it but
Babe never heard her response. He was out the door
as fast as he could get one porky Bambino thigh past
the other. The source of the noise? Babes Yankee
teammates, led by Manager Joe McCarthy, jockeying for
position at the peephole. Babe always carved one in the
wall for just such occasions. But Gehrig goes rst! hed
say; it was the Babes way of avoiding any loud jostling
or hurt feelings. What the hell. No harm lettin the
boys share in the hijinx, Babe would explain in later
years. What a Bambino! Is it any wonder that Gehrig
considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the
earth?
But it wasnt because of that. Behind closed doors,
Gehrig frowned upon the Babes extracurricular activities.
Nevertheless hed always take up his Bambino-mandated
position at the peephole whenever the opportunity
arose, and the opportunities were many. Yet Lou would
maintain his virtue and, unbeknownst to his teammates,
secretly shut tight his eyes, only pretending to look. With
a fear of karma approaching paranoia, the Columbia-
schooled Gehrig was afraid that if ever he missed his
turn at rst, hed never get it back.
In the fifth inning of that afternoons game
against the Cubs, Babe stood in the on deck circle. Out
of nowhere he began to sing, Take me out to the ball
game. Take me out with the crowd... He strode to the
plate. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. I dont
care if I never get back....
After taking two strikes from Cub hurler Charlie
Root (born, yes, Charlie Root), Babe deantly pointed
to the center eld seats.
Root, Root, Root for the home team... he warbled
derisively, loud enough to rattle the hapless Cub. Babe
took Roots next pitch and, with Ruthian panache,
gracefully drove it into those very same center eld seats
hed pointed out a moment before, just like he said he
would, just where he said he would. Bulls-eye! he yelled,
spitting out a wad of tabacky juice. When the Babe calls
his shot, he calls his shot!
Then he circled the bases, imagining the rst- and
third-base coaches as a oor lamp and an end table, with
Cub fans doubling as nondescript owers on faded pink
wallpaper. His body may have been at Wrigley Field,
but mentally the Babe was naked in a hotel room with
a corpulent hooker. He nearly hallucinated with the
thought that somewhere in Chicago, his Bubbles was
planted beside a radio, delirious with joy.
She was, too, back at her LaSalle Street brothel,
surrounded by a bevy of trollops. Didja hear that, goyls,
didja? Bubbles squealed, shaking random colleagues by
their well-padded shoulders. The Babe said hed hit a
homer for me, and by God, he did! she screamed, gazing
heavenward, sts clenched. Then she sucked on an Old
Gold, hitched up her skirt and broke into an impromptu
Charleston. Aaahhh, Bubbles, quit yer dreamin!
carped an envious Trixie (a notorious Gehrig fan).
Leave her alone! snapped Joy, one of the other
hookers. Im happy for ya, Bubbles! Im happy for ya!"
So was Bubbles. Just as Babe had envisioned, she was
1 3
delirious with joy. And now, she was delirious with Joy.
According to The New York Yankee Encyclopedia by Harvey
Frommer, In an instant, their [the Chicago fans]
loathing of the big Yankee had turned to admiration.
They were on their feet cheering and applauding as he
rounded the bases with those mincing little steps of his.
He punctuated the touching of each base with a special
curse for each Cub inelder for good measure. When he
reached third base, he paused. Then he bent from the
waist in a mocking bow to the enemy dugout....
What Harvey fails to mention is, it was Bubbles
of whom he was thinking. When he returned to the
Yankee dugout, Babe was met with the heartiest of
congratulations from his teammates. Some of them
roared with laughter til they were sick. This was the
usual response when Babe gave his trademark wink.
Scant few have gotten to peer behind that pinstripe
veil of secrecy. But to a man they could tell you, Babes
wink was more than just a wink. It was his clubhouse
impersonation of a vagina, which never failed to conjure
up fond peephole memories among teammates. Hes
winkin! Hes winkin! roared shortstop Frankie
Crosetti, holding his sides as tears of laughter streamed
down his face. Then Babe winked all the more.
The response was hardly unanimous. The Frommer
book quotes Gehrig as having said, The nerve of the big
monkey, calling his shot and getting away with it. After
all the times Babe let Lou have rst crack at the peephole.
Gehrig later groused, I knew as long as I was following
Ruth up to the plate, I could have stood on my head
and no one would have known the difference, which
just goes to show some guys are born on one side of the
peephole, some are forever relegated to the other.
Thats how history was made. One of the greatest
moments in the annals of sports, and it all started in a
seedy Chicago hotel room with a hooker named Bubbles.
Our story doesnt end there, though. Cubbies being
Cubbies, Chicagos Finest were dispatched by the
Yankees, four games to none.
Babe died, if you believe in that sort of thing,
succumbing to cancer in 1948, but not before summoning
Bubbles one last time in the summer of 34 on a road trip
against the White Sox. To prove it was no uke, he again
called his shot from ten paces three inches just to
the left of her navel. Thirty minutes later, after a hearty
meal, he repeated the feat, this time without pulling
out, Bubbles innards given a Ruthian drenching. It
was the closest Babe ever came to love. She also got an
autographed baseball.
In her late nineties, Bubbles now languishes in a
nursing home in San Diego, where she whiles away her
days watching soap operas and the occasional Padres
BAHADUR
ballgame. Nothing against the Padres theyre just not
the 32 Yankees, which explains the vintage Yankee cap
she always wears. Every once in a while a sportscaster
will make mention of the Babe and a Mona Lisa smile
purses Bubbles wrinkled lips. A trickle of drool nds
its way down the rivulets of her cheek and neck. As her
attendant, often mistaken for ex-Yankee centerelder
Mickey Rivers, sponges up the damp, you can hear her
faintly hum, Take me out to the ballgame, take me out
with the crowd.... The attendant will mutter, Lady,
you crazy, then gently Bubbles will touch herself, three
inches just to the left of her navel, and drool some more.
Bye, Mick! shell taunt, as the disgruntled attendant
leaves the room, full bedpan in hand.
The name is Rufus.
1 4
no. 12
DAMON RUNYON
(WRITER, 1880-1946)
When I was a kid in Queens, long before I ever heard
of Guys and Dolls, my best friends father used to
read, almost perform Runyons stories, and wed
crack up. Decades later I rediscovered his bevy
of New York underbelly characters, and again I
couldnt stop laughing. From 1910 to 1940, with
an ear for American vernacular that ranks with
Twain, Runyon was immensely popular. The roots
of Susan Sarandons Annie Savoy in Bull Durham
can be found in Runyons Baseball Hattie: Now out
of this incident is born a romance between Baseball
Hattie and Haystack Duggeler, and in fact it is no
doubt love at first sight, and about this time period
Haystack Duggeler begins burning up the league
with his pitching. A partial list of slang that
Runyon introduced into popular use sheds light
on his often overlooked influence: cock-eyed, croak,
kisser, shoo-in, shiv and drop dead. In the words of
another sports sage you can look it up.

Bruce Bauman
HORSE FEATHERS
(MOVIE BY NORMAN Z. MCLEOD, 1932)
This Marx Brothers film remains as funny and relevant
now as it was eighty years ago with its skewering
of the corruptions, hypocrisies and pretensions of
purity in college sports. As President Wagstaff of
Huxley College, Groucho heads to the local speakeasy
(the memorable swordfish-password scene) to hire
ringers to compete against arch-rival Darwin. The
usual puns and silliness ensue, highlighted by
Grouchos raucous rendition of Whatever It Is, Im
Against It. In the run-up to the big football game
we encounter gambling, easy women and nefarious
characters, and in the final scene the Marx Brothers
roll down the field in a mock-chariot to score the
winning touchdown. If it were made today, the
USC Trojans might be the inspiration. Written by
the incomparable S.J. Perelman, Harry Ruby, Will B.
Johnstone and Bert Kalmar.

Bruce Bauman
BOX SCORES
1 5
THE SET-UP
(MOVIE BY ROBERT WISE, 1949)
Round for round the ultimate boxing movie. Rocky
seems like Disney compared to Robert Wises
unrelenting noir in seventy-two minutes in real time.
Through his hyper-realistic eye, cinematographer
Milton Krasner shows us the dismal and squalid, as
Robert Ryan plays Bill Stoker Thompson, an aging
fighter believing one last small fight will bring him
closer to the big one. Add the Mob, a conniving
money-hungry manager, and a worrisome and
fatigued wife, and youve got pure seedy perfection.
Based on a poem by Joseph March.
Monica Carter
THE NIGHT CLIMBERS OF CAMBRIDGE
(BOOK BY WHIPPLESNAITH, 1937)
While it can boast many authors, Cambridge
University also boasts a long tradition of urban
climbing. The most famous guidebook to daring
adventures on the rooftops and spires just outside
the windows of the Cantabrigian academic cloisters
is Whipplesnaiths pseudonymously published cult
text (republished for the first time since 1952 by
Oleander Press in 2007). Modesty drives the roof
climber to operate by night; the proctorial frown
makes him an outlaw, pens Whipplesnaith. And
outlaws keep no histories. Whipplesnaiths Night
Climbers is a rare and transporting historic document
from the guerilla sport known as buildering or
stegophily, transfiguring city architecture into a new
set of Himalayas and leading on to such feats as
Spider Dan Goodwins 1980s ascents of Chicagos
John Hancock and Sears Tower.

Anthony Miller
THE HARDER THEY FALL
(NOVEL BY BUDD SCHULBERG, 1947)
Schulberg weds the perfect couple, boxing and the
Mob, into a Runyonesque story of deceit and greed.
The underachieving college-educated Eddie Lewis
forgoes the ethics of journalism and aspirations to
become a playwright for the job of marketing lackey
to crime boss Nick Latka. Argentinean and human
monstrosity Toro Molina has been imported to be
Latkas personal moneymaking machine, and Eddie
is in charge of spinning Molina into the greatest
boxing story the world has never seen though in
his indentured servitude Molina is neither happy nor
much of a fighter. And like Michael Corleone, no
matter how much Eddie wants to go straight and
become a real writer, they just keep pulling him
back in.

Monica Carter
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no. 12
THE SWEET SCIENCE
(BOOK BY A.J. LIEBLING, 1956)
Abbott Joseph Liebling is the incomparable poet
of pugilism and the patron saint for any writer
who seeks to convey the agon within the ring. His
collection of New Yorker pieces on boxing illustrates
his keen eye for characters and his love for all
things vigorous and vaudevillian, and he celebrates
boxing as an art of the people where the milling
crowds and their talk could never be captured on
television. (At the same time Liebling doesnt
shy away from words like rutilant, temerarious
and psychomachy.) Although many attribute the
phrase the sweet science to Liebling, he borrows
the phrase from Pierce Egan, author of Boxiana,
whom Liebling dubs variously as the Herodotus,
Thucydides, Edward Gibbon and Sir Thomas Malory
of the London prize ring; Liebling sees his Sweet
Science as a kind of sequel to Egans book. At the
top of the ticket: Donnybrook Farr, a great tale of
a bout fought in the Irish town that lent its name to
a no-holds-barred scuffle; and the main event, Ahab
and Nemesis, an epic account of Archie Moore vs.
Rocky Marciano told with intelligence, gravitas and
real feeling for a sport that challenges both bodies
and wills.
Anthony Miller
MARVIN BAD NEWS BARNES
(BASKETBALL PLAYER, 1952- )
A remarkable ABA power forward who should have
made the Hall of Fame, Barnes career was cut
short by excess when, as a marijuana wholesaler,
he pulled in ten times his players salary. Marvin
got his nickname at Providence College, where he
was an All-American, for cracking a teammates
jaw with a tire iron. His apartment in St. Louis had
thirteen telephones because Marvin didnt like to
reach. There is the legendary story about Marvin in
his rookie year with the St. Louis Spirits, who were
preparing to depart on a flight that left Louisville,
at 8 p.m., and got into St. Louis at 7:46 p.m. due
to the time-zone change. Looking up at the big
departures and arrivals boards, Barnes said, I ain't
getting on no goddamn time machine, and rented
a car for the trip.

Lou Mathews
1 7
INSTANT REPLAY
(MEMOIR BY JERRY KRAMER
AND DICK SCHAAP, 1968)
An offensive lineman for ten years, Kramer recounts
the day-to-day quest for glory, from training camp
to championship, of the Green Bay Packers Super
Bowl II run. As part of one of the best teams ever,
Kramer helped to build the Packers legacy, at a time
when football was more about winning and loyalty
than rap sheets, embarrassing YouTube videos and
celebrity sport tweets.

Monica Carter
PAUL NEWMAN
(ACTOR, 1925-2008)
Starting in 1956 with breakout roles as a boxer
and a baseball player (Somebody Up There Likes Me
and, on TV, Bang the Drum Slowly), this son of an
Ohio sporting goods store owner also portrayed a
football star, pool player, race-car driver and hockey
player/coach. His physical beauty and prowess
were matched perfectly by a dark humor, existential
anger and often repressed lust that expressed the
hurt in sports how its more about losing than
winning, suffering than joy. The Hustler rightfully
has become a cinematic and cultural touchstone,
while 1977s Slap Shot ranks not only as the best
hockey movie made but a superb examination of
jock dreams among the gifted but not gifted enough
who will never make it to the big show. Newman,
who played hockey as a kid, proclaimed this movie
the one he had the most fun making.

Bruce Bauman
BOX SCORES
GEORGE BLANDA ATE MY HOMEWORK
Brad Schreiber
Dear Miss Christopher:
As you know, I have never turned in an assignment late. So it is with
great regret that I report to you that I do not have my homework
completed at this time. While I know that you never, ever accept late
papers, the reason I have not completed my essay is not due to laziness
or some other lame excuse that you have undoubtedly heard before, like
I was sleeping outside in the backyard and a gust of wind blew my paper
into a tree where a blue jay ate it.
Perhaps I should say that I do have an essay but it is not in the form
you expected. The reason for this is simple: Its due to George Blanda,
the backup quarterback for the Oakland Raiders.
I was quite prepared to discuss, as you requested, how Ernest
Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea speaks to our societys attitudes
about aging and death. Sunday was the day I had set aside to write my
paper. I was ipping through the book, taking additional notes, with
my TV quietly on in the background. I assure you it was not distracting
me. And then, around one oclock, I could not help but notice that
the Oakland Raiders were playing the San Diego Chargers. And then,
to my great surprise and relief, I found that the central character in
Hemingways novel and the second string quarterback of the Oakland
Raiders have quite a lot in common.
Miss Christopher, I am assuming that you are not a fan of the
National Football League. If you are, great. But if not, let me suggest
why an appreciation of the NFL can give new insights into Hemingways
work.
You see, George Blanda is not only a quarterback, he is a eld goal
kicker. Thats pretty rare. And he was released by the Raiders in the
pre-season because he is forty-two years old which, according to the
standards of the NFL, is one step away from being in a wheelchair in a
retirement village like my Uncle Dave in Cocoa Beach, Florida. And yet
he Blanda, not Uncle Dave was brought back, despite this being
his twenty-rst year in the league, and he has stepped in to replace the
regular quarterback, Daryle Lamonica, who was injured.
In essence, while I watched the opening of the rst quarter, I had
the stunning realization that George Blanda is totally analogous to
Santiago, the old sherman, in Hemingways work. Santiago has gone
eighty-four days without catching a sh. Blanda has gone over two
decades without winning a championship.
1 9
Normally I would say any student trying to dissuade you from
giving him or her an F for non-delivery of a standard essay by melding
a discussion of a great work of ction with a three-hour telecast of a
football game is not deserving of your respect. But what happened
yesterday in the Oakland Coliseum capped off an extraordinary string
of circumstances, one that might be unrivaled in the history of sports, if
not human endeavor. And human endeavor certainly includes the act of
shing.
You see, Miss Christopher, ve weeks ago Blanda came in for
Lamonica and threw three touchdowns to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers,
31-14. The next week he kicked a forty-eight-yard eld goal with a mere
three seconds left to garner a 17-17 tie with the Raiders AFC West rivals,
the Kansas City Chiefs. None of this might inspire awe on your part, I
realize, but it was very crucial if Oakland is to win its division over the
Chiefs. OK, so the third week Blanda comes in with a paltry one minute
and thirty-four seconds left to throw a touchdown pass and tie the
Cleveland Browns. And now, Miss Christopher, the truly eerie moment
in this seemingly random series of events occurs, because again, with
three seconds on the clock, Blanda kicks another game-winning eld goal.
Raiders 23, Browns 20.
Now, if we stopped there, even someone like you, Miss Christopher
and I do not write this in any way patronizingly might say, OK,
George has had a run of good luck, especially for the oldest guy in the
NFL. But this kind of thing must go the way of all esh.
But it doesnt. It should have ended there: Lamonica got healthy and,
as rst string QB, he started the next game against the Denver Broncos.
And yet, strangely enough, he was relatively ineffective. It was almost like
the Raiders and all the fans in the Bay Area could no longer accept him
as their leader. It did not feel like a defection. It was more like Blanda, in
his swan song to the game he loved for so long, was saying to those who
needed to believe in him, If I am going to leave you, I want you to bask
in the most resplendent memory possible. It was George Blanda not
just trying to play with every remaining ber of his strained, bruised and
sagging middle-aged body but trying to say thank you to the organization
that gave him one last eeting chance at a little glory.
And so help me God, Miss Christopher, my breath left my body
when, with a miniscule 2:28 left in the fourth quarter (thats the nal
quarter, in case you are not familiar with the rules), Blanda connected
with Fred Biletnikoff for a touchdown pass to defeat the Broncos 24-19.
Everyone was stunned, especially considering that Biletnikoff is really
kind of small, does not have blazing speed, the strength of a tight end or
the leaping ability of a Lance Alworth, and is an unlikely candidate for a
wide receiver. A lot of people claim Biletnikoff, though widely respected,
uses too much Stickum in order to catch passes.
So I hope you now understand, even if you cannot fully accept, that
yesterday I had to see if Blanda played again. And you know what, Miss
Christopher? He did. Lamonica, the young generation, the equivalent of
Santiagos boy assistant Manolin, took the snap from center and set the
ball down, laces out, as Blanda, elderly but experienced, with hands sore
from the shing line of life ripping across his skin, kicked the ball with
seven seconds left from the sixteen-yard line.
The crowd fell silent, but only for a moment. A great seismic roar
shook the Oakland Coliseum as if it was on the San Andreas Fault during
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no. 12
April of 1906. The ball sailed through the uprights. The announcer, Bill
King, shouted to be heard above the din: This man may have tied the
entire Bay Area into a knot from which it may never extricate itself again.
It was one of greatest calls in sports history, commemorating Blandas
fth straight miracle in a row. Raiders 20, Chargers 17.
I was so overcome with emotion, Miss Christopher, that I started
thinking, if this amazing 1970 season is Blandas last, perhaps he can nd
some solace in it. Perhaps he will nd some way to soothe the bitterness
of being called an NFL reject when he joined the Houston Oilers.
In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago catches the biggest sh he has
ever seen. Blanda has the most amazing string of last-minute heroics
in football history. Tragically, Santiago has the sharks eat away the
magnicent marlin he has caught, until there is nothing but the skeleton.
Blanda was a has-been, washed-up, the Ancient Mariner of the League.
And yet Santiago shall sh again, although he has come home to his
Cuban village with nothing to show for his efforts; and Blanda will kick
and pass again surely, even if he is a mere sub for Lamonica, who has
been utterly inconsistent this year when he wasnt injured. Santiago and
Blanda have both tasted the sweet, sustaining fruit of victory, and in the
twilight of their lives they simply want to hold tight to whatever tattered
wisp of dignity can be mustered.
In the end, the old man Santiago dreams his usual dream of lions at
play on the beaches of Africa. Blanda, near the end, dreams of starting
in a Super Bowl near the beaches of Miami. Ernest Hemingway said,
Bullghters live their lives all the way up. So do decrepit but brave
shermen and aging quarterback-place kickers.
Brad
Dear Brad:
I am not clear from the above why you were unable to write a more cogent essay. I am
very disappointed. However, I will accept this as your assignment and give it a D, with the
following proviso: You make more time for future assignments. And, at least in this class,
you will never, ever make any kind of allusion to sports again.
Miss Christopher
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FI ELDER' S CHOI CE
Nina Revoyr
it vividly, the particular tensions in the air, the way all of
us faced the morning with heightened awareness, as if we were preparing
ourselves for whatever the day might bring. The uneasiness in town
was sharpened by events in the larger world the resignation of the
president, long lines at gas stations, the kidnapped heiress who still was
missing though her captors had been killed or arrested, the busing crisis
in Boston. Everyone seemed to be on edge, and at nine years of age I felt
suddenly old, as if I knew that what I was then witnessing would propel
me into an early adulthood.
But there was more to those weeks than tension and difculty. Some
good days were mixed in, too. And as those days grew increasingly rare, I
held on to them more tightly.
One Saturday, my grandfather Charlie and I loaded the car up with
several bats, two gloves, about three dozen baseballs, and headed out into
the country. My grandparents car was a lime-green 64 Pontiac LeMans,
so big it could have t eight people in its long bench seats, one short of a
starting lineup for a baseball team. The car had clocked 22,000 miles in
the ten years theyd owned it, just slightly more than I rack up now in a
During the fall of 1974,
time seemed to move both faster and more
slowly than usual, with each event brightened
and magnified like the leaves on the maple
trees. I remember
2 3
single year in California, and its a measure of my grandfathers view of the
world, of his essential satisfaction, that he never saw reason to drive more
than fty miles from Deereld, and then, really, only to hunt.
That day he sat with his right arm thrown across the back of the seat
and his knees spread wide, so relaxed he might have been sitting in his
living room. His left hand rested lightly on the bottom curve of the wheel,
even as we hurtled along at eighty miles an hour down a two-lane country
road. I wasnt scared because everything about the way he held himself
made clear that he had this powerful machine completely in his control.
Besides, I was eager to reach our destination, an old ballpark about ten
miles into the country. It used to be the home of the Deereld Bombers
until the new stadium was built close to town, and now it served mostly
as a practice eld for the boys who still lived out on the few remaining
farms. It was at the far end of a pasture that backed up to the woods, and
deer would wander into the outeld at dusk. Charlie drove me out there
sometimes when we knew the place would be empty to work on my batting
and elding. We always brought his English Springer Spaniel, Brett, with
us, and as we approached the eld that morning Brett raised his head to
feel the rushing air against his face, the wind lifting his black ears like sails.
As we pulled off the road onto the gravel parking area he began to circle
and whine, as eager as Charlie and me to be outside.
Is there any place more perfect than a baseball eld in autumn?
Anything better than the smell of the grass; or the crisp, cool air; or the red
and yellow leaves against the clear blue sky, which was paler now than it
had been in the summer? I didnt think so, and this eld was my favorite.
Because it wasnt used as much as the elds in town, there werent any worn
spots in the grass, and the ineld was perfectly level. The backstop was
simple about fteen feet tall and thirty feet wide not one of the huge,
imposing structures they had put on the newer elds. The dugouts were
just benches behind a six-foot fence, and the bleachers along the baselines
were made of wood. The outeld wall, which was painted a fading Brewer
blue, had a few old ads from businesses in town Dieter Tires, Ronnies
Bar and Grill, the Deereld Herald News. Past the third base line was a
wide, unbroken view of the countryside the slightly rolling hills spotted
here and there by stands of wood, a few red barns in sharp relief against
the green of the elds. It was quiet there, so quiet you could hear the
individual songs and conversations of the birds, the approach of a car on
the distant highway. Any home run ball was hit into the woods beyond the
outeld, where it became part of the landscape with the rocks and fallen
leaves, maybe scaring a deer or two as it landed.
There was something about stepping out onto a baseball eld that
always gave me a thrill, as if some energy source, some element in the grass,
entered my feet and moved up through my body and set off an extra charge
in my heart. I knew that my grandfather felt it, too. He was grinning as
we unloaded the gear and carried it to a spot along the rst base line. And
seeing his worn Brewers cap and the muscles that still lined his arms, I
could imagine him at eighteen or nineteen years old, driving out to the
country with a duffel bag and a glove, just looking for the next eld, the
next game.
We played catch for a few minutes to warm up. Brett followed the
ight of the ball through the air and ran back and forth, barking, between
us. Then my grandfather sent me out to the shortstop position. He stood
at home plate and threw the balls up for himself, hitting them as they fell.
2 4
no. 12
He sent ground balls, line drives, and pop-ups across the eld, moving me
left and right, making me charge or take balls on a hop or run backwards to
keep them from ying over my head. I was a fairly good elder for a nine-
year-old procient at judging hops and even backhanding grounders
although I still inched at very hard-struck balls that whirred straight at
my head. Brett waited patiently through this barrage, sitting between rst
and second at the second basemens spot so he could watch but not be in
the line of re. He knew not to chase balls that were intended for me. But
if I couldnt handle a scorching grounder or a high line drive and the ball
went past me into the outeld, hed chase after it, sprinting full speed, as if
he planned to pick the ball up, turn, throw it back toward the ineld, and
cut the baserunner down at home plate. Once he actually retrieved the ball
the urgency was gone; hed trot casually outside the third base line, lifting
his head as he readjusted his grip, supremely proud of himself, and drop
the ball at my grandfathers feet. Then hed run back out to second base
and wait for my next miss.
After thirty minutes or so of elding I took up my bat and Charlie
went out to the pitchers mound. At rst he just threw the ball straight
across the plate until I could hit it consistently. Sometimes he yelled out
instructions move up in the batters box, dont let your shoulders y
open, take your step toward the pitch a bit sooner. Batting is about muscle
memory and repetitive motion, and you have to get to the point where
youre moving perfectly and acting without thought. If you think too much
about any part of the swing the position of your hands on the bat, the
timing of your step, the relative movement of your hips and shoulders
you can break the rhythm and throw everything off. When players, even
professionals, get into a hitting slump, its often because theyre thinking
too much, breaking down the various parts of their swing until it becomes a
series of separate, fallible mechanical actions instead of a unied expression
of grace. At nine years old I already knew this. Sometimes I could hit
beautifully, as if the ball sought out my bat. And other times I couldnt hit
a thing.
But that day I was able to connect. After my grandfather was sure
I was swinging smoothly and consistently, he started mixing up his
pitches a bit, moving them inside and outside, higher and lower, offering
curveballs and change-ups to test my eyes and my timing, even throwing
the occasional splitter. Hed been a pitcher as well as a third baseman, so
he could make all those pitches, and sometimes, on my more futile batting
days, Id believe he was trying a little too hard to get them past me. I
wasnt as good with these more difcult pitches, swinging way out in front
of the change-ups and on top of the splitters that looked like strikes but
then dropped precipitously just before they reached the plate. But when
I did connect, when the ball hit the barrel of the bat and ew out into the
eld, I felt a sense of joy and freedom as powerful and true as anything Ive
ever experienced. If you have never felt the resistance and connection of
a bat hitting a baseball; if you have not heard the crack of the bat split an
autumn afternoon; if you have not watched that ball sail through the open
air and settle into the fresh cut grass, you have missed one of lifes purest
feelings of achievement. Hitting a ball is like catching a piece of the sky
and sending it back up to itself. Its like creating your own crack of thunder.
And stopping a ball especially a grounder you have to reach for, or a line
drive that should have own past your glove is like catching a bolt of
lightning.
2 5
We were out on the eld practicing hard, both covered in a sheen of
sweat. By now, my grandfather had stripped off his short-sleeve shirt and
was pitching in his undershirt. (Its funny how even the simplest things
can change with time and context. Those shirts which then were simply
part of the working mans unglamorous uniform have now taken on a hip,
modern masculinity, as well as the more descriptive name of wifebeater.
This, even though the men I knew who wore them my grandfather and
Uncle Pete were as likely to hit their wives as they were to give up beer
or hunting.) But for all of our exertion, our efforts didnt feel a bit like
work. For Charlie, there wasnt a real distinction between work and play,
anyway, or at least there shouldnt have been. In his mind, if something
wasnt enjoyable, it wasnt worth doing, and this held true even for the
things he did to make a living. Hed taken pleasure, he said, in cutting out
perfect pieces of leather for shoes; in watching freshly-plucked chickens
move down the assembly line. And there was no mistaking the pleasure on
his face when he played baseball with me, or when he was walking through
the woods at dawn with his shotgun in hand. All work should feel like
play, he said, and all play should involve hard work. This was a lesson I
learned well, and still adhere to. The things I do for fun, I do with effort
and dedication, and the things I do for work must always involve some
pleasure. I cant stay focused at my job unless Im enjoying myself. And as
I sit here at my desk Im wearing a wool Dodgers hat because of something
else that Charlie told me, which is that all serious work should be done in
a baseball cap.
REVOYR
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no. 12
UCLA-USC CROSSTOWN RIVALRY
(FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL, 1929- )
Some things never change. The USC Fight Song, as
taught to me by my mother, Majorie Lurine Peyton,
UCLA 39: Fight On / for Old SC / the Fullback wants
/ his salary. USC fans have their own responses. On
one of the rare occasions that UCLA was beating
the Trojans in football, the USC cheering section,
answering the Bruin catcalls and jeers, set up an
entrepreneurial chant: Thats all right / thats OK /
youre going to work / for us some day.

Lou Mathews
A FANS NOTES
(NOVEL BY FREDERICK EXLEY, 1968)
Exley accomplished the near impossible feat of out-
Bukowskiing Bukowski. As drunk and cynical as
the poet, Exley managed to scrape together enough
fortitude to capture his hundred-proof woes in a
novel three years before the King of Barflies found
it in himself to give up the verse for the paragraph;
seeing Bukowskis ante of booze and women, Exley
raises him a sports fanaticism. The eponymous
narrator is a tragic Giants fan whose only constant
in life besides the bottle is his unabashed love for
Frank Gifford; from couch surfing to dry-out stints
at a mental hospital, Exley is left to rely on football.
Each Sunday he knows, win or lose, its the game
itself we must all endure. And he cops to the truth
thats in all of us: It was my fate, my destiny, my
end, to be a fan.

Monica Carter
LET NOXEMA CREAM YOUR FACE
(TELEVISION COMMERCIAL, 1973)
When the commercial aired, Joe Namath was the
poster boy for NFL swagger and all Farrah Fawcett
had to her name was an Ultra-Brite commercial, an
appearance on The Dating Game, and a few roles
in television episodes with titles like The Girl With
Something Extra and The Girl Who Came Gift-
Wrapped. Even opposite Broadway Joe, she steals
this spot. Not to exaggerate the issue, but Fawcett
was a natural beauty whose seduction was so
powerful it seemed artificial, with a relationship to
the camera similar to Marilyn Monroes; no matter
what was happening in a scene, she had a glow that
made her the center of attention. As she purred,
Let Noxema cream your face, the cocksure Namath
just had to smile and try to roll his eyes on cue.

Dwayne Moser
BOX SCORES
2 7
LEVELS OF THE GAME
(NONFICTION BY JOHN MCPHEE, 1969)
Notwithstanding occasional celebrity-player tell-alls
(crystal meth, Andre?), tennis is a difficult sport to
write about. McPhee manages not only to make it
interesting but relevant, providing colorful analysis
of the semifinal 1968 match between Arthur Ashe
and Clark Graebner in Flushing Meadows, New York.
As much a social study of race relations as a lively
account of sports rivalry, Levels of the Game reveals
the contrasting paths of two men one black, one
white and how each background contributed to
their style of play.

Monica Carter
HOWARD COSELL
(SPORTS BROADCASTER, 1918-1995)
With his nasally, staccato, haughty Talmudic
Brooklyn accent and delivery, he preached the gospel
of How-ard Co-sell telling like it is. Surely the
never-modest Cosell believed he was the only great
sports announcer. Ever. He despised the jockocracy
that has given us hundreds of unqualified and
obsequious empty-headed bloviators. Cosell began
his career as a lawyer before moving into local New
York sports radio and TV; he rose to prominence
when he championed the young Cassius Clay, and
stuck by the boxer as he became Ali and refused
to enter the draft. Its now hard to imagine the
immense impact of Monday Night Football when it
premiered in the early 1970s; many hated Cosell
and embraced the corn-pone of Don Meredith, who
impugned Cosell because he never played the
game. But Cosell knew sports and much more;
he distinguished himself during the tragedy of the
Munich Olympics.

Bruce Bauman
CALIFORNIA SPLIT
(MOVIE BY ROBERT ALTMAN, 1974)
Altman made no secret of his gambling jones, and
in this film he proves that the action is the thrill
that binds the gambler to the gamble. Elliot Gould,
who played a former quarterback in MASH (which
included a hysterical send up of pro football), has
the bulk and fluidity of the ex-jock kibitzing and
gamboling through life. George Segal, who at first
didnt get Goulds and Altmans style, is introspective,
torn, almost joyless and the films soul. Having
started out directing episodes of Combat!, Altman
understands the male bonding inherent in sports
and gambling, and made the two opposite leads
attract. Written by Joseph Walsh (who also plays a
bookie), who wanted the young Spielberg to direct.
After his characters triumphant, almost cosmic
winning streak, Segals crestfallen admission
There was no special feeling is a harrowing view
of the empty American dream, by a dreamer who
achieves the big score.

Bruce Bauman
Dennis Danziger
HOOP SCHEMES
and anyone who ever has played on
one instinctively knows this to be true. Classrooms, on the other hand,
are not democracies. Yet in my rookie year as a teacher in South-Central
Los Angeles, my eleventh-grade English class felt more like a dictatorship
crumbling toward anarchy.
Nothing Id learned in teacher boot camp was working, and it didnt
help that I was teaching English in a home economics room. There were
two refrigerators, a double sink, a Maytag washer, a Kenmore dryer and
a Tappan range. The home-ec kids in the class before mine served meals,
then tossed the linens into the washing machine. The minute I started
teaching, the spin cycle kicked in. I had to wait until it ended to call roll.
Besides the racket, I could do nothing with this group of twenty-six
boys who wandered around the room as if it were Happy Hour, trying
to get the digits from six girls, most of whom were talking on their cell
phones. When I asked them for their homework, they would try and tell
me I hadnt assigned any, though the assignment Write a 500-600 word essay
on what you consider Home was written on the board staring at them.
Of all the intransigent students, the toughest to comprehend, the
most difcult to deal with, was Deonte Mohammad, sixteen years old,
tall and lean like a whippet. Dressed in his freshly ironed, sleeveless LA
Lakers t-shirt (on which he had scrawled #21 in black marker) and baggy
purple and gold-trim Lakers shorts which seemed to be the only clothes
he owned, Deonte emulated the former Laker great Michael Cooper, the
A basketball court is a true democracy,
2 9
Showtime Lakers rail-thin bald defensive wizard.
Always smiling, Deonte never worked. Two months into the fall
semester he had a negative average. I hadnt a clue as to what, if anything,
went on inside his head because he never raised his hand to ask or answer a
question, never turned in homework, never volunteered to read a response
to the daily prompts meant to kick start the class. Mind you, he never posed
a threat. Regularly waltzed in three minutes after the tardy bell, smiled,
borrowed a pencil from one girl, gave her a soft, sweet thank-you kiss on
the cheek, and a sheet of paper from another girl with an accompanying
kiss, and for the rest of the hour sat down and practiced tagging his gang
name, Lil Shooter.
But on this day, I had just had it. Maybe it was because I felt like
a failure stealing the states money posing as a teacher, but I realized I
needed to gain control of my class or quit. I asked Deonte to sit next to me.
He obeyed. I asked him what was up. He said in his buttery smooth, late-
night jazz disc jockeys voice, Life is cool. I checked my grade book and
said, How cool can life be when youve got a negative thirteen average at
the eight-week mark?
Deonte said, Its all good.
No, its not all good. Its awful. Youre failing. Maybe you should look
into some after-school
Im busy after school, he said.
Doing what?
For the rst time all semester he looked squarely at me. He smiled.
Froze the smile on his face, enjoying the moment. JV bas-ket-ball, he
said. Yo, Im a baller.
You any good?
He shook his head as if he pitied me, then ashed a cocky grin and said,
You new here, arent you?
Yeah. So?
Crenshaw High basketball, Teach. You been in our gym? We got
so many state championship banners theres hardly room for the ones we
going to win when Im starting on Var.
Deonte, I said, tomorrow, me and you are playing ball. One on
one.
My challenge was insane. I knew it as I spoke the words. But I was
sick of feeling like a loser in this classroom and one of the rare places I felt
at home, felt like a winner, was on a basketball court. From the rst time I
stepped on a court, I felt a pump of energy, a grounding condence; it was
on a Sunday, I was ve, my brother eight. Our father had hired one of his
workers to nail together a backboard and rim and mount it on our garage
roof. Then my father handed my brother a new, bright orange Spalding
basketball and said, Lets see who can make the rst shot.
My brother missed. I shot and missed. Everything. The rim, the
net, everything. My brother missed. I missed. This went on for what
seemed like an entire morning. Around my nineteenth or twentieth shot
I heaved the ball just high enough to clear the ten-foot-high rim and
miraculously it seemed to freeze on the rim, then fell in. My father picked
up the ball, walked over, dropped it in my arms and proclaimed, Win-ner!
And champion of the world! Almost immediately thereafter my brother
turned to books and never picked up a ball again. I pretty much did the
opposite.
Deonte laughed. You want to play me one-on-one?
30
no. 12
At lunch, I said.
Whats wrong with now? he asked.
Two reasons. A) Im wearing Hush Puppies. And B) I want you to
think about it overnight.
One positive thing about loving sports is that for many of us its
accompanied by a vast knowledge of sports history. I dont know if I
consciously thought this at the moment, but somewhere led in my brain
under Intimidating a Superior Athlete, I recalled how Muhammad Ali,
then Cassius Clay, taunted, trash talked and beat Sonny Liston before they
stepped into the ring. Alis best chance to beat the Big Bear was to make
Liston think that he, Ali, was crazy. And I was attempting a form of that
with Deonte. My best chance of winning was to make Deonte do the one
thing an athlete should never do think. Deonte headed back to his seat,
turned and asked, You any good?
I knew then that I was in his head. I couldnt beat him with my ball
handling skills; I didnt have any. But messing with his mind that was
my game. Well, Deonte, I played high-school ball in Texas for a redneck
coach name Lyle Doggett. After one of my better games, twenty-four
points, thirteen boards a lie; my best game was eighteen and seven
Coach Doggett came up to me in the locker room and said, You know
Dan-zin-ger, for a white boy youre good. For a Jew, youre incredible.
For the rst time Deonte wasnt smiling. His face went soft and
expressionless. Here was the possibility of a Triple Crown: he could lose
to a white guy and a Jew and a teacher. I announced my challenge to the
class: Tomorrow at lunch they were cordially invited to witness Deonte
get whupped by a forty-two-year-old, six-foot-two, two-hundred pound
English teacher who couldnt jump, dribble or go to his right. Maybe
we should bring a casket in case you drop dead on the court, Cornelius
Green, CHSs three-hundred-pound all-state tackle, said. Better give us
the name of next of kin just in case. A bunch of them slapped high-ves
and laughed as they headed out the door.
On game day when the bell rang, Deonte and his entourage, which
was most everyone in my class, headed toward the gym. I stayed behind
and changed into my re-engine red shorts, my matching size-thirteen
high-top Converse All-Stars and my lucky #13 red-with-yellow-trim
knock-off Houston Rockets jersey. I headed down the hallway where
students pointed and laughed at my pale body. Someone called out, Here
come the worlds oldest Blood. That killed them. Another student added,
And brother-man, youd best watch out cuz this be a Crip school.
When I entered the gym more hoots and hollers from the assembled
greeted me. Teacher look like a re hydrant, someone shouted. Lucky
I didnt bring my rott or hed piss all over him. I walked onto the court
where Deonte was running one-man drills. Right-handed lay-ups, left-
handed lay-ups, ve-foot shots off the backboard, ten-foot shoots off the
glass. Pretty much everything he launched was going in, and every time
a shot fell, his audience of three, maybe four dozen applauded. After he
knocked in a twenty-foot bank shot, he shook his right forenger in the
air which started the chant, Deonte Number 1! Deonte Number 1! He
nished his warm-up exercises by dribbling full-speed down the middle
of the lane, leaping into the air, bringing the ball back behind his head and
jamming it home.
Dunk City, baby!
31
You my boy, De-on-te!
Lets get this par-tay started!
He could run, he could jump, he could handle the ball, and yes, he
could dunk. At the peak of my game as a high school senior in 1969, I
was a slow at-footed outside shooter; two and a half decades later I was
a slower, atter-footed outside shooter. To watch my Sunday morning
basketball buddies and me run up and down the court, you might think we
were playing under water.
So I thought, maybe that was the key. To slow the game down. Play
white-boy ball. Of course white-boy ball, aka YMCA ball, aka JCC ball,
implies spreading out and passing and setting picks and working the shot
clock down to three seconds before shooting; but this was one-on-one. I
didnt have anyone to help me kill the clock. Still, not shooting until the
nal lunch bell might not be a bad idea. I could play for a 10 win. Or a
00 tie.
Need a minute to warm up? he asked loudly enough for the crowd
to hear.
Nope. Im good to go.
You dont want to take no shots?
Ive already visualized the entire game. Im going to win.
Youre nuts. And old. Here, you bring in. He ipped me the ball.
Game on. First to get ten. Three-point shots counted for two points.
Two-point baskets counted for one.
Deonte gave me an open twenty-two-footer from the top of the key.
Swish. 20. Winners in. I kept the rock. Deonte stayed home again and
let me launch another uncontested shot from beyond the three-point arc
nothing but net. 40. Ooh, Deonte, a girl sang. You gonna lose to a
white man.
I knew one thing. The longer the game lasted, the less chance I had
of winning. I had made two outside set shots. Deonte hadnt touched the
ball and I already felt a little winded. My ball in again, and again Deonte
backed off. Either playing defense wasnt cool or he was playing the odds
that I couldnt nail three in a row. I set my feet, squared my shoulders, said
a silent prayer to the Gods of Three-Point Land: Steve Kerr, Reggie Miller,
World B. Free, and let it y. You know its buttah, a student yelled, cause
teacher be on a roll.
My fourth shot clanked off the rim, and Deonte started carving me up
like a Christmas ham.
He didnt do it right away, though he could have. Instead he went
into a stall game. He zipped around the court, baseline to baseline, slashed
through the lane and, though wide open for an easy lay-in, faked a shot
and brought the ball back out. All I could do is huff and puff and try in
vain to keep up with him. His classmates roared the way I roared as a kid
when I watched Curly Neal of the Harlem Globetrotters dribble all over
the court, sliding on his knees, dribbling behind his back, between his legs,
and nally between a defenders legs as he drove for an easy deuce.
I was being clowned, and wasnt that the point? Winnings not the
point. It never is in sports. The point is to obliterate the opposition.
Humiliate them. Make them want to go home and cry to their mommas.
Make them want to go home and curse their daddies for ever buying them
a stupid ball or a bat or a pair of cleats and encouraging them to play some
silly game so they could enjoy the vicarious thrills. And our one-on-one
DANZI GER
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2

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P
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32
no. 12
was no different: This was about power, revenge, respect, face.
Three possessions in a row, Deonte dribbled all over the place, then
seemingly bored, crossed me over, ew to the rim and slammed it in.
Someone shouted, Cracker got no wheels. I felt as if I had never played
basketball, and maybe I hadnt. Even when I was Deontes age I never had
played against anyone with such speed. Back in my day kids with Deontes
skills started on Division I freshmen teams. Now they played junior varsity
ball at inner-city high schools.
By now word had circulated campus and the game was attracting more
attention than Back-to-School Night. The stands were lling up.
Finish him off, Deonte.
Take his big ass to the glass.
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a kid half a foot taller
than Deonte and thirty pounds lighter with an Afro so high it made Dr. Js
look like a buzz cut begin to moon walk along the sidelines, and when
he stopped to wild applause he turned to his admirers, cupped his hands to
the sides of his mouth and yelled, Whooose house?
The response, C-House!
Whooose house?
Even louder, C-House!
And then someone yelled, Not in our house. No way, teacher.
You got no skills out of the classroom.
I was the show and I was sucking air, trying to catch my breath. This
was Deontes game, Crenshaws game. What was I doing here? What had
I been thinking? Finally, mercifully, Deonte took a twenty-foot jump shot,
missed, and I picked up a long rebound. Did the only thing my body could
manage: I dribbled behind the three-point line and let it y. Air ball! Air
ball! they chanted with delight.
My legs were jello and Deonte decided to show off his shooting
repertoire. He hit a baseline one-hander to make it 6-4, then backed me
into the paint, leapt and nger rolled one between my outstretched arms.
More kids streamed into the gym which grew hotter and stufer and
noisier. More taunts rained down on me. Hey Deonte, give him a break.
Put another white guy on his team.
Hey teacher, the Over-Sixty League play in Beverly Hills.
Hey man, you got articial legs or you really that slow?
Maybe hearing the put-downs was the motivation I needed. Like
the ones I remembered from playing high school ball in Houston when
opposing fans waved Confederate ags because Bernie Halperin and I
both started on our team. Throwing pennies at us on the court, or a ref
saying, Shut your Jew mouth, when I questioned his call. I loved the anti-
Semitic epithets; the sound of their collective silence, their shared gloom
and depression as they slinked out of the gym after we beat them, was what
I played for not for personal glory or to make the all-tournament team
or to win a college scholarship. I played to shut those bastards up.
I picked up a loose ball, huffed and puffed behind the three-point arc
and found the bottom of the net.
Someone shouted, Whats the score? A voice called out, Deonte
ve, Blue-eyed white devil eight. I missed my next shot. Deonte blasted
past me for an easy bucket, 8-6, then scooped a soft underhand shot off
the window, 8-7. Then we began trading misses. With each one I drew
closer to open-heart surgery; I needed a two-minute time-out to collapse
on the bench, sip a grape Gatorade, slow my heartbeat, cool my body, catch
33
my breath, towel off and visualize Downtown Freddy Brown throwing in
some long range bombs. The only way I could win this game was with
a three-pointer. I didnt have the energy to make two one-point shots.
Trying to defend against Deonte, I barely had the energy to lift my arms
above my head.
I reached for the only weapon that remained in my arsenal. I talked
trash. Hey Deonte, lose and youll never make varsity.
Aint going to lose to no white-haired skeleton.
Hey Deonte, beat me and youll denitely fail English.
Who give a fuck? Im probably going to fail anyways.
And nally, pathetically, Hey Deonte. Lose in front of these all ne
ladies and you will never, ever get laid.
For the rst time since I had challenged him to this game, Deonte was
silent, his cockiness gone. He stopped taking it to the hoop and started
missing jump shot after jump shot. And nally I labored behind the three-
point line and red. It hit the backboard, which I wasnt aiming for, and
somehow, mysteriously, died on the rim, and dropped in.
10-7. My game.
I stuck out my hand. He slapped it away. Run it back, bitch, he
demanded.
Im done for the day, I said.
The hell you are. Run it back. Best of three. Lets do this.
Ive often thought that the best way to die though he left us way
too soon was the way Pistol Pete Maravich, the greatest scoring freak
of all time, departed. On the court, from a heart attack between pick-up
games. But I wasnt ready, and if I ran it back, by sixth period Id surely be
a corpse.
So I cut him a deal.
If his work habits and grades signicantly improved, Id play him again.
Three, four weeks from now. Otherwise hed live with the shame of losing
to a teacher with no possibility of redemption. Take it or leave it. Deonte
accepted what choice did he have? And the next day and from then on,
my eleventh grade English class resembled well, a dictatorship, though Id
like to think of it as a benign one. Order was mostly restored, and I had
basketball to thank.
By weeks end, a dozen of Deontes classmates had challenged
me to lunch-time games. I posted a sign-up sheet on my classroom door:
Monday, Wednesday and Friday Id play the name at the top of the list,
but only after reviewing the students work. Deontes rules applied to all
comers poor work, too many absences or tardies, disrespect, classroom
b.s., try again in a few weeks. Didnt matter if I won or lost those games;
what mattered was that some of my students and I found common ground,
on the court, a place we all preferred. And one lunch day after I drained a
three-pointer to end a game, one of my students called out, Yo, you aint
Mr. D no more. You Larry Bird.
Ever since the day I challenged Deonte, in my seventeen years teaching
in the Los Angeles Unied School District, Ive pulled into the faculty
lot with my school stuff in my shoulder bag and my basketball gear in my
trunk. And Deonte, well, he passed English class and moved on to Var, and
earned two rematches, the results of which I never talk about.
DANZI GER
Carolyn Kellogg
STROKE
Feather, recover and again. Shouts from the
shore echoed; we would overtake them on this drive. At the Head of the
Charles crews biggest spectator event in America we were seconds
away from the races trickiest turn, a sharp bend under a bridge. According
to the gentlemanly rules of the sport, whoever was leading going into the
turn got to take the single prime spot; Id calculated correctly. We had
pulled ahead, forcing the other crew to yield.
With a clatter, our momentum hitched. The long oars from our
starboard side were being battered by their port. Our competitor hadnt
given way, after all. We pulled toward our spot in the narrow passage,
but they drove at us diagonally. Wet blades skittered in the air, smashing
into arms, faces. And then, the terrible sound: the bow of our $50,000
crew shell shattering as the other boat smashed us into the bridges stone
piling.
I was fteen. I was steering. And we were out of the race.
Our oars
sliced into the river and we surged against the
lead boat. Eight blades slipped out together, leaving eight
whirlpools behind.
35
There are people born into the world of boathouses and
gentlemens rules. I was not one of them. My family lived in a small
Rhode Island town where bowling rivaled football as the schools most
popular sport, due, I imagine, to the easy-access bar. I experienced all the
standard anxieties and torments of a too-smart adolescent; I determined
to get away using my only asset, my oversized, troublesome brain.
My guide to escape was the then-popular The Ofcial Preppy Handbook,
which I read with devotion and not an ounce of irony (my brain didnt
always get put to its best use). I wore tragically unattering turtlenecks
with little whales and, holy god, rainbows, under oxford shirts from Sears.
I earned straight As and set my sights on what the book said was the best
boarding school in the country, two-hundred-year-old Phillips Exeter
Academy.
While I have little residual school pride, I have to point out that its
chief rival, Phillips Andover, counts both George H.W. Bush and George
W. Bush among its alumni.
Getting into Exeter wasnt easy. In addition to my grades and 99th
percentile test scores, Id had to muster my scant thirteen-year-old charm
for an interview with a dour-faced, chain-smoking Latin teacher. Later
I learned that he loathed women, who at that time had attended the
institution for only a decade. Sometimes I feared he let me in precisely
because he knew I would fail and prove his darkest hopes right. I didnt
fail, not quite, but I did have to put my brain to work. For the rst time I
didnt have to worry about having too many right answers or being the rst
one done with my tests. Never mind the new grade lows; I was relieved to
be one of the pack.
Fitting in socially was another matter. I developed an acute case of
brand awareness: a J.C. Penney polo shirt was not an Izod polo was not
a Polo polo. I learned there was a difference between Fifth Avenue and
Park Avenue, and that the people who lived on them held dances called
cotillions. In the early Eighties our culture was somewhat in thrall to
preppies and New York yuppies, and for a time I was as aficted as anybody.
I conated old money and new money and legacy and tradition, which all
seemed of a piece as I slept and studied and ate next to them that is,
when I wasnt at my part-time job, washing dishes in the dining hall.
Our small freshman class Preps, they called us, a derogatory
nickname that gave me a happy thrill took months of gym, introducing
us to the full roster of sports. We were required to do real athletic sports
every season: Exeter students were to be hale and hearty. I might have
tried something accessible, like soccer or track, but Id been drawn to the
clubby sports. I was lousy at tennis, no better at squash, and the aesthetics
of eld hockey sucked. After they put us on the rowing training barge a
mashup crew-wise of a double-wide and a tricycle, simple, slow and safe
I knew I had to try crew, creaking oars, splashing water and all. Now I can
see that I was hoping for another access point, another way in. I had a class
anxiety I couldnt name, plus a jittery case of adolescent outsiderism. Id
been drawn to crew by its unfamiliar gear, its jargon, its casual but raried
culture; these were, of course, the wrong reasons. But what did that matter
once I was hooked?

Rowing took off as a competitive sport in the early Nineteenth
Century, in England and then in the U.S. The rst American intercollegiate
competition, of any sport, was an 1852 race between the Harvard and Yale
36
no. 12
crew teams. Harvard won. The founder of the modern
Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was a rower. For
a long time America dominated the games, taking the
gold medal in the mens eights competition every year
from 1920 to 1956.
Rowers compete in single sculls, in pairs and in
fours, but the eight is the big glamorous star of the sport.
The boat called a shell is close to sixty feet long, less
than two feet wide and only about a foot deep, made of
strong, ultralight composites. For each practice the shell
is carried overhead from the boathouse to dock, ipped
and then placed in the water; the reverse is done to put
it away. Everyone gets wet.
If you were standing on the dock, looking down into
the empty boat, you would see eight molded seats, each
with wheels on its underside that t onto a short pair
of tracks, called a slide. Before the slide is a mounted
pair of shoes which each rower ties into. Four oarlocks,
called rigging, extend out on starboard, and four on port.
With both hands, each rower holds one twelve-foot oar.
Rowers are tall and powerful without being bulky.
Picture Gregory Peck, who rowed for Berkeley in 1937.
Drilling on water and land, they build tremendous
strength. Races, typically two thousand meters long,
take seven minutes or more, and are done at top capacity
straight through. Rowers have incredible endurance;
they suffer intense pain.
And they face backwards. As powerful as they are,
the eight rowers cant see where theyre going, which is
where the coxswain comes in. Pronounced, with preppy
obliviousness, cocks-in and shortened to the equally
bad cox the coxswain is the only one in the boat facing
forward. The coxswain, she was me.
It is the coxs job to steer. Its also the coxs job to be
little and stay little, because the rowers are hauling your
ass and youre hauling nothing. The same hubris that
made me think I could get to Exeter made me absolutely
unintimidated at the idea of yelling at eight very large
people. Because thats the coxs other job: to call the race.
If you saw a movie about crew once, the cox probably
shouted stroke, stroke, which, aside from being
ridiculously prurient when paired with a homonym for
cocks, never happens. Its not that the word isnt used.
Each time an oar goes in the water, its called a stroke,
and the rst rower in the boat, who sets its pace, sits
in the stroke seat. But saying stroke, stroke on the
water would be like saying page, page while reading
descriptive, but missing the point.
For me, that point was that the cox could be part
coach, part cheerleader, part jockey, part quarterback.
There are some silent steerers, Im sure, but that wasnt
my style. During a race, Id drive my team to win using
psychology, pleading, encouragement and guile. Rowers
often nish a race crying or vomiting in pain, at the
coxswains constant urging; for this reason, victorious
crews always celebrate, upon reaching the dock, by
throwing their cox in the water.
The cox and the stroke face each other, so
it helps to be friends. My stroke/friend Gina, from a
moneyed Michigan family shes now a lawyer in
London had a sassy streak. When I wanted to take
the boat away from our coach and run drills on our own,
shed encourage it. When she thought the boat could
pull harder in a race, shed gasp it, redfaced, and Id call
a power 20. Gina went to crews junior nationals in the
summer. Me, I worked at McDonalds.
Lynn also went to junior nationals, where she
advanced beyond Gina, but in our boat she rowed the
seven seat. Each seat has its own character: The middle
four are the biggest, strongest rowers, the crews powerful
engine, while the bow pair are the shortest in the boat,
gifted with technique and intuition, since its often hard
for them to tell whats going on. The stern pair works
as a team, but an ambitious seven wants the strokes seat,
because the stroke is the de facto captain, the leader. If
the cox is the eyes and the mouth of the boat, the stroke
is the heart. A good cox-stroke duo, together, are the
brains. Sometimes, our coach would re-rig the boat
putting Lynn at stroke and Gina at seven. Ginas rowing
would get sloppy with anger at the demotion and Id be
a brain of one; although Lynn was a solid, talented rower,
she wasnt much fun.
We rowed on the Squamscott, a tidal river with
rocky, colonial-era dams to the right of the boathouse
and, to the left, a meandering path through marshes and
woods. A combination of ocean and spring water, the
river was brackish and sometimes got stinky; we called it
the Scum.
Once Id gotten the hang of coxing and our workouts,
Id sneak the boat away from the coach, who was trying
to watch several shells at once from a motorboat. We
rowed almost daily; often, because of the tidal schedule,
monstrously early. As awful as this was pre-dawn
October in New Hampshire is very cold, and very dark
the early rows, when wed gotten off on our own, are
what I remember best. On good days, with fog rising up
through the reeds against the breaking sun, Id order two
strokes and a glide: the rowers would halt, those twelve-
foot oars feathered parallel to the surface of the glassy
brown water, attempting to maintain a perfect, silent
balance, sliding past herons and egrets, coasting with
impossible grace.
That was something you could never do in
Los Angeles Harbor. The water there was always full
37
of chop, as we rowed just an inlet or two away from the
actual Pacic. And it was always full of wakes, thrown by
speedboats, sailboats, and a constant parade of container
ships as big as skyscrapers. Ships arrived from Korea,
Russia, Japan, Argentina, China looming ve, six
stories above us, kicking up rolling wakes big enough to
surf. If I steered straight into them, the oar blades would
splash a lot, but we could keep going. If not, wed have to
come to a full stop, have one side lower their hands and
the other raise them, tipping the boat as far as it could go
into the swells, to keep them from tipping us over.
After I got to USC, I marched past the Heisman
trophies to the tiny crew ofce and offered my services
as an experienced coxswain. They told me where to
wait for a bus a yellow school bus, outdated even
then which bounced down the 110 Freeway, exited in
a deserted industrial zone, turned left at the strip club
and pulled up at a chain link fence. On the other side
was a sandy parking lot and a dusty boathouse crouching
above the longest, steepest dock Id ever seen.
By then, Id dispensed with my adolescent preppy
envy. Id grown up enough to hear my own secret ticking.
I didnt apply to Harvard or Yale, instead making the
unorthodox, unsanctioned choice of coming to Los
Angeles to study lm. I didnt need any connection to
New England or its traditions; I welcomed the escape.
But still, the boathouse was so far from everything I
knew about crew. It was bleak, dirty. In fact, the water
in the harbor was so toxic that instead of simply wiping
down the shells before putting them away, we had to do
a rst pass with rags soaked in gasoline to remove the
harbors oily mysterious residue.
Crew at USC was an outpost of slackers and true
believers, almost post-apocalyptic in its isolation. I
bounced between the mens and womens crews, settling
in with a novice womens boat that had strength and
hope but no nesse. Two of our rowers had been junior
Olympic swimmers, but burned out terribly; they quit
and joined crew, the most obscure full-body workout
they could nd. Another, from Californias country club
class, rode with her twenty-year-old boyfriend in the
private jet hed pilot to Santa Barbara for the weekend.
Despite the odds, they rowed hard and got good.
By then the metal-rimmed megaphone that old-
time coxes used was replaced by wait for it a cox
box, a nicky microphone and speaker setup. When it
blew out during practice, I took to standing in the shell
absolutely unheard of so the girls could hear me, as
the salty chop lapped over the edges of the boat and the
container ship horns blew. Once, on a blinding hot day,
when a hundred men lined up on the rail of their ship to
gape at us, we turned to them simultaneously, lifted our
shirts and ashed our breasts. They howled, my boat
grabbed our oars, and we were gone.
For years, crew was a true love. I cried when our
boat shattered, was grateful when, according to the sports
gentlemanly rules, I was vindicated. I did land workouts
with my rowers, even lling in their seats once in a while
to prove I could. I celebrated every win, dripping, after
climbing back on the dock. At USC I dyed the roots of
my spiky red hair bright yellow our colors, cardinal
and gold and they nicknamed me Sparkplug, Sparky,
because any boat I was put in I made go.
But the same raried world that made crew so
attractive to me at rst was what has made it impossible
to maintain my affections. While anybody with a ball
can scare up a soccer game, places to row, things to row
in and people to row with arent nearly so easy to come
by. There are rowing clubs, even here on the West
Coast, but theyre not cheap, and for the most part they
emphasize the smaller shells, for one or two or four,
because the perfect eight is impossible to achieve with
adults spare time.
In the Eighties, I found a genuine crew oar at a yard
sale. It was wood, with a red blade and an old-fashioned
leather cuff. As far as I knew, rowers didnt get to keep
their oars, but the family told me it was from a Harvard
boat, class of 1933. I kept that oar for twenty years,
stringing it up on walls, driving it across the country
lashed to the ceiling of a moving van. But I move a lot,
and every time I picked it up I had to consider what it
meant to me. Sometime, Im not even sure when, I let it go.
KELLOGG
THE ROAR
Oscar Villalon
A great love for USC football is foretold with a death
The end is near for my mother, and she knows it. She has Stage IV cancer.
We, her sons and daughters, sort of know it, but we think, somehow,
theres an escape from the inevitable. She wont lose; she cant lose.
My mother, cheerful (or trying to be) and exhausted, tells us she
would love to see USC play Notre Dame at the Coliseum. Her whole life
she has never seen the Trojans play the Irish. Her entire life spent in L.A.
her youth, anyway and shes never seen one of the greatest rivalries
in U.S. sports unfold for her in person. She wont say its because if she
doesnt see them play in November (the month of her birthday) she never
will. It doesnt really occur to us that she never will, though shes clearly
dying, if smiling and warm and loving.
This is in 2000, and the SC team isnt very good. I know this. My
mother is staving off death night and day, and the thought that the rst
time she sees SC play Notre Dame it will only be to witness the Trojans
loseits too much to bear. Defeat isnt something she should be around.
Shes going to win.
So come November we wind up not taking her frailer now my
mother than when she spoke aloud her wish and lo and behold SC does
lose to Notre Dame. I think what it would have been like if we had taken
her. At the time I pictured her with her thin, gray-wool beanie pulled
snugly over her bald head, leaning forward in her seat, skinny arms resting
on her stick thighs, bundled up in a couple of blankets. She looks over at
her children seated around her, trying to grin, more disappointed for us,
somehow, than for herself, as if to say, Oh man, maybe next time. But, of
course... .
40
no. 12
Now, several years later, Im not sure she would have
been so obviously dismayed. I think she would have gone
on and on about how great the Trojan marching band is,
and how fun it is to see Traveler galloping around the
eld. But in 2000, on the month of her fty-second
birthday, I felt only relief that we couldnt come up with
tickets and make the long drive to downtown Los Angeles.
That month, we throw her a great surprise party. She
dances with my father; skeletal under her eece jacket
and a light blanket, she rocks side to side with him. She
is full of life. She stays up well past midnight, drinking
coffee, beaming, talking with my father and my sisters
in-laws. Scores of family and friends hug her, laughing,
showing her in an implicit way how much she means to
them. I dont think we could have had a better birthday
party for her.
Still, she would so have loved to have seen that
game.
In 2001 SC began a multi-year run of greatness:
two national championships, three Heisman winners,
and seven consecutive conference championships. Is it
pathetic to say that all that winning all that bravado
winning was as much a needed sign to me as the dove
carrying the twig in its beak was for Noah? Or that the
fact the Trojans havent lost to Notre Dame since 2002
means everything, though it couldnt possibly mean
anything about my mothers death?
An awakening passion for SC football does not begin with rst having
attended the University of Southern California
I did not own a single piece of cardinal-and-gold
clothing while I was enrolled at USC. I worked every
Saturday of every fall that I was there at College Library,
checking out books to students, shelving books in the
stacks, reading back issues of Rolling Stone and National
Lampoon. I think I went to one game in my senior season
(SC lost), and once again just after graduation; I spent
most of that game trying to read an essay by Christopher
Lasch in Harpers. (Im pretty sure SC lost then, too.)
When my Saturday morning shifts were over at
the library, I would cross campus past the USC
topiary in front of Doheny Library, past the plinth
bearing the statue of Tommy Trojan and revel in the
post-pre-game quiet, a silence accentuated by the dull
roars, drifting overhead in wafts, shimmering out of
the concrete bowl of the Coliseum. Breezing through
the now empty Carls Jr. on campus (getting a Western
Bacon Cheeseburger and wafe fries to go), ambling
home to read Hopscotch, I couldnt care less about SC
football. Though thats not entirely true. The years I
was there, SC football was mediocre, which is to say that
by the programs high standards it wasnt any good. No
one wants to be part of a lost cause. But the deeper truth
is that I didnt need any part of the thunderous crowd; I
was still innocent to the fact that, if only for a little while,
you need to be part of a roar. You need to be part of
something bigger, even if that something, in the grand
scheme of things, is indefensibly unimportant. You
need to embrace whatever legacies small and large
you can lay claim to.
Out on my apartment porch, reading Cortzar,
pushing my long hair away from my eyes, I was too
content to know that.
An embrace of SC football is provoked by somebody hating some part
of you that you gave no thought to before
This is the litany of SC football: Eleven national
championships, seven Heisman trophies, countless
conference championships, dozens of Rose Bowl
victories. SC has the most players in the Pro Football
Hall of Fame: Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen, Bruce
Matthews, Anthony Muoz, to name a bunch who arent
O.J. Simpson. Theres no football program west of the
Mississippi not even Texas nor Nebraska that
comes close to SC. (The NFL Network named SC as
the top football factory in the country. This doesnt
shame us in the least.)
For all these reasons, most people hate SC with a
holy fury. Their contempt, they would tell you, is due
to all of the intellectually dim yet distressingly cunning
people who seem to be the (Aryan) face of SC. A lot
of very rich Anglo kids unapologetically boastful
of living in Southern California, no less have come
and gone through USC. They are drunkenly loud at
games. They are, as a group, ridiculously blonde and
disturbingly attractive. They wear shirts that say their
maids graduated from UCLA, or that spell Cal as Kal,
with a hammer and sickle.
These reasons make up the g leaf that disguises
peoples envy of SC. The true reason for loathing SC
football, and with it USC, is that no football program
on this side of the coast is as storied and excellent:
Only ve or six college programs nationwide can hold
their own next to it. And in a land where football rules
supreme over popular culture (the NFL makes more
money than the NBA, the NHL and major-league
baseball combined), a connection to one of these few
dynastic lineages is problematic. At best, a person may
be respectful of your school; even indifference would
be good. At worst, and most common, they resent your
football program, and they dont like you as much as they
otherwise could.
Growing up the son of a janitor and an assembly
line worker, I had no idea of the depths of enmity among
41
colleges. (The only college-educated people I knew
were my teachers.) And even though my mother and
her eldest brother were Trojans fans, none of them had
gone to SC. So I knew UCLA and Notre Dame were
the enemy, but I didnt really understand how visceral
that derision could be until I moved to L.A. and became
a Trojan. Even then, I was clueless as to how widespread
the hate went, until I took a trip north with a buddy to
San Francisco. SC was playing Cal, but we werent going
to see the game; he was going because his girlfriend
would be up there (she was in the marching band) and
I just wanted a change of scenery. I got dropped off in
Berkeley at Cloyne Court, a student co-op a friend of
mine was living in. It was a grand, dark-wood lodge of
a place, chaotic and mildewy, with rows of rooms on the
upper oor and giant sofas and stained carpets on the
bottom, and lanky women with rolling hips and wide
smiles so anarchic that nobody quite knew who was
ofcially living there and who was squatting. You got
the sense that a party could go off at any point, as if all
these young people were oating around like molecules
waiting to coalesce around a keg or a bong and grow
exponentially in mass till things got too big and fell apart
and then the process could begin again. I immediately
liked it. I liked it a lot.
I was introduced to people, and with every
introduction I felt obliged to offer a brief explanation
of why I was there. Pretty soon I was making my
explanations longer, throwing in a shrug, because it was
becoming abundantly clear that here, in this bohemian
bacchanalia, they loathed Trojans. No, no, no, I told
them. I wasnt even going to the game. I just wanted to
check out Berkeley, buy some books at City Lights, and
otherwise avail myself of this seductive place. I must
have said this a dozen times in ten different ways. I think
I was even hoping that my un-Trojan make up dark
hair, proletarian, literary obsessed would exoticize me
among some of the women. (It didnt.)
On the long drive home down Interstate 5, the
Indigo Girls blaring out of the car speakers, I kept
thinking, How can they hate us when weve never given
them a second thought? When I told them showed
them were not all fascist tools? I shouldve done the
math. I would have realized long before Cal started
paying Jeff Tedford millions a year that this citadel
of scholarship and culture actually gave a shit about
football.
A great love and SC football co-exist
On an early afternoon, while the Blue Angels
thundered over the city, my son was born. Later that
same day, SC lost to Stanford. At home, and a forty-
point favorite one of the greatest upsets in college
football history.
It was an evening game, and I couldnt get the
channel showing it on the TV in the maternity room.
Not that it mattered. I was percolating on adrenaline
and exhaustion and wasnt taking in anything not already
present. I cradled my son, then I handed him back to
his mother, then she would hand him back to me, then I
handed him to his grandparents, then they handed him
back to me. This was the entirety of my world: cradling,
handing, pacing, and smiling. When my sons uncle
arrived, though, I asked if he knew the score. He didnt,
so we ipped through the channels till we got the news;
on a crawl at the bottom: SC 16-7 in the third quarter.
It made no sense. SC was limping rather than soaring to
victory.
I walked down to Clement Street with my sons
uncle to get some Vietnamese food for my wife. For the
rst time that day I was distracted. I didnt want to check
the score again. I didnt want it to matter because, since
my mothers death, it had mattered to a gut-wrenching
degree. On this day, it shouldnt matter.
Now my friends like to remind me how I said at
the time, If my son hadnt been born today, I would be
suicidal. I would have lost my mind to shame and anger
and despair. What I was trying to say was that on that day
I was standing out in a hall leading to an operating room,
wearing green scrubs pulled tight against my shoulders
and chest and belly, exing my ngers, waiting for the
nurse to come out and lead me past the metal bowls and
silver instruments to where my wife would have our son
removed from her womb. Standing out there I could
hear the roar around me, bigger than anything I ever
imagined and making everything shimmer: the oor, the
walls, the lights. And I wanted to jump and cheer or
something.
So yes, I have no doubt that what I told them, in the
long run, is true.
VI LLALON
42
no. 12
FAT CITY
(NOVEL BY LEONARD GARDNER, 1969)
Set in Stockton, California in the Fifties, Gardners
landmark boxing novel perfectly captures the
unforgiving nature of small time boxing grime-
coated hotel rooms, the sweat-soaked YMCA and
the unwavering despair of boozy dives. Its not hard
to anticipate the fate of twenty-nine-year-old Billy
Tully, a boxer whose life is down for the count and
who thinks he sees possibilities in younger boxer
Ernie Munger. Maybe Tully will get back in shape,
maybe hell quit drinking, maybe his wife will return,
and maybe the future for both Billy and Ernie will be
more than a string of forgettable victories; but like
a bout where we know from the opening bell who
will win, Gardners novel takes us round by round
through hope and humiliation with a narrative as
lean as a championship fighter.
Monica Carter
RACING IN THE STREETS
(SONG BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 1978)
Springsteens elegy to lost innocence and the ever
receding promised land from Darkness on the Edge
of Town. A slice of American youth culture that
once seemed dangerous, hopeful, fresh when the
summer also was right for dancing in the streets
and now is exhausted. The evocative despair in
Springsteens heartbroken hot rod angel and one
who hates for just bein born is unique in male rock
poetry; the glory days are gone and the spirit in the
night is haunted by sins that cant be washed away.
Max Weinbergs time-ticking-away drumbeat is a
bone shaking, eerie riff off Ivory Joe Hunter and the
hard-charging beat of Marvin Gaye.

Bruce Bauman
BOX SCORES
43
BALL FOUR
(NONFICTION BY JIM BOUTON, 1970)
A fireballer for the early-Sixties dynastic New York
Yankees, Bouton was traded to the lowly Seattle
Pilots when his number-one pitch lost its smoke.
His book burned the veil off myths and outright
fabrications perpetrated by venal sportswriters;
Bouton revealed many sports heroes as double-
crossing semi-illiterates, most notably two-faced
boozehound Mickey Mantle. For his often hilarious
if sometimes score-settling truth-telling, Bouton was
branded a pariah. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried
to force him to sign an official recantation; Bouton
refused. Ball Fours most notorious legacy may be
the cycle of memoirs and scandalous exposes that
followed that make sports less innocent. In the
afterward from a 1990 edition, Bouton writes that
he doesnt miss the pros but every spring he gets
the urge to play some ball. Its why, no matter
how tarnished its stars, the game remains a ritual
as irreplaceable as sipping a cool drink under a
summer twilight.

Bruce Bauman
HOOSIERS
(MOVIE BY DAVID ANSPAUGH, 1986)
This pedestrian paean to times past is often bafflingly
ranked as one of the greatest sports films ever. The
mid-Eighties release befitted the subtle racist vision
of Reagans morning in America. Gene Hackman
barks out his performance as the cantankerous
coach seeking redemption, while Dennis Hopper was
nominated for an Oscar as the over-the-top drunken
assistant coach (as opposed to an over-the-top
ether-driven wackjob in Blue Velvet the same year).
In Hoosiers, very loosely based on Milan, Indianas
1954 high-school championship team, the all-white
underdog defeats a predominantly black team; in
reality Milan was one of the favorites. At this time
in our countrys history no all-black team ever had
beaten an all-white team because they rarely
played each other. A year later, Oscar Robertson
led the all-black Crispus Attucks squad to the state
title. Where's that movie?

Bruce Bauman
RACI NG I N THE STREETS
Lou Mathews
I am looking at the
Russo-Steele January 2010
auction catalogue.
It is packed with the Sixties muscle cars of my youth Plymouth Hemi-
Chargers, Dodge Ramchargers, Chevy Novas, Chevelles, Ford Mustangs,
Pontiac GTOs.
On page twenty-four there is a model I know well, a 1963 Dodge
Polara Max Wedge. Its an utilitarian car, at brick-red paint, blackwall
tires, painted rims, no hubcaps. It was an ugly car when it was new, its
an ugly car now. That Dodge only impressed when the hood was lifted
to reveal its reason for living, a 426-cubic-inch Chrysler wedge motor
with a stepped Ramcharger manifold bearing two Carter four-barrel
carburetors with throats as big as coffee cans. At idle, the hiss of the air
being drawn into the engine could be heard fty feet away. I can still hear
that pungent hiss and see the stunned young faces surrounding that open
hood, looking at an engine big enough to power a tank, and I can still
remember the primal roar of that car, winding out for the nish line on
Forest Lawn Drive. That noise will always carry me back.
In 1965 and part of 1966 I made a good portion of my income on the
streets of Los Angeles. Sometimes from straight-up racing but mainly
from betting on illegal street-racing. It was a dangerous sport. I saw two
engines explode, piston rods punching through the side of the block from
detonation because the drivers had loaded their tanks with nitromethane
fuel. I saw three cars burn to the ground. I probably saw someone die.
We were running the other way when the car rolled at ninety on a back
street in Pacoima trying to avoid a roadblock and the cops.
At that moment in California Car Culture, street-racing was a 24/7
46
no. 12
operation. There were more than forty drive-ins across
the Los Angeles basin, twelve legal dragstrips. Even
104-octane White Pump Chevron leaded gasoline was
only 25.9 cents a gallon. You could cruise sixty miles in
a night for about a buck. The cars were overpowered,
horribly under-braked and handled curves about as well
as a cofn on a 2x4 skateboard.
My street-racing mentor, a term he would sneer
at, was a guy named Charlie Cooney. He was from
North Carolina originally, a tall man when he wasnt,
characteristically, slumped. He was broad, potbellied,
lazy-looking except for lively brown eyes and a neat
goatee that offset his soft features. Charlie ran a one-
man garage on a desolate stretch of San Fernando
Road opposite the train yards. It was as close to a
shade-tree garage as you could nd in an industrial
wasteland. He always had three or four cars on jack-
stands or cinderblocks, awaiting parts or inspiration.
Usually a couple of clunkers for sale AS IS. In back
of the Quonset hut garage building was a yard where the
better cars and parts were kept, enclosed by a chain-link
fence and guarded by two Shetland pony-sized German
Shepherds. Cooney was a thief and he protected what
was his with vigor.
Out front on the sidewalk was a sandwich-board sign:
Batteries New & Used
Battery Repair & Reconditioning
Batteries were Cooneys main thing, the neighborhood
depended on him for reliable starting power and his
prices were fair to startling, ve to ten dollars under Pep
Boys or Western Auto for brand new batteries. No one
could gure out how he made a prot.
Cooney had a simple and ingenious supply method.
Late nights and early mornings he would cruise middle-
class neighborhoods far away from his own. Hed pick any
car parked on the street, write down the license number
and the address it was parked in front of, jack the hood
and steal the battery. It was simple work, if the terminals
were corroded hed cut the cables with shears and lift
out the assembly. He didnt care about the condition
of the battery. He brought them back, sometimes ten a
night, to his shop, where he would wash them down with
baking soda, ush them, add new battery acid, recharge
them and wait a week or so. He would retrace his route,
assured that each car would have a new battery. Hed
pull the new battery out, put the reconditioned battery
in and drive off with his new inventory. He assumed
that most of the car owners never knew about the switch.
No reason to lift the hood if the car started.
My high school, Pater Noster, was a couple miles
from his shop. I met Cooney, delivering parts for a
NAPA auto parts store and saw him nightly at the local
drive-in, Van De Kamps, which was Street-Race central.
I was an agreeable young fool, willing to run errands,
and I was always there, hanging out. Cooney decided he
liked me or that I could be useful and took me in hand.
Cooney had four loves: Olympia beer, Lucky Strike
cigarettes, the chile verde burritos at Lupitas down the
block from his garage, and street racing.
He taught me about the world of street racing.
There wasnt an ounce of romance in his soul, street
racing was his livelihood. His scams and his weekly work
were only to provide the capital he needed to bet. He
taught me how to scout, how to handicap and how to
bet.
Cooney had gured out, early on, that in a
completely unregulated system, which Street Racing
was at that time, a man with knowledge had an extreme
advantage. He was the guy who waited at the nish line,
with a stopwatch hidden in his hand which was buried
in a pocket. Until he taught me, I was one of the mob at
the starting line, which was always more exciting.
Drag racing, at a strip or on the street, is simple.
Two cars line up side by side, and race, straight ahead
for a measured quarter-mile. At a dragstrip, each car is
measured and delivered time-slips in 1/100ths second
increments. On the street all you got was a blinking
ashlight for the winning lane.
Cooney measured and codied and when, by his
chart, he had a thirteen-second Chevy up against a
fourteen-second Ford, he would get down a bet. Or I
would, once Cooney got too widely known. He taught
me handicapping. He taught me never to bet on a good
car with a bad driver. Most of all he taught me restraint,
an unusual choice for a nineteen-year-old. He taught me
to wait for the odds to come to me.
The culmination of that was the night on Riverside
Drive when I got two to one odds, eighty bucks, against
a 409 62 Chevy with extreme handling problems and a
bad driver that sometimes ran in the low 13s but mostly
smoked the tires and ran low 14s, racing a nifty Fiat from
Long Beach that ran consistent low 13s. And they had to
talk me into it.
Cooneys other talent was driving, and when money
was down he drove for the hottest cars. He had a feel for
driving that couldnt be taught. He heard the engine in
a way I never could, shifting at the optimum moment.
His hand on the shifter was a blur. These were in big-
money meets, drive-in against drive-in. There was an
unscheduled but year-round league, Drive-in against
Drive-in. Van de Kamps faced off against teams from
Stans in Van Nuys, the Wich Stand in Crenshaw, Bobs
Toluca Lake, Bobs Van Nuys. Their ten best cars
matched against ours.
Los Angeles was a more democratic city in those
days, a lot more white kids went to Watts or Pacoima
47
to race, a lot more black and brown kids came from
Compton and San Fernando to Burbank and Atwater
for the same reason.
Cooneys best friend on the circuit was a black
guy from Pacoima named Moon. There were reasons.
Cooney made a lot of money betting on Moon, but the
reason they liked each other was that they were the
same, brothers under the skin. Moon had a 32 Ford with
what looked like a warmed-up stock 265 Chevy engine.
The Deuce had headers, an Offenhauser manifold and
a four-barrel Carter AFB, but nothing radical. It was
actually a new 327 Chevy, bored and stroked to 377, with
high compression Venolia Pistons and an Iskendarian
roller cam. None of those changes were visible and the
engine ID numbers had been ground off and restamped
to reect a 1955 small block. Moon nailed the wiseguys
with that every time. The car probably weighed eighteen
hundred pounds. Every weekend Moon would pack
about eight hundred pounds of sandbags in the trunk and
back seat oor of the Deuce Coupe. Saturday nights he
would run at Lions drag strip in Long Beach. Sunday he
would run at San Fernando raceway. Valiantly. All out.
Never faster than high 13s. Hed unload the sandbags
on Monday and go looking for races against suckers
who had seen him at the dragstrip. Moons Deuce was
a straight-up low twelve-second car and he made a lot
of money, and so did Cooney, from drivers who thought
theyd just had a bad day.
The streets we raced on were chosen for two semi-
practical reasons. They had to be four lanes wide, ideally
with no trafc after commute hours. Proximity to a
drive-in was the other consideration. Racers from Van
De Kamps used a half mile stretch of Riverside Drive
between Fletcher and Glendale Avenue. A quarter mile
started around the bend of the Fletcher end, marked by
luminous paint on the curbs. Races were always run with
a green light on the Glendale end. Some of the other
courses were dangerous, and one, Forest Lawn Drive,
was insane. It was the favored course of racers from
Bobs Toluca Lake. It was isolated, which was good.
The L.A. River was on the north side. Forest Lawn
Cemetery was on the south, backed on to Grifth Park,
but bends in the road made it dangerous. Only a couple
hundred yards after the nish line the road curved
gradually to the right and then more sharply left. My
last race there, my cousin Denny was in the car with me.
That was the handicap I gave to the other driver. He had
a 50 Ford with an Oldsmobile engine. I was driving my
green and primer 55 Chevy with a built 283. It shouldnt
have been close, but I smoked the tires coming off the
line and had to push on the top end to catch him. I had
my foot to the oor and caught him in fourth gear, but
I didnt let up soon enough, winding out. The curve
was on me and the car started to drift. I overcorrected,
braking and jerking the wheel left, absolutely the wrong
thing to do, and I realized that, for a fraction of a second,
the car was on two wheels. Face ashen, clutching the
doorhandle, Denny was riding at least a foot higher than
I was. I backed off the brake, eased the wheel straighter
and gradually the steering came back and the car settled.
We actually felt the right-side wheels touch down, like
an airplane landing. It was the last time I raced at Forest
Lawn Drive and, soon after, I stopped racing altogether,
opting instead for marriage against the wishes of my
family. I was nineteen, we had to elope to Idaho. Cooney
had taught me some restraint, but not a lot.
Those days are gone. The top octane gas and it is
now only 97 octane costs more than three dollars. That
ugly 63 Plymouth Wedge sold at auction for $87,500.00.
Bought by a collector. It will never be driven. It will
live the rest of its life in a temperature and humidity
controlled pod, waiting for the next investor. What I
mostly miss is the sound of those cars on the street. It
was pure jungle noise, a rolling bass at idle and underway
a menacing roar that would make Harley riders pale, a
sound that could stampede dinosaurs.
I live now in Beachwood Canyon. If you know
where the Hollywood sign is, you know where I live.
The acoustics are strange. At night sometimes you can
hear a train on the Glendale side of the mountain, its
horn and straining engine; the bands at the Hollywood
Bowl sometimes sound like a party across the canyon;
and sometimes youll hear a car winding out at full
throttle, probably on Forest Lawn Drive, but it could be
Hollywood Boulevard, going through the gears at full
wail, and I cant help thinking back to those joyous and
dangerous years.
MATHEWS
48
no. 12
THE SEASON
Eloise Klein Healy
Sometimes when Colleen and I wake up in the morning,
before we even get out of bed,
we say a few things about the day
and anticipate the newspaper headlines.
And then we talk about the baseball game.
Baseballs whats right with the world,
and good game or bad, theres something
to say about it.
We love the whole vocabulary of action
and the encyclopedic litany of measurement
sixty feet six inches from pitcher to hitter,
elds as small as bandstands or spacious as national parks.
And then theres the speculative ction
of how our pitching will hold up against really heavy hitters,
the kind from the Midwest whose statistics are beefy,
or East Coast lineups whose averages soar like skyscrapers.
If home runs could inscribe the air,
last nights fusillade would hang there,
a neon arcade of arching and ethereal trails
backed up by palm trees and headlights in the parking lots
( for Maxine Kumin)
49
that ring Dodger Stadium,
itself a stack of circles,
and nothing at all like the at courts of the Aztecs
where play ball was a death sentence.
Much better here where theres always a tomorrow,
a clean score sheet waiting for its statistical narrative
to unfold among greasy popcorn ngerprints
and cotton candy smears in rainbow colors.
Who cant love the pandemaniacal anthems of the crowd,
the beach balls bounding from the outeld pavilions,
the improbable and impossible overlap
of diamonds and squares all in play?
Its enough to get you out of bed in the morning
and, like Max,
get all your poetry written
before the rst pitch of the day is thrown.
THE TORTI LLA CONSTRUCTI ON HANDBOOK
Samantha Dunn
They have nothing in common with the thin, scared-white,
store-bought kind that tear apart. Those cant hold the weight of one taco.
Keeb hates those. The kind you get in a supermarket. People outside
New Mexico dont even know about these things. Go to Raton (which
is not that far away but pretty much acts like Colorado already) and you
cant get Mexican food for shit. Hes always wondered why that is.
Where Keeb is from, people vaguely resemble somebody famous.
Except theyve never done anything. Its like this: In a dark bar take
the Dingo as an example if you catch sight of a man on the periphery
of your vision, before your eyes have really had a chance to focus, for a
second you would think to yourself, Hey, is that Mickey Rourke?
But it would just be Bobby Tulane. The momentary resemblance
has to do with the just-ate-the-rat tilt of his mouth, as though his lips
are remembering something no one else has tasted. Bobby might be the
single most worthless excuse for a heeler that ever did try team roping
and, worse, he considers himself a cowboy poet. Cowboy poet. Now
theres two words that pretty much cancel each other out.
Hey Keeber. Tulanes hand strangles a Bud longneck. Its ten in the
morning. You riding tonight? Pull a good bull? Keeb doesnt want to
waste ve seconds on Tulane so he just kind of smiles and nods, but the
cowboy poet takes even that as an invitation. What do you know there,
buddy? Hey, let me tell you something I just wrote. If it seems like Im free its
because Im always running.
The line makes Keeb think about his brother and those damn tapes
he played until they were so warped the cassette player ate them whole,
and how he would buy another one and start all over again. Unbeatable,
Keeb tells him, seriously, its good. Too bad Jimi Hendrix already said it.
He reaches out to cuff the side of Tulanes head, knocking his hat sideways.
Dont be a chag.
What the hells that mean? Christ you talk like some dang whatever
from California.
Whatever. Keeb keeps walking straight past the bar to the mens
Real corn tortillas are
thick, nutty, the span of
one hand.
51
room, to the urinal. Its a long drive out to Bernalillo and he hates stopping
roadside to piss.
This is what girls do: Talk about what theyre going to do when they
go somewhere else. Paige can spend an entire afternoon just looking at
fashion magazines. It doesnt matter if the issues are current or not. She
sees her future in fashion. She says, I have concepts. Im talking Gaultier
in denim. Can you image? We just need to get to New York. Well live in
the subway if we have to, Keeb. In junior high some older girls told Paige
she reminded them of Molly Ringwald, in some movie where she was the
poor girl with a lot of style. Since then shes been the only girl in Bernalillo
who wears a leopard-print synthetic fur coat. It provides no camouage.
Sometimes, like this morning, she tells him:
No Keeber. Im not into it right now.
I know I know I know, he replies, while his tongue searches the
freckled plane where her throat goes into the bony ridge of sternum. The
grime off the horses she loves clings to her. Sometimes horse hairs bead
themselves on her skin. Black with brown tips, their blunt shapes. The
hairs can form letters. Sometimes he sees words.
She pushes a hand against his shoulder, but not so hard he believes
anything shell say next. Damn it Keeb. That new colts bowed his right
tendon and Ive got to change those wraps on him and besides that I need
to turn Lulu out before I try to get on her this afternoon. (You heard of a
blue streak? Thats the way Paige talks.)
I know, baby, I know, he moves his mouth against her neck as he
murmurs, but could you just
The sigh, a little exaggerated for effect. OK, but just this today, Keeb,
OK?
Yeah. Thats perfect. Just right there
Let me know before you
Always, he lies. Hell tell her anything. Dont stop.
Did you call about that application? Whens the deadline? Paige
always talks through the door when shes in the bathroom.
What? Keeb says, although he heard her ne. What? Ask me when
you come out. You know Im not going to talk to you in there. He leans
back on the pillows theyve mussed and grabs one of those magazine on
her nightstand to thumb through. He stops on an article called Up Your
Sex IQ! Five Easy Steps to Be Einstein in the Bedroom. He can hear his
mother say, If Susan B. Anthony had read this crap women would never
have gotten the vote, but he folds the page over before he closes the spine.
Paige comes out with her hair wet, holding a comb with fat purple
plastic teeth that divides her curls not unlike the way a rotary till cuts hard
ground. She smells like warm vanilla and he thinks about that magazine
article.
You been reading this stuff? He holds out the cover for her to eye.
I think I need to test your comprehension of the subject matter one more
time.
Dont change the subject. She takes the magazine and tosses it on
the laminate ooring, comes over to put her arms around his neck. She
twines a nger in the thick blond hair at the base of his skull. If you dont
do college howre you going to get out of here?
She kisses the hollow of his throat and he feels her body, all liquid
52
no. 12
smooth, like hot syrup poured against him. If he could
inject her into his veins, he would. He puts his hands on
the slight grooves of her hips, feeling the heat of her skin
through the thin cotton of her bathrobe. She orders
these lingerie things out of catalogues; they dont hold
up well but he doesnt gure theyre meant to. Ill get
to it, he says. But you know, I was thinking maybe it
would be good to hold off for this year.
What? Why? Her hands drop from his neck,
jumping back like cats do when you blow hard on their
face, the whiskers turned down, the ears folded back.
He reckons then her arms look something like PVC pipe.
The girl needs to eat more.
Chavez and me, we were thinking about nishing
up the circuit, maybe trying Calgary in the summer
He hurries the explaining but already she is turning her
back away. I could save some more money. Get set up
better, you know?
Well, thats just so intelligent. She has a brittle
way of talking sometimes. You are the smartest person
I know, but you just want to do whatever your moron
friends do. Working construction and rodeo on the
weekend. Why is that, Keeb?
Just back the fuck off. Like he needs her opinion
on this particular issue yet again. So you want me to do
something you can show your parents? Thats what this
whole things about. Its got nothing to do with me.
He is thinking about the look he caught on Mrs.
Lynchs face the day he came by to pick up Paige after
he just got off a job, all stucco and paint and sunburnt so
bad it hurt to smile. Had to re-grout a whole bathroom
and thats a bitch of a job, dont wish it on anybody, a real
knee killer, and damned if his bum leg hadnt ached so bad
he gimped up to the door like a man three times his age.
Pity and disgust locking Mrs. Lynchs jaw unattractively,
narrowing her eyes. Paige with the same look on her face
today. Shes eating her nail polish, which is purple, like
eggplant or organ meat. To ease the tension he reaches
over to stick his little nger in her ear; she swats his hand
away, in the same motion meant for a mosquito or a y.
Im not laughing. She turns her head to look out the
window next to the bed, always having to squint against
the glare. Only twenty-two years old and lines already
fan from the folds of her eyes, like the ribs of goldsh
ns. John, she only calls him this when shes mad, its
just that you could do anything and youd rather ride a
bull and get yourself smashed up
But hes already slid into his jeans and pulled on his
shirt. He carries his boots in his hand as he steps out
the bedroom door. Easier just to hot-foot it over to the
Camino and put them on in there.
He swings by the house to pick up his gear. His
great aunt, Doreen Gaffney, insists on oiling his boots
for good luck before a ride. He thinks a rabbit foot
would be easier but he goes along with it. Once a lanky
woman, Aunt Doreens shoulders are now rounded and
bony, her droopy-lidded eyes the color of pond water,
the same watery blue-green as Moms, and she wears the
smile of a child, trusting and a little eager. She is also a
drunk. Not a mean one, a six-pack-after-dinner type,
but still a drunk.
More often than not she tells him, Youre real smart,
Keeb. Smart like your mother is smart. She gets that
from the Jews. Shes worked for the kikes over there at
the college so long all that rubbed off on her. Just dont
get so high and mighty like she is now. Dont go back on
your raising. This is spoken as a warning and creed.
After his parents divorced and they left Dad
on the ranch in Fort Sumner, his mother took Keeb
and his brother Todd to the home they share now in
Albuquerques Northeast Heights. Not the newer,
expensive part of the Heights built for the generation
of Californians who just moved in, but the older part
where the sod actually has had time to root. The
streets are Pennsylvania and Louisiana, places he
supposes the whiteys who named the streets moved
in from. City planners, got to be. Career path of the
mediocre and uninspired, of the petty criminal and
emotionally retarded. How bad does your life have to
get before you go into city government? Theres also
Comanche Boulevard, which goes to show you how
much these whiteys knew when they got here, because
the Comanches arent even a New Mexico tribe. Maybe
they raided the pueblos occasionally, but they never lived
here.
The Keeber house is brick with a shingled roof,
the lawn evenly measured, the front door so much like
the neighbors that its possible to wander home loaded
and end up in the Reinhardts living room (high school
senior year, enough said). The Keebers and his mothers
family, the Gaffneys, are the New Mexico kind of family
the tourist literature prefers to ignore. He terms their
cultural heritage cracker, as in shit-kicking, cracker-
ass, red-neck motherfuckers, but Mom is in denial about
the whole thing and pitches a t when he talks like this.
John David Keeber, stop it. We are above that, Mom
says, and in fact she is, her hair an impeccable yellow
sculpture done like Farrah Fawcett, books lining shelf
after shelf as if creating a fortress of higher thought. She
cleans house like shes destroying evidence. Sufce to
say the Keeber ancestral homeland is Southern in origin,
maybe one of the Virginias or Carolinas, but its hard to
be denite since specics on a few relatives are nebulous
at best. They came here trying to pick up the pieces of
53
their lives after the Civil War, Mom says. Which means,
of course, they were on the side that lost.
Mrs. Lynch is born again. Whenever hell sit still
long enough to listen she talks about the Rapture and
how shell be taken up to heaven, which sounds a lot like
the lingerie section of Dillards the way she describes
it. All white and lace and walking on clouds, which he
thinks would probably be like walking barefoot across
good carpeting, the kind with lots of premium padding
underneath. She might not like him much but she does
want him saved, and Keeb appreciates the sentiment.
When he looks over Albuquerque from a great
height, say from Sandia Peak or imagining a hawks eye
view, he sees land stitched in a patchwork, the outseams
frayed, eventually weaving back into the mustard-beige
sides of the mesas. Each neighborhood has its own color
and a texture. Downtown is a burlap of concrete and
rough design. The South Valley, a low adobe brown. The
Northeast Heights, the exact green of people who obsess
about keeping the grass. Southeast of the fairgrounds
is sort of a rag rug. The cleavage of mountain to the
east marks the opening of Tierjas Canyon, the Malibu of
Albuquerque, a place where houses are hidden up long
driveways. To the west Coors Road is the marker for
the Mexican Redneck Ponderosa, home of hombres who
look like Jimmy Smits only fatter, who drive jacked-up
dualies or Ford F-150s and wear belt buckles big enough
to serve dinner on. One being his best friend, David
Chavez.
Hes picking Chavez up by Hoffman Plaza before
they head over to Chavez house. Theres a CVS
pharmacist over there who hasnt noticed his vicodin
prescription ran out three rells ago. He thinks the
pharmacist might be a pillhead herself, or at least
someone who knows what it is to have pain that never
ends.
His Camino passes a sign announcing Arroyo Hahn,
which means theyve poured concrete down the sand
and made the arroyo into a straight line so that its no
more than a ditch. But tourists dont pay for ditches, so
they need a sign that says Arroyo Hahn. Used to be that
it was just all dirt down there. Keeb and Todd would
spend afternoons after school catching horny toads, dry
little fat creatures that always looked like they were
smiling. The brothers didnt do anything bad with them,
just tried to get them to eat grasshoppers theyd captured
and pulled the legs from. Sometimes the toads would
take the legless grasshoppers and sometimes they would
ignore the offerings. Todd was so young then he thought
the toads who wouldnt eat were just shy. They shy,
hed say. The kid couldnt use a verb to save his life.
Keeb shakes off the thought and says out loud to
no one, Bet if I went into that ditch now I would nd
exactly zero horny toads. All of the toads now entombed
in their sand tunnels under those tons of concrete.
Come to think of it, he hasnt seen a horny toad in about
ten years. What do kids do now if they dont play with
horny toads? The answer is: ride skateboards fast so the
speed will mask the fact that theres nothing to see in a
fucking ditch.
Although Keeb turns the radio up and rolls the
window down, the day Todd came home from the
Navy recruiting ofce starts to repeat, rerun after rerun.
Four solid years of work, man. Maybe the rest of my life,
Todd seemed proud.
But the Navy? Dude, why not the Air Force? The
Army at least.
And be stuck at Sandia? He looked at Keeb
like one too many bulls had stepped on his head. Im
not staying here. Im going around the world, fuckin
understand that?
Youre talking submarine duty, Mister In-the-Navy
Man. You sign up for four years underwater and you
dont even know how to spell nautical.
Todd sprawled over the couch, his long legs like
poles, barely hinged at the hip. He could play good
basketball but not well enough to get to college for free.
I dont know what youre talking about half the time.
Sea man. Semen. (Juvenile, sure, but what do you
expect theyre brothers.)
Todd, annoyed. Asshole.
Shut your pie hole, mutt. Keeb popped him hard
on the thigh. His brother, younger by two years. The
distance between them was frozen the day he walked
Todd to kindergarten and Mom told him he was the oldest
and the responsible one. Todd stood up and looked him
square in the eye. Try me now, motherfucker. Ill take
your head off.
Keeb shrugged, walked toward the kitchen.
Someday Ill take that bet.
Fact: Bull riding has the highest rate of injury
of any rodeo sport. Maybe of any sport at all. Spinal
chord and traumatic brain injuries, compound fractures,
these are a few of the favorite things. It only stands
to reason that eight seconds straddling and spurring a
ton of pissed-off animal will cause harm, especially if
that animals sole existence consists of eating, shitting,
fucking and ghting.
As a consequence, if the body of John David Keeber
were land it would be a bone yard, littered with the
broken and unreplaced. So many scars trace his skin
he has forgotten to count them, but here are the most
memorable: Across his left-hand knuckles rise a series of
narrow, white ridges that look like lacing. On his back
DUNN
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no. 12
a stripe of skin thats puckered and dimpled, the exact
negative impression of the wire fence that grated it. And
at the base of his throat a slit like a crescent gill, a place
from which he did at one time breathe.
But what he most feels is what cannot be seen, and
that is the titanium rod through his left leg, bolted below
his knee and at the ankle. The product of a spiral fracture.
Secretly he thinks the word is beautiful. Spiral, as in
colors, like a kaleidoscope, which is what happens when
the body is twisted by extreme force. Bone, the big blue
of major arteries, stringy white ligament, and of course
blood, which, when exposed to air, is redder than you
can imagine.
Truth is, he thinks about dying a lot, probably
more than just a healthy curiosity, and worries at how
inconvenient death is for the people still living. Outright
suicide is just rude. He knows if someone up and killed
themselves he would think, What a prick, he expects
me to clean this up. Shotgun or cutting, the volume
of blood it takes to die would mean some of it couldnt
be stopped from seeping in between oor tiles and
leaving a crimson stain. Carpet would be ruined for sure.
Hanging is out: That takes too long and someone has got
to cut you down, assuming the rafter doesnt break with
the weight of your body, with you left alive and having to
explain the broken beam. Plus theres the chance the job
would be incomplete and then whats left, a vegetable on
a rope, broccoli on a swing.
He doesnt talk about any of this. He thinks, given
everything thats happened in the world, its not that big
a deal, really.
Mrs. Chavez is Chavezs grandma, who calls
Chavez Joseito, as in Little Joe, as in Little Joe from the
Ponderosa.
You look more like Hoss, says Keeb.
You look more like Hoss ass, says Chavez.
Touch, dillweed. Mrs. Chavez is worried Keeb
will marry Paige, which of course would happen, like,
never, but Mrs. Chavez was married at thirteen so to her
theyre more than old enough. She eyes the young mens
girlfriends up and down as if theyre pieces of furniture
and shes got to gure out how to arrange them in the
living room. Mrs. Chavez calls Keeb hijo. Hes been
friends with Chavez so long theres a good chance shes
forgotten hes not one really of her grandkids. For his
part Keeb believes hes a little less white than he really is,
a mestizo soul capped in dirty blond hair.
Ven, mijo, she motions and leads him into the warm
kitchen where she takes an ancient wooden spoon to stir
a pot of beans. The scent of cumin and pork fat: two
of the only things he knows for sure. Hows your mami
doing? All this time since you heard anything about
your brother. I worry so much about her, pobrecita, I cant
imagine what she must feel.
The air in Keebs lungs turns to lead. He
concentrates hard and breathes again, notices that the
top of Mrs. Chavez head hits him mid stomach. He can
see how wiry the white hairs are against the smoother,
blacker ones that sprout from the crown of her head.
Shes ne, maam. Just ne. He has a smile that makes
women forget what they were talking about. That which
you cant overpower you must divert, as any bullrider
learns. If they dont learn it fast enough, they die. I
was just hoping you had some of that posole left over
from the other day?
When Mrs. Chavez laughs it arrives in bursts like
plates breaking across linoleum. Oye, mueco, you got to
learn to make posole yourself porque that girl youre with
dont know nothing. She stands him by the stove.
Grandma, Paige can cook. He doesnt know why
he lies to her. The truth is Paige can order out.
Oh si, she clucks, which actually means, Like I believe
that. But she doesnt know posole. What are you going to
eat at Christmas if she doesnt make posole?
Ill just eat at your house. That smile of his again
and she beams, a light coming on behind her eyes, the
color of molasses. She squeezes his hand.
Chavez stands at the refrigerator, drinking milk out
of the carton. He shakes his head at Keeb. Youre such
a kiss ass.
!Joseito! Dont be talking like that in my house!
Mrs. Chavez whacks at his head with the wooden spoon.
He ducks too late.
Late afternoon already. Keeber and Chavez
drive the Camino up Central Avenue toward the
fairgrounds, radio blaring Led Zeppelins Immigrant
Song. The two bear slim resemblance to the Lee
Greenwood-listening, Bible-believing, God-Bless-
the-USA aw-shucks Marlboro image of the American
cowboy that people who have never been around
modern cowboys have, if they think about cowboys at
all. Besides, bullriders arent really cowboys in the sense
of the word. In the evolutionary chain theyre a closer
relative of snowboarders or base jumpers, adrenaline
athletes who know total quiet only in the midst of the
rush, the spin, the roar.
They talk about trafc, Chavez talks about the
Packers game and a barrel racer named Katy hes sure
has been giving him a vibe, Keeb complains that Paige
is on her college kick again and they complain about
money and the lack of it but they do not, ever, talk
about the bulls theyve pulled for their rides. Just one of
those things, like how in baseball youre not supposed to
mention the fact that someones pitching a no-hitter, for
55
fear of a jinx.
Keeb is thinking about this son-of-a-bitch gray
Brahma hes pulled, called Cyclone for the fact he cranks
to the left in circles tight and fast. But already his neck
aches if he thinks about it too long, then he considers he
could get a good mid-70s, maybe 80 score if he manages
the ride from the chute on out
Then, coming through the speaker, the rst chords
of Styxs Too Much Time on My Hands, one of the
suckiest songs of all time.
Switch it! Keeb directs Chavez, but even as he
says it he knows his friend is going to react too late, so
he reaches across the steering wheel and hits the tuner
to get something, anything, else coming through the
speakers. All right! Chavez yells. Jesus. Quit acting
like a little bitch.
Then maybe Chavez says something else but its
already too late. Keeb has heard enough of the chords
so that this Vegas-variety-show lame excuse for a prog-
rock anthem has inltrated his brain and the damn song
is playing in his head. This is the worst of all situations
for a man about to face a 1,700-pound bull named
Cyclone whos had a cattle prod stuck up his ass out of
the chute. The problem goes something like never let a
sucky song enter your brain because you could be killed
before youve had a chance to replace it with something
like Johnny Cash or even the Rolling Stones, meaning
your dying thoughts will be the lyrics to some mediocre
crud. Like all observed principles (such as the Ten
Commandments and the reason Jews dont eat pork
because animals with cloven hooves used to have some
disease) the sucky-song principle is empirically based.
After more than one of the times hes been thrown,
Rock n Roll Hoochie Coo ran through his head as if
it were on a tape loop. The other part of his mind that
could still think other thoughts was tortured with the
idea that a stupid song by Rick Derringer would be his
send-off to the next eternity.
Maybe Keeb said this out loud, because Chavez is
staring at him. The real point is you should get the
damn tape player xed. Fuckin freak.
The entire crowd in Tingley Coliseum is on its
feet, of this he is somewhat aware. Otherwise he feels
only the hemp burn of the bull rope cutting into his
right hand, even through the rawhide glove. There is the
heave and jerk of Cyclone beneath him and, strange as it
sounds, hes sure he can make out the slight tinkle-tinkle
jingle-jangle off the dull rowels on his spurs. Then the
buzzer, foghorn loud, blaring the signal for eight seconds.
Eight seconds. Ride complete.
And then, air.
Time becomes elastic, stretching out before him.
There is a blur of leopard print in the stands, he can
almost be certain, and then, weird enough, the moon
face of lame-ass Bobby Tulane comes into focus as Keebs
head slams into the gate, the cowboy poet grimacing, in
that moment at a loss for words.
Who knows what happens next? Sure, well, there
are the bullghters weaving and dodging around Cyclone
to pull his attention off the rag doll he wants to toss again
with his horns. But maybe then Todd Keeber, looking
dapper in his Navy seaman standard issue blues the
youngest Keeber gone AWOL or suicide, the story was
never really clear maybe he really does leap from
somewhere in the stands and step onto the dirt. Maybe
he does cradle his brothers limp form in his arms.
Anyhow that is what Keeb himself feels. Lifted. And
there is the smell of cumin, and a warm pot on the stove.
DUNN
Chris Lowry
CRI CKET S CRASHI NG CONTI NENTS
The good news is that its a fundamentally
simple game.
You may already have gathered, perhaps from watching the lms
of Merchant-Ivory, that the object of cricket is to hit the ball and start
running. Likewise you might have guessed that your opponents task is to
stop you hitting the ball, or to make you hit it in such a way that its caught
before it hits the ground, or best of all to propel the ball with sufcient
accuracy, speed and/or spin that it ends up directly behind you.
In fact, if youve given the matter much thought, you might have
concluded the only real difference between cricket and baseball is that
the latter has somehow misplaced the s in the word innings.
At this point things get a little more complicated, so let me rst
fortify you for the journey ahead by considering the joys that wait at
our destination. At its best, a cricket match is a sublime occasion, more
complete in its satisfaction than anything rival games can offer. I speak
as one who will happily watch any sporting contest, with the possible
exception of Olympic dressage.
Take for example the last day of the second test in the 2005 Ashes.
It was the most thrilling experience Ive had on a Sunday morning. Four
days of combat had built towards a climax, with England apparently on
the brink of claiming a rare, and commensurately precious, victory over
its nemesis, Australia. The weather was the best the English summer has
to offer balmy and still. All that was needed to transform this sunny
morning into an azure paradise was the apparently inevitable win. The
Aussies were teetering, the coup de grace apparently minutes away.
But Australia hadnt read the script. Decades of feasting on success
all over the cricketing world had done nothing to blunt their appetite
for victory, especially when the dish was marinated in English blood. As
57
sportswriter Paul Hayward warned readers of Londons Daily Telegraph
before one Ashes clash, Nobody should kid himself that Australia will
lose the will to keep stamping while England writhes beneath the boot. In
short, the apparent hopelessness of their cause on this day merely served to
stimulate the endorphins.
All Australias recognized batsmen were gone. Standing between
England and victory were a couple of Aussie bowlers (pitchers in
baseball parlance) with no more natural batting ability than you or I. One
of crickets most entertaining spectacles is the bowlers often very tall
men who look hopelessly uncoordinated with bat in hand going out at
the end of an innings like lambs to the slaughter, at best connecting with
wild swings, more often cut down in quick succession. Cricketing logic
therefore dictated that the remaining Australians would be dismissed far
short of the 107 runs they required. England needed just two more wickets
(outs) to win the game.
In other words, the end was nigh.
Yet, slowly but surely the Australian rear-guard action chipped away
at the total. As minutes turned to hours, the crowd, a drunken mob on
previous days, was stunned rst into sobriety, then a silent apoplexy of
nervous tension. This was only intensied when the rst Australian wicket
fell. The eruption of relief and anticipation that greeted this dismissal
was soon replaced by a stillness even deeper and more mesmerising than
before. A cricketing cat has ten lives only one now remained. The
drama of cricket is that nothing can happen for days and then, suddenly,
everything can hang by a thread: the game, the series, entire careers.
That thread grew thinner and thinner until nally, the moment
arrived when it had to snap. Australias hack batsmen had whittled the
target of 107 down to two. The turnabout was complete the underdog
had clawed its way back up the precipice and was now salivating over
prostrate English esh. A single ash of the blade could send the ball
over the boundary, scoring four runs (or six if it cleared the rope without
bouncing) and winning the closest match in the 120-year history of the
Ashes.
But at exactly that point, the towering English bowler Steve Harmison
himself something of a clown when batting but devoid of sympathy for
his opposite numbers sent down a thunderbolt. Australias Michael
Kasprowicz could only use his bat in self-defense and nicked the ball
into the grateful gloves of the (Australasian-born, Queensland-raised)
Englishman (of Welsh parents) Geraint Jones.
England had won. The release of emotions that had been pent up
through two decades of Australian dominance, and pumped up by days of
mortal conict, was one that no one who witnessed it will forget.
Such moments loom large in crickets collective consciousness. One
reason for their impact may be the sheer length of time involved: a test
match can last ve days, and then might not produce a result. The glacial
pace of proceedings partly explains why, when the crunch nally comes, such
tumultuous feelings are unleashed. Not that all tests end with excitement,
of course many are notoriously damp squibs. But sometimes teams
collide with the slow purpose of crashing continents.
Is this what has attracted the interest of so many great writers?
Cricket has long captivated A-list authors, by no means all of them English.
Its devotees include James Joyce and Samuel Beckett (the latter, a skilled
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no. 12
batsman and left-arm bowler, is thought to be the only Nobel laureate to
have had his exploits chronicled in the cricketing bible Wisden), as well as
Salman Rushdie whose rst sporting love is the Indian national team
and the great Trinidadian historian CLR James.
With the exception of James, however, few of them have said much
about the game in their work. Indeed its a common misconception that
cricket and great literature are conjoined twins; even Harold Pinter, the
obsessive fan who once said that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever
created on earth, and whose rst thought during a childhood evacuation
from a German bombing raid was to rescue his bat, seldom mentioned it in
his plays. Great cricket writing was left to those for whom it was a day job,
such as the journalist Neville Cardus and the broadcaster John Arlott. I
have no satisfactory explanation for this literary lacuna, but perhaps Pinter
and company felt that cricket was, in essence, enigmatic and ineffable. So
many of lifes treasures are, after all. Nonetheless, there are some things
about the game we can say.
Which takes us back to the rules. The gist, as suggested above, is that
the bowler runs in and throws the ball at the batsman, who does his best
to connect, and if he has been successful sprints up and down the
pitch as many times as possible before an opposition elder has returned
the ball to either wicket. There are two wickets, wooden structures
comprising three stakes (stumps) pushed into the ground (if youre in
England, where the turf is soft) or driven in, Dracula-esque, with a mallet
(if youre in the South African veldt, where the earth can be as dry and
hard as an Arizona parking lot). When the ball hits any part of the wicket,
it smashes like a rickety fence charged by a bull. In this regard, cricket is
more spectacularly visual than baseball, where an umpire decides whether
the pitchers delivery was accurate or not. In cricket, if the bowler hits
the target, everyone can see and hear the evidence in the form of ying
woodwork.
Except that, as always with cricket, its not as simple as that. Often
the umpire does have to decide whether the delivery was accurate and
as I type I sigh, thinking (in my imaginary Australian accent): Crikey, the
minute you try and explain this game it begins to seem like a mineeld.
Maybe the best thing is to celebrate the apparent complexity, always
remembering that once you get the hang of it, cricket isnt that complicated
at all. (Remember that the sport thrives in the worlds poorest areas,
enjoyed from infancy by children who are denied even a basic education
for whom, it is sometimes said, cricket is education). In any case it becomes
clear that the game dees attempts to explain it in a linear fashion. Better
to wade in at any point and let the examination of each idiosyncrasy serve
as a torch in the catacombs.
Take for example my assertion earlier that the bowler throws the
ball at the batsman. Those familiar with the game may have thought, wait
a minute, thats exactly what he doesnt do. Throwing is outlawed; the
bowler must keep his elbow locked, and if he straightens it from a bent
position his delivery is invalid. On the other hand, the most successful
bowler in the games history, Muttiah Muralitharan, is widely regarded
as a chucker or, in other words, a cheat. An Indian Tamil born in
Sri Lanka, Murali is so bewitchingly brilliant he appears to defy science,
and when one of his viciously spinning deliveries reared unpredictably up
from a Melbourne pitch in 1995, the umpire concluded that Murali had
straightened a bent elbow.
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In fairness to the ump, it looks to the naked eye as if Murali is indeed
a chucker. Closer examination reveals otherwise. Experts in biomechanics,
working with super slow-mo cameras, discovered that some straightening
of the joint was an anatomical inevitability, and the rules were changed as
a result. The Murali affair opened up a can of worms not just in Sri Lanka
but among the millions who play and follow the game. Worse was the
suggestion of racism that hung in the air, as the Sri Lankan legends devotees
complained that a player of European descent would not have faced such
scrutiny. The fact that the bowler suffered from a congenital defect in his
arm, believed to be more common in poorer countries with less advanced
healthcare, only compounded the matter. Incidentally, among Muralis
ercest critics was the former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe. If
youre not cricket-literate you might not know of Martins prodigious
feats hes amongst the greatest batsmen his country has ever produced
but youll almost certainly know about the equally prodigious feats, in the
elds of acting and phone-throwing, of his cousin, Russell.
Mention of the Crowes brings us back Down Under, to the source
of crickets greatest rivalry, the Ashes. If Sri Lanka illustrates how far
cricket has come from the days when it was the preserve of white men, and
if these days the games stronghold is India and the sports best players
come from places like Antigua, where the legendary slugger Viv Richards
was born and raised, Australia is cricket history.
The rst test, between England and Australia, was played in
Melbourne in 1877. Australia won. The Ashes began a few years later,
when the Empire lost for the rst time on home soil; the English press was
so outraged by this humiliation that the Sporting Times printed an obituary
in affectionate memory of English cricket, which died at the Oval on 29th
August 1882, writing at the end, N.B. The body will be cremated and the
ashes taken to Australia. Many fans believe that the ashes are those of
a bail which was set alight, and that theyre contained in a small wooden
urn presented to an English team which toured Australia later that year.
In fact the urn isnt formally linked to the contest, and some speculate
that any ashes contained are those of a Victorian ladys veil, though x-rays
reveal that a bail remains the likeliest candidate.
That aside, Ashes history is well documented. Australia has
dominated, particularly in recent years; the 2006/7 series, held in the res
of an Australian summer where temperatures frequently soared above a
hundred degrees, was a dramatic example the visitors were trounced
5-0. Of the many controversies that have beset the contest through the
decades, the most notorious was Englands incendiary tour of Australia
in 1932-33, depicted in the 1984 mini-series Bodyline, starring a young
Hugo Weaving. By the late 1920s English cricket resented its constant
drubbings by the upstart Antipodeans and foresaw, in the person of an
up-and-coming Aussie bat called Donald Bradman, another decade of
humiliation. So good he could almost have beaten England on his own,
Bradman is considered not only the greatest cricketer who ever lived but,
by some, the greatest exponent of any sport. Such is his legend that, when
Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island after twenty-seven
years, the rst thing he asked an Australian he met outside the prison was
whether The Don was still alive.
The England players had to do something to stop Bradman. But what
they chose was regarded by many as, well, just not cricket. They devised
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a tactic that would effectively amount to decapitating the opposition
literally. A cricket ball is hard and heavy, like a tennis ball lled with lead
and coated with cement, and when bowled at ninety miles per hour it has
killed players, though theres only one occasion when a rst-class team
deliberately risked injuring the opponent. That was bodyline, the English
tactic of bowling at the batsmans chest and head in the hope that the
victims need to take evasive action might cause him to spoon an easy catch
to a cordon of close elders.
It didnt go down well, even with the English players. The brainchild
of a fanatically ambitious captain, Douglas Jardine, played by Weaving
in the miniseries, bodyline split the touring party, at least behind closed
doors. Those were the days of gentlemen (amateurs) and players
(professionals), and among both groups were those who doubted the
morality of Jardines tactic. Foremost was the Nawab of Pataudi, the
Oxford-educated heir to an Indian ruling clan; when Pataudi refused to
take up a position in one of Jardines bodyline cordons, the captain said, I
see his Highness is a conscientious objector.
But the tactic was a success. Bradman and colleagues were unable
to settle into their usual rhythm, and one Australian player sustained a
fractured skull, inaming the already heightened passions of the crowd,
which was larger than ever, and requiring the polices intervention. The row
was so poisonous it became an international diplomatic incident, and the
fallout caused, among other things, a mutual and economically disastrous
consumer boycott. The Bodyline series hold on the imagination of cricket
fans has led to talk of a new movie, one with particular emphasis on the
Australian captain at the time, Bill Woodfull, who refused, despite the
desperate exhortations of his countrymen, to stoop to Jardines level lest it
damage the game he loved.
Cast as Woodfull in the lm? Russell Crowe.
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ITS GARRY SHANDLINGS SHOW
SPOOFS THE NATURAL
(TELEVISION, 1988)
A straight-faced sports movie that begs to be
parodied meets a television show willing to rise
or sink, depending on your appetite for Shandlings
canny flatness to the challenge. The only surprise
in this episode from the shows third season is that
Shandling would knowingly invite comparisons to
Robert Redfords hair.

Dwayne Moser
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
(MOVIE BY PENNY MARSHALL, 1992)
Gathering Madonna, Rosie ODonnell and Jon Lovitz
together in one movie seems like insanity, a bomb
destined to be heard in theaters around the world.
Instead Marshall makes an important if schmaltzy
tribute movie to the All-American Girls Professional
Baseball League that kept Americas favorite
pastime alive while the male players went off to
fight World War II. Geena Davis stars as the good-
looking catcher of the Rockford Peaches, managed
by Tom Hanks; Davis sister Lori Petty ends up
traded because she cant control her sibling rivalry.
What becomes this film most is its likeability and
intentions. Successful on both of these counts, we
all know now that theres no crying in baseball.

Monica Carter
END ZONE
(NOVEL BY DON DELILLO, 1972)
DeLillos farcical take on college football is not the
typical take-a-group-of-muscled-misguided-youths-
and-as-miracles-would-have-it-turn-them-into-a-
well-oiled-championship-team-during-one-season
sports novel. Its a light and meditative spiraling
narrative, like a long pass in the air perfect in
its trajectory and delivery. A blocking back who
shuns his potential at bigger schools only to play
for a small West Texas college, Gary Harkness is
preoccupied with war and extraterrestrials; his
passionate involvement in brilliantly staged tactical
violence on the field meets head-on his passionate
search for the horrific tactical implications of
nuclear holocaust. Football comes out the winner,
like any good sport in a capitalist war-happy society
should.

Monica Carter
BOX SCORES
Anne-Marie Kinney
ZI ZOU PRSI DENT
June 1998. The masses
pouring into Paris sit sweating,
hugging their overstuffed
luggage in their laps. With most of Air France on strike, theres no one
to wheel the airstairs to the planes. They sit, trapped in their seats, with
nothing to do but wait for this nightmare to sort itself out somehow, to
grind their teeth, to stare out the little windows in private unfocused
panic, longing to unfold their legs. Time is the only way out, and theres
no sign of it anywhere.
In the city too, time seems to have slowed to an unbearable crawl. It
seems for a while that the day will never come. The Scotsmen picnicking
along the Trocadero look weary, their jerseys wrinkled, the boomboxes
plunked beside them in the grass playing Rod Stewarts Every Picture
Tells a Story for the tenth time today. As the sun sits swollen in the sky,
as the shadows of the four crouching giants loom across the city, their
lifeless heads hanging over the treetops, the early summer breeze seems
to whisper
ole, ole ole ole, O-le, O-o-le
like a half-forgotten prayer. Day and night people crowd around the
sleeping giants, watching for any sign of movement, but it isnt time yet.
There is only the watching and waiting, the shallow breath and pulsing
nerves.
I remember playing in another place, at another time, when something
amazing happened. Someone passed the ball to me, and before even
touching it, I knew exactly what was going to happen.
Zinedine Zidane
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In his own corner of the city a young Algerian-Frenchman, a rising
star, waits too.
In a few weeks hell be the most beloved man in France, the apparent
fulllment of a nations dream of itself. On the Champs-Elyses the
Algerian ag will wave alongside the French one, and the chant Zizou
Prsident will reach beyond the city to the outer banlieues where little kids
crowded around rabbit-eared TV sets watch the celebration, parents
hanging back in awe. But rst the giants have to wake up. Separately,
simultaneously, the tin men with their pupil-less eyes and closed mouths
come alive, mechanical necks creaking, diesel-engine nervous systems
whirring as the men rise up and begin their slow lumbering journey to
meet one another, to signal to the bodies below pressed against each
other, rib cages squeezed against metal railings, collective hot breath lling
metro station stairwells, hair pasted to the backs of their necks that
something is happening, will happen, has happened, has been happening
all along.
The young Zidane, dubbed Zizou by a former coach, wont be playing
tonight, not yet. But already he hears the sounds of the stadium; he pictures
himself on the pitch, the vibrant green of the eld. He closes his eyes and
listens to the wave of noise that hovers all around, that forms a barrier
between the match and anything thats not the match, the noise that
drowned out all voices save the one inside that drives him. He looks to his
teammates, proudly called Black, Blanc et Beur from Guadeloupe, from
Senegal, from the banlieues the team the far right leader Le Pen sniffed at,
saying they didnt really represent France, in whom he said French society
would never recognize itself each in his own space, deep in thought or
blocking out all thought, silent and primed. He thinks back to the narrow
strip of concrete in the quartier difcile of La Castellane, the only place to
kick the ball in private, where he would bide his time until supper, when he
and his brothers and sister would eat in shifts at the cramped kitchen table.
Its been so long since hes returned to La Castellane. It seems impossible
hes been away so long. His jaw tightens and he calls up the wave of noise
again.
The four giants, representing the four corners of the earth
brought together in this place at this time, chug on toward the Place de
la Concorde, their faces laboriously turning from side to side, blank eyes
surveying the falling night. The streets are cleared for them, the barriers
guarded by riot police, helmeted and gloved. What the people below dont
know yet is that the start of things the meeting of the giants, Scotland
and Brazil in the Stade de France, the triumphant return of the World Cup
to its birthplace wont bring an end to the rising tension in the air. It
will keep rising after it breaks.
When the opening ceremony is over, when the giants are driven behind
a wall to be disassembled and carted away to a warehouse, the people below
dont feel anything has changed. They still cant move, jammed in tight
corners, whispering to each other. The games are about to begin but no
one here, in the street, in the stairwells, on balconies, in bars, can see it.
Soon the need to move grows more urgent, as girls try to wriggle away
from drunk men who tell them their eyes are like pearls of the sea, who
tell them, their mouths slack against the girls necks, that they should go
dancing, that they must be beautiful dancers, as boys try to extract their
skulls from the crooks of strangers armpits, as glasses are squeezed out of
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sweaty hands to shatter at neighbors feet, splattering beer on bare ankles.
Soon there are defectors, bodies breaking out of the tangled mass, sending
cool air shooting into the crowd. Soon glasses are being thrown and the
riot police are gaining, their plastic visors down and batons gripped tight;
the crowd breaks up as people run down alleys, averting their eyes from the
ones whove been caught and beaten, holding up their arms to protect their
faces from ying debris, stopping only when they realize theyve reached
some pocket of quiet far from home. On this night the city doesnt sleep.
It hides and waits, white-knuckled, for morning.
When the young midfielder who plays for France because he has
dual citizenship and, they say, an Algerian coach thought he was too slow
enters the stadium, he already has a feeling, something the air is telling him.
The air parts for him as he walks, so theres no sound, and no direction but
the one hes heading down. Its curious more than unsettling, this weight
that seems to be bearing on him. When the game begins, his focus narrows
down to the ball and the space around the ball, the pathways that illuminate
themselves for him, which he follows without hesitation, sliding in at the
necessary angle, at the exact moment when hes needed, manipulating
the ball like he is its rightful owner. But mostly he watches, eyes darting
across the eld, frowning, consumed. The stands that surround the eld,
tall and brightly lit, wall him in, a towering impassable glow. As far as his
perception goes, the match could be going on for days. It will go on as long
as it goes on, because time doesnt have meaning here. There is no real
time, only this, only now, on and on.
His focus is broken only when a taunting voice its past. His head
jerks in the voices direction, as he watches the Saudi Arabian player, Amin,
jog away. For the next few minutes he tries to keep his attention on the ball
and the space around it, but keeps ashing back to the voice. He sees Amin
hovering nearby, mouthing things to him; he cant be sure whats being said
but he ashes back to all the times hes had to defend himself and his people
since leaving La Castellane for a life in football, his rst weeks playing for
Cannes spent on cleaning duty after he punched an opponent for mocking
his immigrant neighborhood, the whispers from detractors of his father
being a harki a traitor to Algeria whispers hes never entirely sure
hes heard in the moment but that stay with him, needle him, never leave
his thoughts. The more he watches Amin, the less the words matter. Soon
the ball is secondary, and his focus is entirely on Amins back, his apping
jersey running away, and all grows quiet inside as he resolves to follow, and
the next thing he knows hes standing over the writhing Saudi Arabian, a
red card apping above his head, the wall of spectators looking down. As
he leaves the eld his teammates yelling at the referee, everyone yelling
the pressure in the air lifts momentarily and what lies ahead is a thin fog
with no weight to it at all.
On the day of the final between France and Brazil, the mood
in Paris is tentative. Though Brazil seems unstoppable, and the chances
of beating them are slim to none, the French somehow have made it this
far, to this dizzying and unfamiliar height. Zizou is back after a two-game
suspension and the countrys hopes rest on his shoulders alone. He knows
this but is unsure if the pressure is coming from outside or if its pushing
to the surface from some place inside him where the voice that drives him
resides, his enforced hiatus giving it the time and space to build.
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But soon hes in the match space again, where the white noise of
the crowd hushes his nerves and time holds steady, opening pathways
for him, pointing him toward a breach where he tunnels in like a rush of
wind between bodies, hitting the ball with his prematurely balding head
with such force that it confounds Brazils goalie, who never sees it coming.
Zizou tumbles to the ground then rolls back up, always watching, heavy
brow furrowed. After that its as though a seal has been broken. His course
lights up before him brighter than before, the eld opening up its promise
one weaving path at a time, and hes the only one who can see it.
By the time Zizous done it a second time, a miraculous, almost
identical hit that leaves Brazil reeling, the streets begin to vibrate with the
energy of the crowds huddled around TVs mounted high on caf walls,
champagne bottles at the ready in cupboards, under counters, just in case;
and outside Paris too, on the outskirts and farther, in the quartiers difciles
theres a lifting sensation in veins, under ngernails, in hair follicles, but its
too soon, too soon.
and as he always does, amid the quaking stadium air and the crowd
noise that periodically collapses into its components, chairs creaking and
the individual shouts of Allez, allez! Zizou watches the eld for his next move,
following the light to set up shots for his teammates, following the driving
force that builds within him. Hes not thinking of the towering golden
trophy that sits just outside his peripheral vision, and hes not thinking
what it will mean or what people will say it means if they win. Theres only
this place, this time and no other. When his teammate Petit scores the goal
that will seal their fate if they can just beat the clock, hes still so deeply
involved in the eld, the space, the ball, the light, the path, that it hits the
streets before it hits him, that theyre winning, that its won, and the bodies
come ying out of doors.
Then hes being thrust into the air by a knot of intertwining arms,
and the noise crescendos higher and higher. The golden trophy rises up
from somewhere into his hands, and he closes his eyes as he brings it to
his lips. He runs his hands over and over it, just to feel its dimensions,
its glorious weight, and he clicks his teeth against its surface as he goes in
for another clumsy kiss, and the constant ashing of cameras bathes him
in white light. As the stadium erupts, as word travels through the cities,
suburbs and villages, sending more and more people ying from their TV
sets and out into the streets, these moments come ashing through his
consciousness, too quickly for him to fully process: There are posters of
him rolling off the presses, of him running head rst toward the camera,
ball hovering between his feet, the posters stacked up, rolled up, shoved in
boxes and shipped around the world along with jerseys emblazoned with
his name, not the name his family calls him, Yaz, but publicly, yes, his name.
There he is playing for Real Madrid, a lm crew of seventeen cameras
following him for a documentary hes agreed to for some reason, thats
supposed to unlock the secret of his mystic talent, there he is being named
a Chevalier of the Lgion dHonneur by Jacques Chirac, there is headline
after headline, Zidane as harbinger of a new racially united France, as role
model to Arab youth, as proof positive that fraternit has nally arrived.
The tension of the last few weeks unravels through the streets of Paris,
the running bodies creating rushes of wind where there were none on this
hot summer day, just two days before Bastille Day, but this is bigger. Before
long there are so many bodies in the street running, jumping, shouting,
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sts pumping, ags waving, that the spaces close up. Elbows jut into collar
bones, heels jump and land hard on neighboring toes, but no one feels the
pain until later, after they lose their voices from singing, after they grow
nauseated from lack of air.
In the banlieues, on the outskirts of the city and farther out in Marseille
and beyond, little ones jump and dance for the hero they can claim as one
of their own, their fathers breaking away from the festivities to get ready
for work, working in factories or working department-store security, like
Zizous own father had, or any work they can get. They stuff their aching
feet into thin-soled shoes and watch their children the purity of the
hope, of the pride swelling in their small chests as they rush into the alley
for re-enactments, scaled down into the tight space between crumbling
buildings. Their breaking point is still a ways off.
Still hoisted on a knot of bodies, he has let the trophy oat through
other teammates hands now, his brothers, Les Bleus, still beset by a utter
of camera ashes. He blinks his eyes and sees orange spots oating before
him and feels the mildest headache coming on from the force of collision.
Then he hears another voice, that taunting voice, but it isnt Amin this
time where is it coming from? What is it saying now? He can feel heat
rise up through him, so hot it will have to go somewhere, sometime soon;
then he hears the voice inside him, the one that says quietly, insistently now.
He squints his eyes hard to silence these thoughts run wild, and when he
opens them again, another camera ash sends a wash of whiteness over his
eld of vision, and the voices vanish. Then there is only this moment. And
this moment, he knows for certain, is beautiful.
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Lisa Teasley
BEACH VOLLEYBALL I S CHURCH
The four by four foot oil on
canvas is at gallery center. Atop the abstract prism of the sand court,
clouds lay like sick froth over the sun. Scattered light creates the illusion
that the seven gures play inside a souvenir glitter globe. Depending on
where the viewer stands, alternately blue then ambient gray sky makes
the outline of dolphins, the calm disturbance of water almost German. It
is postcard Los Angeles, if David Hockney, Alice Neel and Egon Schiele
worked a love child for the city.
Based on a weekly Sunday ten a.m. Will Rogers Beach game that
picks up in cooling mid-October and falls off in May, the painting features
on the right side of the net, two African American women, one tall, one
short, with stereotypic shiny and obedient muscle. The tall ones nostrils
are with sea air, the scent of sweat, and expectation that shell slam the
ball over the net. The short ones mouth is parted in awe of the power she
feels manipulating time while slowing down the ball for a proper set. In
acuity and health, theyre the Williams sisters of the sand.
Playing against the two is a tall glossy man with Roman soldier
carriage, the Hollywood version, because he is blondish and glassy-blue
eyed. His expression is vulnerable, as if hes unsure whether he can play
as well as he remembered or as well as he can play anything else. His
black-haired teammate has just served the ball, his st still revolutionary
activist-ready. If he were isolated on the canvas, he would be Soviet
propaganda of a young, glamorous, powerful Mexican Communist.
Sitting near the foreground post is a girl with her back to the
viewer. She is yogi bent over what could be an iPhone graphic game,
large indiscriminate navy sack in a heap next to her. From any angle, the
ball in wide brushstroke motion appears to be directly over her head,
though well over the net. Running toward the game is a couple, the guy
well-coiffed, fey and English, and his picture-perfect American wife, a
surprised, slightly insolent look on their faces like they were never before
late. His mouth is open, brows impish, as if cheerfully calling out to them,
Wicked bunch of tossers!
Live and on hand at the gallery opening are a few of the subjects, such
as foster sisters Shannon and Penelope, the unofcial hosts of the game.
The title of the painting:
Beach Volleyball Is Church.
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Hawthorne natives and Picfair Village residents, they wouldnt ordinarily
attend an opening in this particular Beverly Hills space nor do they feel at
all comfortable. But theyre proud of the painter, whom they assume has
come a long way.
Also present are the weekly games most reliable players, Jack and
Emmie, who shout I go! before hitting the ball. Missing is the tall, glossy
gorgeous plumber from Long Beach as well as his teammate, the painters
ex-boyfriend whom she portrayed in red and with a Russian st because
hed always dreamed of going there. Game co-host Penelope knew the
painters ex-boyfriend Ricky before the painter did. Three years before
the last day Penelope saw him, he had been her juvenile hall continuity
school student, who went AWOL the week before graduation and two
months before his ofcial day of release. Penelope met the painter Maribel
the day she ran into Ricky in Highland Park at the Lummis Home and
Garden. He wasnt scared, and not really surprised. Though it was the
painter Maribels job to give the Lummis tour that Penelope took, Ricky
was at his girlfriends side musing with his usual showmanship on how
Charles Fletcher Lummis built the house after walking from Cincinnati to
Los Angeles to become the rst city editor of a edgling Los Angeles Times.
With a touch of spit on his plush bottom lip, Ricky waxed on about
Lummis New Mexican adventures and Indian crusades. As Penelope
watched him engrossed in his own knowledge and inspiration, Penelope
felt her sister Shannons missing front tooth, seeing it knocked out once
again by their foster father when she was twelve and Shannon fourteen.
Penelope had wanted Maribel to understand how she had loved Ricky
when he was inside but this was going to be quite different loving him out,
and wanted.
None of this mattered since Maribel ultimately knew how to take care
of herself.
Salvadoran-born and Los Angeles-raised, Maribel the painter has
the look of an Indian mystic, lovely and serene as a spiritual daughter of
Anandamayi Ma. The girl in the painting sitting with her back to the
viewer over an iPhone is a self-portrait. In fact she considers the entire
painting a self-portrait. Because its a group exhibit and Beach Volleyball Is
Church is her only piece (placed at center unlike the six others whose two
pieces each appear to ank hers in inferiority) makes Maribel the star
curiosity. Remarkable audacious grace.
Among other only obvious questions, everyone asks if she plays
volleyball, to which she admits a preference to games over sports.


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FATHOM
She probably doesnt mind being called rail-meat,
whispered the wives and mothers of the Island,
she probably even likes it.
She even liked it. She thought it a fairly apt appellation it was
what she was and where she did it. And it got her off Island. It was a hell
of a lot better than being called a clam-digger. A term that differentiated
the Islands true cradle-to-gravers from everybody else. But there
were no more clams to dig, hadnt been for years, so the only thing the
clam-diggers were digging was themselves and their children and their
childrens children deeper and deeper into an impossible future. When
her husband died she became the end of her line. She liked it that way.
Living for the here and now instead of for the hopes of the hereafter. She
took a trip to a doctor on the mainland to keep it that way. It was the rst
time she had spent the night Off-Island. The second time if the rumors
were true.
She hoped the rumors were true.
That she wasnt a clam-digger at all.
She isnt a clam-digger at all, whispered the
wives and mothers of the Island,
shes just a common mussel-sucker.
She hoped she was a mussel-sucker.
She didnt mind being called
rail-meat.
7 2
no. 12
That she wasnt born on Island.
She wasnt born on Island, whispered the wives and mothers of
the Island, got twisted in her umbilical cord. Made her mother go the
mainland to have her cut out. Mussel-sucker or no, everyone knew she
was a prime cut of rail meat. Both her ass and her attitude were perfect for
the task. Her glutes maximus, medius and minimus her abductors
and her adductors, all were impressively developed from the constant
squatting she did at her Ropery. She sat on a tight, toned shock absorber
that could withstand a lot of punishment. And living on Island had taught
her nothing if not endurance.
So all through the season, each time a racing yacht dropped anchor
and the Helmsman needed volunteers for practice runs, she was always the
rst in line. Some found it an insulting and inglorious job, basically being
ballast, but she craved the human contact and camaraderie. And the speed.
Just coming out of the turn, when the sails lled with victorious force and
the boat began to heel, she and her fellow meat-mates had to lean out over
the windward rail to maintain the boats balance. Her contorted position,
exposed to the chops and spray of the sea, actually made the sailboat more
aerodynamic. She helped keep the keel submerged. She minimized the
drag. The dizzying velocity the boat achieved was addictive with its
evocation of escape but the nish line was always the same as the start.
Like coils in her cordage. Like a gure-eight knot.
Her familys ropeyard had been in operation for six generations.
In the Age of Sail, they provided the running rigging for all the most
prestigious vessels. Her family was famous for the ropes they twisted with
their homegrown and nely brous hemp. Then they were surpassed
by advancement. Turned out hemp ropes were uncommonly prone to
rot. While seemingly sound on the outside, inside salt water was held
in the heart of the weave. And so began their inevitable march towards
obsolescence. They harvested their last crop of hemp and then laid the
elds to fallow. That was years ago, but they had dried and ensiled vast
quantities of the plant for future use. And she was the future.
Her father once had been the future, but now he was too weak to work
in the ropeyard. She situated him every day in his favorite wicker chair on
the small balcony outside his bedroom, over-looking the harbor. He hated
having her fuss over him.
He wanted her to leave him alone.
To do the work of the ropeyard.
She hated to leave him alone,
but she had to do the work of the ropeyard.
How dare she leave him alone, whispered the
wives and mothers of the Island,
to do the work of the ropeyard?
The work of the ropeyard was now limited to the manufacture of just
two items Mizzenmast Flag Halyards, by special order only, and One-
of-a-Kind Lead Lines. Invaluable instruments from a time that had been
left behind, they were now purchased solely as a nod to nostalgia. They
were used to sound the depths of the sea. She would twist a three strand
rope of 150 feet, eye splice a lead plummet to one end and then use the
marlinspike to weave different leather markers into the rope at intervals of
two fathoms. Once a fathom was the distance between opposing ngertips
of a sailors outstretched arms. Now, it was just six feet.
The Leadsman would drop the lead line off the side of the ship and
7 3
into the sea, and as he pulled the line back out of the water and onto the
deck, he would nger the rst mark he encountered, the one closest to the
surface, and therefore know the oceans depth at that moment in that spot.
Even in the dark. And if it was cold and his hands had gone numb, a skilled
Leadsman could read the marks by touching them to his lips or even his
tongue. Charts and sonar had banished her products to the realm of the
symbolic, but she was still part of a grand tradition. Her ropes were made
by and for those in the know.
The second time she spent the night Off-Island, the third if the rumors
were true, was in the arms of a Skipper from San Francisco, California,
USA. Two summers after she lost her husband and one since the operation,
she nally accepted an invitation to be night-sail rail-meat. The duties
were quite different, but it was still an accurate description of what she
was and what she was bent over when he did it. But this rail ran between
her Ropery and the shore. When he nished, she turned around. It was
dark, but she felt corralled inside the crescent of his outstretched arms still
white-knuckling the rim of the rail. His breath echoed the panting of the
tide. She stood amid the impossibly wide fathom of his embrace, then
tried to free herself. Gently touched his hand. The caress was electric. She
withdrew in shock not at the power of their connection but at the fact
that she could still feel anything at all. Her ngertips had been rubbed raw
by her rope; the subsequent scarrings callosity served as tactile anesthesia.
Now her nerves pricked and tingled. She felt primed for adventure.
Alert and explosive like a live wire, she reached out to him. The air between
them was charged with an approaching storm. The hair on her arms stood
and swayed slightly like the surface of the sea.
She touched him. Blue sparks ew from her ngers illuminating their
location on his body. She was enthralled by the intricate landscape of his
sinew and scars. Muscles knotted round tendon and bone. She began at his
right hand. Walked her ngers upwards impossibly slow, excruciatingly
slow palpating both the peak of his forearm and the valley of his elbow.
She ascended his bicep, crested his shoulder and then traveled carefully
across the rugged cliffs of his upper back. The descent to his left hand was
exhilarating. Treacherous. She had to navigate the savage remnants of a
bar ght to reach the sensuous foothills of his knuckles. Caught her breath
in the harbor between his thumb and forenger and then embarked upon
the return trip; sight-feeling her way through his corporeal vistas.
He was exactly like what she had read about San Francisco. The scar
on his left arm twisted in on itself like Lombard Street. Haight-Ashbury lay
in the crook of his right elbow. Across the span of his trapezius swayed the
Golden Gate Bridge. On the ledge of his left scapula sat Alcatraz. When
her tongue savored the same trip, she could taste Ghirardelli chocolates,
warm sourdough bread fresh from the oven and a robust pinot from
Sonoma. After that, she traveled wherever she could whenever she could.
She was on the arm of a different sailor every week.
Shes on the arm of a different sailor every week,
whispered the wives and mothers of the Island,
wonder if she is keeping a list.
She was keeping a list. Sailors became the stamps in her passport.
The stickers on her suitcase. Nocturnal dead reckonings on her compass
rose. Some of the highlights of that rst summer were:
Sunbathing on the cliffs above the Aegean in the caldera of a
Greek Bowmans clavicle. Feasting on Chesapeake blue crabs boiled in
PETTY
X

1
2

X



S
P
O
R
T
S

X
7 4
no. 12
Old Bay under the ngernails of a Port Trimmer from Annapolis. The
well-worn and sun-raised tattoo of an Italian Mastman took her on a
gondola ride through the Venetian Canals. She pressed oil from Waiheke
Island olives between a Kiwi Grinders thighs. In the armpit of a Tactician
from Portugal she frolicked among the fragrant wild hydrangeas that
border the black sand beaches of the Azores.
But off-season she felt increasingly isolated and alone. She was haunted
by spectral remembrances of her erotic cartography. The visitations
proved too ephemeral. Elusive. She sometimes received postcards from
exotic places written by sailors on whom she had taken a trip. Brightly
colored wish-you-were-heres. But two dimensions held no delight for her.
They were absent enchantment. She couldnt cuddle up to cardboard. She
needed something more. Something that she could hold on to.
And so, on one particularly lonesome new moon night, she slipped
into her Ropery and stretched forty strands of rope yarn down the entire
length of the ropewalk. On one end she attached the strands to the hooks
of the jack-twister, on the other she wound the strands round the enormous
bobbin of the traveler. Then she ipped the switch.
The traveler snapped to attention, received its orders, and set off
towards the jack-twister. Along the way, the rope yarn collapsed in on
itself, from opposite directions, gathering in girth and strength. When she
was nished, she had several lengths of beautifully crafted cordage all with
a six-inch circumference. Using her extensive knowledge of knots and the
tactile memory of her nimble, ravenous ngers, she began recreating each
mans fathom. She found Two-Bight, Turks-Head knots were the most
successful for shoulder blades. Watermans knots were indispensable as
biceps. Either Sinnet Shroud knots or Sinnet Chain and Crown bends for
elbows. Generally, an Oystermans Stopper for each wrist. From ngertip
to ngertip she meticulously recreated her trips. The topographical
marvels of each one a unique combination of knots and splices, hitches and
bends. She hung up each rope on the pegboard of her workshop. Carnal
three-dimensional travelogues.
She started to spend every night in her workshop.
She spends every night in her workshop,
whispered the wives and mothers of the Island,
wouldnt be surprised if she took her ropes to bed.
She took her ropes to bed. Every night she fell asleep in the arms of
a different sailor. Dreamt of a different destination. And on the stillest
nights, when the sea was silent, she would take a nine-inch length of rope
down off the wall. It was actually two ropes spliced apart then looped back
in on themselves and secured by two Surgeons knots. And she would rock
it until sleep came.

7 5
CLIMBING ICE
(BOOK BY YVON CHOUINARD, 1978)
This book froze me in my tracks even as it fired my
imagination. If youre anything like I was when I
first picked up the book as a kid, you may become
so glued to some of the photographs of climbers
driving their ice axes and crampons into the glacial
landscape that it will take you a while to get to
Chouinards text. Published by the Sierra Club in
association with the American Alpine Club, this
manual by the inveterate climber and Patagonia
mogul ushered in the sport of ice climbing by
teaching readers straightforwardly how to hold an
ice axe, step-kick and glissade along with the history
and ethics of ice climbing. Even if you never venture
out to clambering across forbidding couloirs on the
Cerro Torre, this is a book that inspires you to feel
the crunch of snow and ice under your feet and lifts
you to new heights.

Anthony Miller
DARRYL DAWKINS
(BASKETBALL PLAYER, 1957- )
Dawkins was the first NBA player to successfully
invent his own nickname, Chocolate Thunder,
and to refer to himself in the third person as
in Chocolate Thunder is just a visitor from the
planet Lovetron. He also was the father of the
collapsible/unbreakable backboard. In the 1979-80
season, as a Philadelphia 76er Dawkins shattered
two backboards, causing lengthy game delays; by
the following season newly modified rims were
imposed. Like Muhammad Ali, who named his
punches, Dawkins named his dunks. Best was the
acerbic Dunk You Very Much. Most famous, against
cringing Kansas City King forward Bill Robinzine,
was the Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying,
Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump-Roasting,
Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam-I-Am Jam.

Lou Mathews
BOX SCORES
7 6
no. 12
CATCH AND RELEASE
Robert Eisele
The lake is cold.
I can see my breath.
A man, obese, tumbles off his boat,
his legs tangled in an anchor rope.
He could freeze to death
but a trout teases my line.
The frozen man, swaddled in blankets,
abandons the lake with his saviors.
In a moment their footsteps vanish
in Aspen medallions
that color the water a pale re.
I shed this lake with my children once.
I grow older now, shing alone
or with my wife
when she braves the cold.
7 7
I havent caught my trout today.
The oldest man on the lake
tries to teach me how
to lace a stringer with rainbows.
One inch of nightcrawler
on a number twelve hook,
seven feet of leader and
two pound test,
bobber plus swivel,
the arithmetic of death.
Let it sit. Reel in slow.
I do not like to sh with bait.
To deceive with lures or ies
is sporting.
The trout is at fault,
striking at seeming life
but a live worm is its right.
Rainfall.
Diana sits alone in the car.
The oldest man leaves me
last on the lake.
I let the lure sit. Reel in slow.
The line tugs. This time I wait
for the bite.
Trout erupts, soars
but I have no patience for his dance.
I want my sh
and drag him pulsing onto shore.
Hes off the hook
with a snap of his head.
I hold him in my hands,
hungry to show Diana.
But he lurches toward the water
pale as re in the rain
and makes me cradle him
into the shallows again.
He lies in my palms
still as seeming death,
then with a tremble
carries me with him
into the lake.
Alan Zarembo
GOI NG FAST
I consider this a failure. I wanted to ride ten thousand miles. I know this
is absurd, possibly pathological. But the numbers hover on the surface of
my consciousness. As I read over my training log, a worn composition
notebook that is starting to smell, I look for places where I might have
made up the missing miles. I live in Los Angeles, so the weather is no
excuse. But there were two weeks when I was working in Nicaragua and
logged zero miles. I checked a bicycle through to JFK ($175) when I
went to New York, where I pulled on multiple layers of wool and Lycra
and added vodka shots to my water bottles to keep them from freezing up.
But it was already December. I didnt make it to ten thousand.
I began riding three years ago. Since then I have pedaled far enough
to circumnavigate the globe, a route I might seriously consider taking if
there were bike lanes across the ocean. (Is there a Facebook campaign
for such a thing?) Ive spent $4,250 (the discounted price) on a carbon
ber bicycle frame that weighs just over two pounds, and $600 on custom
shoes that weigh 200 grams apiece. I have consumed more than a hundred
pounds of energy drink mix and disposed of countless plastic razors yes
Im a leg shaver. I own a helmet shaped like a teardrop, eece-lined Lycra
overalls, two torque wrenches and ten bicycle wheels, including two with
built-in computers that tell me how many watts Im generating at any
given moment. Im not a wealthy person. I write for a newspaper and
balk at the price of blueberries out of season. But every man has his vice.
Mine lls up an entire bedroom of the 850-square foot house I share with
my wife and our eighty-ve-pound sheepdog.
It wasnt always thus. For almost thirty years I was a runner. Those
were simpler times. All I needed was a pair of narrow Nikes and a Casio
watch. I started running in 1978, shortly after my father bought a copy
In 2009
I rode my bicycles I have three of them
9,574 miles.
7 9
of The Complete Book of Running by James Fixx and became a regular sight
on the roads near our house in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. I couldnt do a
pull-up, kick a ball or hit a pitch. But it turned out that I could run. With
no training, I managed to nish a 10K. I was seven years old. I started
training on the roads near our house. Neighbors werent sure whether
to cheer me on or call Child Protective Services. By junior high I could
beat my father (a development he didnt seem entirely happy about), and a
few years later most everybody else on the high school cross-country team.
This did not exactly make me a jock. If the cross-country team bus would
have crashed on the way to a meet, the math team would have suffered too.
While I make my living with words, Ive always been attracted to numbers.
People would ask what I thought about when I ran. I wish I could say I
had been mulling over the Cold War or the nuances of Farrah Fawcetts
cleavage. Not that these werent major concerns. But usually I was simply
working out my average pace per mile. I was the nominal leader of a small
band of mists in a school dominated by soccer and football. In those
sports, running was doled out as punishment. But I relished it. Running
was my only way to feel tough.
I ran in college and beyond. When I moved to central Africa as a
freelance journalist, I ran on the edges of war zones. I ran through the
smog of Mexico City when I lived there, ignoring warnings that breathing
heavily on a routine basis was equivalent to smoking several packs of
cigarettes a day. Long after James Fixx dropped dead of a heart attack, I
was still running. I ran for hours by myself on mountain trails and in the
Boston Marathon through freezing rain and forty-mile-per-hour winds.
Then one day I stopped. It was May 9, 2007. 5 miles, I wrote in my
logbook, hip very sore. The pain had started a few years back. Now a surgeon
was telling me that he could make it go away by sewing up a tear in the
lining of my hip socket and shaving a few millimeters off the top of my
thigh bone. He wanted $40,000 cash, couldnt guarantee results and had
a six-month waiting list. I put myself on it.
While I was waiting, I started riding my bicycle. In many ways this
was no momentous occasion. I had ridden it in the past when running was
too painful. It didnt hurt and the more I rode, the more I began to forget
running. Within three months I had canceled the operation, bought a
lighter bicycle made in France and signed up for the hardest race I could
nd on the Internet: a 206-mile grind up and down six mountains in the
Eastern Sierra-Nevadas, with the uphill portions totaling 29,035 vertical
feet the elevation of Mt. Everest. I nished. I dont remember much
about the nal climb: only that it was snowing, that I was turning the
pedals so slowly that I nearly fell over, and that I told myself if I made it to
the summit I would never enter the race again.
I will do it for the fourth time this year.
Let me clear up a few things. I dont ride to get anywhere or to save
gasoline or the planet. I dont ride to ght multiple sclerosis not that
theres anything wrong with that or raise awareness for a cause. I dont
ride at midnight in packs of tattooed hipsters in skinny jeans and T-shirts
that say Spam. I dont ride for exercise, though it gives me more than
enough. I just love to go fast on a bicycle.
If you live in Los Angeles, youve probably seen me on the road.
Perhaps youve tried to run me over, or maybe you were just distracted
80
no. 12
by the logos on my team jersey. Once upon a time I took great pride in
resisting the forces of consumerism. Then I joined a team and I found
myself transformed into a rolling billboard for Johnnies New York Pizzeria,
Surf City Squeeze, 1031 Market.com, Accelerade, Lane Ochi DDS, LA
Sports Massage, Peets Coffee & Tea, Surf City Squeeze, Kahala, Lee Ziff
Real Estate Professionals, Helens Cycles and Richard Hyman, MD. I have
ve jerseys bearing these logos. But I dont know what to do with them,
since now Im on a new team, with new logos.
What Im about to say will be unnecessary for anybody who knows
anything about professional cycling. But for most Americans, here it is: The
closest Ive come to riding in the Tour de France is tracing the switchbacks
up Mount Ventoux on Google Earth. The Tour de France question, which
I hear more than you might think, is based on a misperception that bicycle
races are like big-city marathons, where tens of thousands of joggers line
up behind the fastest runners on the planet and hobble across the nish
hours behind them, happy to record a personal best or simply to nish.
The Tour de France is not open to the public, and even in my amateur
races, which usually take place on chip-and-seal roads on the edge of the
California desert, the everybody is a winner ethos does not exist. To
fall out of the main pack is to be humiliated. In some races, referees on
motorcycles order stragglers to quit.
I have lost every race Ive entered. Or, put another way, Ive come
close to winning a few times. This is not to imply that Im a particularly
good racer. In the United States amateur bicycle races are elaborate
theater productions designed to give each rider both the illusion of being
a professional and at least an marginal possibility of victory. Most races
have about a hundred people who are roughly of the same ability, thanks
to a rigid system of categorization based on the history of your race results.
I am a Cat 3, the midpoint in cyclings caste system. With good results
this year, I might be able to upgrade to Cat 2. Or perhaps Ill just stick to
Masters, for racers over thirty-ve. How did my life get so complicated?
There are times that I feel like a sell-out for betraying my
running roots. But much of the time, for reasons that Ive stopped trying
to tease out, I feel that I have no choice in the matter. A psychoanalyst
might seize upon the recurring nightmare in which I discover at sixty-
two miles an hour a velocity I actually reached once that my brakes
dont work, or the one-time dream in which Mark Cavendish, the worlds
fastest rider in a sprint, appears at his front door as a dwarf and refuses
to go for a ride with me. But Ive simply come to accept if not fully
understand my compulsion and take solace in the fact that many riders
have it worse. I recently met a Cat 4 who paid $500 an hour to have his
bicycle position analyzed in a wind tunnel. (I myself wouldnt pay more
than $100.) I know several weight weenies cycling vernacular for
riders who are obsessed with the weights of their bicycles, substituting ever
more expensive parts to shave off precious grams. And if my teammates
constant ow of emails scrutinizing tire tread patterns and lubricants for
our chains is any indication, my preoccupations are mild. (Note to my
boss: I only read these on my lunch break.)
In Central Park, another rider is resting in my slipstream. Im pretty
sure hes an investment banker. Hes riding a $10,000 Colnago, a fact about
which I manage to muster righteous indignation even though my bicycle
cost no less. I move aside, let him break the air for a while. No words
81
are exchanged. Im waiting until we reach the hill at the north end of the
park. If I can beat him, I know it will be here. The advantage of drafting
disappears when the road begins to climb and the main counterforce
becomes gravity rather than air resistance.
Quieting my breath since I want him to think this is easy, I pull
around, stand on the pedals and accelerate until hes comfortably behind
me. I sit up for a moment as he ghts to catch up. This is part of the game.
The moment he regains contact, I attack again. In a few hours Ill make
lunch, meet a deadline for an investigative story about medical errors and
go about the simultaneously prosaic and messy business of adult life. But
right now, these things are far from my mind. What matters is that this
rider behind me is gone for good. This will be my biggest accomplishment
of the day.
ZAREMBO
John Harlow
Wi i THE PEOPLE
all adolescent goatee and dark glasses, an evil sprite dedicated to tangling
the net in my Wii tennis game.
Firstly, a brief primer for the Betamax generation.
On this video game consul youre not couch-bound, frantically
pressing buttons to annihilate aliens. Youre leaping around the living
room ailing in the air with a wand, against an array of sporting adversaries
facing off with you from the television screen. And despite resembling
cartoonish bobbleheads and playing under cute monikers, these avatars
are demons. Theyll be kicking your ass from the start, whether youre
swinging for a homer, saber-fencing on top of a water tower or, in my
sweet sweet addiction, transforming myself into a would-be baseline
warrior in Wii tennis.
But (and heres the good news) you get better, rising up the Wii ranks.
Jake had it coming, far as
I am concerned.
Nasty little avatar,
83
Im not sure how this happens; there are no websites
offering Monday morning quarterbacking or critiquing
personal Wii styles. You can improve by yourself, or
invite a friend over to play side by side. But alone is
more serious and then you meet Jake.
There are family members who will tell you that
Jake was only running amok in my head, even if they
saw us staring mano-a-mano, shifting foot to foot across
the net on the massive plasma TV upon which I blew
the smoldering ruins of our 401k so I could see Jakes
monobrow signal more pain. No matter how I sweatily
honed my forehand and slice, there would come a
moment as I progressed up the ranks when Jake would
appear on the other side of the net grinning horribly I
swear it was personal and my game would go to crap.
Only my Real Life signicant other noticed these titanic
struggles, complaining our hour-long marathons were
responsible for churning up more pile from the rug than
any activity since our domestic honeymoon. You want
to beat him? Play barefoot, she opined. It didnt work.
I slowed and slipped even more as he drove me to the
corners of the room.
But as I said, Jake had it coming, and this is how to
wreak revenge on a bobble-headed psychopath who only
exists inside your TV set.
The Wii is a spooky computer. It learns your game
and, as you progress, sets you up against an army of
ever more twisted opponents who know when youre
crouching to add some spin. Wiis TV-top sensor is
betraying you to the enemy.
Its enough, mutters my spouse sarcastically (shes
British), to drive you outdoors into the sunshine, get
some fresh air, maybe even play against real people in
Bermuda shorts too short-sighted to read your facial
contortions.
Thats so Twentieth Century.
The Wii is the future of all sports. Weve been
trying to get away from the outdoors for generations.
Its cold, unpredictable, and occasionally muddy. What
were Eighteenth Century landscapes but early Wii,
freeing aristocrats to enjoy tamed mountains from an
easy chair. The same goes for novels, invented around
the same time by brainiacs who hated going outdoors.
Even in the pre-Wii era there was NordicTrack and the
stationary bike, more popular than Centurion, Schwinn
and Den Beste Sykkel combined.
The book-sized Wii (and who says the Japanese
are not an ironic people?) is the perfect manifestation
of the hidden desires of our fearful, nestful, agoraphobic
era. The Greatest Generation would have used the
consul as a doorstep. Baby boomers would have lobbed
it over the wall of an army recruiting post. But the Wii is
the right toy for the post 9/11 generation, which already
views the world as a slightly scary cartoon. The Wii is in
50 million homes from Honolulu to Havana. In Manila,
Wii bowling tournaments end in bloodshed. Schools
install consuls in gyms so they can sell off playing elds.
Theyre beloved in jails and retirement communities,
where the more brutal head injuries are caused by sweet
old ladies gripped by Wii-rage.
The rst Wii stars are emerging in Asia, uploading
lms of fake golf handicaps and bogus hula-hoop scores
on YouTube, corporate sponsorship to follow. How long
before the Wii Olympics, or at least the Unextreme
Sports Championship? Theres no terrorist threat if
were all watching each other perform in our bedrooms.
Its fugly and going to get fuglier: Sony and Microsoft
are developing ever more exhausting photo-realistic
3-D machines tied into Google Maps so you run around
your neighborhood or up Everest, without leaving an
increasingly untended domicile. You may not even
notice your spouse has left, taking the rug with her.
Both focused and disconnected, youve shed calories
and personal hygiene, your eyes unnaturally bright as
you approach the new gold standard in post-Vancouver
sportsmanship. Youre WiiFit, ankle and wrist muscles
as unlikely as Golds Gym abs.
Yet there is a serpent in this virtual Eden, and yes,
his name is Jake. Hes Blofeld to my 007, Palin to my
Obama, Mordor to my California.
Today, as I approach the glorious 1,000-skill point
line, a single set away from Nirvana, having cashed in the
last of my mental health days to get here and ignoring
calls from my soon-to-be ex-employer, here he is again,
shifting from foot to foot, a certain amused glint in his
cold eye.
Jake knows all my moves, and he is faster, slicker,
meaner. Or so he thinks.
I have one move that I practiced in the early days,
oh, days ago, which Jake has never seen. Whack. A
ninety-mile-per-hour smash from the left hand corner,
trembling the net to drop short of his baseline. Fifteen-
love. More light foreplay, banter across the net, and then,
again, fast, thirty-love. More ungrand slamming and
then a swoosh that would make Nike proud forty-
love.
Leaping in the air, plunging down like Brad Pitts
Achilles onto a hapless Hector and Jake is gone, baby,
gone. Back into the nether regions where such entities
itter in the dark. I think its called Cleveland.
And then I cut the fucking Wii disk up with
scissors.
Kara Lindstrom
MY OWN PRI VATE ASHTANGA
I was in an Ashtanga class in a dark room of a frilly Art
Nouveau building inscribed by its builder, le Syndicat de lpicerie franaise (the
union of French grocers), Tous pour un. Un pour tous. All for one. One for all.
The room had a dry chevron oor, the threat of splinters between every
plank. There were eight students and a teacher. There was an opening
mantra:
vande gurunam carana-aravinde
sandarsita-sva-atma-sukha-avabodhe
nihsreyase jangali-kayamane
samsara-halahala-moha-santyai
The mantra ended what had the Sanskrit meant? Should I have
parroted it without understanding? and my teacher put her hand on
my mouth to close it. From now on I was to do ujjayi breathing, mouth
closed, oxygen running through the nose and up and down the back of the
throat in a wave. With eight of us breathing ujjayi, the room lled with a
steady Darth Vader hiss.
A week after
I decided to do yoga,
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no. 12
My teacher directed me pose after pose. She was rough sauvage. Hard
brutale. Her hands were big and unafraid of pushing and prodding. We
had known each other twenty minutes and she was reaching and stretching
parts of the body that many people are unaware of having. At minute
thirty my muscles started to shake and some part of me the beginner,
the good student expected from my teacher a bon. I was paying her.
Didnt that mean she was supposed to encourage me? Or was my vision
of teachers too stuck in a student-centered Montessori-smiley paradigm?
I never got a smile. Instead, every time I landed in a pose, ready for a
moment to revel in the accomplishment, she brusquely demanded that I
get to it and pick up my body as in, Push with your arms so you lift from
the oor, and then jump yourself through a series of postures that will get
you to the next posture. Oh, and by the way, do this with a controlled
breath. Vas-y, respire. Go on, breathe.
Every breath was tied to a movement. There was no rest, no moment
to gape at the other students at the black man with blue eyes who picked
himself up from sitting to straighten his arms into a handstand and then
lowered his legs into a push up. Only one verb could describe what he was
doing: levitating.
Two hours of this and I was slipping on the sweat puddling my mat, in
pain. Donc, relche, my teacher said. So, relax.
I was confused and tense. Relax?
Maintenant, tu fais le savasana, she said. Now I do savasana: corpse
pose. Time to rehearse death. After two hours of demanding me to be
aggressively sentient, my teacher told me to cross to the other side and be
dead. I did as I was told and laid myself down, becoming vulnerable and
still in sweaty clothes on a soggy mat; and slowly everyone in the room
reached this point in our practice until we were all prone. The wave of
ujjayi was gone, replaced by our normal breath thin streams of oxygen
that barely rippled the air. As I tried to relax, my muscles quivered and
spasmed. I felt the streets draft through the glass of the old windows and
heard the evening trafc on rue du Renard. Police sirens. There was a
thud from a neighboring ofce, a ock of honking scooters in the street.
So this is death, I thought. When I left that day my teacher laughed
at me and said, Youre totally battered.
I wasnt a victim. Womens magazine culture was saving me: ashtanga
was exactly what I needed.
I was a middle-aged romantically dissatised expatriate, lonely in
the French countryside where local cows the color of cement made forty-
percent fat-content Coulommiers cheese. Ashtanga was there to yoke my
antsy energy and become what I was meant to be a perfectly ripped
goddess and I would do it in my adopted and loved French. Not only
did every breath correspond to a movement but also to a word. The space
between object and symbol diminished. Hanche was hip as hip had never
been before. Colon vertebral brought vertebrae to mind in a way that spine
never could. In le plexus solaire the sun was in residence somewhere around
my ribs. La serrure, le bras, droit, gauche, le vagin le trne, le sexe, lanus, la tte, la peau,
hold, stretch, push, relax. Corps et mot body and word.
My teacher placed her hands on my poitrine and ventre to monitor my
breathing. She held me in a spot just below the nombril where I could
hold my stomach hard and then suddenly and easily hoist myself up off
the ground to kick back into chattarunga. It wasnt the Cirque du Soleil
87
party trick that the black blue-eyed Ashtangi did, but I was on my way.
Ashtanga is supposed to create heat that will cleanse the body; ultimately it
helps rid one of the poison and hypnosis of Maya (illusion). Ashtanga will
bring one to Moksha (liberation). If a sub-molecular Fantastic Voyage ship
were swimming through my body, it would see my new muscles forming
from the inside out, for I was learning the magic of the bandhas (locks),
which were churning up all this cleansing heat. Traveling through gristle
and mucus, the camera would see my clenched anus and contracted vaginal
walls. Bouncing these heretofore invisible muscles like a jovial belly dancer
was bringing my abs into relief. Even if I never made it to Moksha, this was
a serious added value.
I was commuting an hour by train to my Ashtanga class. My muscles
started to look like magazine muscles, even as my lonely life with a
boyfriend and the cows making milk for fatty cheese became increasingly
insufferable. I learned that the opening mantra was about gratitude and
hope: to the gurus, to our consciousness, to the pacication of delusion and
the rejection of the poison of Samsara. It is an intent pledge to continue,
against all odds, to be a mensch. Ashtanga has nine series; almost no one
does more than three. Whatever series youre on, you do the same one
every day Sunday through Friday except for full moon, new moon and
heavy menstrual days. I memorized all the postures of the rst series.
My teacher told me that I seemed unbreakable. She was convinced she
couldnt hurt me when I asked to be pushed to the maximum.
I rented an apartment a few blocks from the yoga studio so that I
could more easily practice with my brutal teacher at least four times a week.
On the weekends I made the journey back to the wet dairy landscape
that was, on paper, my home. The loneliness became more acute. As I
got stronger, the cows slackness became malevolent. There are stories
of young women who cut themselves in order to feel something; when I
hobbled back to my apartment after practicing, I sometimes wondered if
my Ashtanga was any different. There are stories of adults lapsing into
anorexia (Ive heard even John Lennon fell prey) in order to lord control
over their unruly bodies. Two years into the practice the loneliness with
the boyfriend continued, but I now was able to lift myself into a handstand,
raising and lowering myself into the posture with straight legs. My teacher
guided me, holding my feet at the impossible ninety-degree angle; each day
I felt my stomach strengthening. Soon Id be able to do it on my own. But
not yet.
Then one morning when I was in that half-cocked L position, hands
on oor, the rest of me held aloft by my arms, my teacher walked away. A
moment of mute slackness and my stomach released. My arms crumpled.
Bang! My feet slammed to the oor.
My teacher shouted, Mais comment tu ty es pris? Arrte de me faire des
motions? She was mad. She was a coach shouting at a player with a sprained
ligament, Give me fty. My answer was a screamed, Putain! So much for
all for one, one for all. My feet swelled and turned black, blue, yellow, violent.
There were stress fractures.
Learning the rst Ashtanga series from my teacher had been an
Apache dance. I had completely given myself over to her, and now she had
walked away from my feet. She had blown me off.
I left my boyfriend and France.
LI NDSTROM
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I went without Ashtanga for a month and my antsy energy
returned. The goddess paradigm disappeared. I found a new teacher and
the breath calmed me. I could face facts: the ripped goddess paradigm
might be lame, but still, theres something in it to use. In the U.S. my
Ashtanga teachers were less brutal; some even put my body into savasana
like I was a child being tucked in for her nap (on a wide smooth oor, never
a splinter in sight). I came to understand that the source of their kindness
was at least partly fear of litigation. I was stroked and placated because I
was paying.
In savasana I saw maps in my head of Paris wide places, angled streets.
Increasingly I saw lHotel de ville, lit with care to bring into relief its every
French curve.
I moved back to France.
Now when Im in savasana practicing death, the maps resemble
sentence diagrams sometimes French, sometimes English. I hear the
trash truck and the concierge vacuuming the stairs. The interphone
buzzes in a neighboring apartment and someone in the building cooks a
roast chicken. I never became a hard-body sex-goddess, but my vanity was
pleasured for a while by the sight of new muscles. My feet are still a little
messed up, but if they can transport me through practice, then theyre ne.
The ujayii reminds me that Im here, and breathing it in a room with a
bunch of Ashtangis reminds me that Im not alone. I am one amongst tous.
89
THE SLAUGHTER RULE
(MOVIE BY ALEX SMITH AND
ANDREW SMITH, 2003)
This powerfully affecting drama about six-man
football delves deep into the bond between coach
and player. David Morse is a sketchy run-down
guy selling newspapers in a small Montana town;
coaching the local team is his only purpose in life.
Enter Ryan Gosling, cut by his high school football
team; when his father dies, putting an end to
their already feeble relationship, the kid is offered
a chance to quarterback the team. The intricate
and bizarre bond between quarterback and coach
becomes a dysfunctional and emotionally unsettling
portrayal of two people needing each other for the
wrong reasons.

Monica Carter
JACQUES YVES-COUSTEAU
(SCUBA DIVER, 1910-1997)
It might be easy to lose sight of the fact with the
man being claimed by oceanographic or ecological
factions, or the subject of affectionate parody in
Wes Andersons The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
that Jacques Cousteau should be considered
among the Twentieth Centurys great sportsmen.
In his Undersea Discoveries and Ocean World books
and various TV series, readers and viewers rooted
for the creator of scuba diving as he occupied the
vast stadiums of the worlds oceans, flanked by
his Calypso crew, arguably a team as iconic among
its enthusiasts as, say, any football squad of the
Seventies. Like any great sports figure, Cousteau
extended where and how the human body could
travel, and constantly demonstrated the preparation,
courage and talent required for marking out new
frontiers underwater.
Anthony Miller
THE BOYFRIEND
(TELEVISION, 1992)
A two-parter in Seinfelds third season, the episode
featuring former New York Mets first-baseman Keith
Hernandez cemented the series status as the most
inventive and sophisticated comedy of its time,
overflowing with subplots and intrigues: Georges
increasingly desperate attempts to retain his
unemployment benefits; Jerry and Elaines awkward
stumble through post-dating life as good friends; an
elaborate spoof of Oliver Stones JFK as enacted
through a spitting (was there a second spitter?)
after a Mets game; and a budding bromance
years in advance of the terms usage between the
jock superstar and Jerry, who freezes up when Keith
rounds the male-bonding equivalent of first base.
Georges Did you get a handshake? after Jerrys
first outing with Keith (I did. How was it? Firm,
confident, but not aggressive) leads to Jerrys Its
too soon! I barely know you! when Keith asks his
help on moving day.

Dwayne Moser
ON BOXING
(BOOK BY JOYCE CAROL OATES,
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN RANARD, 1987)
It is the only human activity, Oates writes, in
which rage can be transposed without equivocation
into art. In her mosaic-like essay (organized
in eighteen rounds), she examines how boxing
reconfigures time, spectacle, physicality and
masculinity, and how its systematic cultivation of
pain in the interests of a project draws writers to
the ring. This lithe little volume packs more of a
wallop than many heavyweight contenders in the
authors interminably expanding oeuvre. Oates, who
accompanied her father to Golden Gloves bouts as
a girl and admits feeling uneasily alone in disliking
A.J. Liebling, crafts a sweet-science study that is as
dour and unromanticized as it is memorable and
polemical.

Anthony Miller
BOX SCORES
Richard Rayner
SHOOT THE REF
to her estranged husband Ed. You neednt have come.
I wouldnt miss this for anything, Vickery replied, his eyes searching
the muddy, windswept eld for their two boys. Adam, the eldest, stood
behind the goal, juggling a ball from foot to foot. He wasnt playing today.
Luke, who was, loitered in the center-circle with his teammates, waiting
for kick-off. Vickery waved hopefully, but neither responded, not having
seen his hand, perhaps, or just ignoring him.
Youll miss your ight, Kate said, probably wondering whether
Vickery would ask for a ride to the airport. Vickery didnt drive, one of
his eccentricities.
Ive got all my stuff with me, Vickery said, gesturing to the wheelie-
bag he pulled behind him. He was traveling to England that night, his
mother having passed away three days ago. Ill jump in a cab after the
game.
Youll be late,
Kate Vickery
was saying
91
How are you? Kate said with a softening of the
voice, a concession on her part, an acknowledgement of
ground still shared. They had been separated for more
than a month now.
Im ne, Vickery said though, truth be told, he felt
close to the end of his rope. Nothing unusual in that
these days, and his mothers death was merely the icing
on the cake, just another nis, one of many. Im looking
forward to some football, he said, refusing, as always,
to call the sport with which hed grown up in the north
of England by the name which his adopted American
country insisted on giving it. Football was grown men
hacking each other down and breaking each others legs.
Football was the Welshman Ryan Giggs sublime silkiness
and Manchester United beating Bayern Munich with
two goals in time added on after regular time had ended.
Football was religion in Brazil and red ares lighting up
the Milanese night while smoke drifted over the shining
turf of the San Siro. Football was guts and glory, a tribal
call to the blood, blunt lessons in life and what it meant
to lose and what it took to win. Soccer was something
else again entirely, a bit of fun, something you did on
the beach, not for grown-ups. Soccer was for girls, really,
and not just for Yanks.
Vickery rubbed his hands together, smiling with
anticipation as if, indeed, he were standing on the
terraces of Old Trafford, about to watch the fearless
heroes of his boyhood, not two teams of shivering ten-
year-olds in Santa Monica. Still, he could pretend, and
at least for once the weather was right. A Pacic storm
had blown in the previous night, leaving pools through
which the kids would slosh and slither, and clouds were
still banked up in the lowering sky.
This is gonna be great! said Vickery, and
Kate smiled, almost with affection, or so it seemed.
Something occurred to him, not a sudden realization,
more a gathering of moods and causes that he hadnt
fully appreciated until now. Here might be his way back
in. Im not drinking, he said, a truthful statement at
the moment, though, equally, Vickery had quit the sauce
and been in and out of AA more times than he cared to
remember. He was a writer, whatever that meant these
days a content provider; and this most recent problem
between him and Kate had arisen when some Internet
wheeze that Vickery had been relying upon, inspired by
Vickery-created content, suddenly if predictably had
gone kaput. It was the way of things, in this economy,
but Vickery had handled it with ung plates and smashed
glasses. Bad form after too much wine at dinner, and the
display had been repeated over a sequence of evenings
as Vickery luxuriated in a boozy swamp of self-pity. No
surprise, really, that Kate called time-out, an American
expression that even the Englishman Ed saw the point
of. So for these last weeks hed been shacked up in the
conversion above a friends garage, living the lonely life
and hating it. Then his mother passed on, having been
bed-bound and at deaths door in a nursing home for
more than a year. I still kind of wish I was taking the
kids with me for the funeral.
Its been on my mind too, Kate said. She was a
small, calm woman with dark blue eyes, tough but kind
and reasonable, this last being a quality Vickery ceased
to associate with his own behavior. Somewhere along
the line hed turned into a bit of a madman. They loved
their grandma and theyll miss her, Kate said.
Its weird, said Vickery. She vanished down the
Alzheimers tunnel such a long time ago. And then kept
hanging on and hanging on. Its like shes been dead for
years and its just now that I can start in with the grief.
Ive missed talking to her. I miss talking to you.
I know, said Kate, sliding her arm through his,
but then Vickery, volatile and not a man to waste time
staying in one state of mind for too long, noticed the
referee prancing out onto the eld. The ref was a tall
guy of darkly Italianate good looks dressed in snazzy
Adidas shoes, too tight shorts, and a red and blue striped
shirt that said Messi on the back.
Bile began to stir in Vickerys inconsistent soul.
Bloody prima donna, he said. Summoning the team-
captains into the center circle, the ref tossed a quarter
that rose high in the air and was seized by a gust so
he barked at one of the kids, at Vickerys son Luke in
fact, commanding him to pick up the coin from where it
landed in the mud. God, that guys such a prat, Vickery
said, taking his arm from Kates, clapping and yelling to
Luke and Lukes teammates out there on the eld. Lets
go, Motley Crew. Get stuck in. Dont play like a bunch
of fairies.
Kate shot him a warning look.
What?
Its just a game.
Its football. Besides, these kids deserve a win. Just
one.
Motley Crew: while other teams picked names such
as Red Dragons or Blue Wizards or Yellow Tigers, Luke
and his gang had opted, not without wit and certainly
with predictive prescience, for this. The season thus far
had been a farce, a disaster. Theyd lost every game and
had contrived to score fewer goals than most people had
thumbs.
Vickery beamed encouragement at Motley Crews
coach, Stephen, a calm and likeably dithering UCLA
law professor who specialized in reviewing death
penalty cases. Unfortunately, preventing violence and
unfairness was Stephens general idea, not the ruthless
grinding out of victory on the football eld. Todays the
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day, Stephen, Vickery said, thumping him on the back.
Today we turn the corner. The season starts here!
From nearby on the touchline came a snort, loud and
meant to be heard, and Vickery turned to see Dai Davies,
an AYSO nemesis from years past, a squat and dreadful
Welshman in a wide-brimmed bush hat. So one of your
boys is lling out the ranks of the opposition today, is
he? said Dai Davies in the gloating Welsh sing-song
tenor he insisted on not only keeping but exaggerating,
as if at any moment he expected to be called upon to
pop back home and join in a chorus of Land of Harlech.
Out there on the real-life mean streets of Santa Monica,
Dai Davies was a policeman. Hard to believe, but true.
Were the Black Crushers. Were un-beat-en.
Dai Davies, it had to be said, knew his football and
was an excellent coach. That may be, Dai, Vickery said.
But in this game, you never know. In football, anything
can happen.
True enough, said Dai Davies in a half-choked
voice, and for a few seconds the two middle-aged
migrs stood in silence, pondering with conventional
awe the mystery of this sport into which they poured too
much of themselves. Good luck, then, Dai Davies said,
offering a heavy hand which Vickery shook. See you
later, when weve given your mob a good tonking.
In your dreams, Dai.
The game began, and Vickery lived every moment,
crouching apprehensively and leaping high when at rst
Motley Crew managed to string a few passes together.
Soon, though, the performance disintegrated into the
sort of shambles that was their norm. The boy Dylan
was standing by the corner ag, picking his nose, as the
Black Crushers scored their rst goal. The boy Flynn
was in the center-circle, spinning like a ballerina, when
the second went in. And Vickerys own boy, Luke, too
tall and clumsy for his age, attened a Black Crusher,
giving away the penalty kick that led to the third.
Come on, lads, youre worse than Liverpool,
Vickery shouted, and heard Dai Davies cackling beneath
the brim of that absurd bush hat.
Just then Carlos, the Puerto Rican wizard, Motley
Crews self-styled superstar, set off on one of his runs,
ghosting past one Black Crusher, then a second and a
third.
Pass the ball, Carlos, make the bloody pass, Vickery
said to himself, muttering softly, almost daring to hope,
hope being part of the games joy and a substantial
portion of its torture too, for Vickery knew in his heart
that Carlos would do no such thing. Still, Vickery held
his breath while Carlos danced on, beating player after
player before drifting into the penalty area and turning
back again so he could gleefully beat the same opponent
for a second time. That done, Carlos stopped, waved
to his proud father on the touchline, tripped over his
own deft little feat and fell at on his back like a turtle.
Vickery failed to suppress a groan, but at least the ref,
consulting his stopwatch with a preening ourish, chose
this moment to blow for halftime, releasing Vickery
from the tunnel of torture and anxiety. Right. Now Ill
talk to Kate, he said, but she was busy, handing orange
slices and cups of Gatorade to squabbling muddy-kneed
kids who already had begun to mill and swarm around
her. Vickery ambled down the touchline.
I was thinking maybe Luke should play striker next
half, said Stephen, Motley Crews coach, frowning at his
clipboard.
Sounds good to me, Vickery said, looking out onto
the eld. The referee, standing alone and apparently
unable to restrain himself, icked up the ball and, with a
single sweep of a snazzy Adidas boot, blasted it into the
net, then sprinted towards the goal, ailing his arms in a
giddy windmill of celebration and jabbing his ngers at
the name on the back of his stripey shirt.
Stephen watched this display without expression,
without so much as a hint of a smile. Some people take
it very seriously, dont they? he said, as if discovering a
surprising, pertinent fact concerning a death row case
he had been required to review. Who is this Messi
anyway?
That would be Lionel Messi, Vickery explained
patiently. He plays for Barcelona and hes maybe the
best footballer in the world right now.
Right. Sure. I remember, Stephen said, eyes
narrowing in his lean and pockmarked face. Kate told
me about your mother, by the way. Im sorry.
Shed been ill for a long time, Vickery said,
suddenly remembering his mother the last time he saw
her, in the nursing home, with her body shriveled and
her mind gone. She no longer had known who she was
or what she had been or who Vickery was either.
Still. Grief is difcult, Stephen said. Im sure
Kates helping you. We need to talk at times like this.
Shes a wonderful person. Youve very lucky to have her.
For a moment Vickery sagged as if he had been
knifed. I am, he said, knowing that Stephen meant
well and wondering how of much their situation, how
many of their problems, Kate had discussed with him.
Im a very lucky man.
Out on the eld the ref no longer was preening or
prancing but clutching at his shorts with an expression
of agony and dismay.
Oh brilliant. Hes peed his pants, Vickery said.
God exists after all.
Ouch! That looks painful. I think hes pulled a
muscle in his groin, said Stephen a more judicious
and probably more accurate assessment. Either way, the
93
ref, it soon became clear, was damaged and couldnt go
on. Maybe we should just abandon the match, said
Dai Davies, joining them and pronouncing his ringing
Eisteddfod tones. Let the score as it stands be the
result.
Thats not right, Vickery said, happy to forget
everything else and immerse himself in football. Ill ref
the second half.
The ref was offering his whistle while withholding
the Messi shirt. Dai Davies, on the other hand, allowed
a frown to pass over a face whose pallor was like fatty
pancetta. No funny business now then, eh Vickery? he
said.
Absolutely not, said Vickery, angered by that
smarmy Welsh smirk. No bloody funny business.
And until that moment, it has to be said, no such idea
had entered Vickerys mind. But now, brandishing the
whistle, he strode into the center-circle with missionary
zeal. So what if Kate wouldnt have him back? So what if
his mother had died and his guts felt like soggy crumbled
plaster? So what if he no longer had the power or will
to deal with the problems he languished under? For the
next thirty minutes all of his vital sap, every ounce of his
ingenuity and daring channeled into making sure Motley
Crew scored their rst win of the season. After that, who
knew? Maybe Motley Crew would go on a streak. That
was out of Ed Vickerys hands, while here, for one half of
AYSO U-12 football, his power was Napoleonic.
Vickery gave corner-kicks and a multitude of free-
kicks to Motley Crew. Vickerys whistle peeped each
time the Black Crushers bore away from their own
goal and threatened to cross the halfway line. Vickery
thrust himself in front of the ball, appearing by accident
to knock it into the path of the gifted Carlos, who
shimmied into the Black Crusher penalty area and
promptly fell over, whereupon Vickery blew the whistle
for a spot-kick which, Luke having missed, Vickery then
ordered to be taken again for infringement. This time
Luke slammed the ball in and punched the air as if he
were Leo Messi himself, having dragged his team back
into the game.
Vickery blocked out the rumbles of discontent that
began to issue from the touchline. He descended into a
thrilling cavern of unfairness. He became a poet of the
dodgy call, issuing yellow cards to Black Crushers if they
presumed to try to tackle anybody on the Motley Crew
team and standing in front of the Black Crusher keeper,
obstructing his view when the second Motley Crew goal,
an underhit shot, trickled in. Nudged and prompted
by this assistance, the members of Motley Crew drove
themselves forward through the wind and the December
rain that was starting to fall once more. They scored the
equalizer almost by themselves and then, after a tense
goal-line struggle, the ball fell to Dylan who, for once,
was not picking his nose, and slid the ball into the net.
Vickery at once blew the whistle, bringing to its
end a game that Motley Crew had improbably, or maybe
not so improbably, won 4-3. On the pitch, there were
amazing scenes Motley Crew kids screaming and
shaking their heads with bonkers glee, Black Crushers
slumped in tears. Walking off the eld, Vickery saw
similar drama on the touchline where parents tussled
and screamed at each other while Stephen used all his
legal skill, and no small measure of unexpected physical
strength, to restrain Dai Davies, who had lost his bush
hat but turned bacon-puce in the face screaming: I will
bloody kill him. I will shoot him with my gun. I will
report him to the commissioner.
Kate awaited Vickery with the wheelie bag held out.
Youd better get out of here, she said. There actually
might be trouble.
I love you, Vickery said. When I get back Id like
to come home, please.
Behind Kate, Adam and Luke exchanged victorious
high-ves, looking at their parents hopefully. You really
are the limit, Kate said, and Vickery took the bag from
her.
Ill take that as a yes, then, Vickery said.
She said nothing, shaking her head, but smiling too.
Vickery hugged his boys and, with screams of
protest and shouts of congratulation resounding in his
ears, hurried from the eld towards Pico Boulevard. His
shoulders ached with tiredness and his back hurt. He
scanned the trafc, hoping for a cab.
RAYNER
Dante Ziga-West
THI S I S NOT A SPORT
There is a crowd of hundreds,
a giant red-roped ring
standing six feet off the ground, and though the house lights arent out
yet I know what it looks like when they go. A single lamp to illuminate
the contest, a hanging yellow haze to suspend the darkness where we will
ght. There will be screaming but I will not hear it. There will be water
and sweat and blood.
Im standing at the entrance gate, staring into the ring and asking
myself, Who the hell am I? Because this is not a sport, and for a moment
the endless hours of suffering and toil arent there to buoy me. My
opponent enters from the gate to my left. Weve never met before but
Ive dreamt of him every night for months, staring at his picture on the
ght poster. Ive dreamt of his cruelty, Ive dreamt of him humiliating me.
Weve fought a thousand rounds together. When we meet at center ring,
glove-to-glove, Ill receive him like communion. At the gate my teacher
stands next to me, the training partners who have become my best friends
behind me. Im alone with an entourage, waiting for the announcer to call
my name.
Im coming out of the gate. Out, I am drifting force. I am walking
footsteps. I am pounding heartbeat. I am scared. Im scared out of my
mind and I cannot believe Im here, doing this. I could die tonight. The
little voice in my mind that Ive learned to silence isnt so little anymore.
Its reminding me that this is not just boxing, this is Muay Thai. There
are knees, kicks, punches, elbows. Broken ribs? Punctured lung? Cracked
ocular cavity? Spinal paralysis, anyone? How does drinking applesauce
Sport [sprt]
noun
1. an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team
competes against another or others for entertainment: team sports such as baseball and
soccer [as adj.] (sports) a sports center.
dated entertainment; fun: it was considered great sport to trip him up
New Oxford American Dictionary
95
through a straw for a few weeks sound?
Fool.
Hero.
Both.
Neither.
Maybe.
I could die tonight in this ring if Im not careful, I could
die hours later in my sleep after the ght even if I win, of
concussion or internal bleeding that goes unnoticed to
my ght team, my teacher or ringside doctors. Im pulling
the cold air of the arena through my nose because urgent
thoughts of mortality have a special way of clearing the
sinuses. This isnt a street ght. An up-and-up one-on-
one street ght to a trained ghter is like playing chess
with a monkey exhilarating in its perversity, little or
no fear involved. This is a ring ght against a trained
opponent, and could be the last thing that I do. Because
this isnt a competition, its an afrmation of my life. I
think of my mother and father, school teachers, asleep in
their bed after a hard week of work. Its Friday night and
their son is about to ght a man in a dark ring, in another
country, far from them. I dont see faces in the crowd,
theyre like a blurred photograph of the ocean. Afraid, I
keep walking. I am reckoning. I am consequence. I am
punctuation.
The ring gets closer. My teacher is an older
man, a realist painter by trade, joined to a cane that
he manipulates gracefully. He walks in front of me. I
continue walking, adjusting to a three-legged rhythm.
The ring is near.
For this Im two months, six hours a day of training.
Im the same daily bland healthy diet for this egg whites,
buckwheat pancakes, protein shakes the consistency
of vomit that I choke down straight out of the blender,
multi-vitamin loads and glutamine every twenty-four
hours; no red meat, no coffee, no lets-go-get-a-beer-
with-my-friends. Vigilant sobriety on all fronts. Early to
bed. Bloodied exchanges at the hands of my best friends,
for this. Six hundred sit-ups a day. Three-mile runs and
thirty-minute swims, ve-minute rounds beating the
shit out of a heavy bag; ten three minute rounds beating
the shit out of other people for this. Yoga. Black eyes.
Hundred-yard wind sprints. Running up and down
the bleachers at the University of Oregons Hayward
Field. Is that the morning fog or my breath? I cant tell
anymore. Bone bruises and bloody plastic mouthpieces,
for this. My hands reek of my boxing gloves no matter
how many times I wash them. I smell terrible, for this.
Epsom salt. Meditation. Two-hour classes where I focus
on technique so that I can look beautiful when I try to
destroy this man whos out doing the same thing, for this,
everyday. Everyday except Sunday on Sundays I sit
next to naked fat men in a hot YMCA steam room and
roll a wooden broom handle over the tops of my shins
to deaden the nerves and make them more effective for
striking. Im groomed and conditioned for this.
Im scared. Im cold feet on the stadium oor. Im
taped sts and tight leather gloves. Im at the base of the
ring and Im stepping inside. Im here. And this is not a
sport.
There are gloves and rules and a referee. There are
ring girls and judges and doctors. But this is not a sport.
This is honesty and dancing violence. I begin my Ram
Muay, a ve-thousand-year-old ritual dance. The dance
is a series of bows and kneeling movements, carefully
choreographed to the thumping drums and blaring pi
java woodwinds. These instruments and the musicians
who play them will continue during the ght. Each round
will beckon them to play faster; by the third round the
pace of the ght will be agitated and inuenced by the
rising symphony. The music soaks me while I Ram Muay,
bowing and kneeling and making my way around the
ring. In Thailand, where the martial art form of Muay
Thai originates, its said that the outcome of a ght can
often be predicted by which ghter boasts the prettiest
Ram Muay. Im calm during the dance. Im beautiful.
Its customary to think of ones family, teacher and God
while the dance is performed. I think of the sunset and
watch portions of my life slip through the vision: mother,
father, sister, teacher, not-so-forgotten lovers, the dead. I
am making my way toward the nal segment of the dance,
to my opponents corner. He has nished his Ram Muay
and stands at the turnbuckle, eyeing me. Here during my
dance is our rst true meeting, aside from the bridge of
dreams.
I bow to him, to his teacher and ght team. This
wont be easy. He will ght until he can no longer stand,
I can see this promise in his eyes. I return to my corner.
From my head our gyms ceremonial Mong Kong, a
colorful wreath, is taken and placed away for safekeeping.
I bow to my teacher who stands on the other side of the
ropes. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me on
the crown of my skull. He releases me and we meet eyes.
Im a wooden boat set into the current. Im a painting in
motion. Im his stringless marionette ready to perform
my suicide mission. I will not return the same. I love
you, he says.
I love you, too, Sir.
Do your best.
Yes, Sir. My corner men stand below me, water
bottles and bucket in hand. Theyve been with me
through each grueling day, as Ive been with them.
Tonight we will all ght, but Im the rst to do so. Their
ghts will come later in the night, and Ill be in their
corners. We are brothers, annealed by our little family
of combat and crumbling. We have pushed each other to
96
no. 12
the cliffs of physical cognizance; beaten, cut and bruised
each other. Weve seen each other lose and weve cheered
taking pictures of winning smiles, golden trophies. They
are here, in my corner. They know Im scared, because
every ght is different and anything can happen; and
this is not a sport. This is free will meeting the notion of
sudden death. Performance art, made by gladiators.
The lights go out. Theres nothing but yellow
in darkness. My opponent bounces on the balls of his
feet, staring out from his corner. The ref steps to center
ring and motions for us to meet. We are together, my
opponent and I, eyes locked and entangled. The ref
recites the rules of conduct, which he already went over
with us in our dressing rooms. Im not listening, neither
is my opponent. Hes trying to enter my thoughts and
Im trying to cut through his. Were searching each other
for fear, weakness or doubt. Neither will nd a shred.
Here in this moment were the same, to be differentiated
only by our ght.
Were told to return to our corners. Soon the bell
will ring and there will be no thinking. I look below
the ropes. My brothers nod in silence, then one shouts,
No quarter! the nal words of a mantra we sometimes
use when theres nothing left. The enemy receives no quarter.
Because this is not a sport.
The bell rings. I come out of the corner with arm
extended to touch gloves. Its a traditional gesture of
respect amongst ghters. My opponent touches my glove;
the sting of his shin crashing into my left shoulder burns
as we separate from the exchange. It was a cheap shot,
thrown at a moment that should have been acknowledged
as a customary show of sportsmanship. He has a hold of
me now and these moments have the aura of a car crash.
Knees slam into my chest and midsection. I can see them
making contact and hear his heavy breathing, but I dont
feel anything. In the ring, one doesnt register pain as pain.
Its all received as technical scoring and aggression, unless
a bodily function is stopped. Protected by adrenaline,
I feel the turnbuckle press against my back and Im
pushing and twisting to get away. Against the turnbuckle
something in me changes. My mouth tastes like copper.
I push off on his chest and throw my right hand. The
glove smacks into his face; I can hear the sound. Though
foreign, Ive dreamt of it. Training gloves dont sound
like that. Bag gloves and big fourteen-ounce sparring
gloves dont sound that way when they hit. Only tightly
laced, brand new ten-ounce ghting gloves sound like
that. A cracking snap of leather on esh. My opponent
reels; his forearms still locked around either side of my
neck, I push off with my left and hit him with my right
once more. This time the sound is louder and I hear the
mufed volume of the crowd expand and rise. I move
forward and he reaches in and grabs hold of me again, his
forearms against my clavicle, his gloves pulling down on
my neck. He knees my stomach and I return the favor.
The next knee hits me in my protective cup followed
by three more in the same place. The ref standing next
to us does nothing. Most likely he didnt see the illegal
blows. Im expected to ght on and furthermore, if I try
to signal the ref, I risk giving my opponent an advantage.
Another knee hits my cup, this time with such force that
it takes me up off of my feet. I land, hitting the mat on
my knees. Im not sure why Im not doubled over in awful
amounts of pain; instinctually terried of receiving a knee
to the face I pop to my feet and slam my forehead into
my opponents nose. The ref separates us, cautioning me
on the use of head butts.
We meet at center ring again, bobbing and weaving,
twitching and faking. Our shins bash into each other and
I feel the dead thudding weight of his force, followed by a
tingling burn. The ref is there again, larger than both of
us but not by much, an older man of Thai descent. He has
hold of my arm and my eyes are locked on my opponent,
searching him; he looks back with erce spilling pupils.
The bell rings, I snap to attention, turn and walk to my
corner.
A blue painted stool appears from the below darkness
and faces emerge as well. I turn and sit. My chest is one
thumping heartbeat. I can feel heat leaving my body in
pulsing waves. My brother Nathan is in the ring with me.
He extends his hand, palm upwards, just below my chin.
I spit out my mouthpiece. Leaning over me with towel
and spray bottle, he goes to work. I have no cuts and
am not bleeding. My teachers face is to my right, over
my shoulder, hovering behind me. I hear his voice, loud
and imperative in my ear. This doesnt feel like half time.
This doesnt feel like a time-out. This doesnt feel like
time. This is a psychosomatic kaleidoscope, profoundly
random and vital. Listen to me, I want you to kick low.
Kick just above his ankle and foot sweep him if you get
the chance. Youre doing ne, but remember that. Keep
your hands up and dont lean on him so much when you
stuff him against the turnbuckle.
Yes, Sir.
Dont talk. Just listen.
Yes, Sir. Nathan nishes spraying and wiping my
face. He holds a freezing cold ice pack to the base of
my skull in efforts to cool my brain stem. This works
brilliantly. Immediately I can think clearly. The ring girl
is walking around carrying a giant card with the numeral
two on it.
Be rst and attack him using angles, dont stand in
front of him unless
Seconds out! the referee shouts, nodding at me.
Nathan holds a water bottle to my mouth and I nod
while he pours the precious liquid into me. Stand up.
97
Yes, Sir.
My teacher places my mouthpiece back in. Im ready
to return to the ght. My opponent stands in his corner,
and only the referee is between us. The fact that I can
think clearly puts me at ease. The bell rings and the ref
signals for us to begin again.
This time I do not extend my glove to salute my
opponent. We pair off at center ring and hes jumpy. I
move in to gain ground and am hit with a foot jab, his
leg jutting out like a spring-loaded projectile, his heel
blasting my midsection. The blow shoves me backwards;
he jumps toward me, his leg rising upwards on route to
my head. I throw my right hand. I feel impact on the
edges of my knuckles but its nothing substantial. My
opponent has disappeared and Im disoriented. The
crowd is roaring and I hear nothing but their collective
yowl.
Confused, I look down in front of me. Hes trying to
stand, his big red gloves behind him, pressing against the
mat in efforts to help himself up. Hes blinking at me like
someone else woke up in his body. The ref is motioning
something but Im unable to comprehend. He motions
again and I hear my teachers voice yelling, Neutral
corner! I move to the neutral corner while still watching
my opponent struggle to his feet; the ref is in front of him,
counting ngers in his face. Im wondering if this will be
it, if I will win now by knockout or technical knockout. I
cant tell. I look down to my corner and theyre all smiles.
My teacher, forearms on the blue ring mat, chin rested
on the backs of his hands, watches my opponent with
pensive eyes, like a man gauging the wind.
My opponent has returned to his feet. The ref is
talking to him and Im starting to step towards center
ring. Theres a man at the top of the stands someplace
off to the right. I cannot see him but his hoarse voice
calls over and over again. With the music at rest, I can
make out what hes saying. Its my name hes shouting,
elongated and with gravel in his throat. Again he calls
my name; I dont know whom this voice is coming from
but I feel intimately supported by it. This is the voice of
everyone who has ever loved me. It calls my name once
more, shouting, Its your ght kid! and the crowd roars.
The ref prepares to signal.
Its not a thought: its something between emotion
and response. Its muscle memory linked to a coiled
reptilian portion of the mind. I want to nish him. I leap
forward, the kick lands in his ribs. He stumbles back and
I crash in after him. His neck between my forearms, I
choke and throw jumping knees. The crowd is a howling
garden. We twist in each others arms and the ref is there
separating us; I struggle against him for a moment before
conceding. Were pulled to center ring. I can hear the
man from the rafters again, his voice still scratching below
the music. The bell rings and Im triggered to stop.
Subconscious adrenal dump. No idea where I am.
Confused, I cannot achieve cognizance. Im someplace
else. Suddenly my teachers voice is shouting at me.
Back to the corner. Sitting with Nathan in my face
Im aware of minutia. Im in a ght in Canada and that
was the second round. The hanging yellow light. The
creases in Nathans black t-shirt. The bright red color of
the ropes. The edge of a slight draft on my bare chest. I
look out into the crowd as if peering through the round
foggy window of a submarine.
Water.
Ice.
Some thumping mass lives in my chest.
My teachers voice: We won that round with the
knockdown, good work.
Yes, Sir.
Dont talk. Just listen.
Yes, Sir.
I want you to try to keep him in center ring. He
doesnt want to stand and throw with you, which is
why he keeps pulling you in close. Dont smother your
punches, and watch his knees. Youre doing everything
you need to be doing.
Seconds out! The timekeeper at the judges table
taps the mat.
Stand up.
Yes, Sir. Again the mouthpiece is placed back in
my mouth. I dont care that I cant think in terms of logic
or time. I dont care about stress or injury, I dont feel
fear. I cant perceive anything outside these moments.
Im home. Someplace Ive never been. Standing in my
corner, the stool removed from the ring, my opponent
and I face each other across the blue mat; an oval-shaped
bruise forms beneath his left eye and hes heaving with
exhaustion. Im not tired but my entire body pulses. I
can see him mustering his strength and I want to eat his
fear but this is not malevolent. I am exuberant. This
painting will be a masterpiece, if I can nish the nal
strokes. This is not a sport, this is art disguised as war.
Hands up, chin down.
Shoulders roll backwards in tiny circles. The bell
rings. I step out with my glove extended to touch his, in
show of respect. He reaches to touch my glove and I kick
him immediately during this moment to remind him of
our rst round. The kick misses and only the end of my
foot slaps his thigh. He shakes his head at me, aware of
my statement. As I see him responding I jump with a
leaping kick; when I land, so does my shin, on his thigh. I
throw again, landing my shin into his mid-section before
we go into the ropes, sliding into the turnbuckle directly
in front of his corner.
I can hear his teacher and friends shouting his name.
ZI GA- WEST
98
no. 12
Again we twist in each others arms and I shove him
back into the padded corner of the ghting ring. The
ref returns and I let him pull our bodies apart while I
stare at my opponent. Nose bleeding, he gasps for air and
attempts to steady himself. Im still quivering, in search
of the nal brushstroke.
A ghter is often most vulnerable when he returns
to the ght from a referees separation. Reorientation
from a transition is not easily achieved in the heat of a
ght. When the ref pulls us to center ring and motions
for us to ght again, I step in and lead with a kick to
his head; I want this to end it, and all of my intention
is placed in this spinning movement, which misses by
inches. He looks at me as if Ive attempted something
morally wrong. I step forward and throw a punching
combination. The second punch snaps his head back,
but he grabs hold of me again. Vigilantly he chokes me,
throwing knees to my thigh and midsection; just as we
go into the ropes I return with knees of my own. The
rst hits him in the chest, slides upwards and bounces
off his head. The second knee is the hardest strike Ive
ever thrown at a person, and it pushes into his ribcage,
bending things not meant to be bent. I feel his body curl
over my kneecap while I pull him down by his neck. He
makes a sound thats not voluntary, the sound of air and
pain unaccountably leaving the body.
Im returned to my mind in a different way. Im
disgusted not with myself but with biology, with the
capacity of bone and kneecap. Ive never inicted such
a heavy blow on someone before. I always thought,
in training, that I would love this moment. I would
fantasize, as every ghter does, about landing a perfectly
placed and severe blow on the opponent. You imagine it
on the bag, when youre tired and dont want to be there
in the gym. You imagine it in your sleep, you imagine it
will be orgiastic.
The shouts of my teacher pull me back. Again! he
shouts, and I hear Nate repeating this. I turn, shove my
opponent back into the ropes and throw another knee.
The ref there, beginning to separate us once more. I stare
at my opponent, amazed; hes magnicent. Tucking his
chin down he moves to center ring with the ref pulling on
his arm hows he still standing? What do I have to do
to break him? Will I have to hit him like that again? Am
I willing to do so?
I am. The bruise under his eye becomes darker and
the blood from his nose is painted over his upper lip in
small strips. We exchange once more and his shin nds
my ribs; I hear Nate yelling that there are ten seconds
left in the ght. Ugly and without form, I throw myself
on my opponent. He slips my punches and I continue
throwing them; we wrestle torso to torso, both unable to
get off a clean shot knees, sweat and head-butts. We
fall in and out of balance as the nal seconds tick. In the
gym were trained to a timer, made to simulate the bell; its
pavlovian. During a training cycle one might awaken to
a young womans alarm clock by jumping out of bed into
ghting stance, because the tone of her alarm is almost
identical to the tone of the timers bell. One might hear
the bell and snap to attention in broad daylight, walking
down the street, triggered by some sound in the passing
trafc. Any sound similar in pitch and volume can trigger
the initial desire to start or stop ghting.
Im punched in the nose while attempting a close-
range ying knee. I send my own punch and, as it ies
towards him, the bell sounds. Mid-punch I retract the
blow, and our chests slam together. The ref pulls us apart.
I pant with anxiety and relief. Theres an enveloping
applause and Im dazed, lled with affection for the other
ghter; we stare at each other in punch-drunken reverie.
I hug him and were pressed forehead to forehead while
the storm of applause continues around us. I walk back
to my corner did I win? Did I do enough to win? My
teacher smiles. The fear of failure and rejection lingers; I
walked into this arena feeling nude, with only two gloves,
a protective cup and my own bones to defend myself. I
could never have survived without my teachers tutelage.
He reaches over the ropes and hugs me. Thank you.
Im sorry, Sir. It was sloppy. I felt sloppy.
No, you won that ght. Nicely done. The icepack
is placed at the base of my skull again, the piercing cold
pulling my spirit back through a tiny non-existent hole
in the center of my face. My body heaves and it feels as
if Im going to drown in my own breathing. A towel is
thrown over my head, the sweat wiped off me. I can hear
my brothers congratulating me; theyre standing in the
ring now. I still have on the gloves, and I want them off.
As the towel is pulled from my head, I see the smiling face
of my opponents teacher. I bow to him, and he takes my
head in his hands for a moment before releasing it and
congratulating me. The arena has become quieter now,
as the judges rustle pages of scoring sheets.
The refs hand suddenly is on my wrist. I retract my
arm, surprised, then I look to his wide brown face lit in
smile. Ashamed, I bow. He rubs the top of my head and
takes me by the wrist again. My opponent walks to center
ring and the ref takes his wrist as well. The announcer, in
his black suit and brandishing his wireless microphone,
joins us. Ladies and gentlemen, that was a tough ght
to judge. But in the end we have a unanimous decision.
They raise my hand and I close my eyes, having earned a
thing that can be hung only in my mind. It doesnt feel
like winning, even when you win. Because this is not a
sport, its something else.
99
BILL JAMES
(SPORTSWRITER, 1949- )
Has anyone changed the way we perceive and analyze
the nations pastime in the last forty years as much
as this innovative contrarian? Its taken a generation
or so for his influence to be felt, but James, now an
adviser to the Red Sox, has his acolytes in front-
office executives Billy Beane, Theo Epstein and Paul
DePodesta. There would be no Moneyball without
James, who began by writing (and self publishing)
his Baseball Abstract in 1977, coining the term
sabermetrics and focusing on such stats as runs
created and on base percentage. Though more
focused on numbers than prose, James also was a
fine writer when he put in the effort. He remains ever
stubborn in the face of the sports establishment,
proclaiming recently that steroid and PED use will
mean virtually nothing in the debate of who gets
into the Hall of Fame and who does not.

Bruce Bauman
HOOP DREAMS
(DOCUMENTARY BY STEVE JAMES, 1994)
Seed the sixty-four best basketball movies ever
in NCAA style brackets. Live action on one side,
documentaries on the other. What do you get?
Maybe Hoosiers, White Men Cant Jump and He Got
Game going up against The American Game, Drive
and, of course, the ultimate winner, Hoop Dreams,
intended as a thirty-minute PBS short to be shot in
three weeks before turning into an epic that followed
two inner-city Chicago hoopsters on and off the court
for five years. Both are recruited by a suburban
Catholic school with the lure of scholarships, fame
and fortune, and then along the way we see how
the gods of basketball high school and college
coaches promise poor African-American ballers
the stars, then toss them aside the moment things
go south. Three hours, and more exciting than a
front row seat at the Final Four.

Dennis Danziger
BOX SCORES
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Colin Fleming
DARE ME TO BREATHE
in life was to be a magician. Not the proper Houdini kind,
but someone who could get everyone in a room to believe something that
made an absolutely mockery of the truth, without anyone having a clue
what was going on. I admired him for this. His last name was Sampkins,
son of Frederick and the late Henrietta Sampkins, rst of White Plains,
New York, and then Ramapo, New Jersey, and nally the suburban west
of Boston, the city in which we both worked in the nancial district
and where I lived.
The nancial district, or FD, is small but busy. Its not some mad ant
farm of get-aheaders, but its busy enough. We hated it and spent a good
deal of each day wasting time and talking about nding a way out, which
sounds weird, because its not like we were escaping from some tank town
where everyone was a factory worker or a miner, or Saskatchewan, where
youre trapped doing whatever it is everyone else does unless youre a
hockey player.
Like I said, Blaine had this idea of himself as some deft manipulator
of reality. His name wasnt even really Blaine. It was Dave thats what
his parents called him but he often said that Sampkins wasnt part of
his name either, and sometimes when we were out drinking hed insist
with an adopted Welsh accent that would come and go that he was,
naturally, accordingly, and decisively Blaine Blanchard. There is no doubt
in my mind that he lifted the surname part from the name of our local
liquor store or at least our favorite just across the street from the
Italian American club the Itam to the locals where the junior high
kids hung around groping each other in the alley by the rows of dumpsters
stuffed with Peroni beer bottles.
It was, I believe, Blaines ambition to run off to Wales for good that
got him up to his perverse style of legerdemain. He would tell women that
I used to think Blaines
main ambition
1 02
no. 12
hed rst gone overseas after having secured a research
grant dealing with the techniques of various styles of
taxidermy: the push-corner, the crampled deviation
approach, the ossication color index, and scalpel
layering. Wales was where it was at in the taxidermic
world, and if you had a radical new way to stuff a goat
or a monitor lizard there isnt an animal that some
collector wont buy, Blaine liked to say it was where
you went. A complete lie, but whos going to stand up
and say, why, thats just crazy Memphis is the place, or
Costa Rica, or the University of Alaska. Normal people
dont know that kind of stuff.
In speaking about Wales, Blaine would adopt the
parlance and the passion of the certied soccer hooligan,
albeit one with a professional interest in his teams
results. Sometimes he told people he was a scout for
Manchester City, a born hater of anything pertaining
to Manchester United, their big rivals. No matter
how drunk he sounded on the phone or how drunk his
writing looked in his various emails, it was up with Man
City and down with Man U, a paean he never reversed,
and a consistency, if not a stability, I admired almost as
much as I admired his room-trickeries.
Im not massively proud of what this says about me,
but whenever I reect back on my time with Blaine, I at
least know I could never have done what he did. And
I dont think its for a lack of courage. Maybe though.
But it was interesting to watch, and its still interesting
to think about, a few years after the fact, and I guess
theres still some guilt Ive never shaken off. Are you
complicit if you dont try to stop something that you
know isnt right? Or are you merely weak? I tried to
comfort myself with dogged mental arguments that
Blaine and his eventual situation went beyond issues of
simple complicity. I knew, like everyone knows, that if
you start picking apart someones behavior, youll often
nd that strange acts and strange statements originate
from a clear cause. A diseased mind, a depressed soul.
But Blaine didnt have either, I dont think. If you were
in Bostons FD or maybe even in Wales, back around
05 or 06, you would have wanted to meet Blaine, and
you would have had a good time. So long as you werent
a certain kind of woman. If you were, youd be better
off making a run for it. Blaine would have made a joke
here, about how his particular type of woman couldnt
run at all or hed get her to think so, anyway. It was the
sort of joke hed say to me and never to the woman
before rambling on about some precocious midelder
hed found in the elds of Monmouthshire that was just
perfect for Man City.
If someone had asked me, point-blank, why Blaine
ended up in Wales which is to say, why Blaine
disappeared Id have been tempted to say it was for
love. But thats misleading. I was almost positive he
was in love, with a woman named Mattie. I didnt know
what Mattie was short for Blaine claimed it was a
truncation of Matilda, a name that was handed down
through Matties family because of a beloved Eighteenth
Century aunt who founded some womens broadside in
Scotland. She was supposed to be some kind of noted
scholar, which seemed at cross purposes with the Blaine
I knew, as he was more of a rabble-rouser than a note-
taker.
He said he met her in Boston at a Beacon Hill bar
we frequented, just a few paces off the Freedom Trail
where she had been traipsing about with her family, who
were visiting from Scotland. I wasnt with him that night,
so my understanding of events was reliant on Blaines
report. And knowing Blaine, it might have all been a
fabrication to cover up some horrendous experience
with one of the women he was then in the habit of
manipulating for money and assorted perks food, sex,
and what passed for kicks and the emotional sustenance
in his life. If he didnt have constant activity no matter
how screwed up so much of that activity was it was like
he ceased to exist.
There was never a time when Blaine introduced
me to one of his many women and said, Id like you to
meet Mattie. Hed go on about her though, for about
three months, which was a record for him, and he talked
about her more like she was an ideal than a person. I
got the sense that he didnt try to manipulate her that
much, and I think that caused him some problems. He
needed tumult on an almost hourly basis to get through
his days such as he got through them, and he needed his
companion, whoever it happened to be, to abet him in
his cause to create excitement, which tended to resemble
disorder. Or else hed just go about fabricating some tall
tales that you were apt to believe, if you saw how he lived
the rest of his life.
But if he wasnt in love, he sure could fake it, and
I didnt know why hed do that just for my benet. My
conclusion before I was violently disabused of it
was that she had left Blaine and he was too proud to fess
up, to me, about what had really happened. Shortly after
his relationship with the elusive Mattie appeared to have
dissolved I was told that the rot had set in, whatever
that meant he grew fond of remarking that women
always come back. Very cryptic, but that was the kind
of thing he said, like he was half sage, half stoned jester.
A somewhat foreboding jester. Theyre like records,
revolving, the right ones, I mean. They always come
around, again and again. In spirit, at least, if not always
in person. Until you decide youre through. If you play
it right.
1 03
I asked if this was some sort of reference to anyone
in particular, as though either of us wasnt fully aware of
who he was talking about.
What you dont understand, my friend, and what
youd be better off trying to learn, is that its far better to
part than be parted. Having a choice is a much better way
to go than putting yourself in a position where someone
can make one for you. Its the difference between lying
in a cofn thats been nailed shut and one that doesnt
have a top.
Why are we talking about cofns?
You dont live, Motts, he said, using the name hed
given to me because of the Motts apple juice boxes Id
pack in my lunch in the FD. Me, I live.
We liked to drive out to Worcester because it
wasnt that far from Boston, but it was like going away
for an evening, like you were expanding your circle of
existence. Blaine said it was suggestive of Swansea in
Wales in spirit. Wed drive down usually once a weekend,
sometimes building up the expectation by waiting until
Saturday night. Blaine ate black licorice in the car. He
claimed it was good for the breath and for lining the
stomach for a night of draft beers.
The plan, Blaine said in the post-Mattie era
was to meet a rich woman. Not that he couldnt live
comfortably. Since we worked at the same company, I
can attest that he was borderline wealthy, especially for a
twenty-eight-year-old single guy.
Wouldnt you rather live by your wits, Mottsie?
hed ask. I heard the wits line a lot. I also heard some
off-color variants, like when Blaine said he ought to
hang a sign around his head reading Will Diddle For Food,
because thats basically what he was doing. My God, how
hed lecture me nonstop on the way back from Worcester
provided he didnt end up at a womans apartment
about the need to synthesize the arts. By the arts he
meant those having to do with having it large than with
the so-called Beamers, in addition to those that were
more acutely taxidermic.
At rst I had no idea what a Beamer was.
BBWs, Motts. Big Beautiful Women. BBW. Like
the car. Sort of.
What made this particularly beguiling was that
Blaine only exploited/bilked relatively thin women
albeit with self-esteem problems. The key, he pointed
out, was to make them feel heavyset. Then theyd feel
even more down on themselves. Even I could see that
longing, panting look in their eyes. They may have been
successes in their given elds but, if anything, their
professional distinctions cut them off from their peers.
Or maybe theyd become so accomplished because they
never had anything else to do. For his part, Blaine would
market himself as underfed (never mind that he was
bulky, almost like a Lincoln Log), poor, desperate to
pursue his taxidermic calling, and in need of care and a
proper bumping up some mothering, if you will, from
yuppie women lonely enough to ll the gaps in their
lives trolling the bars of Worcester on Saturday nights.
You need to blend the arts, Motts. Make them go
together, make them work for you. In concert. Didnt
they teach you anything at that Ivy League business
school? Save how to think like a machine. Relax. Im
kidding. Its good to be a talented thespian, obviously,
and if youve seen a lot of lms you can quote a lot of
lines that most people will think are highly original since
they never do anything but rent the hits at Blockbuster.
And mathematics. Im indebted to my mathematical
prociencies. How else would I keep track of what each
Beamer has and when I can pad my stores and when I
need to lay back for a bit?
For a long time I thought he was joking. This was
before the halcyon Mattie days. I took it personally that
he never introduced us, since I met just about every
other woman that came into his orbit. Granted, he
wasnt exactly overbrimming with respect for more than
a few of them, and when I asked what the deal was with
keeping Mattie squirreled away from me at least
like some jewel he wanted to keep out of the light, he
pooh-poohed me by saying Id just be bored. Right.
Because I lived such a daredevil life.
Mattie was not into just football, but writing
abstruse papers on football hooliganism. She also had
offered Blaine the loan of her storage unit at one of
those big suburban facilities where you dump all the
junk that doesnt t in your house or apartment, none
of which you need. Its a place to keep my taxidermic
creations the ones that went bad, Blaine explained.
I thought this was beyond creepy, but alright, I guess
theres something to be learned from the misshapen
pheasants and armadillos you stitch back together. That
is, if you plan on getting them right the next time.
The Beamers, in principle, were like one big spongy
landing pad from the Mattie comedown. Blaine pointed
out, in a calm, dry almost dehumidied voice that
he suspected that Mattie poor thing was not
someone terribly long for the world and that she had this
weird withdrawal mechanism to her, like life was to be
avoided even at the ultimate cost. I remember he used a
taxidermy metaphor here, something about embalming
and canopic jars for animals and how you could never
get the guts back in once they were out. After all, Blaine
Blanchard was all about life. And where to nd it.
I think anyone would have believed Blaine was
in practical joke mode with his tales of the Beamers.
FLEMI NG
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no. 12
Eventually, though, I realized he really was doing what he
said he was doing. Coming home one night from work,
I was stopped by a man about ten years older than me,
whom Id never seen before, who knew me at rst sight.
He asked some questions did I know a woman named
so-and-so, did I know the legal penalty for conspiracy to
defraud. At which point I blurted out that I didnt have
anything to do with it, realizing in that moment what Id
been trying to keep out of my own consciousness. After
killing a couple hours in a bar, fairly certain that no one
had followed me, I called Blaine from a pay phone.
Dont worry about that guy, he told me. He
doesnt represent the law. I think hes a second cousin
of my latest dupe pretty sure he got chucked out of
the police force for taking bribes with some Big Dig
construction. You can always handle those kinds of
people. But yes, the gist of what he assuredly conveyed
to you is true. I took that one pretty good.
I didnt know what to say. In Worcester, we could
tell everyone was giving us these second and third looks,
constant double-taking, like we were more than two guys
playing pool. Blaine just ate more black licorice and did
an assortment of trick shots to beat all comers, usually at
a buck a head. I held the pay phone receiver in my hand
until the operators prerecorded voice came on, a voice
which nearly twined with Blaines. He was stammering
on about being a corpse encased in a living body, and she
was ordering me to hang up.
Its strange, the steps some people will take to
make themselves feel more alive. The closest example I
can think of to Blaine was my ex-ance. She used to try
and pull her ngernails from the skin. I walked in on her
doing it a couple times and nearly passed out. Imagine
that, she said as she worked her left index nger with a
pair of tweezers. When youre tortured youre pretty
close to being killed, but you feel in a way youve never
felt before. Blaine always kept his distance from her.
I didnt see a lot of Blaine when he was with his
Beamers. There were two main ones by main I
mean these were the two he bilked the most and for the
longest period of time. They were sisters, Allison and
Kendra Channing, and they were pretty nice, actually.
Kendra was a biochemist who made consultations
across the country. This was handy in keeping the
charade going, as it lessened Blaines chances of getting
caught. Allison worked as a zoologist specializing in
marsupials. The sisters couldnt have weighed more
than three hundred pounds together and they both ran
half-marathons in the Worcester area. I assumed that
neither had an inkling as to what Blaine was up to, and
I became friendly enough with both of them that theyd
send me text messages on my phone, attempting to run
down Blaine, like I had tabs on where he was.
It was around this time that Blaine launched his
website. He never told me it was his, and it didnt bear
his name any of them but I got a lot of spam
emails at work on behalf of embossed.com. He was
fond of the word. He collected miniature soccer balls
embossed, as he put it, with the name and shield of his
beloved Manchester City soccer team. The website was
ostensibly for lonely heart types a place for people
to meet and greet and, Im sure, for Blaine to suss out
women. We were going to Worcester more than ever at
the time despite my concerns and hed put up these
notices for local pool tournaments on the sites front
page. A lot of women in Worcester play pool, apparently,
and the sisters were two of them.
Nothing was denitively planned the night we met
them, but it was obvious that he had some idea theyd be
there. I assumed he heard from them via the website.
He hit it off right away with Allison, and you could tell
they must have spent a lot of time on the phone before
that rst night, given how much they knew about each
other. What she didnt know was that just a couple days
before, Blaine had been busted by two other women
who were best friends with each other and that he was
working over at the same time. He really had it going
back then, and you should have heard the things hed say
to get people to believe notions about themselves that
were just patently false. He would starve himself when
he was with a woman, barely eating anything over a
whole weekend and making it seem like this was normal,
while issuing little comments, like Youre ready to eat
again, really? His refrigerator was absolutely busting
with foodstuffs because he told his various Beamers that
he hadnt had work in months the art of taxidermy
was a tough gig and that it was just too dear a cost
to go to the Stop and Shop. He lived pretty good off of
what they gave him. Hed comment on how down he
was about being unemployed it drains you of your
motivation and soon hed be given cash for the week
and, if things turned especially romantic that is, if I
love yous were exchanged hed come into possession
of some blank checks and a credit card bearing his
name.
The best friends incident was ugly. Like the sisters
after them, each woman believed that she, alone, was
Blaines girlfriend. It was easy to like Blaine. At the
same time, you knew that your friends wouldnt really
approve of him he exuded shiftiness so I can
understand why you might try to keep things quiet. The
women were put straight when a scheduling mix-up
something about one friend going over to the others
apartment to let in the plumber resulted in Blaine
being caught in agrante delicito. In a harness, no less.
1 05
Or perhaps it was the woman who was in the harness.
Anyway, someone was strapped into something, and
Blaine was inside of someone. Money matters were
quickly discovered And after I gave you my credit
card! Wait ... you gave him your card? and Blaine
legged it down the re escape with his jeans in his
hands.
He wanted to step it up another level nonetheless.
He had eeced best friends, and now sisters would be a
special challenge. He was listening to that last Big Star
album a lot, the depressing one, Sister Lovers, like it was
a soundtrack, so maybe that had something to do with
where he was directing his attention. What a miserable
album. It was all about how love is like a holocaust when
you really parse it out, because your identity gets blotted
up by someone else and then youre part of something
and not your own thing and youre screwed if that thing
jets. Blaine would put it on in the car when we made the
drive down Route 9, past the strip malls of Natick and
Shrewsbury. Theres a background to bleakness for you.
And when we got near one of the pool halls, hed begin
what was becoming a regular routine.
First there would be a little lecture. Do you know
who the Earl of Rochester was, Mottsie? I bet you dont.
Just business classes for you, as betting your Ivy League
single-mindedness and devotion. But I took a couple
literary seminars way out in the purple pastures of
Williams, and I can tell you he was one sick guy. Loved
the drink, loved the ladies. You might say he died of
both. And he hung out with King Charles II, sort of a
hanger-on, even though he was king and all. And you
know what the Earl said to this patsy?
No idea, Blaine. Why dont you tell me.
He told him that he couldnt stand still life.
The painting style?
Yeah. The painting style. Of course not, jackass.
Still life. Life that doesnt move. He needed stuff on
top of stuff on top of stuff. Or else hed want to slit his
throat because he was so bored. He was the type of guy
the King would egg on by daring him to do something
outlandish. And then hed do it a million times over.
That night we met the sister Beamers and Blaine
went on to chisel both of them. As we sat in the parking
lot, before heading into Jakes House of Stick, Blaine was
entirely motionless, starting dead ahead, like hed had an
attack of catalepsy. I could barely make out his whisper.
What was that, Blaine?
Dare me to breathe, Motts. His mouth scarcely
moved.
What?
Dare me to breathe, God damn you.
I dare you to breathe.
With that, his mouth ared open and his body
jerked as though hed been injected with adrenaline. A
month later, he was gone.
It was an activity-packed month. The bilking
had been going as well as possible, as far as I knew.
Whenever I saw Blaine with Kendra or Allison, the
duo whomever it happened to be looked pleased.
I know Blaine was; he spoke of Allison in such a way
that I wondered if he was putting me on, like he used to
speak about Mattie, as though she were Mattie more
of an exhilarating concept than a esh and blood human.
It wasnt so much the language he used that made him
verge on giddy at times. He was no more effusive than
when he was lecturing me about Rochester or whatever
else in the car on the way back from some dive. But there
was a perkiness to him that I hadnt noticed since the
talk of football hooliganism and armadillos-gone-awry
had died down. True, her name was often discussed in
the context of how hed managed to get more money out
of her, or some new sexual feat that theyd attempted
together, or in reference to a new South End bote shed
taken him to. But he talked with enough ardor that I
wondered if he wasnt about to make a choice between
the two sisters.
Dont get me wrong he spent a lot of time with
Kendra as well. But my understanding of it was that
she was the boozy, lets-race-here-lets-race-there-lets-
race-everywhere one, whereas Allison was more cerebral,
more Mattie-esque. I shouldnt have made that analogy
to Blaine, who stared daggers at me before his face
softened into a sad smile.
Everything rolled along, until the great halting, when
Allison was diagnosed with Wilsons disease, which Id
never heard of. Its a liver thing, Blaine reported over
chicken Caesar wraps at a cafe near work. Very rare.
Can kill you. I was going to scurry off, you know. Its
tougher now.
There was no arguing with him there. I asked how
her sister was dealing with the news.
Shes been freeze-drying my animals.
Is that some kind of code for shes very worried?
Im sure she is, and its not. Shes had to take on
some of Allisons duties. All for the good cause, Motts.
Freeze-drying is a taxidermic technique. Its pricey. You
have to store the animals for months in a subzero unit
before you can have at them properly. Its very exciting.
He didnt look excited in the least. Actually he had
that same detached quality that he had in the parking
lot in Worcester, outside the pool hall, when he did his
catalepsy routine.
The detachment became more pronounced as
more was expected of him from each of the two sisters.
Hospital visits, consultations, tears, worries. He was
FLEMI NG
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no. 12
actually counted on. And then, compounding matters,
the mother was diagnosed with a form of lung cancer so
advanced that she was advised to get her affairs in order
and take advantage of the gift of being able to say her
farewells to those she was leaving behind. It blew my
mind that with all the sickness enough of it that a
family has no choice but to come together Blaine was
able to keep himself out of the presence of both sisters
after that rst night. Still, an endpoint couldn't be that
far off.
The mother, miraculously enough, recovered. And
as soon as she did, the liver disease specialist issued a
grim forecast: if a liver was not immediately procured for
a transplant, Allison would die.
She turned yellow yesterday, Blaine told me.
Fully yellow. There had been a bit of whiteness mixed
in before. I didnt know what to say, so I just shook
his hand. I knew he was ravaged by his particular kind
of guilt that he couldnt change his behavior the next
time an opportunity presented itself with a new round
of Beamers, because it was either him or them. And he
thought they could get over it, while hed never be able to
get over his still-life aversions. Then again, I suspected
he also was okay with what he had done, in the same way
that the vampire hardly faults itself for going about its
business. You do what you do, if thats what you are.
I let go of his hand in the FD on a late Friday
afternoon during the brightest November I can
remember. He was going to the hospital to visit Allison
and we had plans to play pool in Worcester the next
night when Kendra got back in town from her latest
consultation. I never saw him again.
What I did learn began with a couple of digital
communiqus. The rst was a text message on my
phone from Allison a few weeks later. Have not heard from
B do you know where he is? What was I going to say? That
he might well have been with someone else? Could
be her sister, could be someone elses sister. Or that
maybe hed had some chance encounter with Mattie? I
assumed he had told Allison about her. We all do that,
dont we? Tell the one you think youre going to be with,
always and genius me, I actually thought Blaine might
have been taking a turn that way with Allison about
the last person you thought you were going to be with,
always? And if it works out well, I guess those two
people are always linked then, aren't they? A two-part
pivot point in your life. And then another text came in,
straight away, this one from Kendra, asking if Blaine had
said anything about picking up a deli platter for some big
family to-do. Some gamut.
Now, I could have seen him making off with the deli
platter, in less tumultuous times the times when he
invented the tumult himself rather than had it imposed
upon him by the world at large. But it felt like something
more serious, and sinister, was up. A few nights later, still
without any word from Blaine, I was horried when I saw
a Fox News broadcast I was watching with the sound
off, so I had to deal with the visuals and bare-bones text
rst that the Charles River was being dredged around
Harvard. Turns out a sociology professor had tied a
rope and a rock around her waist and stuck herself to
the bottom of the river. Theres your still life for you, I
thought. Which, weirdly enough, made me miss Blaine,
even though I had no reason to think, at the time, that
he was gone for good. It also made me pretty depressed
that a water-logged corpse would inspire feelings of
fealty in me. And then the alarm set in that perhaps
this was Blaines Mattie. Hell, maybe knowing how he
was, how he always had to have everything and everyone
going on at once, had driven her to it. But no.
The sister Beamers kept on sending their texts, as
if the relationship had carried over from Blaine to me
and I had somehow inherited them, but only as friends.
I made up some lame excuse to each sister separately
namely that Blaine had to rush home, as his brother had
just been discharged from the Coast Guard because of
an alcohol problem, the revelation of which surely would
cause the demise of his panic-stricken, ever-doting, ever-
fretful father. Blaine was a family man, above all.
I admit that, like a duty, I imposed these friendships
on myself with these women so as not to have to
contend with my own guilt. I mean, if youre friends
with someone like Blaine, youre basically sanctioning
that persons behavior by saying its not bad enough
that you dont want to have any part of him. It was
wearying, going back and forth with the sisters. Allison
spent most of the time in the hospital; a liver was indeed
procured, in it went, and it took. Problem solved. The
mother ended up dying, in what seemed like record time
a straight shot from a healthy prognosis to some new
warning signs to the earth, in less than a month.
My part thus came to a close. Or it ought to have. I
dont know why I chose to make a clean breast of Blaine
matters when I did, in a boozy haze at a family gathering
after the mothers funeral. The sisters had stopped
bringing him up by then; neither ever had slipped and
mentioned Blaine in front of the other, and they were
consistent right up until our nal meeting. But there I
was, blurting out his name. I kept repeating it, for some
reason, like that was catharsis enough. Blaine. All right
then. Lets get it out there. What a joke. Blaine Blaine
Blaine.
I had had too much to drink, yes, but my accents
were still sharp and I was hitting all the syllables,
so I knew I wasnt slurring any of my words. They
1 07
understood me just ne, as we sat in a recessed corner of
some dingy Knights of Kiwanis lodge that one of their
uncles belonged to. They both stared at me with utter
placidity, as if they were ships becalmed in the most idle
of seas. Allison spoke for both of them. We know all
about that.
You know all about what?
Blaines funny ways. Dave Sampkins. To use his
real name. And what a good person he was to both of us.
And how good his friend was too. She placed her hand
on my arm. Where would we be without Mattie?
Mattie? How the hell do you know about Mattie?
Allisons voice quavered and she seemed at once
horried, confused, and increasingly aware. He was
very upfront with us right? He said that you liked some
extra amusement in your life. That you got a kick out of
intriguing scenarios. Thats why he had that funny name
that wasnt really his. Cute. Weve dated the same guy
lots of times, so we were OK with a little bit of fun.
I could feel the alcohol in my stomach start to churn.
And Mattie what about Mattie? Have you met her?
Not a word from either of them.
Good Christ. Shes the Harvard woman, isnt
she? Thats where he was. Trying to patch it up with
someone as crazy as he is and then she went off and
killed herself.
That would have been tting. I could have lived
with that. He would have been more corporal to me,
someone genuine enough to love, grieve, and fall apart.
He said you guys did these kinds of practical jokes all the
time, said Allison. He told us your real rst name was
Mattie or thats what your parents called you and
you just preferred going by Motts. Blaine was always so
tricky. Kendra said he was like a magician. Didnt you,
Kendra?
I drove home as drunk as Ive ever been in a car.
I didnt care if I crashed, or crashed into someone. It
was my very own Earl-of-Rochester-gone-wild moment,
although he probably would have been careening about
atop a horse or in a hansom cab. I staggered to my
computer and pounded out to the site administrator
email that was listed at the bottom of the front page of
embossed.com a drunken rant that mostly consisted
of me bemoaning why, whats wrong with you, how come,
etc. In the morning, with a erce hangover, I checked my
email, in no way really expecting a response. But there
one was, like a note I could have gotten at any other time,
under more normal circumstances in our friendship, as
though all was hunky dory.
Back in Wales again, Motts, scouting some more for Manchester
City. Dare me to breathe, eh? The taxidermy is going beautifully.

FLEMI NG
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no. 12
WALLACE ON TENNIS, 1
(ESSAYS AND REVIEWS BY
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, 1991-2006)
Wallace wrote enough about tennis to comprise a
small volume. Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes
(Harpers, December 1991) describes the beginnings
of Wallaces love for the game in his pre-teen years
as a mathematically-minded and briefly nationally
ranked junior tennis player. In The String Theory
(Esquire, July 1996) and Federer as Religious
Experience (New York Times Magazine, August
20, 2006), Wallace combines player profiles and
courtside exegesis, complete with footnotes. (Given
Wallaces enmity for Andr Agassi, its difficult not to
imagine what he might have written about Agassis
autobiography.) Perhaps we would never have found
out. In the poignant How Tracy Austin Broke My
Heart, his 1992 Philadelphia Inquirer review of
the Seventies/Eighties tennis star and U.S. Open
champions breathtakingly insipid autobiography,
Wallace confesses that her memoir has maybe
finally broken my jones for the genre. Still, this
review expresses most succinctly and powerfully
what lies at the heart of all Wallaces tennis
writings. He charges himself with explicating what
these players cannot: synthesizing his lifelong love
for and uncompromisingly meticulous attention to
both tennis and language in an attempt to articulate
the kinetic beauty and kinesthetic intelligence
that makes a great athlete an exquisite hybrid of
animal and angel. Like us, Wallace is a spectator,
desirous to get intimate with all that profundity,
turning the players of the game over and over in his
mind to see if he cant more fully comprehend their
physical and metaphysical genius.
Anthony Miller
1 09
WALLACE ON TENNIS, 2
(IN INFINITE JEST,
NOVEL BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, 1996)
Tennis is also among the central games, systems and
discourses anatomized in Wallaces compendious
book, and no contemporary novel delves as deeply
or as entertainingly into tennis. At the Enfield
Tennis Academy, Wallace presents a pageant of
tennis prodigies for whom the game functions as a
competitive theology. The game is at one moment
described as like chess on the run, beautiful and
infinitely dense, but other passages exfoliate into
more philosophical territory, as when E.T.A. coach
Gerhardt Schtitt (who seemed to know what
Hopman and van der Meer and Bollettieri seemed
not to know) intuitively understands the nature of
the contest as this diagnate infinity of infinities of
choice and execution, mathematically uncontrolled
but humanly contained, bounded by the talent
and imagination of self and opponent, bent in on
itself by the containing boundaries of skill and
imagination that brought one player finally down,
that kept both from winning, that made it, finally, a
game, these boundaries of self.
Anthony Miller
BOX SCORES
1 1 0
no. 12
POEM by HARRI S CONKLI N
Jonathan Lethem and Christopher Sorrentino
REPLY by I VAN FELT
Cold Stove

Casual as a schoolyard epithet, informing you
Youd not shaken off the chains of your grade,
Or an overheard answering machine snippet,
One you were dead certain youd erased,
Which draws you into unwilling complicity
With yourself, I glimpsed the headline, Mets
Seek Catching Help. It might have been a punch line
To a joke from nineteen sixty-two
Some witticism re: outeld ineptitude.
There were so many then.

In January everythings close and far away.
The stove, though, is obliged to be hot.
Today I found myself watching a three-year-old
Ballgame on SNY, an ostensible Mets Classic
Triumphally monikered Two Balks and A Walk-Off.
Three hours I waited for the oracled events, enduring
A parade of recent ghosts. Endy Chavez. Willie Randolph.
Armando Benitez warming in the Giants bullpen.
PA japing Ev/Re/Bo/Dy/Clap/Your/Hands!
At ten, yes, came the balks, the walk-off. I shut it off.

Stoves cold, Ivan, and Im losing my hair.
More than Jason Bay will be required to rouse me.
Hes Kevin McReynolds re-decanted: hows that
For a less-than-poetic reference? At last I confess:
The Mets were never good for my poetry, not once.
I wasted it upon them as I did my hair, my youth.
Not that the Mets had use for any of that stuff.
Im ranting, reeling: Conklin Seeks Poetry Help.
Grading papers, spattering them with menthol sneezes.
Former hairs hew statically to my (lemon) Kindles screen.
1 1 1

Oh, yeah, last night another ghost was featured: Shea.
Our blue chaldron was disassembled top rst
Like my coiffure. Dis-Believing, we mourned it badly,
Then gathered within its gaudy tombstone, waiting hours
For a tellingly tiny burger. I will not speak
That corporate designation, with which we have un-said all
We did not mean to un-Shea. Oh crap, this stanzas worse
Than my latest combing strategy, my shiny pates
Latest gleaming. Oh, what coy banners we weave
Whener we lift a comb in purpose to deceive.

There it is, my rhymings back! Ember in the stove.
Ill fan it with whatever implement Viagra provides.
Have I told you how I believe, as a poet would, the Mets
Have cousins: in basketball, the stone-cold grayish Nets
And, even closer kin, the presently-ascending football Jets
Who, Namath for their Seaver, with us were counterculture pets?
That lines too long, but Ill keep the rhyme for barter
In my cold stove the rhymings hard but scansions harder.
The point about the rhyme for Mets is how Ive always overlooked
Another cousin. Ill leave it for the end, til we see what my stoves cooked.

That balked runner, Ivan, of course it was Jose Reyes.
Recall how we once sat and saw him hit for the cycle,
Then watched Wagner cough up that same game in the ninth.
How one comes to loathe a closer! For what comes last
Counts most. (Let this be not my last poem, just my latest.)
Fallen seasons, epic collapses, raining strands. One seeks
To cloak the losses, yet how the world loathes a comb-over!
And, contra Lowell, never in poetry or baseball is one given a do-over.
So, okay, Ivan, now do your Kinbote thing on this
Herewith enclosed and most sincere Pale Fart of mine.
For the Mets (and this cousin, once discovered, could only
Be internal rhyme), profound Regrets, still grip this heart of mine.
1 1 2
no. 12
Commentary:
Panoramic postcard:
America. America. America. John Ford. America. America. Native
America. Burger King. Stray dogs. Native America. America. Shabbos
America
1
. Weird America.
Harris.
Hello from Utah. My own poem is entitled, I Have Been Arguing
With Divsha (or, The Dishonorable Discharge).
There I was, earlier this winter (not to worry, Im going to braid all
this together), sitting in the West Village, yawningly reading of Jason
Bays acquisition, Carlos Beltrans secret knee surgery, Carlos Delgados
imminent relegation to the teams mixed history, the acquisition of Gary
Matthews, Jr., in between prepping my Spring courses and conducting
interviews for that non-starter article, Armed Consumerism: Guns and
Dining Out in Russell Banks Afiction.
Suddenly, theres Divsha, crosslegged on the futon, contentedly eld-
stripping her Glock. I was happy, Harris. Id interviewed sixteen deer
hunters about their favorite kinds of donuts, talked to two rural emergency
room doctors about the injurious consequences of overenthusiastic post-
hunt toasts, re-read fucking Faulkners The Bear for the rst time since
college, the piece was going nowhere and then I met Divsha, whod
eaten weeds and free-range insects in the Golan Heights while doing
weekend reserve duty away from her boutique on Dizengoff Street. Next
thing I knew, my head was between her legs. Im not sure which of us put
it there. It was extraordinary. That vise-like grip! I felt the ecstasy of the
walnut between the pincers of the nutcracker.
You wont be surprised that when Divsha offered to take me out here
as arm candy while she served as a rearms and explosives instructor at a
retreat held by an outt called Re/Jew/V./Nation, I jumped at the chance.
Its an interesting setup. The mission of this outt seems to suggest that a
new, affably militant, Jewish identity can be forged via a meeting of minds
between graduates of Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, and the occasional louche
presence of a Kenyon alum. Its what I am going to refer to in my next
screed, to be published by Ol Swimmin Hole Press as Desiccated Ethnicity
as Foregrounded in the American Surname. (Swimmin Hole just sent me my
advance; if youd like to come over after I get back Ill be sure to save the
other Snickers bar for you.) The participants here are aware of the iffy
reasoning, of course: for instance, I saw a youngster wearing a t-shirt that
said
I Am A Gay Jew Smite Me, God
So here I am, serving as Distinguished Buick-in-Residence, slightly bored
when Im not being overpowered by my expert in hand-to-hand combat.
Talk about a cold stove: these guys are more excited about Theo Epstein
than they are about any of the players. They kept talking about how they
wanted to get him, which I infer means acquire his presence for a little
1
Typed by a Goy.
1 1 3
basking in his reected glory. Smite me, God.
Now. Do you remember when we went to see Angel, Angel Down We Go at
the Thalia? It was half of a double feature with The Vampire Lovers. This was
1974, a cold, slushy, gray December afternoon. You were deeply offended
by that movie, Harris; felt as if Jennifer Jones had conspired in her own
ritual abuse. We went to a coffee shop on Broadway for a late lunch
afterwards. You were uncharacteristically short with me about what you
called my and I quote here verbatim buffoonish, low, enthusiasms.
You said my interest in the latter lm was motivated only by my perversely
deliberate interest in the noncanonical. You said, Selznick is waiting
in Hell for the director of that picture, as if actually he was waiting for
me. You were wearing a v-neck sweater, striped oxford shirt, and Stetson
that day. You looked like Paul Blackburn cross-dressing as Frank OHara.
Watertight-vinyl cowboy boots you would have been proud of under other
circumstances, but you were very upset. You barely touched your chicken-
in-a-basket. It was an aesthetic quarrel, so I thought, but it wasnt until
after Id loaded you onto the subway, your name and address pinned to the
sleeve of your Mighty Mac, and saw the headline on the back page of the
Post that I realized what was bugging you: Goodbye, Tug McGraw.
Why am I thinking about all this? Things came to a head very
suddenly out here. Jennifer Jones is newly dead, Selznick is still waiting
patiently in the lake of re, the Mets are still unloading apparently ailing
relievers who then open their yaps once safely in another uniform. And
I, Im afraid, still couldnt keep my mouth shut even if my life depended
on it, which, you know, it sometimes might. I was in the dining hall, the
copy of USA Today thats propped each morning against the doorstep of
our luxury quonset hut spread out before me, reading about J.J. Putz and
the Case of the Secret Bone Spur, when from out of the embers of yet
another earnestly Middle Brooklyn conversation about real estate values
a Young-Creative-with-Fort Greene-Brownstone turned to me and said,
Youre in a rent-controlled place, Ivan, arent you? Youre lucky people
really dont understand the burden of owning a home, which as you can
imagine gave me a kind of phantom pain in my missing wisdom teeth, but
then he quickly added, Of course, Id never want to live in the Village. I
really prefer a neighborhood with an edge to it.
Now, Jennifer Jones was on my mind, since obituaries always linger
for me in a way that news of the living never does, and I recalled that some
years after our spat about Angel, Angel I went to see Pasolinis Teorema at the
Film Forum and was struck by the similarities between the two pictures
so much so that I was moved to write you, but then remembered that
you were in residence up at Chipwich: probably just as well. And so by
the mentally acrobatic process that has informed my career as a raconteur
(and scholar), I mentioned to Noah, as we shall call him, the nal scene
in Teorema, when Massimo Girotti rids himself of everything his home,
his car, his factory, and nally his very clothing, which he strips off before
heading off into what I pointed out was a strikingly Utah-like wilderness
to scream at the heavens that have seemingly forsaken him. (Im betting
you wept at that scene, Harris. Remember how badly we wanted to have
things, simply so that we could shed them?) And then in walked Divsha,
LETHEM & SORRENTI NO
1 1 4
no. 12
rosy from morning target practice and smelling sexily of cordite, and she
folded her arms and listened to me for a moment I was showing off
for her, of course before silencing me. Teorema, she informed me, and
everyone the Jewish people, the entire honeycomb state was a piece
of communist agit-prop, adding incoherence to its patent offensiveness
with its crypto-Christian message. Then she turned to Noah, and said,
You neednt listen to him. His act does not travel. The games with which
his kind is preoccupied, the interest in tearing things down in both the
analytic and destructive senses, are well-suited to diaspora life in a city of
masturbatory decadence like New York. But here he cannot adapt to the
desire of a people to build, to create, to forge their own destiny!
She really said it like that, Harris, talked like a Stan Lee exotic, and I
felt shamed. Not because she was right I was tempted for a moment to
liken her entire frame of reference to a heavily garrisoned Park Slope, sans
Chinese food but because abruptly the carefully hidden intimacy of my
enthusiasms, the ones Id shared with her, became obvious, and what was
equally obvious was that she didnt recognize it as intimacy at all; not the
Italian Ice Confessions, the Kubrick Homilies, the Harlem Globetrotters
Revery, the Hawks Ode, the Spider-Man Identication, the Anthony
Mann Paean; not the James M. Cain Memorial Address, the Star Trek
Eclogue; not Diners I Have Loved, Part One, the Envoi to the Morton
Street Pier, my Subway Map Reliquary the list is familiar to you, and
you know it just goes on.
There were the Mets in front of me, right there in USA Today. Jason
Bay, I thought: another leap of faith. J.J. Putz: the shattered remains of a
prior leap, down at the bottom of the shaft. Every single spring, all summer,
into the fall. Masturbatory decadence? Were not all Yankee fans, I
said (I am, said Noah big fucking surprise). Its not true, I said.
I couldnt even articulate. I knew if I mentioned the Mets to Divsha she
would tell me that baseball is some frivolous proxy for taking actual sides
about actual issues, and I also knew that if we got within a hundred words
of those issues she and I would be through even before theyd served
lunch. So I just shut up Noah was already on to progressive day
care anyway, some storefront empire along Lafayette Avenue called Lil
Endosperms or something and waded back through todays edition of
my mind: Girotti, Teorema, Jennifer Jones, Angel, Angel, Tug McGraw. And
Jane Jarvis is dead; Jazzy Jane who hammered out the Irish reel every time
Tug came out of the bullpen.
I know, I know its a whole different century. But as Tug himself
said, when asked why he drove a 1954 Buick, I like it because it plays old
music. Cannot adapt to the desire to build, to create, to forge a destiny
my ass. Two on, one out, one run lead to protect: talk about stripping
naked and lighting out for the territories. Id rather ght the Syrians and
eat bugs.
So here I am, packing my duffel. Ill be back sooner than I thought to
pick apart your verse. And you can help me relight my own pilot.
Singly,
I.F.
I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N

B
Y

A
N
I
A

D
I
A
K
O
F
F
1 1 6
no. 12
THE HORSE FI NDS HI S OWN WAY HOME, EVEN WI THOUT CLUES
Kenneth Deik
O glasses with nose and moustache,
O hat, O pointy one.
The last word I have spoken has burst apart
Like indeterminate vector bosons
In the thrown baseball.
Like a King For A Day over all the words I could think of
If only youd stop making me.

Man Weds Sex-Change Son!!!
Police surround their mountain retreat
And pound it with mu-mesons.
This man is a baseball player.

A cop has split in two and married himself,
And nobody even knows.
Later, in the movie capsule of it, we read
Bunch of guys get trapped in a mine
And they blow each other.
Its like in baseball.

God created man because He was disappointed in himself.
Like a baseball full of baseball molecules,
He walked into a fog on a bridge of dreams.

What did the atom say to the molecule?
It could not speak, so great was its awe,
And that said a great deal to the molecule, indeed.

1 1 7
The light has bounced off the man.
The man has eaten the scrod.
He is in his element in the pluperfect tense.
He was a general from General Electric, and now
He its across two stories being told to each other,
Passing up the opportunity to be in either of them,
Even though one of them is baseball-themed.
He looks back one last time, but decides, Fuck it,
Im so good I dont even have to get involved.
I love me this way. I love my life.

Imagine being so neurotic that you turn into the Incredible Hulk.
Imagine an atom which is an incredible hulk of atoms.

Suddenly the baseball bounces off the baseball.
Suddenly somebody asked me to do something
They could have done themselves.
Bring me my blocks!
They call this one of the thirty-six dramatic situations,
Meaning one of the thirty-six were not embarrassed to think about.
Tod Goldberg
WELCOME TO THOUSAND PALMS
giving people
good advice thats been completely ignored. Used to be he gave a shit
about this, but now its just one of those things he recognizes as one of his
personal burdens, like gout or hemorrhoids or the lien the IRS put on his
house last year or that other thing hed rather not talk about, that issue
that died yesterday, certainly that dead issue which died yesterday, and
which, thankfully, will not be returning. At some point you just decide
those are the things in your life you cant control without extra-special
effort and, really, who wants to exert extra-special effort? No, Kip thinks,
standing in front of his third bucket of balls at Terra De La Pazs driving
range, theres just no sense in worrying about other peoples stupidity.
Why diagnose problems for other people when they clearly are content
living in the stupor of their blindness?
Kip Lewin figures hes wasted
maybe two-thirds of his life
1 1 9
Take the gardeners, for instance. Its 6:30 in the
morning and theyre wearing those absurd coal miners
headlamps while they tend the greens and hazards at
Terra De La Paz. For the last thirty minutes, as Kip has
hit drive after drive into the darkness, the gardeners
have been raking the sand traps, running weed cutters
along the edges of the fairway and puttering around on
lawn mowers equipped with headlights. In another ve
minutes the sun will be up completely and theyll realize,
as they do every morning at 6:35, that theyve butchered
signicant parts of the golf course and theyll spend the
next three hours trying to rectify their mistakes. This
used to infuriate Kip. Why not just start work at 6:35
and not bother with the whole headlamp thing? Why
not just do your job right the rst time? Why was this
hard to understand? A few years ago he even hazarded
to ask Javier, the head greenskeeper, why he didnt see
what was so clearly a waste in man-hours (never mind
the damage this was doing to the course itself ) and
Javier said, My guys come in at six, so thats when the
day begins.
Kip told him that with that logic his guys could
come in at noon and the day would begin then, too, but
when Javier just looked at him like he had a head growing
out of his ass, Kip realized it was fruitless to argue with
people so clearly set in their own demoralizing spin cycle
of dumb-fuckery. How do you tell someone when day
begins? How do you advise someone about time? So
instead Kip said, Oh, wait, sure, sure, I get what you
mean, and went on about his life. He was just the clubs
pro, after all. Without me, Kip thought then, none of
you fuckers would even have a job. Me or someone like
me, anyway.
Maybe thats the root of his burdens, Kip thinks
now. How many versions of me are there? In Thousand
Palms alone there are three courses and Thousand Palms
is the crystal meth capital and general butthole of the
Coachella Valley, but there you go. Within ve miles
of where he was standing, Kip could count at least two
other guys just like him. Move up the freeway to Desert
Hot Springs, another six miles, maybe seven, except
for that asshole Brigance who actually qualied for the
Open in, what, 94? And then if he looked south and east
to Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm
Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, even fucking Indio and
Coachella, there were just too many to count. Hundreds.
All of them wearing Nike golf vests and red Nike sweat-
wicking polo shirts and Nike visors and anything else
theyve seen Tiger wear.
It would be silly to assume each version of himself
was offering good advice, but Kip knows that if even half
of his doppelgangers are as dedicated to helping people
as he is, well, thats a lot of advice being ignored in favor
of faith or obstinacy or simple avoidance. A shame,
really.
Kip removes his three wood and examines it in
the dark for a moment. His girlfriend Joanna bought
it for him last Christmas, which initially pissed him
off. He wanted this pillow he saw on an infomercial
that would reduce his snoring and help him lose weight
and have more self-condence. He even gave her the
phone number to call to get two for just $99, but she
was convinced a new three wood, purchased with her
own money and with her own good luck (versus Kips
apparent bad luck, though that went unsaid) would help
solve whatever problems Kip was having on the course.
The club sat in the trunk of his car for six months, until
this morning.
Just close your eyes and feel the club, Kip says
aloud. Its a piece of solid advice hes been giving people
for years, though hes not sure now he even knows what
it means. It doesnt matter, really. He rears back and
res towards the ball, feels the approximately fteen
degrees of loft the three wood is about to give him, feels
the smoothness of his swing right until the point where
he feels an innitesimal twitch near his thumb. Its tiny.
Maybe not even a twitch at all. Probably nothing, really.
A piece of advice hed give someone thinking this? Youre
thinking too much. Just follow through. He thwacks the ball,
but keeps his eyes closed. There you go. Just be your swing.
What a terrible piece of advice that is. Be your swing.
Who wants to be a goddamned golf swing? Thats a
piece of advice to be avoided, for sure.
Kip is certain that much of his avoided advice comes
as a direct result of his present setting at Terra De La Paz.
When it was being built back in 1999 on an old landll
project that had been abandoned a dozen years prior, the
Desert Sun, the local newspaper, said it was going to be the
centerpiece of a revitalized Thousand Palms, which even
at the time struck Kip as preposterous. How do you
revitalize a piece of land that was never vital in the rst
place? The golf course itself was going to be beautiful:
thirty-six holes, spread over two courses, were to be dug
into the base of the San Jacinto Mountains with the idea
that the north course would be for the locals and the
south course would be for big tournaments. There was
talk back then that Terra De La Paz would become part
of the annual Thanksgiving Skins Game rotation; that
eventually Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer and Jack
Nicklaus would stand beside each other in the shadow
of the San Jacintos, the lush greens of Terra De La Paz at
their feet, discussing their next million dollar putt and
then thousands of others would pay millions just for the
right to stand in the same location to take shots of far
less signicance.
1 2 0
no. 12
Even despite his misgivings about the location, Kip
was sold. He envisioned himself and his wife Ginger in
the VIP tent during the Skins sipping Arnold Palmers
with Arnold Palmer. He wasnt married and didnt know
anyone named Ginger, but that was just a small hoop.
Hed nd a girl and nickname her Ginger if he had to.
And maybe they would marry and maybe they wouldnt,
but goddamn it, she was going to drink an Arnold
Palmer next to Arnold Palmer. The old master would
appreciate the irony of it, as Kip was certain guys like
Arnold Palmer respected guys like Kip Lewin. They both
loved the game and Kip was actually taking a proactive
role in teaching it to the next generation of people who
would buy whatever Arnold Palmer was pitching. Kip
wasnt sure Tiger respected guys like himself, since Tiger
was more like a robot than a golfer, not unlike that kid
Todd Marinovich who was supposedly bio-engineered by
his dad to be a quarterback, except that Tiger was Tiger
and Marinovich was doing time for drugs or beating up
a drifter or something.
The problem, however, was that some fucking
environmentalists tinkering around the proposed north
course discovered an endangered weed, along with
unnatural levels of barium in the soil, and the Skins
Game disappeared. A month later, a developer planning
on building two hundred homes abruptly stopped
construction after fty and then shortly thereafter
feature stories began appearing in the Desert Sun detailing
how Terra De La Paz was yet another failed attempt to
turn unincorporated Thousand Palms into an actual
city, except that this failure had the added incentive of
possibly causing cancer.
Kip replaces his three wood and takes out his
seven iron. Middle and true, he says and swings
away. Middle and true. He hits another and another
and another and they all y middle and true into the
darkness. Hes pretty sure his balls have gone middle
and true all morning long, sure that when the sun comes
up in another two minutes he wont see that his hour of
hitting has yet again produced a ragged V of balls.
The Yips are gone. For sure.
Kips first lesson isnt until nine, so he spends
two hours in the pro-shop ofce tidying things up on
his computer.
Its not that hes the kind of guy prone to worry and
paranoia, but its a good general practice to pick up after
yourself, make sure no one trips over your crap. So every
morning Kip erases all of the previous days emails, cleans
out his web browsing history, deletes the cache le, runs
a full Norton scan and then defragments his hard drive.
Hes not entirely certain what the defragmenting actually
does, but the mere idea of little bits of information on his
computer without a place makes Kip nervous. Besides,
its good to have a ritual and what better ritual than
starting every day at absolute zero? The last thing Kip
wants is to be beholden to some virtual memory bank.
If everyone in the world started their days at absolute
zero the mental health profession would cease. Another
problem solved.
Hey there, Kipper.
Kip looks up from his computer and sees his
assistant Gavin in the doorway. Hes got a bottle of blue
Gatorade in one hand and a putter in the other and hes
wearing a pink polo shirt with a huge white Nike swoosh
on the left breast pocket and has on a pair of yellow linen
shorts slung far too low on his hips. You look like an
Easter Peep, Kip says.
Its going to be a thousand degrees out there today,
Gavin says. I could die from heat stroke.
And this is how you want to be remembered?
Point is, Kipper, Gavin says, you either look cool
or you be cool.
If theres one thing Kip hates, its to be called Kipper.
If theres another thing, its to be called Kipper by Gavin,
a person practically young enough to be his son from
a one night stand in college. As it stands, Gavin will
likely end up being the person who takes his job, most
likely some time in the next year if the economy stays
in the toilet. And then what? It isnt a thought Kip
particularly wants to entertain, so instead he stares
back at his computer screen where the defragmenting
program displays a series of colored blips and blurbs
slowly moving into order. Out of his peripheral vision,
however, Kip can still see Gavin lingering in the doorway.
Isnt there somewhere you need to be? Kip says.
Not really, Gavin says. All Ive got is Mrs. Reller
at noon.
Anyone walks in today, Kip says, theyre all
yours.
I appreciate that, Gavin says. The sad thing is that
Gavin probably does appreciate the opportunity to give
lessons to the fucking walk-ins, which usually amounts
to some lost Japanese tourist who thinks Thousand
Palms must be nicer than Palm Springs since theres,
you know, a thousand palms versus just one. Part of
Kip admires Gavins drive and ambition and for coming
to work three hours early in the middle of summer.
Another part of Kip wishes the kid would choke on
something. Not choke to death. Kip doesnt want that.
But just choke enough that maybe hed run into Kips
ofce needing the Heimlich and Kip would do it and
Gavin would thank him and realize hes been living the
wrong life and that what he really wanted to be wasnt a
club pro at all. Gavin would tell Kip that his near-death
experience had conrmed in him a great desire to work
1 2 1
in Antarctica with the polar bears or the seals or the
glaciers or whatever else they had in the Antarctica. I
actually came in to ask you a question, Gavin says, and
I want you to know rst that I mean no disrespect to you
or to Terra De La Paz.
Of course, Kip says because he realizes hes been
staring silently at the kid for maybe a full minute, the
whole scenario of near-death, salvation and epiphany
playing out over and over again in his mind with several
different iterations of calamity, including a lightning
strike, a rattlesnake bite and an attack by a pack of rabid
coyotes. And also because he has no idea what Gavin
might need to ask him and because hes worried about
whatever that whole disrespect issue might entail in
light of, well, his dead issue. Nevertheless, what he cant
gure out is why people have to preface their every
action and every expected reaction. When did it become
necessary to foreshadow everything? An entire breed of
humans have been created who always expect a teaser or
commercial for whats about to happen next. Someday
Gavin would realize that not every decision he made in
life came with scenes for the next weeks very special
episode.
Im not sure how to say this, Gavin says.
Shit, Kip thinks. He saw the range. Or one of
those fucking gardeners with the miner hats told him.
Or maybe he got on the computer yesterday and went
through the Google searches. What had he Googled
yesterday?
The Yips for sure. Hed done that everyday now
for, what, a year? What day was yesterday? Tuesday.
Tuesday is personal-stories day. Thats right. He read
about Rick Ankiel, the pitcher with the Yips who had
to become an outelder since he couldnt stop hitting
batters or throwing the ball into the stands and then
ended up getting caught with a syringe of HGH in his
ass or some such thing. He found some losers blog about
getting the Yips on his honeymoon at the TPC course in
Maui and it turning into a sexual thing, too, which is now
threatening his marriage. And there was a woman with
the Yips on another blog who said now she couldnt even
iron a crease correctly anymore. And then he read about
some study going on in Denmark where a golfer with the
Yips named Magnus Der Magnus was studied for three
goddamned years and was nally diagnosed with focal
dystonia which, it turned out, was just a clinical way of
saying he had the Yips. No cure. Just a name. Those
people? They had problems. Kip just had a burden. And
now this fucking Brutus, with his pink shirt and yellow
shorts and blue Gatorade was going to make it a problem.
Its not like Kip hadnt been anticipating this day. You
can only not play golf for so long when youre a golf pro.
Could you write a letter of recommendation on my
behalf for a new job? Gavin says.
What?
See, I knew this would piss you off, Gavin says.
Never mind.
No, no, Kip says. Im not pissed off. I just didnt
think you were looking for a new job. You took me by
surprise, thats all. Hell. You know. In this economy and
all, I thought, you know, you were entrenched here. Part
of the team and all that.
I am, Gavin says, I am. Totally. But to be honest
I feel like Im ready to make my move up and I know
thats not going to happen here. I mean, youre Kip
Lewin.
Its not like that, Kip says.
You know it is, Gavin says, and thats totally cool.
I understood that when I got the job. Everyone told me,
Kip Lewin will be there forever, and I was like, no, no,
hell end up at one of the big resorts and they were like,
No, no, Kip Lewin is the King of Thousand Palms, and
maybe at rst I didnt think it was true, but now, man, I
see it.
Behind Gavin, Kip can make out Mr. Tucker, his
nine oclock, wandering around the shop. Mr. Tucker
wasnt a bad guy, really, but he was the kind who would
tell you about every leak and dribble that was happening
in his body, to the point that Kip didnt feel comfortable
shaking his hand anymore but had to, because thats
part of the job. A good handshake with the members
sometimes included a fty. But now he saw Mr. Tucker
touching a rack of shirts and the only thing he could think
was that hed need to get one of those blue lights that
detected fecal matter and body uids before someone
ended up catching diphtheria from a polo shirt.
But the thing about Mr. Tucker was that even
though he was a terrible golfer, and maybe carried
around infectious diseases, he knew he wasnt an athlete.
He wasnt playing golf because hed been endowed
with ability. He was playing golf because he wanted
to, irrespective of his lack of actual physical talent. Mr.
Tucker would never get the Yips because he didnt have
anything to get Yippie about. Its a realization that
suddenly lls Kip with a feeling of intense envy: to not
be good. To play just to play. What an idea.
Where you applying? Kip asks.
Its really just a formality at this point, Gavin says
and Kip sees the kid exhale, watches as his shoulders
loosen, notices that hes let his putter slide out of his
hand so that it now rests easily between the door frame
and his thigh. He was actually nervous about coming to
me, Kip thinks. Every day, a new surprise. Theres a
course opening up about fteen minutes outside Davis?
In Northern California? You know, by the college?
I played Juniors up there, Kip says.
GOLDBERG
1 2 2
no. 12
Yeah?
Yeah, Kip says, but the truth is he missed the cut
at the Juniors tournament there during his freshman
year in high school, and then for the next three years,
whenever he even saw the last name Davis, hed get a
taste in his mouth like moldy popcorn. Its a cow town,
right?
Something like that, Gavin says. Anyway, my
wife? Her sisters husband, hes some asshole land-
developer and hes pretty much the guy in charge and he
said hed take care of me if I applied for the job.
That sounds great, Kip says, though he didnt
even know Gavin was married. But right there on his
hand is a ring and everything. How long have you been
married again?
Five years, Gavin says.
Thats good, Kip says. Right? Thats considered
good these days?
Oh, I dont know about that, Gavin says. My
parents have been married forty years.
How old are you again?
Thirty-ve, he says.
No, Kip says, thats not true, is it?
Why would I lie about how old I am?
Because Im forty, so theres no way you could be
thirty-ve. That doesnt add up.
Add up to what?
A dialog box opens up on Kips computer screen
letting him know that his hard drive is now completely
defragmented. Just like that. A fresh start.
Kip stands behind his desk and extends his hand
toward Gavin. Well, thats great, Gavin. Im really
proud of you. Gavins grip is so strong that Kip feels
a pain shoot from his wrist all the way into his groin.
Could it be that for the last ve years hes never shaken
the kids hand? Maybe when he hired him. He must
have shook his hand then. There must have been some
other occasion along the line, but Kip cant think of one.
When they nally stop shaking and its never easy
for Kip to tell when that should happen, that point at
which its OK to stop touching another person for the
purposes of being merely polite but not personal Kip
cant gure out what to do with his now throbbing hand,
so he does what he thinks Arnold Palmer would do in
this situation and pats Gavin on the shoulder and gives
him a kindly squeeze. Palmer would say something, too,
wouldnt he? Im real proud of you, son, is what hed
say, so Kip says that too and gives Gavin another squeeze,
except squeezing Gavin is like squeezing a brick, so he
ends up essentially pinching him. Whatever happened
to golfers having a little life on their bones?
Thanks, Kipper, Gavin says.
Youll have to cut that shit out when you get up
there, Kip says.
Gavin cocks his head in a way that looks painful.
Excuse me? he says.
That nickname shit, Kip says. He tries to smile but
he cant get his mouth to work quite right and instead he
ends up curling his upper lip over his teeth until he looks
like a decomposing corpse skull.
I dont know what youre talking about.
All that Kipper bullshit. My name isnt short for
Kipper.
Its not?
No, of course not.
Then what is Kip short for? Gavin asks.
Nothing, Kip says. Kip is short for Absolute
Zero. Some things just are, my name being one of those
things. Youll learn that, my friend.
My friend. When did he start calling people my friend?
And did he call Gavin son a moment ago, too? Well,
it didnt matter. He was at the beginning of the day
who knew what exciting development might come
next? Maybe hed break ritual and spend all afternoon
Googling places in Davis where you can get a discreet
hand job and then email his results to Gavin for the
inevitable moment, ve or ten years down the line, when
he realizes its time to start paying for sex.
I thought I was being respectful, Gavin says. Im
sorry if you took it some other way.
Im over it, Kip says and actually means it, because
suddenly it feels so petty in light of everything else in
the world. Iraq and the Yips and his snoring and that
IRS bullshit and wherever people were starving these
days. Really. I just wanted to make you aware now
that youre going to be the big man in Davis. Cant be
indiscriminately pissing people off.
OK, then, Gavin says and starts to make for the
door, but something makes Kip grab his arm and squeeze
it again. Solid. Five years younger than him and solid.
No discernible weakness at all.
I want to give you another piece of advice, Kip
says. Hes trying to smile again but isnt sure he knows
how anymore, isnt sure he can fake anything more than
he has for the last year of his life.
Whatever, Gavin says.
You ever hear of something called focal dystonia?
Gavin stares at him blankly so Kip continues. Golfers
get it.
Is that some kind of blood disease? Gavin says.
No, Kip says. Its this thing that happens to your
muscles. They contract on their own.
Like Tourettes?
No, Kip says, though he has no idea if thats correct
or not. Maybe it is. Shit. Maybe he has Tourettes.
Maybe thats what this whole outburst can be attributed
1 2 3
to later on down the line. Thursdays are his medical
investigation days on Google, so hell need to wait until
tomorrow for a denitive answer. Totally different. Kip
isnt quite sure why hes telling Gavin all this, especially
with Mr. Tucker lingering only ten feet away in the shop
and likely taking assiduous notes so that he can share the
experience back at the nineteenth hole with the rest of
the fucking club. No, see, its this disease thats, well, its
not a disease, its more of a condition, so its this thing,
this burden, really, that you can get and I just want you
to be aware of it, since youre moving on. In case, really,
you should nd yourself concerned because of your time
here that maybe, you know, youve been infected by me.
What are you telling me? Is this from the barium?
Christ, is it from the barium? A patch of sweat has
formed under Gavins left armpit and is spreading east
across his chest. Its the damndest thing Kips seen all
year. The boy genius breaks a sweat. Is that what youre
telling me? Theres another migration happening on
the other side of Gavins body and it occurs to Kip that
maybe those sweat wicking shirts dont really work when
youre sweating out the possible end of your life.
No, Kip says, but then he stops himself, reconsiders.
Maybe. Yes. Maybe. You never know. And you know
what? Why dont you take today off. Im happy to do
Mrs. Reller today. OK? And Id be happy to write that
letter, OK? Take the week if you want. Spend some
time with your wife, you know, in case.
Part of being a finely tuned athlete, Kip
understands, is that occasionally your body ends up
betraying you. If you play football, maybe you blow out
a knee or a shoulder or some obscure tendon ruptures
and, next thing you know, youre one of those guys
on the sideline holding a clipboard. Or Kips always
reading about these massive hulks in the NBA who end
up retiring because of some tiny insignicant ligament
in their ankle or foot that just wont heal. Seven feet of
bones and muscles and all of it comes undone by an inch
of connective tissue. You train your entire life to do one
thing well and then one day you wake up and your body
has decided that it would prefer to sit idly by, happy to
nd a point of stasis.
Its just after seven in the evening and Kip is
watering his backyard lawn with the hose, a daily activity
since hes never managed to get sprinklers installed. Yet
another reminder of things hes put on the back burner
in pursuit of becoming whatever it was he thought he
was becoming; an absolute that Kip has never been
able to pinpoint with any real accuracy. For a long time
he wanted to be a professional golfer. Then, when it
became clear he wasnt good enough for the Tour, he
decided that being a golf pro would be the next best
thing. But now, forty years old, living in a house that
abuts the seventh fairway of Terra De La Paz, one of the
only homes that actually got built before the developers
had to start including that barium disclosure rider, Kip
cant recall what it was that he wanted to do other than
hit a ball straight. His entire life boiled down to that
singular desire: to nd a consistent straight line.
How stupid, really. Devote your entire adult life to
a ball and a stick and an ability to read which direction
grass was growing. A career in golf seemed like a good
idea when he was fteen, even seemed like a good idea
when he was thirty and maybe when he was thirty-ve.
And, weirdly, it seemed like a good idea for someone like
Gavin. Kip kept replaying their conversation from this
morning in his head, trying to gure out at what point
it seemed smart to start losing his mind in front of the
kid. Here Gavin was excited to give him the news about
his job and then it all got kooky. Maybe it was that King
of Thousand Palms bit that pushed him over the edge,
though it seemed to Kip that hed been over the edge for
so long that he was spending his entire life looking up for
something hed never be able to nd.
Seemed. Its a word Kip has grown to hate. Everything
seemed one way in his life and actually ended up being
some still-born version of the ideal. He seemed to be an
excellent golfer, but in reality he was just the best on
his college team, or his high school team, or the under-
fteen team that he was on at Boundary Oak Country
Club, back when he was a kid living in Walnut Creek,
long before he ever ended up in the desert. (Even where
he had lived was a big seemed: Walnut Creek contained
neither walnuts or creeks by the time he was old enough
to notice such things. Thousand Palms contained not
even a hundred palms, really.) That everything he
had and everything he didnt have were a direct result
of hitting a dimpled white ball every day had become
crushing in its insignicance.
So this is life, Kip says.
Whats that? Joanne says. Kip forgot she was sitting
beneath the misters on their little porch drinking a glass
of wine and ipping through some listing papers. For
the last six months Joanne had been selling foreclosures
at a pretty brisk rate and Kip had the sense that she was
planning to make her own move shortly. They werent
in love neither of them had ever even pretended to
be but they did like the same movies and restaurants
and could make each other laugh and these days there
was value in that. There also was a tenderness between
them that Kip couldnt quantify. She wasnt Ginger.
Shed never met Arnold Palmer and, most likely, if Tiger
Woods wanted her to be mistress number 190,000 shed
hop at the opportunity, but it wouldnt be personal. Just
a chance at a better life and Kip couldnt deny her that.
GOLDBERG
1 2 4
no. 12
Maybe thats what caring for someone ultimately meant.
I hate golf, Kip says.
No you dont, Joanne says. Kip walks over to the
spigot and turns off the hose and watches the last bits of
water drain out onto grass. For a long time he made a
point of putting fertilizer on the lawn and didnt allow
Joanne to walk on it, but after a while it just got to be silly,
this idea of keeping the grass green and then not being
able to enjoy it. Not long after that it started to turn the
perpetual shade of brown it was this evening. He plops
down across from Joanne and stares at her for a moment.
Shes pretty in the way meteorologists on the local news
often are not pretty enough to be a model but pretty
enough that people often ask Kip how he got so lucky,
as if he won Joanne in a tournament. Luck. That was
another of those words that plagued Kip. Good luck.
Bad luck.
Lucky shot.
Lucky to have a woman like Joanne. Luck was the
sort of thing that made Kip start looking for excuses,
exceptions to rules. Like: Joanne wears too much
perfume for Kips taste but he understands shes playing
a role for the people who sit in her car for hours on
end while they drive by foreclosure after foreclosure,
someone elses crushed hopes and dreams now a pretty
good bargain if youve got a bit of liquid. Lucky for them.
Kip takes a sip of Joannes wine. Its warm and tastes like
her lipstick. We should get married, Kip says.
To each other? Joanne says and Kip actually laughs.
She reaches over and takes his hand in hers and, for the
rst time all day, Kip feels better. You dont want to
marry me, Kip.
What are we doing here? Kip asks.
Right now or are you speaking generally? she says.
Right now.
Youre having some kind of breakdown and Im
calculating my millions, she says.
I dont know how to hit a golf ball anymore.
I know, she says.
And this doesnt concern you?
Do you want the truth?
Today Gavin told me he was taking a new job, Kip
says.
Thats good then, right? You can stop worrying
about him taking your job.
He said I was the King of Thousand Palms, he
says. Can you believe that?
Look around, Joanne says, do you see anyone else
here?
It was true, of course. Hed settled into a life of
passivity and somehow along the way that had dened
him. The King of Nowhere. He hadnt lucked into that.
He hadnt even tried. Now here he was, sitting across
from a beautiful woman, looking out onto the abundant
landscape of the golf course at Terra De La Paz, the long
shadows of dusk hiding the poor job the gardeners had
done over the duration of the last decade, and the jagged
lines of the San Jacinto Mountains.
As a kid in the Boy Scouts, hed been taught that
straight lines were unnatural, that if he was ever lost in
the woods or the mountains he should look for straight
lines as that meant something had been made by man
and that meant civilization, or at least rudimentary
shelter, was nearby. That was a good piece of advice, a
piece of advice hes forgotten for so long that when he
nally recalls it now, it lls him with a sense of longing
so acute that he feels both sick and giddy at once.
A distinct advantage of being the golf pro at
Terra De La Paz was that whenever he wanted to, Kip
Lewin could turn on the tournament lights at the course
and play a round in the middle of the night. And sure,
maybe a few of his neighbors might complain the next
day about it being lit up like Dodger Stadium all night
long which is why he didnt extend the courtesy to the
gardeners on a daily basis but so what? It was silly that
Terra De La Paz even had tournament lights as it was
an extravagance not even real courses like Pebble Beach
or Augusta had. Real golf courses and real tournaments
simply stopped play when the sun went down. And
it was not as if Terra De La Paz even stayed open for
night golf since most people were afraid to venture into
Thousand Palms after dark except to go to the In-N-
Out Burger off I-10, since even gangsters, crooks and
tweakers respected the sanctity of In-N-Out Burger.
This morning, however, none of those things are
pinging around Kips head as he makes his way across
the faux Scottish bridge to the eighteenth hole. Its just
after 3:00 a.m. and though its taken Kip almost seven
hours to get to this place on the course or, roughly,
about ve hours longer than it should have taken he
feels surprisingly alert. Hes spent the night and early
morning spraying balls all over the fairway and then
putting somewhere between six and twelve times around
each hole, moving inch to inch until nally the ball nds
the cup. The only audience hes had to this display of
utter imperfection are the tiny nocturnal kit foxes that
live in the dense underbrush surrounding the course
and, briey, Joanne, who stood silently on the lawn as
he shanked his way down the seventh fairway. Kip isnt
entirely sure what either the foxes or Joanne made of the
display, though both looked slightly frightened initially
and then merely curious and now have left him alone.
The eighteenth hole at Terra De La Paz sits on a
postage stamp in the middle of a water hazard. It was
designed to test the mettle of the best golfers in the
1 2 5
world and even in his prime or what amounted to
his prime Kip was constantly undone by the hole,
splashing his approach shots into the water time and
time again. It wasnt even ego that forced him into this
exercise; it was just easier to take the penalty than to
actually make it onto the green with a spectacular shot.
In his new condition, however, where the tiny twitching
muscles in his hand dont allow even an increment of
control, hes managed to drop his ball directly onto the
putting green without issue, just feet from the pin.
A lucky shot, Kip thinks. A perfect, lucky shot.
He pulls his putter from his bag and stands over
the ball. Two feet with a break left to right. A shot
hes made a thousand times. Maybe a million. Arnold
Palmer could make this shot after being embalmed.
Its that most unusual shot that requires not merely a
straight shot but also the ability to make a straight shot
turn at the end, the kind of shot that people watching
golf on their high-denition televisions imagine only
professionals know how to make. A water cooler shot.
Kip takes a practice cut and then another, and
another, and then closes his eyes, levels his putter and
hits the ball.


GOLDBERG
Monica Carter
THE RETI REMENT PLAN
I operated on assumption that nothing
was ever enough. Some call this addiction. I call it the mistress I cant
give up, the reason to ignore the pains that call out from almost every
crevice in my body each morning, the holy goddamn grail of redemption.
I call it football, because thats what it is.
But now, as I stand here on the thirty-seven-yard line in front of
sixty-ve thousand Super Bowl-hungry fans, I think I have denitely had
enough. Ive said this before, I know. Some may doubt the authenticity
of this statement. But believe me, after I win this game, Ill gladly tell
anyone who will listen that Brett Favre nally has had enough.
There may be two things about the statement Ive just made that are
difcult to believe. First, that Im going to win. Second, that Im going
to retire.
Ive been cursed, I know. Ive taken every team in the league to the
Super Bowl and the last time I won was with the Packers in 1997. I myself
cant believe it. The 2009 Vikings were a better team. For hells sake, we
How do you know
when enough is enough?
In the past
1 2 7
had Adrian Peterson. And I still couldnt do it. NFC Championship game,
tied in the fourth quarter, less than a minute to go, and bad Brett comes
out. I didnt want him to, but he showed up anyway. Intercepted by Tracy
Porter, a twenty-three-year-old New Orleans Saint. Hes no Saint to me,
I can honestly say. Knocked out by a team I secretly rooted for during my
childhood and by someone almost half my age. My heart was broken.
I took the Vikings to the Super Bowl the year after to prove to myself
that I could do it, only to be beaten again by Brees and the Sinners. The
Lord really does work in mysterious ways.
It hurt just as bad in 2013. I took the Texans to the Superdome in
the beloved month of February. This was a team that no one ever wanted
to believe in, and we never dropped a game until the Super Bowl. Beat by
Jay Cutler and the Giants, and their defense that included a thyroid case
of a defensive tackle named Baumglatt. I think that kid ate steroids for
breakfast, lunch and dinner. He sacked me four times and broke two of
my ribs. Every time I inhaled that offseason, all I could think about was
how his jersey never covered his gut, how it jiggled like an old strippers ass
when he ran right at me.
I wince when I think about the Titans. Twenty years since my
last Super Bowl win. I wanted another ring, another chance to prove that
I deserved it. Lost on an intentional grounding call. Game tied, third
and long on the nine-yard line. I ran like hell to get away from the united
mass of muscle that was the Raiders front line. I threw it to Joffries, the
only guy open and the least likely to catch it. He catches it in the end zone.
Fourteen seconds left in the game and, of course, they had to review it
upstairs. My toe was in front of the line of scrimmage. Sheehan, rookie
that he was, shanks the eld goal. Raiders win. After that loss, a month
passed before I could even look at my big toe.
The press never helps either. They have never given me a fair shake.
Since the rst time I played for the Falcons, all they have done is paint me
as an egomaniac, an arrogant prick. First I was the young hotshot who
wouldnt listen, and somehow morphed into the old codger who doesnt
listen because he thinks he knows better. Never mind that I do, they still
call me the choker. Taken all thirty-two teams to the Big Game and only
won once. Even if its not my fault, its my fault.
Doesnt matter if the coach calls run instead of pass on the second-
yard line with six seconds left in the game against the number one red zone
defense in the NFL. Or that with a 14th-ranked special teams, we decide
to do an onside kick that gives the Rams the ball with ve minutes left in
the game, only to take it all the way in for the winning touchdown. Or the
fact that when I played for the Jets (the second time), both our corners
were out and we were left to defend the top-rated wide receiver duo of
the 49ers, Bentner and James, with back-ups who have never played in a
Super Bowl, much less a whole season. Im still the Choker, a good-for-
nothing criminal, a hijacker that takes teams to the Big House and then
nose-dives.

Ill say it again: Its not my fault. If teams still pick me up, who am
I to argue? Teams that havent won more than three games a season in
twenty-ve years call on me to take them to the Super Bowl. And every
year I believe that were going to win once we get there. I believe I can take
any group of guys, show them what hunger is, show them what winning is,
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no. 12
show them what endurance is, show them who I am, who they are. And
damn if I dont do it every year. But somehow, all the hard work through
the season, the training, the injuries, we end up losing, throwing it away
like a half-eaten stadium hot dog.
Dont think I dont know with all these Super Bowl losses, Im the one
constant. Believe me, Ill take blame where blame is due. I took blame
when I played with the Chiefs and was intercepted four times by the
Dolphins defense, twice by a guy whose name I dont even remember. Its
just a game, right? Ill get em next year.
And I always do. I always come back. In my forties people kept saying,
Quit already, would ya? Things changed when I kept playing into my
fties. I was an oddity. I never missed a game, never got hurt enough that
I couldnt play. People started moving to Mississippi one after another
thinking that there was something in the water, the air, the soil that grew
indestructible human beings. Every week people tuned in to see the circus
freak-of-nature throw for another two hundred yards. It didnt matter
what team they had allegiance to I was exempt. Now they cheer for me
because they cant believe it.
I wonder whats so difcult to believe. I love this game. I love it so
much that I approached everything in my life like it was a football game.
I got into an argument with my wife Deanna, I consider the possible
defensive attacks and pick an offense thatll get me another down, a little
reprieve. When my daughter got married, I treated her like a game ball
and refused to let go of her hand when we reached the end of the aisle.
Letting go would have been a fumble. When my nancial advisor who was
in charge of my retirement plan gambled it away, saying he never thought
I would retire and didnt want the money to go waste, I found out who his
rival had been in business school and put all my money with him, vowing
to make him more money than I ever made before. I think everything in
life breaks down to offense and defense, because thats the only way I know
how to survive.
At seventy-one I know that sooner than later Death is going to come
up and say Put her in the old vice! Age is no longer part of my offense.
Well, it could be if I bought into that crap that seventy is the new forty.
Its not like I dont know that Im seventy-one or that theres no other
sport that has or ever had a starter this old. (Im including bowling in
that statistic.) Its actually become an advantage. When those defensive
linemen see my white hair and grizzly Clint Eastwood face, they get a little
freaked out they dont like seeing someone that old on the eld. They
dont want to think about it. Some of them cant even sack me; its like
sacking their grandpa. It presents a moral dilemma.
But the time has definitely come. As soon as I win this game, which
I will, Im going to call it quits. Go hunting. Relax on the farm. Do
whatever the hell a grandpa does. The truth is Ive done and seen it all.
Ive seen the greats, the not-so greats and the could-be greats. Seen the
offenses and defenses of every brilliant football mind the game has had
to offer. Seen commitment so erce you wonder how the player survives
when hes not on the eld. Seen limbs broken, muscles ripped and guys
never get up and walk again. Ive seen careers pissed away on drugs and
booze whole contracts spent before the player ever shows up for training
camp. And I dont want to see it anymore.
I know I said I love the game but lets face it: love aint what it used to
1 2 9
be. Its like a relationship youre too lazy to leave. You dont have too much
to do but maintain a pleasant atmosphere then there comes a time when
its just not fullling anymore. All I want is to win this one game. Thats
what it comes down to one last roll in the hay before I move on.
So here I am on the thirty-seven-yard line, tie game, thirty-seven
seconds on the clock. Im going to air this one out and someone is going to
catch it, I dont even care who. Three steps back and I cant nd anyone. I
feel the pocket getting smaller. Theres Montell with some room. I launch
it and, as I do, I see the Packer tank Danny Grant ready to roll over me.
He hits me in the sternum; Im at on the turf. Theres pain everywhere,
but mostly in my arm. I cant lift my head to see Montell. The sun is so
bright. I dont hear anything. Any play thats ever been called is swarming
in my head; each number-four jersey Ive worn is passing before my eyes
like days of a calendar in an old movie. Every head coach from every team
Ive played with is yelling at me. Its so God damned blindingly white. I
wish I could move but I cant.
And then, I just see Lombardi.
God, I hope he caught it.
CARTER
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Richard Peabody
SHI RTS AND SKI NJOBS
Foley.
Coach Rogan.
Youre going in.
Coach? Sonny Foley is sitting at his locker, downing Gatorade and
joking with a few other players.
The quarterback bot broke. I dont know how or why and I dont
understand all of that engineering mumbo jumbo anyways. Were gonna
script the rst eight plays in the second half just like we have since day one.
You know the drill.
Break down the history for me, for the casual viewer.
At rst there was a robot league the RFL. They went toe-to-toe
with the NFL and were more popular than the XFL or UFL had been.
The new league attracted sports geeks and the cable audience drawn to
robot demolition shows like BattleBots but never really caught on with
the mainstream. The eight teams adapted the Arena Football League
rules and played indoor venues.
This was after the clones and augmented players in the NFL?
Right. Clones were eventually banned but lots of players were
getting chips inserted. Bret Favre won two more Super Bowls after he
was auged.
But back to the RFL
Robots dont drink beer.
Coors Light spokesman on canceling ad stream with Fox Sports
1 32
no. 12
There was something to be said for an impenetrable interlocking wall
of robots, or blocking bots that could produce snow plow-like extensions
receivers and cornerbacks whose arms could telescope above other players
for impossible ricochet catches off the end zone rebound nets. Kickers
were as predictably bad as the ones on those vibrating electric football
games your grandpa grew up with. Quarterbacks were programmed with
complete playbooks. There was no longer a need for huddles as plays were
simply uploaded from the sideline.
Im sure that made the owners happy.
NFL owners could see the writing on the wall in terms of player
contracts and players union demands. Why have fty-three contracts
when you could acquire a bunch of bots and reduce your roster and contract
expenditures? If ticketholders would still come out to watch the product
the spectacle did it matter?
So, the NFL rejected the RFLs bid to force an NFL vs. RFL
championship game
Right, lesson learned from the NFL-AFL merger. So they absorbed
the RFL in the process, rejecting most of their rule changes save one big
one roster size. Bots would have to play by existing NFL rules. That
lost the geeky SciFi crowd that enjoyed the impossible feats of running-
back robots that could transform into giant balls or leap thirty feet into the
air. For the integrity of the game bots would have to wear unis and skin and
look like humans. No more wheels or sixty-mile-per-hour supercharged
receivers. No more cornerbacks with multiple latex tentacles. They would
be allowed to do only what humans could do. Granted you could program
bots to run like Jim Brown or pass like Joe Montana, but they no longer
looked like machines no visible shiny struts or hydraulics.
And of course that metal look was one of the things that made the
RFL so popular in the rst place.
ESPN:
Well, three home teams won last week and they all covered the
spread.
Trifecta.
Think the Pack can make a run deep into the playoffs?
Two words: Dallas Cowboys.
So whats your Super Bowl, Scott?
Stars vs. Stars. Dallas and L.A.
L.A. hasnt made the playoffs since your grandmama was above
ground.
Well, it took three years for the Stars to be competitive but I think
their run defense and their ground game make them a sleeper pick.
The Cowboys will bury them.
Cowboys-owner Brock Hunts box:
Hes watching warm-ups through binoculars.
Cecil, call Cal-Tech. I want a serious software upgrade on these
cornerbacks. They cant catch rain in a bucket.
Foleys on a rehab table, his right arm wired up. Whoa, Max, crank that
voltage down a notch. You trying to kill me?
Sorry, Foley.
1 33
Look at them over there. He nods toward the bots at the tech side
of the locker room. What do they talk about?
Lets ask. Max motions to Vikram the head tech, Hey Vik, what are
you guys talking about?
Vik shouts back, Killing the quarterback.
Hi, Nathan. Can you come over and play bots this afternoon until the
game starts?
Mom, can I go play at Averys house?
Of course, Nathan.
A little girl holds Packers jersey #16 in two grubby hands, thrusting it out
to the team as they troop out of the tunnel for opening warm-ups. The
quarterback bot hesitates. Stops. Signs the kids shirt with a Sharpie that
protrudes out of nowhere from one index nger.
Sports Guys radio:
Well take another caller. Bob, youre up. Talk to me, Bob.
Hey Tony. How big a hurting do you think the Boys will put on the
Pack today.
Gotta love Dallas fans.
Always modest.
I dont think itll be a barn burner, Bob.
Can you say, Gunght at the OK Corral?
Fox Sports:
Lets go down to Michelle on the sidelines with Packers QB #16.
How do you like your chances today?
Weve come to play.
Think you can match the Cowboy offense? Theyve been really piling
on the points lately.
Weve come to play.
Two kids on a porch:
Ill trade you the Lions entire D for the Packs #16 card.
No way.
Cmon. Ill throw in Foley.
Got him. What else you got?
Kid hands over his cards. Here, take a look.
Got him, got him, got him, want him, got him, got him. Hey, you
dont have nothing. Flings cards at the kid and jumps on his skateboard.
Whiny kid bends over to sweep his cards into a pile. Cmon, Ill give
you all of them for #16.
NFL Rule Book:
Each team will maintain a twenty (20)-member active and a four
(4)-member inactive roster during the regular season. Every club must
dress twenty (20) players for each game.
A balding reporter snares Foley and shoves a mic in his face. So Foley,
youre an old vet. Ready to retire?
Foley shakes his head, Too many alimony payments.
You have two ex-wives, correct?
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Foley grins, Three.
So, how about those bots?
Bots are just like people, only thing that makes them different is the
glow of those LED eyes under the visor.
How exactly?
Were teammates, we depend on each other.
What do you miss about the old days?
I miss the practical jokes at training camp. Its just not the same
taping a rookie bot to a goal post.
Whats next?
Robot coaches.
Isnt the NFL already a little like playing chess against a computer?
Chess?
NFL Hall of Fame, Canton, Ohio:
Look son, heres the rst football bot. The father waves his Packers
cap at the ten-inch action gure of Cleatus, the Fox Sports robot.
Theres just one display case on the defunct RFL. An L.A. Stars
silver helmet. A New Jersey Night red and black jersey. Photos of some
memorable bot players: Zac Zero star quarterback of the El Paso Bats,
annual kickoff return leader Louie Louie of the Peoria Predators. Video
clips are available at the push of a button.
The boy pushes one.
TV ad: Theyre big, fast, brutal, and quick-thinking. They can pass and kick the ball
further than any man. Are you watching the RFL?
At rst they looked like the Fox Sports Cleatus robot before evolving into
Transformer-like robots. In todays NFL theyve become skinjobs with
faces, uniforms, who arent allowed to shapeshift, though in the back of the
crowds mind there is always the hope that they will.
Well, son I guess it was only a matter of time before the animated
bots became ten-inch action gures, and only a few years later before they
became full-sized ten-foot bot players.
The boy pushes another button. And gets a video of TV host Conan
OBrien making fun of Cleatus. He bugs the crap out of me, Conan
says.
The boy pushes another button.
The NFL owners and commissioner held a series of meetings before
rules were agreed on. No more ten-foot bots. No more bots that could
convert into a wall of steel. No more receivers with stretchable arms.
The NFL is not going to turn into a sideshow, were not the Harlem
Globetrotters. Were Americas Game, for godsakes, said the commissioner.
No more bulldozer blades welded onto linemen, no more bots on steroids.
No more wheelie bots. No more pneumatic crushers.
Look here son, the rst player with nanotech parts. Dad ashes his
camera.
In the stands:
Oh no.
I cant look.
No!
Fumble. Get the ball. Fall on the damn ball.
1 35
A eld of silver uniforms. The Cowboys shimmer in the dome light. The
bots even appear to be concerned about their fallen teammate. Good
programming. The medics wait on the sideline while the bot techs try
rebooting. #98 is the Cowboys sackmaster. Hes harassed #16 the entire
game. He stops his sack dance and watches as they help #16 to the locker
room.
Fox Sports:
Lets go back to Michelle on the sidelines.
What about #16? Coach Rogan.
Well try to reboot him during the break.
And if he cant go?
Im not worried, Michelle. Well be back.
Vikram switches #16 off. Coach Rogan and his assistants hover in a circle
around them as Vik reboots the bot. The LED lights glow. Smiles abound.
Okay, Vik. Check him out.
Sports Guys radio:
One of the changes the NFL made was requiring the RFL teams to
jettison the bots zany names and personalities.
No names, just numbers. Thats why I call them the No Fun
League.
Most teams left vanilla personalities, but the Cowboys were the rst
team to do away with personalities altogether.
Quarterbacks were still human at that point.
Not for long. Think about it, Chuck. A computer can run through
progressions faster than a esh and blood QB ever could. They can make
all the throws.
Well, once offensive coaches could program quarterback bots with
the entire playbook. It was as simple as icking a switch to send in a play
and getting the bots to make it happen.
Bots get injured, true. But you dont have to pay them $100 million
salaries. They dont have to do PT for months on end.
Bots arent cheap.
Well, they are if youre Microsoft and you own the Seattle
Seahawks.
Oh, the Hawks dont play nice. They dont share their software with
any other teams.
Most teams have their own software set-ups, Tony. Coaches have to
turn them in along with their playbooks.
Breakage is repairable. When a bot goes down and the hard drive is
damaged its only a matter of installing a new hard drive.
How long would Brett Favre have played if he could have done that?
Well, Chuck, in some ways Brett still plays, doesnt he?
Oh sure, any offensive coach worth his salt is going to cannibalize
the history of the NFL and upload plays from Montana, Marino, Manning,
Brady, Favre and company. Why not? Theres nothing illegal about that.
For a long time it was predictable that coaches would keep the QB
and middle-linebacker positions in human hands. Some still do. Theres a
trust level there. And fans appreciate seeing their heroes out there.
The NFL today is a mix of esh and blood players alongside androids
and bio-engineered people.
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no. 12
Flesh and blood wears out, though, Tony.
Al Davis was the rst to have an all-bot defense.
Dallas was the rst NFL team to go all bot. No augmentation, no
humans, not even at quarterback.
Foley was the last human on the Cowboy roster.
Ive got to get that Madden 2025 away from you.
Eventually RFL coaches gured out how to hack into the opposing
teams playbooks. They could jam the signal.
Back in the day you had a couple of guys signal in the plays by hand.
One was a decoy to confuse the other team. So they couldnt steal your
plays.
The RFL was going downhill from there. Downloading viruses. The
merger came at exactly the right time for both leagues.
Coach, coach. Vik points to #16. The bot has begun bouncing around in
a victory dance. Hes taunting his teammates.
Send him a play, Rogan says.
The offensive coordinator texts in a handoff. The bot stops dancing.
He turns to face them. His arms ail as he shufes toward them. Hes
malfunctioning, Vik switches him off.
Were fucked, Rogan says.
Fox Sports:
That was some hit.
24 blitzed from the left side and drove the Packs QB right into the
hands of #98. He stepped up but nobody was open.
Never saw it coming.
The Pack recovered the loose ball and time expired.
Another wasted scoring opportunity. They might have had time for
another eld goal try.
I dont know that Rogan would trust their kicker bot after hed
already missed two out of three kicks in the rst quarter.
Their eet little running bot is moving the ball between the 20s but
they cant crack the Dallas red zone.
Well have to wait and see on #16 in the second half.
Lets cut to L.A. where the Stars defeated the Las Vegas Raptors.
Coach Warner, this was the rst divisional title game played by the
expansion RFL teams. The Las Vegas Raptors gave you all you could
handle for three quarters.
They sure did, Tony. But that fumble at the start of the fourth
quarter and then the interception that Reese took to the house made all
the difference.
Any preference for meeting the Packers or the Cowboys in New
Orleans?
We played the Cowboys once this year, as you know, on Thanksgiving
Day, and they squeaked by with a eld goal at the buzzer. We owe them
and we wont be playing at their house this time.
And if the Pack comes back to win this one?
They better bring their A-game. Thats all Im saying.
1 37
NFL Divisional Round:
Green Bay | 3 | 0 | | 3
Dallas | 7 | 7 | | 14 at the half
Las Vegas | 3 | 0 | 7 | 3 | | 13
L.A.
Super Bowl:
L.A. vs. winner of Green Bay/Dallas game
In the stands:
Oh my God. Lookee here, theyre sending Foley in.
You must be out of your mind.
Look for yourself. Hands binocs over.
Son of a bitch.
ESPN:
Sonny Foley is warming up on the Packer sideline.
Foley hasnt thrown a pass in an NFL game outside of training camp
in three years. Lets go back down to Michelle.
Michelle is running alongside the hulking Coach Malibu, trademark
Hawaiian shirt barely concealing his gut. Poking her mic at him, trying to
keep up, breathless. Coach Malibu, your thoughts on the rst half.
We have to tackle better. Their smaller run bots are hidden behind
their O-line. We have to stop them from getting to the edge like they have.
That tiny #46 bot is killing us. Lucky for us they missed two eld goals.
Cowboys owner Brock Hunt calling down from his box:
Malibu!
Yes, sir.
Kill that son of a bitch.
Sports Guys radio:
The smaller market teams couldnt keep up with the tech changes.
Their rosters were littered with clones and droids, though the O-lines and
D-lines were primarily bots. And the skill positions still human.
Teams used to boast about having one or two bots on their roster.
They werent every-down players. Not even close. But then clones were
banned and the RFL happened.
Rapid changes in the past twenty years, my friend.
Fans like to root for small-market teams like the Packers. Still
community-owned after all these years. And Jacksonville and Pittsburgh
and Tennessee and Carolina and Arizona are small but they have all
maintained.
No guns in the locker room. No sex or drug scandals.
Do you think bots will ever enter the college game?
Well, things have changed but at that level the universities cant
afford to explore advanced robotics. I mean, how many players does USC
carry on their roster?
Likewise, the draft has pretty much ceased to matter.
I dont agree. Every team except the Cowboys still has at least six bloods
on their twenty-four-player roster.
PEABODY
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no. 12
Foley ddles with the touchpad in his hand warmer. He still wears one,
a holdover from the old days, even in a domed stadium like this one. A
hundred thousand Dallas fans screaming their lungs out.
The play has been sent in from the bench. The bots already have it in
their circuits. Foley surveys the touch screen. Shotgun. Theyre passing on
rst down.
The tight end goes in motion. The safety cheats a little too much. Its
man. Foley changes the play on the touchscreen.
Foley! Coach Rogan is screaming and turning purple. What the fuck is
he doing?
Audible, his offensive coordinator shouts back, trying to hide a
smile.
The center bot mimics a human center. Points at the MLB. Nods his head.
Foley screams the count. The ball snaps back perfectly. He fakes the throw
and hands-off to #46, a small running back bot, hydraulic legs churning, a
draw play. The O-line surprises the D-line. They adjust but a millisecond
too slow and #46 hits open turf for twenty yards before being hammered
by the free safety that has rocketed over from the wide side of the eld.
Sports Guys radio:
Well take another caller. Lorenzo, youre up. Talk to me, Lorenzo.
Hey Tony. Do you think the Pack has a shot with Foley?
Not a prayer.
First down and ten at their own forty. Foley checks the play. A ve-yard
crossing pattern. At the line he frowns. He doesnt like the way the
Cowboys have six bots in the box. Theyve been blitzing #16 all day.
Theres nothing that can prepare you for getting hit hard by a machine
that weighs 250 pounds. Even todays bots Kevlar and steel and nylon
with nanotechnology are still heavy, cumbersome, and able to cause
considerable pain. Theres no give. Foleys forgotten what its like to get
hit by metal men.
Fox Sports:
Foley gets sacked. Thats a loss of nine yards. Second and nineteen.
Hes hurt, Chuck.
Foley is down on both knees.
Maybe hes having second thoughts about getting up.
Foley is broken. Bleeding. He hurts. He looks at the blood, the torn skin.
Damn. He wipes sweat and blood from his face. He waves off the medic.
Shouts, Huddle up.
Fox Sports:
Look at that. Foleys got the team in a huddle.
What do you suppose hes saying?
OK. Curly, Moe, Larry block, somebody.
Every bot studies Foley.
Foley, man
1 39
Shut-up, Jalen. I need you to get open. Think you can do that?
NFL Rule Book:
Eight players on the eld; twenty-player active roster; four-player
inactive roster.
Four (4) offensive players must line up on the line of scrimmage.
Three (3) defensive players must be down linemen (in a three or
four-point stance). One linebacker may blitz on either side of the center.
Alignment is two (2) or more yards off the line of scrimmage. No stunting
or twisting.
Offensive motion: One receiver may go in forward motion before the
snap.
A fan holds a sign that says Milk the Cowbots. He points to his face up on the
Jumbotron.
Foley scrambles. The Dallas D reacts quickly as the pocket collapses. Foley
slides but a linebacker lands on him late. Theres a ag.
Fifteen yards. Unsportsmanlike conduct. Foley reaches an arm out
and one of the Packer bots helps him to his feet.
Fox Sports:
After the penalty, the Packers will have the ball on the Cowboys
fteen-yard-line, trailing by four points with 4:13 to go in the nal period.
Foley calls a timeout.
Whaddya want, Foley? Coach Rogan croaks.
I want to win.
Think you can hit something over the middle?
Ill try.
Do it.
Foley in the huddle. Do you bots really think about killing the
quarterback?
Oh man, Sonny, dont go there, Darnell, the other wideout, shakes
his head. No, no, no.
The center who plays two-way as weak side LB on D studies the
humans. All the time.
Shit, Foley says.
Darnell laughs. Here we go now.
Foley puts out a st.
The bot stares at the st.
Look, team, if we can score and you can hold them were going to the
Super Bowl. Ill get you robo bots whatever electro juice you want. Just
give me some time to get the ball to Darnell here. Deal?
Seconds click away before the center bot bumps Foleys st.
Four kids are playing with an enormous adult-sized NFL Cowboy bot.
Throw it, throw it, one boy waves frantically. The bot oats a perfect
spiral down the driveway and the boys race to catch the ball.
Nathan comes down the walk with an action gure bot. He looks
from the action gure in his hand to the real lifesize bot clapping its hands
at the catch. He begins to cry.
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Hows it feel?
Nobody gave us a chance. Its awesome.
In two weeks youll go to New Orleans and play L.A.
Can you believe it?
Sports column, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
One for the Underdog
Let me confess right now that I hate that f-ing blue star. I hate those silver
NASA uniforms. I hate the swagger. The Americas Team nonsense. All
of the self-promotion and history. I hate the fact that there are no esh
and blood human beings on their roster. I think I even hate the Cowboys
cheerleaders. I dont know if theyre bots or not. I sat down to watch this
game like most people sit down in the dentists chair.
When #16 went down before the half I almost switched it off. All
hope gone. And what do you know? Gutsy Sonny Foley came out of
mothballs in what many people assume is his nal year in a mediocre career
to lead a touchdown drive in the nal seven minutes to seal the win.
Now that the NFL has eliminated human error and has more
to do with probability and statistics, how refreshing is it that Foleys
unpredictable play-calling and spontaneity confounded the Dallas defense
for a micro fraction of a second long enough to nd his receivers Jalen
Jackson and Darnell Williams for long gainers. Coaches still create a game
plan. Players download hours of lm and process it in minutes. What
bot cornerback today will fall for a play fake or a double move? What bot
linebacker wont react a split second faster than a human? Play-calling is
scripted. The outcome of most games is predictable.
Sonny Foley, the games MVP, played with a passion and intensity
thats all but been eliminated from football. He stuck it to the team that
cut him loose, to the owner who told him he was washed up, that he was
being replaced by a robot. Foley showed the American public that stranger
things can still happen, things beyond the man vs. machine rhetoric thats
been clogging the airwaves. I hear hes even giving the Packer bots names
again. He says theyre all teammates.
Now the Packers go on to New Orleans. Las Vegas has them seven-
point underdogs to the AFC champion L.A. Stars. Maybe thats true.
Maybe with two weeks to study all existing tape of Sonny Foleys playing
years, the Stars defense will be able to second-guess his audibles. Lets hope
not. Lets hope Foley audibles at the line of scrimmage like the second
coming of Peyton Manning. Heres hoping the Packers shock everybody
again.
ESPN:
Scott here on Sports Center. Im joined by Tony, Chuck, DeShawn
and running back bot #41 of the Carolina Panthers.
What do you bots think of Foley?
If you axe me, Foleys a brother.
A brother?
A brother under the skin.
1 41
NIKE, WITH DAN MAJERLE
(TELEVISION COMMERCIAL, 1993)
In the golden age of Nike ads, when everyone wanted
to be Michael Jordan or the young and long-locked
(hair extended, we later learned) Andre Agassi,
the scrappy Phoenix Sun Majerle pulled off a low-
budget gem that implicitly deflated the bombast
represented in other offerings. While Jordan joined
Bugs Bunny for a ninety-second bout of basketball
and bowling against animated Martians, and Agassi
shattered our screens with his forearm volleys,
Majerle joined a handful of t-shirted players in an
otherwise empty high school gym. The players
grunts and squeaky sneakers provide harmony to
Majerles understated voice-over: There oughta be
a stat for desire. They could figure out a formula for it.
The number of times a player dives for a loose ball, plus
the number of times he took a charge, multiplied by the
number of times he ignored pain. They could put it in
the papers. The ten guys who play with the most desire.
Hopefully, theyd spell my name right.
Dwayne Moser
KEANE: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
(NONFICTION BY ROY KEANE, 2004)
Notwithstanding the late challenge of Finn McCool's
Football Club the intriguing new story of a pub
team in post-Katrina New Orleans the most
compelling sports book of recent years is the
autobiography of Irish soccer legend Roy Keane.
Keano is a man of few words, but theyre savagely
revealing ones. Ghostwriter Eamon Dunphy, himself
a former soccer pro, has collected them all and
thrown in a few more besides (post-publication, hes
been forced to admit taking some artistic license
with the material). Honest, uncompromising and
occasionally unhinged, like the subject himself.

Chris Lowry
BOX SCORES
David L. Ulin
MEMBER OF THE TRI BE
to buy my daughter Sophie a Red Sox
cap at Fenway Park. Thats not hyperbole, although it probably sounds
like it, but when youve been on the Yankee side of the New York-Boston
rivalry for as long as I have the rst game I ever attended, in September
1968, was Yankees-Red Sox at Yankee Stadium; Mickey Mantle hit his
last home run but the Yankees lost anyway, 4-3 there are certain codes,
certain standards, certain things you just dont do. Really? I recall asking
her. A Red Sox cap? Are you sure? Yet I knew already where she stood. At
some point Sophie decided that she hates the Yankees, inuenced in part
by my wife Rae, a Cubs fan (anybody but the Yankees, she says each fall when
the playoffs roll around, to explain why shes rooting for the Twins, the
Indians, the Angels, anyone, anyone but the behemoth from the Bronx),
and in part by my niece Christine, who was born in Boston and has
carried an allegiance to the Red Sox for most of her fteen years. Partly
too, I suspect, Sophie plays up her dedication to the Red Sox because she
knows it makes me squirm. Its a complex bond between a father and a
child, with all kinds of competing layers of devotion and control. And for
Sophie, who was not quite eight years old when she asked me to buy her
that baseball cap, rooting for the Red Sox, precisely because of how she
knows I feel about them, is a way of asserting something, of staring me
down on an approximation of my own terms.
As it happens, I was not visiting Fenway Park to see the Yankees.
Rather, on this Monday night in August 2006, I was going to see the
Red Sox play the Detroit Tigers, who would win the American League
pennant that year. My brother John and I were driving up from Cape
Cod, leaving all our children two for me and four for him with
our parents so we could participate in what has been, for us, a lifelong
One of the hardest things
Ive ever had to do was
1 43
ritual. Weve been going to games together since the
early 1970s, at ballparks up and down the East and
West Coasts: Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Veterans
Stadium in Philadelphia, Dodger Stadium, the Big A.
Weve gone as kids and teenagers and young adults, as
drunken partisans and as sober parents with our kids.
Once in the early 1990s we went to see an Angels-
Mariners game with my brothers oldest child Curtis,
who couldnt have been more than two at the time. What
kind of strange universe is this, I remember wondering as we
drove east on the 22 freeway, in which the two of us have been
left in charge of this child and the best thing we can think to do with
him is to take him to a baseball game?
The answer, of course, is: What better thing to do
with him? What better thing to do with any of us? My
brother and I, after all, are fans, initiates, members of
the faithful, participants in a tradition that is, at times,
so intense it can only be likened to tribal war. This is
especially true when it comes to the Yankees and the
Red Sox, who have nurtured a rivalry as vivid as any in
sports. That Monday at Fenway Park, I rooted against
the Red Sox with a quiet insistence: quiet because I was
surrounded by 36,000 Bostonians, insistent because as
much as I love the Yankees I hate the Red Sox more.
The year before, in 2005, after Chicago swept the Red
Sox out of the rst round of the playoffs (and just a day
or so before the Yankees would be bounced from their
own rst round series against the Angels), I emailed a
friend: The only thing more fun than watching the Yankees win is
watching the Red Sox lose. At Fenway, when Josh Beckett
gave up three runs in the rst and another two in the
third, I pumped my st inside my pocket; Beckett,
remember, threw a complete game, ve-hit shutout
against the Yankees to clinch the 2003 World Series
for the Florida Marlins in New York. When David
Ortiz ended the game oh-for-four with two strikeouts,
I whispered a cheer of retribution; Ortiz was a gure of
a nearly Freudian dimension, the scariest Yankee killer
since Jim Rice. And when the game ended and the Red
Sox had lost, 7-4, I found myself buying Sophies cap
with a secret smile of vindication, as if Id plunged into
the belly of the beast and come out not only unscathed
but ahead. I am not so much of a partisan that I cant
recognize Fenway for what it is the most beautiful of
all the big league parks, the best place in the universe to
see a ballgame but there were more essential things at
stake. With this loss, the Red Sox had fallen two games
behind the rst place Yankees in the American League
East, an important edge in a division where every season
comes with its own psychological template, a psychic
structure within which we play out old dramas again and
again.
How important became clear four days later, when
the Yankees arrived in Boston for a rare ve-game set.
These had been the games Id wanted to see, but tickets
were impossible to come by, so I was back on the Cape,
resigned to watch on television. The series opened with
a Friday day-night doubleheader, and during the rst
game, baseball buzzed like a subtext through the long
New England afternoon. At the local go-cart track, we
sidled up to the ticket window where a middle-aged
woman sat in full Red Sox regalia t-shirt, hat, even
jewelry. I like your earrings, Sophie told her, pointing to the
twinned ceramic socks that dangled from her earlobes;
I cant stand it, she replied, her voice an urgent whisper, I
dont want to know whats going on. At this point the game was
tied, or maybe the Yankees were winning by a couple of
runs; it was close at any rate, with that peculiar sense
that anything could happen, that we had moved outside
the realm of solid ground. This is often the case with
the Yankees and the Red Sox, who share a relationship
that is obsessive, codependent even, like two abusive
spouses who cant let go. Even when your team wins,
its almost unbearably painful, a taste of heaven after a
long detour in hell. In 2004 the Red Sox came within
two outs of being swept by the Yankees in the American
League Championship Series before becoming the only
team in major league history ever to rally from a three-
games-to-none decit to win a series in seven games. In
the 2003 ALCS, the two teams fought it out until the
eleventh inning of Game Seven, when Aaron Boone
Aaron Boone? hit the series-winning homer for New
York. From 1949, when the Red Sox lost the pennant
to the Yankees on the last weekend of the season, to
1978, when Bucky Dents home run beat Boston in a
one-game playoff for the division title at Fenway Park,
the history of the Yankees and Red Sox is peppered with
such moments, beginning with the most apocryphal: the
curse of Babe Ruth. It was with the sale of Ruth to the
Yankees in 1920 that the Red Sox, who won ve of the
rst fteen World Series, began their long trek through
the baseball wilderness; until 2004, when they went on
to sweep the Cardinals after defeating the Yankees, they
had not won a World Series in eighty-six years. The
Yankees, meanwhile, played in thirty-nine World Series
during that same period, winning twenty-six of them
or nearly three times as many as any other team in the
history of the sport.
The Yankees won the opening game of that series
in Boston, as my brother and I, along with my son Noah,
cheered in the living room. They won the second game
of the doubleheader also, a marathon that lasted until
nearly one AM. This was the gimme game, one even
the most devoted Yankee fan might have expected to
lose, with the journeyman pitcher Sidney Ponson going
against the Red Soxs Jon Lester, although neither starter
1 44
no. 12
made it out of the fourth. By the end of ve innings
the score was 10-7 Boston and I was beginning to think
about going to bed. But then the Yankees scored seven
runs in the seventh inning and the party was on again.
One of the most famous or infamous, depending on
the side you occupy events in the Yankees-Red Sox
rivalry is the so-called Boston Massacre of September
1978, in which the Yankees came to Fenway and swept
a four-game series from the Red Sox, outscoring them
42-9. This was the culmination of perhaps the most epic
collapse in baseball history, as Boston blew what had
been a fourteen-and-a-half-game lead over New York
in mid-July. All these years later, as the Yankees won
the nightcap, I began to think about that series, to recall
how it had felt. There was something similar going
on here, an air of possibility, of being in the presence
of a process larger than ourselves. Lets call it baseball
mysticism: a sensibility, a heightened awareness, a quality
of connection, as it were. Ive felt it a handful of times
over the years, most recently this past fall when I knew
(and it is a form of knowing, neither guess nor intuition
but certainty) that the Yankees would win the World
Series in six games against the Phillies and not only
that, but which games they would win: Two, three, four,
and six. I felt it, too, in 1978, during the Bucky Dent
game, which the teams played after nishing the regular
season tied for rst place. That afternoon, the Red Sox
took a 2-0 advantage into the seventh, when Dents
three-run home run erased their lead. I was a senior at a
boarding school just outside Boston, and I recall sitting
in a dormitory commons room surrounded by Red Sox
fans, watching Carl Yastrzemski pop out in foul territory
to end the game. As the ball settled into Yankee third
baseman Graig Nettles glove, I look a long look at the
shocked faces around me and let out a victory scream.
No mercy, there is never any mercy in the world of the
Yankees and the Red Sox, although I was too young then
to recognize what that meant.
Now I was back in Red Sox territory, where over the
next three days I watched the Yankees complete a ve
game sweep of the Red Sox, the rst time they had done
so since 1951. Still, if I was older, I had not mellowed; if
anything, my sense of blood sport had only grown more
intense. In 1978, I was seventeen years old, unacquainted
with heartbreak, certain that it would always happen to
someone else. The Yankees had been a bad team when
I rst followed them, but that had seemed a temporary
glitch, not so much tragic as misaligned. By 2006 I
knew differently, knew that tragedy comes to everyone,
that time is a continuum and that the truest measure
of our commitment, of our resilience, is the ability to
bear great loss. This may sound strange coming from
a Yankee fan, but bear with me for a moment: There
is more to this story than meets the eye. After all, it is
no longer 1978, or even 2003, and in the contemporary
culture of the Yankees there is no more fundamental
line of demarcation than what happened in 2004.
2004. The very sound of it, the very syllables,
still ll me with despair. Yes, for all the reasons youd
imagine, and a host of others besides. 2004 was the year
of George W. Bushs re-election, the year we had to face,
nally, the fact that it was our fault, our responsibility,
every bit of it, that we were, as Hunter S. Thompson
suggested thirty-two years earlier, really just a nation
of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we
need to buy guns, and no qualms about killing anybody
else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
2004 was the year the Red Sox came back to beat
the Yankees head-to-head for the pennant for the rst
time in a century, since the nal day of the 1904 season,
when New York pitcher Jack Chesbro whod won a
modern major league record forty-one games that year
threw a wild pitch that allowed the title-clinching run
to score. There were several keys to the Red Sox victory
in the 2004 ALCS: Kevin Millars walk to lead off the
ninth inning of Game Four; David Ortiz, with his three
home runs and eleven RBI, his extra-inning game-
winning hits in Games Four and Five; Johnny Damons
grand slam in the second inning of Game Seven, which
effectively iced the Yankees early on. But Ive always
thought it especially appropriate that it should have been
Curt Schilling who broke the Yankees back by throwing
seven innings in Game Six, his surgically repaired ankle
streaking blood through his white support sock. Schilling,
after all, was Bushs biggest shill in New England, and if
you dont think theres some connection between those
things then you dont think about baseball as I do. From
the moment the Yankees lost Game Six I knew that
they were going to lose the series, just as I knew that
John Kerry, another dreadful son of Boston, was going
to nd some way to lose the presidency, some awful and
protracted failure of intelligence and nerve.
Does that seem too much, this framing baseball as
a lens or as a mirror, mirror mirror on the wall? Well, yes,
of course but for me this is precisely how baseball
works. It is a game that suggests certain things, certain
meanings, on both the mythic and the actual plane. It
is a representation of our deepest afnities and our
deepest antagonisms, a form of tribal kinship, a way we
can belong. Not long ago, in Harpers, Richard Rodriguez
published an essay on the decline of the American
newspaper in which he argued that the emergence
of the metropolitan daily was directly related to the
development of the industrialized city in the Nineteenth
Century and as such, was an essential element in the
1 45
construction of urban identity, of a city knowing what
it was. The same can be said of organized baseball,
which was also a creation of the Nineteenth Century, of
a culture in which industrialization was creating a new
social landscape with different points of identication,
different pastimes, different ways of interacting with
the world. What are our teams, after all, if not the
expression of a city, beginning with their names, which
are often emblematic of the place? Milwaukee has the
Brewers and Baltimore the Orioles, and Brooklyn used
to have the Dodgers, derived from the kids who dodged
streetcars near the teams ballpark in the early 1900s
trolley dodgers, they were called. The identication only
deepens with a teams heritage, with the story it tells its
fans. The Dodgers, when they played in Brooklyn, were
seen as a ragtag unit, dem Bums, a counterpoint to the
glamour of Manhattan, a team of no pretension even
after they became a powerhouse, winning the National
League pennant six times between 1947 and 1956. The
same holds for the Red Sox, which, much like Boston as
a city, dene themselves in opposition to New York. Its
no coincidence that Red Sox president Larry Lucchino
once characterized the Yankees as the evil empire, the
team with the most money, championships, success.
Nor does it matter that this is little more than rhetoric:
Although the Yankees are expected to have the highest
payroll in baseball this year at $200 million, the Red Sox
are right behind them, with a projected payroll of $170
million. What were looking at, then, is not necessarily
reality but perception, a reection of the subtext by
which a city sees itself.
Thats especially true of the Yankees, who represent
a mythic New York, a place of style and achievement,
of efciency and means. From 1921 to 1964 they won
twenty-nine pennants and twenty World Series; the
greatest players on those teams Babe Ruth, Mickey
Mantle, Joe Dimaggio, Yogi Berra are among the
greatest who ever played. They are the only team to
win ve consecutive World Series (1949-1953), the only
team to win four (1936-1939); as recently as a decade
ago, they were in the midst of reeling off six pennants
and four championships in eight years. This is why
people hate the Yankees and to be fair, they probably
should. But its also why I love them, because in a world
of such unimaginable loss and compromise, they have
always stood apart. Being a Yankee fan feels like being
royalty, like youve been given a gift you dont deserve.
Or at least it did, until Ruben Sierra grounded out to
Pokey Reese to end the collapse to Boston, and in the
process destroyed the most essential pillar in the Yankee
universe.
Let me be completely honest: For a long time I used
to imagine the dynamic between the Yankees and the
Red Sox as proof of the existence of God. It meant that
there was order to the universe that the Yankees always
beat the Red Sox, that Boston somehow never measured
up. Even in 1986, when the Red Sox won the division
and then the American League pennant, I watched
them squander a two-games-to-none lead in the World
Series and lose to the Mets (another New York team)
in another heartbreaking baseball failure. I was at Shea
Stadium for Game Six, again with my brother, sitting in
the right eld upper deck. We watched Roger Clemens
throw a perfect game for the rst ve innings, watched
the Red Sox take a 2-0 lead, watched the Mets come back.
We watched Dave Henderson lead off the top of the
tenth with a solo home run off the left eld scoreboard,
watched Boston score another run to go up 5-3. Were
going to see the Red Sox win the World Series, I whispered to my
brother, and then I did not say another word. The story
is so well known now that it seems almost apocryphal, a
John R. Tunis fantasy. In the bottom of the tenth the
Mets were down to their last strike when they managed
three straight singles, closing the gap to 5-4. The Red
Sox brought in Bob Stanley, known for his propensity
to wither in the clutch, which is what he promptly did.
A wild pitch to Mookie Wilson tied the game; three
pitches later Wilson hit a slow roller that went through
the legs of Boston rst baseman Bill Buckner, giving the
game to the Mets, who went on to win the Series two
nights later, in the seventh game. A couple of weeks
earlier, during an ESPN interview, Buckner had said,
The worst nightmare is letting the winning run score
on a ground ball going through your legs. Proof of the
existence of God, anyone?
What does that have to do with the Yankees? Only
this: In a world where such a thing might happen, 2004
was unimaginable. The Yankees didnt fall apart, the Red
Sox did, and in the most awful of ways. That was how
it was, how it would be always; it was money in the bank,
an act of faith. But then the unimaginable happened,
and I was left bereft. Or not bereft but literally faithless,
as if Id misread the very terms of existence, as if the
thing Id most believed had suddenly, and irrevocably,
been revealed to be a lie.
It is ridiculous, of course, to think that baseball can
dene existence, and yet this is the way of the fan. Its
ridiculous to think that fanhood initiates membership in
anything, that it matters whether or not you buy a cap at a
ballpark, that the teams you love (or hate) are anything
other than corporate entities. Rooting for the Yankees
is like rooting for U.S. Steel, quipped Bill Veeck or Red
Smith or Jimmy Cannon the sentiment is so ubiquitous
it transcends authorship and in the age of baseball as
big business, when the minimum major league salary is
ULI N
1 46
no. 12
$400,000 (the average is nearly $3 million), thats true,
to a greater or lesser extent, of every team and player
in the game. $400,000 a year is what the president
makes but then, as far back as 1930, when Babe Ruth
was asked why he should make more than the president,
$80,000 to Herbert Hoovers $75,000, he replied, I
had a better year than he did. As always, the analogies
come fast and furious, yet if this suggests an association
between Hoover and Obama, lets remember that Ruth
was then, and remains, perhaps the greatest player ever,
whereas the president is now matched, dollar for dollar,
by every minor leaguer up for a cup of coffee with the big
club, making him less Herbert Hoover than Moonlight
Graham.
Here we have the conundrum writ large, the
push-and-pull between reality and fantasy. It is, like
any other form of faith, one that must be continuously
tested. On August 16, 2006, the same week I went to
Fenway Park and two days before that Yankees-Red
Sox doubleheader in Boston, ground was broken on
the new Yankee Stadium, a $1.5 billion dollar pleasure
dome across the street from the ballpark where the
Yankees had played since 1923. Yankee Stadium (the
original Yankee Stadium, that is) was, like Fenway, a
landmark, site of all that history. Ruth and Gehrig,
Dimaggio, Mantle, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto: all of
them played and won there, and in the late innings of
a big game, with the upper deck literally shaking like an
earthquake, it did not seem a stretch to imagine that
their ghosts might still be present, somehow inuencing
the action on the eld. Call it myth, call it tradition, call
it mystique and aura, although as Curt Schilling yes,
that Curt Schilling, who before he played for Boston was
one of the aces of the Arizona Diamondbacks team that
beat the Yankees in seven games to win the 2001 World
Series famously said, Mystique and Aura? Those
are dancers at a nightclub. And yet, after the Yankees
staged improbable home eld comeback wins in Games
Four and Five of that World Series, both involving two-
out two-run home runs in the bottom of the ninth, a
fan displayed a sign declaring, Mystique and Aura:
Appearing Nightly, and it was hard to say anymore what
the story really was.
Two years to the day after the groundbreaking on
the new ballpark, I went to my last game at the original
Yankee Stadium, a nal visit to my baseball roots. All
day long I was aware of the numbers: sixty years, also
to the day, since the death of Babe Ruth, almost forty
since my rst game at the Stadium, ve weeks until the
closing game there, after which the place would be shut
down. Im not, by nature, nostalgic, but I couldnt help
feeling a sense of loss bordering on heartbreak, different
but related to the way Id felt in 2004. Here was another
pillar uprooted, another piece of tradition disappeared.
I had spent an undue amount of time in this ballpark,
and everywhere I looked it held memories memories
of childhood games and those to which I took my own
kids, games that didnt matter and those that did. In
1987, during a game against Boston, I got the entire left
eld stands to salaam Rae (then my girlfriend) after Don
Mattingly led the Yankees back from a nine-run decit to
beat the Red Sox; Mattingly always played well when Rae
was around. In 1981, I watched Ron Guidry and Goose
Gossage beat the Dodgers in Game One of the World
Series, after Pearl Bailey sang the National Anthem and
James Cagney threw out the rst pitch. More to the
point, I had soaked in what, for want of a better word,
lets call a lineage, talking to the old-timers, listening
to them recall Dimaggios grace as a centerelder, Billy
Martins re. Throughout the 1980s, when I was living
in New York, I used to come once a week when the
Yankees were in town, sometimes deciding on the spur
of the moment, showing up in the second or the third.
At one game, as a young player named Dan Pasqua stood
at the plate with his peculiar bowlegged stance, I turned
to the guy next to me, sixty, seventy years old, and said,
Doesnt that remind you of Berras stance? Berra was before my
time but Id seen the lms, and when my seatmate gave
me a look of recognition and answered, Yes, it does, I knew
that I belonged.
That last game at Yankee Stadium, I kept going
back and forth between belonging and the sense that I
was utterly out of place. For all my connection to the
ballpark, I hadnt been here much in recent years. Not
only that, but the game wasnt much, a lazy contest with
the Royals. The Yankees were mired in third place, ten-
and-a-half games back of Tampa Bay; they were a team
without direction, themselves appearing out of place.
Even against the Royals, a last place team ten games
behind the lackluster pace of the Yankees, the best they
could do was to force extra innings, as if they were barely
hanging on. Indeed, this was a game that wouldnt come
to closure, much like the one W. P. Kinsella describes
in his novel The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, an endless
progression of scoreless innings, missed opportunities,
failed attempts. The Yankees had the bases loaded in
the fourth with no out and did not score. In the eighth,
they loaded the bases with one out and came up empty
again. Next to me, a guy wearing Yankee pajama pants
and crocs tallied how many double plays the team had
hit into. Meanwhile, as the long afternoon settled
towards dusk, the pigeons began to swirl above the eld
as they were wont to do. Ill stay through the eleventh, I told
myself, and then, the twelfth; when Brett Gardner, a rookie
so obscure the organist played Who Are You? when
he came up, batted in the thirteenth with two out and
1 47
Robinson Cano on second, I thought: Either way, after this
at-bat I leave. Gardner bounced a single between second
and third, bringing in the winning run, and nearly ve
hours after it began, the game was over. I sat for a few
minutes, tired, a little enervated even, and then I realized
that I did not want to go.
How do I explain this? Its simple really: The
Yankees are a part of me. This is the fundamental
clich of fanhood, that we identify with our teams to ll
some gap in ourselves, to feel a part of something, to be
a member of the tribe. Thats both true and not true,
Id suggest or maybe its true in the most complicated
sense. For me its not the players, nor even the results; I
know, in other words, that whether the Yankees win or
lose, it has nothing to do with me. But I identify with
the culture, with the mythos, with the narrative. We may
no longer live in the Nineteenth Century, nor even in
the 1970s, but as we did then, we need a larger story to
make sense of the chaos of the world. Fanhood offers
a mechanism by which to approach this, allowing us to
participate in a larger fabric, of the sort once provided
by family, nationality, religion all those archaic and
discredited allegiances that modernity has stripped away
without pity or remorse. Fanhood is a superstructure, a
way of belonging; fanhood is an act of faith. This is why
2004 was such a test, much like the dismantling of the
old Yankee Stadium, a challenge to the story of the tribe.
And yet, the narrative continues, with all its rivalries and
tensions, its delirious blood sport. Already Sophie has
outgrown her Red Sox cap, although she wants another;
already, the Yankees have completed their rst season
in the new ballpark, a season culminating with a World
Series title, in which they beat another former Red Sox
nemesis, Pedro Martinez, in the deciding game. Already
we have moved into the future, which goes on forever,
within us and without us, a half-second that, as Kurt
Vonnegut once wrote, has lasted one quintillion years
so far. Next year is another season, and even the most
satisfying victory cannot erase the disappointments of
the past. But the game, the game goes on forever, if only
in the ballpark of the mind.
ULI N
1 48
no. 12
BLOOD HORSES:
NOTES OF A SPORTSWRITERS SON
(BOOK BY JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN, 2004)
I was never a fan, writes Sullivan. I was something
else: an ignoramus. After dying veteran sportswriter
Mike Sullivan tells his son, I was at Secretariats
Derby in 73... . That was ... just beauty, you know?
the author, who knows only that he doesnt know,
embarks on an odyssey to understand the meaning
of his fathers words, the truth of that beauty. Blood
Horses is a story of one sons self-guided education
into his late fathers world, a sublime meditation on
horses and horseracing, on how sports and sports
events can resonate within our memories, and on
how sportswriting and other less distinct forms of
writing can at once fix and fail to fix fleeting yet
ineradicable moments in time.
Anthony Miller
DOCK ELLIS AND THE LSD NO-NO
(ANIMATED FILM BY JAMES BLAGDEN, 2009)
Doc Hofmann rode a bicycle after his first
intentional ingestion of LSD on April 19, 1943
(known as Bicycle Day), but on June 12, 1970, the
most unbelievable milestone in the convergence
of sports and psychedelics was when Pittsburgh
Pirate Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter against the San
Diego Padres while tripping. (Where was this event
in Ken Burnss Baseball?) With the story of the
lysergic no-no (no-hitter) narrated by the pitcher
himself from a 2008 NPR interview, in this No Mas
TV presentation Blagden presents an entertaining
black and white cartoon recreation gleefully
augmented with colors a red screen every time
the windowpane touches Elliss tongue, colored
blobs and paint splatters, green Dexamyl rain
along with wonderfully selected sound effects and
Rufus Thomass Do the Push & Pull, as we follow
Elliss adventures in no-hitter wonderland.
Anthony Miller
1 49
MICHAEL JORDAN
(LEGEND, 1963- )
The six-time NBA champ is not my favorite player,
nor do I think he was the greatest. Maybe hes not
even a nice guy. But Jordans crossover appeal to
men and women of all colors, ages and economic
groups is the culmination of the barrier-breaking
that started with Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson
and runs through Ali and Magic Johnson. Starting
with the Dream Teams 1992 Olympic Gold Medal
and continuing for the next decade, at the pinnacle
of his fame Jordan was the most recognizable,
loved and admired man in the world. His presence
embodied intelligence, drive, charm victory and
he did it without sacrificing an inch of his identity
as a black American. There was a time, if he had
wanted it, when a career in politics could have been
his. If theres a reason that sports is more than
Darwinism on the hardwood, its service to the idea
of America as a country that contains multitudes
is it. Without Michael Jordan there would be no
President Obama.

Bruce Bauman
JOCK OPERA
(RADIO, 2010)
Theres always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity.
In every generation, the least cultivated taste has
the largest appetite. This quote by Gauguin opened
the 2010 season of The Petros & Money Show and
nothing on NPR that day was likelier to move you
to thought. If shuttling back and forth between
National Public Radio and todays sports radio
seems like a kind of schizophrenia, then youve
not been listening to sports radio: hosts Petros
Papadakis and Matt Money Smith make literary
and scientific references and cite obscure song
lyrics at length as philosophical treatises; sports is
a starting point for discussions of Holden Caulfield
or the subpar talents of John Mayer. The Jim Rome
Show topical, wide-ranging, above all inventive
is a roller coaster ride through the psyche of the
American sports fan. For those whose circle almost
exclusively comprises writers and artists, modern
sports radio becomes the community of sports-
loving friends we dont have in real life, debating
the merits of the New York Jets or Ron Artest or a
proposed college football playoff while on our way
to the museum.

Dwayne Moser
THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY
(MOVIE BY SPIKE LEE, 20??)
The bio-pic no, you havent missed anything
that Lee began talking about almost fifteen years ago
but never succeeded in funding. Lee is the perfect
filmmaker to do Robinson justice; unfortunately
at this point the directors career resembles Bret
Saberhagen's more than Bob Gibsons. Hes never
again achieved the majesty of Do the Right Thing;
among all the crappy sports movies that do get
made, a Robinson or Joe Louis pic (another of his
wishes) would restore Lee, with his original vision
and love of athletics, to movie grace.
Bruce Bauman
BOX SCORES
Paul Cullum
WHY I HATE SPORTS
I hate sports.
I liver hockey sticks. Facemasks, groin shields, balls spheroid and elliptical.
Pelotas, shuttlecocks, mashies and wedgies, footbags and crumpets. Im
immune to sheaf or caber toss, harpastum, ga-ga, bossaball, pespallo,
varpa and klootshieten. I embrace contest neither actual nor virtual, be
it BASEketball, Rollerball, quidditch, onkerton, chessboxing, cheese
rolling or Brockian Ultra-Cricket. I have no opinion about Michael Vick,
Isiah Thomas, Terrell Owens, John Rocker, Shaq and Kobe or Marge
Schott. I do not follow Dodgeball on the Ocho. Once during a subway
series, I was the only living soul on the streets of the East Village.
Or to be more precise, if its not quite hatred I muster towards sports,
Im oblivious to their strategic charms. It took sports memorabilia to
nally bring down O.J., so its not like I dont register their civic value.
But Im a sports agnostic. I lack the intramural gene. Basketball thats
the orange one, right?
I was born and raised in North Texas Dallas Cowboy country,
Americas Team where the Doomsday Defense and the Gemini
astronauts vied for pecking order in the pantheon of my immediate peer
group. The Kennedy assassination permanently stained Dallas in the
national consciousness, but it was the Ice Bowl in 1967 that sent the city
into an extended depression, when the Cowboys met the rival Green Bay
Packers in Wisconsin for the NFL championship, determining who would
advance to the second Super Bowl. Amid sub-zero weather conditions
for which the Cowboys were woefully unprepared, the Packers Bart
Starr pulled a quarterback sneak on fourth down with sixteen seconds
Anything with a ball no good.
Martin Scorsese, director of Raging Bull
1 52
no. 12
remaining to score the winning touchdown. At the time
I could sense the collective pall that weighed on every
adult around me, and yet I was oddly unaffected by it.
Even at ten, the vagaries of chance seemed like a silly
thing to get worked up over.
Later, I went through ve years of an extended
undergraduate career at the University of Texas at
Austin without once technically making it to a football
game. The 1969 Texas Longhorns were the last college
team to win a national championship with an all-white
players roster (Richard Nixon himself helicoptered in to
watch the Texas-Arkansas showdown), and when I was
there in the late Seventies there were rumors of catered
dinners for university ofcials where they requested
exclusively black waiters. The local kingmaker at the
time, Frank Erwin, a close ally and advisor of Lyndon
Johnson, had followed many state politicos onto the
UT Systems Board of Regents, known locally as the
fourth branch of Texas government, where he raised
the money for a professional-class football stadium.
When Erwin later closed the UT Towers observation
deck following a rash of suicides even though it had
remained open for a decade after Charles Whitman shot
forty-two people from its parapets, killing fourteen
he silenced his critics by saying, If someone wants to kill
themselves, they can jump off my stadium. A concert
venue is named after him now, the Frank Erwin Center,
where at a memorial service in his honor I personally
witnessed sixteen thousand mourners make the Hook
Em Horns sign, clasp pinkies and sing The Eyes of
Texas Are Upon You in a minor key.
Having found my way into the writing life, it was
a sportswriter, Red Smith, who produced my favorite
quote about the process: Theres nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Two years ago I was named one of Americas best
sportswriters, included in Houghton Mifins annual
anthology of sports writing.
But try as I might to get on the bus, to step up to the
plate, to be a team player, I cant help but see sports as
a monumental waste of time and enthusiasm, a massive
con and the engine of most of what is institutionally
wrong with society. To quote Packers stalwart Vince
Lombardi quoting UCLA Bruins coach Red Sanders, in
one of those sports tautologies that atten everything in
its path even as it crystallizes whats most egregious about
its ubiquitous philosophy: Winning isnt everything; its
the only thing.
In his 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class, written at the onset
of the American century, Thorstein Veblen had some
choice words about organized sports, as he did about
most modern institutions, seeing it as an indication of
truncated spiritual development and a carryover of the
predaceous or predatory barbarian culture at the heart
of modern capitalism:
Sports of all kinds are of the same general character,
including prizeghts, bullghts, athletics, shooting,
angling, yachting and games of skill, even where the
element of destructive physical efciency is not an
obtrusive feature. Sports shade off from the basis of
hostile combat, through skill, to cunning and chicanery,
without it being possible to draw a line at any point .
[The] temperament which inclines men to them is
essentially a boyish temperament. The addiction to
sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested
development of the mans moral nature . This peculiar
boyishness of temperament in sporting men immediately
becomes apparent when attention is directed to the large
element of make-believe that is present in all sporting
activity. Sports share this character of make-believe with
the games and exploits to which children, especially boys,
are habitually inclined. Make-believe does not enter in
the same proportion in all sports, but it is present in a very
appreciable degree in all . It is noticeable, for instance,
that even very mild-mannered and matter-of-fact men
who go out shooting are apt to carry an excess of arms
and accoutrements in order to impress upon their own
imagination the seriousness of their undertaking. These
huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic, prancing gait and
to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of
stealth or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit.
Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably
present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible
mystication features which mark the histrionic
nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the
reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The
slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up
of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the
terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as
a necessary means of secret communication, the use
of a special slang in any employment is probably to be
accepted as evidence that the occupation in question is
substantially make-believe .
In popular apprehension, there is much that
is admirable in the type of manhood which the life
of sports fosters. There is self-reliance and good-
fellowship, so termed in the somewhat colloquial use of
the words. From a different point of view the qualities
so characterized might be described as truculence and
clannishness.
That sports are a simulacrum of warfare is evident
from their parallel histories, and the classical canon is
rife with comparisons between the two.
The Olympics were arguably a ritualization of the
1 53
ruinous armed conict threatening to decimate the
Greek city-states, and myth credits their origin to either
Hercules after the completion of his Twelve Labours,
or King Iphitos after the Oracle at Delphos counseled
him to seek peace with his enemies the Pisans sometime
prior to 775 B.C. From the Roman Coliseum onward,
packaged violence has proven an effective diversion
from the follies of empire.
In his coverage of the 1973 Super Bowl, Hunter
Thompson provided an example of Sportswriting
101: The precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami
Dolphins stomped the balls off the Minnesota Vikings
today by stomping and hammering with one precise
jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with
pinpoint-precision passes into the at and numerous
hammer-jack stops around both ends. To be sure,
the violence in sports like football and hockey is real,
widely and readily chronicled elsewhere; one need
look no further than one-time dirtiest player in the
NFL Conrad Doblers memoir Pride and Perseverance, or
the public tragedies of players like Tampa Bays Randy
Grimes, long addicted to painkillers, or to read Malcolm
Gladwells comparison of pit-bull ghting (pegged to
Michael Vicks prison sentence) with the debilitating
effects of a pro football career on its practitioners, to see
the cumulative destruction visited on the participants
of what we term our recreations. Veterans of foreign
wars at least have government subsistence and nominal
medical care at their disposal. The NFLs treatment of
its own combatants, by every account, is atrocious. And
career ghters left punch-drunk and abandoned are the
stuff of drama.
If this violence is vicarious on the part of spectators,
it doesnt have far to travel through the limbic system
and cerebral cortex to manifest itself as the all too
physical violence that spills over into sports crowds.
Football hooliganism is a way of life in much of the
world (chronicled by Bill Buford in Among the Thugs), most
notoriously culminating in the Heysel Stadium Disaster
in Brussels before the 1985 European Cup Final, which
left thirty-nine dead and over six hundred injured. Even
Lakers fans arent above torching a stray police car now
and then.
That sports should be essentially juvenile in nature
stands to reason, as most fans presumably learn the
lessons of sports in childhood, where team play is an
accepted adjunct of primary and secondary education.
These include the principles of sportsmanship and fair
play, respect for your equals on the eld of honor, losing
with dignity, winning with grace, playing by the rules,
learning and accepting your limitations, and the value
of teamwork and healthy competition. All of these, to
one degree or another, are counterintuitive to the world
in which theyre introduced, and all break down when
applied to the world of professional athletics. It was
Grantland Rice, the Depression-era dean of American
sports writers, who in his poem Alumnus Football
coined sports most hallowed canard:
For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name
He marks not that you won or lost
But how you played the Game.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with high school
sports or the movies and TV shows predicated on them
knows that this sentiment would get you drummed out
of any locker room at halftime. And anyone with kids,
or who has ever taken an interest in their evolution,
knows that soccer matches, Little League games and Pee
Wee football scrimmages are among the least fortunate
pageants of human behavior, child or adult. Coaches
are never the strong, silent role models you imagine,
steeped in the verities, who point your child down
the path to man or womanhood. They are invariably
hypercompetitive, aging jocks with a short fuse,
whose gung-ho, can-do attitude has tipped over into
exasperation and resentment. And parents who take
a keen interest in their childrens after-school sports
activities often invest in them to an unhealthy degree,
taking the outcome more seriously than their dutiful
issue. These can only translate as permanent lessons to
the impressionable mind.
The emphasis placed on sports in public school
(and the resources allocated to them) is to the detriment
of every alternative music, arts, drama, other
extracurricular activities and core academics. In high
school its the sports gures who routinely dominate
the social hierarchy and reap the sexual benets (the
most desirable conquests, dressed in ceremonial colors,
literally cheer them on, often dancing in concert). They
are continually held up as role models by any and all
adults, receive the lions share of commendation and are
provided the clearest pathway to professional success. In
college its worse, as real money enters into the equation,
legitimately or not. And yet the values instilled in
the participants (and observers, by proxy) ultimately
work to the detriment of society. Under the guise of
collaboration (i.e., teamwork), players are taught the
paradigm of conict, where all problems are adversarial,
to be dealt with by force and strategy. Competition as
the hallmark of free-market capitalism nds its earliest
advocacy in organized sports, where immediate goals
always are framed as essential through the demonization
of those who oppose them.
By extension, every problem comes with an enemy
to focus on one who soon enough can eclipse the
problem itself. This is how America nds itself in so many
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no. 12
open-ended wars, where everything but our adversary
strategy, goals, benchmarks is situational at best
and nonexistent at worst. Its why systemic problems
requiring broad coalitions and unity of purpose global
warming, health care, any entrenched set of issues with a
clear goal and no personied evil continually elude us.
The combination of abuse and piety with which
players are indoctrinated physical punishment,
psychological brutality and banal platitudes to justify
it all are hallmarks of the military, and serve the
identical function of breaking the spirit and initiative
of participants in the interest of blind obeisance and
external control. Meanwhile the pep rallies, martial
music, uniforms, pageantry, pomp and circumstance are
a nascent form of the nationalist frenzy and patriotic
fervor that accompanies all wars and other actions
requiring extralegal justication, just as the blind fury
of sports fanaticism anger, untempered enthusiasm,
headlong emotion unchecked by reason is exactly
the unthinking fervor that accompanies any rush to
judgment or misadventure on the part of government.
Emotional investment in an arbitrary entity involved
in arbitrary conict whose outcome is ultimately of no
personal consequence is tribalism. Proprietary dominion,
aspirational authority, the vicarious thrill of power
without sacrice these are accomplished through the
sort of warmed-over nostalgia and facile bromides that
Ronald Reagan, himself an ex-sportswriter, once made
his stock in trade. The old values that have presumably
passed away elsewhere are preserved on the playing
eld, bright and shining in the light of a better era, one
inextricably linked to childhood. This is the essence of
sports ctions and lms: Damon Runyon, Casey at the
Bat, Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees, Kevin Costner
in Field of Dreams, James Caan and Billy Dee Williams
in Brians Song, Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty in
Bang the Drum Slowly, The Last Game Of The Season (A
Blind Man In The Bleachers).
As with most successful fantasies, exposure risks
tearing at the fabric of ones belief system. Sports are the
province of honor and fairness, except that professional
athletes routinely resort to steroids and performance-
enhancing agents to attain their competitive edge, often
with the complicity (or at least plausible denial) of team
owners and doctors. Sports is a celebration of the physical,
yet sports fans are among the most slovenly, disheveled,
misshapen human specimens imaginable. (Fat semi-
naked guy in war paint and team colors with the beer hat
on his head Im talking to you.) The game is played
for the love of it, yet Charlie Hustle will bet on games he
can affect the outcome of, like Shoeless Joe Jackson back
at the dawn of professional athletics. Sports provides
bonds for families particularly fathers and sons yet
Ive watched my share of Cowboys games with my own
father and I couldnt tell you a single thing it revealed
about him. It was a pretext to sit together in the den
for three hours without talking and without my mom
bothering us. Sports also ostensibly unites communities,
especially small-town ones, where high school football
often is the centerpiece of social life, much like Wal-
Mart, to the detriment and destruction of everything
around it. And to those who subscribe to it, sports
represents a common language, devoid of philosophy,
politics, prejudice or controversy, while to those outside
it, it signies the exact opposite a racist, reactionary,
vacuous, vindictive world view where brutality triumphs
over all other traits. During a protest following the 1970
Kent State killings, Richard Nixon directed his limo to
the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of the night to talk
college football with some of the protesters. Needless to
say, it didnt go well.
Professional sports are credited with substantially
advancing race relations in America, ultimately paving
the way for integration in other parts of society. But by
designating the arena of professional sports as the one
area where the underprivileged and disenfranchised can
prosper if not dominate, racial struggle is reduced to an
attenuated path of genetic exceptionalism, where the
economic and social rewards sought by all are allocated
disproportionately to statistical freaks. There are thirty-
two NFL teams with a maximum of fty-three players
each. The NBA (thats the orange one) has thirty teams
with a maximum of fteen players each. Major-league
baseball has thirty teams with a twenty-ve-man roster
each. Thats space for 2,896 individuals. As of the 2008
census, there are roughly 37.6 million African-Americans
and 46.9 million Hispanics in the country. This sliver of
opportunity would seem less relevant than that afforded
to those who play the lottery.
Yet sports are awarded an outsize importance in
everything from popular fashion to broadcast advertising
to municipal appropriations. Look at the deals and
incentives accorded sports franchises, particularly the
tax breaks that accompany professional sports stadiums.
To pick just one example at random, consider the case of
one George W. Bush, who was the public face on a team
of investors in the Texas Rangers expansion franchise
American League team that was awarded $135 million
by the city of Arlington to build a new ballpark. This
was paid for by a sales tax hike. The $50 million the
owners agreed to invest up front was largely subsidized
by a one-dollar surcharge on tickets, and the measure
was approved by a two-to-one margin after a $150,000
advertising campaign paid for by the city. With tax
1 55
exemptions and additional nancial incentives, taxpayer
subsidies eventually totaled $200 million. Bush never
had even marginal success in business before that, and his
success rate afterward is a matter of public record. Even
in his tenure as Managing General Partner he oversaw
the trade of Sammy Sosa to the Chicago Cubs. Yet that
single act allowed him the necessary smokescreen which
afforded him the governorship of Texas and beyond that,
the presidency. Without the Arlington stadium deal
and his face time before the cameras at Rangers games,
George Bush would have been his brother Neil. And the
Rangers are still as mediocre a team as they ever were,
one of only three never to make it to the World Series.
George Bush is baseballs true legacy.
Sports, as conducted for the benet of their
credulous followers, are a rich mans toy, designed to
siphon off billions of dollars from the people who can
least afford it. The best players continually are shufed
to the worst teams like the money card in three-card
monte, the wins and losses canceling each other out
in aggregate, season after season, decade upon decade.
Billions more is spent on bookmakers, pools and
sportsbook betting, another suckers game. All of it is
facilitated by the idealism of the fans, without which
there would be no industry, and which is perpetually
and capriciously exploited in the name of prots. Team
owners sell off franchises without a stray thought to civic
loyalty, like Walter OMalley did the Brooklyn Dodgers
or Robert Irsay did the Baltimore Colts, skulking away
on atbed trucks in the dead of night. The owners are
resented in the best of times as arrogant and entitled,
and at their worst George Steinbrenner with the
Yankees, or Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders they
border on the pathological.
In the spirit of competition, sports fans will turn
this argument around, level it ad hominem at whatever
I might invest my own leisure in. Excavating meaning
or identity from sports teams or players is the same as
nding it in music, lms, books, the arts whatever I
might be susceptible to.
Perhaps. The arts trafc in gradations of the
human spirit in ways that athletics cannot, it seems to
me, but perhaps thats merely chauvinism. If something
is beyond the scope of my understanding, I cant very
well use my lack of enlightenment as evidence of its
inferiority. Except that the two dont seem symmetrical.
Sports have infected the arts as theyve infected
everything else, in a way that isnt true in the obverse.
The musical equivalent of sports is Top 40 or, worse,
American Idol, where all subtleties of style and substance
are rolled over in the onslaught of competition. In lm
its the Academy Awards and the reduction of its panoply
of virtues to statistical achievements and anomalies. Or
else its the preoccupation with weekend grosses, per-
screen averages and the metonymic assimilation of those
values into the movies themselves whatever degree of
pandering and diminution is required of drama to force-
feed it into the dilated gullets of those stuporous or
insensate enough not to reject such friction-free ctions.
The against-the-odds, last-second triumphs of will over
adversity that are lifted wholesale from the spontaneity
of sports to animate the lifeless corpses of lab-stitched
entertainments.
I suspect the intensity of sports loyalty lies
somewhere in the realm of sense memory. A pass that
oated into their ngertips, the sweet spot of a Louisville
Slugger connecting with a fastball down the middle: Most
people have some momentary experience with the thrill
of victory or most men at least; and no discussion of
sports can take place without focusing predominantly on
male athletes and fans. Womens sports I get. Ill watch
competitive womens volleyball whether I understand it
or not; similarly, following mens sports allows women
passage into a mans world and a forum to appreciate
the masculine form, as it presumably does for gay men.
But for men, watching sports, or playing them past the
physical prime of adolescence, is a way to retain the
sense memory of those moments most closely aligned
with ones burgeoning, and now waning, masculinity.
The standard-bearer of this phenomenon in
American letters is Ernest Hemingway. Briey a
sportswriter for the Kansas City Star, he chose as his
subject what it means to be a man in the Twentieth
Century. This brought him into proximity with
bullghters, boxers, big-game hunters and deep-sea
sherman, which he chronicled in sparing, taciturn
prose that rejected the orid language of his forebears
all that frilly, festooned, Nineteenth Century dandyism
that reads like so much coded effeminacy. Hemingway
became the most famous writer of his time by playing
the adventurer, the warrior, the world traveler self-
glorifying diversions that excuse one from the actual
business of writing. Im more given to the assessment of
Noel Coward in his send-up of the Cole Porter standard
Lets Do It:
The Bronts felt they must do it
Ernest Hemingway could jjjjjjjjjjjjust do it
In fact, the moment when Hemingways prose breaks
a sweat, when it doesnt languish in torpid naturalism,
modernist gimmicks or agonizing, elephantine subtext
(hes impotent! she had an abortion!), is at the midpoint
of his best short story, The Short Happy Life of Francis
Macomber. A bullet tears through a lion the same
lion that reveals the eponymous heros cowardice,
i.e., sexual inadequacy, the incident cuckolding and
CULLUM
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no. 12
dispatching the protagonist in quick succession
producing sudden hot scalding nausea. At the heart
of the relentless adventurism of the Hemingway hero,
there is inevitably sexual insecurity, battleeld trauma
or both. Of course Hemingway ended poorly, his tepid
prose full of excruciating hothouse sex scenes before the
manner of his death (self-inicted shotgun blast to the
mouth paging Dr. Freud) linked these preoccupations
in a single grisly tableau. But that the premier literary
sportsman of his day should combine sex, violence, death
and dissolution in equal measures, in life and art, at least
must give us pause.
If sports is surrogate warfare, its rules of conduct
and engagement codied some twenty-eight centuries
ago to stave off epic ruin, then its institutional rise in the
Twentieth Century as national obsession and corporate
juggernaut has, in turn, legitimized warfare for greater
metaphoric purpose, passing its guiding principles on to
business and by extension politics.
Veblen again (who, after all, was writing as an
economist): As it nds expression in the life of the
barbarian, prowess manifests itself in two main
directions force and fraud. In varying degrees these
two forms of expression are similarly present in modern
warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, and in sports
and games. Both lines of aptitudes are cultivated and
strengthened by the life of sport as well as by the more
serious forms of emulative life. Strategy or cunning is an
element invariably present in games, as also in warlike
pursuits and in the chase. In all of these employments
strategy tends to develop into nesse and chicane[ry].
Chicane[ry], falsehood, browbeating, hold a well-
secured place in the procedure of any athletic contest
and in games generally. The habitual employment of an
umpire, and the minute technical regulations governing
the limits and details of permissible fraud and strategic
advantage, sufciently attest the fact that fraudulent
practices and attempts to overreach ones opponents
are not adventitious features of the game . The two
barbarian traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to make up
the predaceous temper or spiritual attitude. They are the
expressions of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind.
Both are highly serviceable for individual expediency
in a life looking to invidious success. Both also have a
high aesthetic value. Both are fostered by the pecuniary
culture. But both alike are of no use for the purposes of
the collective life.
Sports is what happened to business in the Eighties,
and what has happened to politics since the mid-
Nineties. When the engine of capitalism becomes
competition, hence conict, when ambition becomes a
social virtue and its consequences the province of ninnies
and alarmists, then the temptation becomes too great, or
the punishment too meager, not to buck the rules: To
cheat, work the refs, spin the facts, game the system
all of which are sports metaphors. The nancial system
collapsed because teams of Harvard MBAs worked long
into the night to identify new and breathtaking ways to
exploit arcane nancial regulations for short-term gain
on the part of their corporate overseers. Government is
stymied by partisan rancor, which is simply competition
carried past the point of rational limits. If winning is the
only thing, then anything done in its service is justied.
Just do it. Because life is not a spectator sport. And
impossible is nothing. This is the legacy of the last eight
years.
Its the logic of sports that is repeatedly used to
justify this worldview. Theres a breed of intelligence on
display among sports commentators and in any sports bar
during a game one predicated on statistics, anecdotal
evidence, rational empiricism, rote memory over applied
analysis, and numbers over shades of meaning. This is
the language of Ayn Rand, of objectivism, of market
research, a belief in the nancial markets as a self-
correcting system. More than a faith in mathematics,
its an entitled philosophy in which whole arguments
are precluded by the mere introduction of numbers, and
where anything can be proven statistically.
These are the people leading our government.
Theyre the same people who recently wrecked the
world. And I think the toehold that allowed them this
opportunity, the susceptibility in the body politic that
allowed them to exercise their rough magic one
masquerading as populist and practical, steeped in
common sense but really just a monstrous grab of equity
at our expense is our century of preoccupation with
sports.
Say it aint so, Joe.
1 57
Katherine Dunn
LI STENI NG
watch TV ghts, he comes through the door roaring
that boxing is vulgar and barbaric and should be banned. I smile because
it takes me back to the middle of the last century when I was a little kid
and boxing was huge.
That was before television arrived in our lives, when most of the
country depended on the magic of radio for entertainment and news of
the wider world. The two major sports were baseball and boxing, and the
big events were broadcast nationwide.
Mine was a blue-collar clan, and my Dad and brothers were gentle
people who were interested in boxing and loved to listen to the Friday
Night Fights on the radio.
My mother called boxing barbaric and vulgar. She banned even
talking about the sport in her house, much less listening to the ghts.
This was ironic if you knew her, because my pugnacious mother was the
only violent member of the family.
So my brothers snuck to take boxing lessons at the community center,
I snuck to watch them, and we all snuck outside to listen to the ghts on
other peoples radios.
This worked ne in the summer because a lot of families would prop
their radios in open windows and sit out on their stoops or porches to
listen to the Friday Night Fights. In neighborhoods all across the country
you could walk block after block and never miss a round. But winter was
a problem.
Every time my pal Larry
comes over to
1 59
Still, for a few weeks one winter, while everybody else was listening
snug in warm living rooms, my Dad developed an alternate strategy. On
Friday nights, when he came home from work at the shipyard, he would
park his old De Soto down the street a ways from our house. After dinner,
as ght time rolled around, Dad would go out for cigarettes. My brothers
and I would straggle out after him.
Wed all jump into the car. Dad would let the engine idle to avoid
running down the battery. Hed crank up the heater. Then hed turn on
the radio and wed be transported to Madison Square Garden. I was ve,
or maybe six, and for me it was always Madison Square Garden.
The voice of the great ringside reporter, Don Dunphy, gave us a blow-
by-blow account of what was happening. We heard the roar of the crowd
and the clang of the ring bell, and in our heads we saw this great drama
playing itself out as we stared into the lit face of the dashboard radio.
I wish I could remember which ght we were listening to on the night
when it all came to an end. All I know is that it was important and it was
close. As the ninth round ended we were all sitting forward, anxious for
our hero, when my Dad said, Oh Christ. Here comes your mother.
We were all scared, but Dad made an instant decision. Theres only
one round to go. Lock the doors. We did it. She arrived screaming that
he was corrupting her children with low thuggery. She ran around the car
trying all the doors, yelling and slamming at the windows. Dad turned up
the volume. We didnt dare look at her. We stared grimly at the radio.
She sailed away but came back halfway through the nal round with
the big dishpan. She ung a swash of soapy water at my Dads window and
then slammed the empty pan on the glass again and again, trying to break
it. Our hero was on his knees and struggling to rise. We could hear the
referee counting, eight, nine, ten. Our man had lost. We all groaned. Dad
reached over and turned off the scratchy voice.
All we could hear then was Mom declaring to the skies that shed
rather have her children dead and rotting in the garbage than deled by
that disgusting so-called sport. Dad said, OK, when I open my door you
all jump out and scatter. Go directly to your rooms and do your homework.
So we did. And behind us he was saying, Now, now, Velma, its not so bad.

1 60
no. 12
POEM FOR JI M ZORN
Matthew Zapruder
in the photograph you are holding a green helmet
and smiling directly into the future
but the straight and the square rarely advance
a Chinese poet working a minor bureaucratic post
a few miles north of the capital
wrote 1200 years ago
when they called the emperor The Immortal
I know you tried
but a falseness runs through all our dealings
a seahawk is not even a real bird
and somewhere it is still 1976
and I have just lofted
a football over the head of my very cold brother
who turns in his blue down coat
that used to belong to me
1 61
and runs with his arms stretched
out as far as he can
towards the pine trees
and I fear when he comes back
he will tell me something everyone knows
12 1111111111111111 12
1 64
no. 12
B
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DIANA ARTERIAN is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
RAJ BAHADURs byline, in a quest to write as many
articles as Pete Rose had hits, appeared more than 3,300
times in Clevelands Scene Magazine. He also co-produced
Rock Today for MJI Radio and covered the film beat for
Westwood One Radio.
BRUCE BAUMAN is the Senior Editor of BLACK CLOCK and
the author of And The Word Was. His work has appeared
in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, and in
2008 he received a City of Los Angeles Award in literature.
His website is BruceBauman.net
MONICA CARTER is finishing a novel, Eating the Apple,
and has work in the forthcoming issue of Pale House II.
She currently is a PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow.
HARRIS CONKLIN currently holds the Harris Conklin
Distinguished Chair in Poetry in Harris Conklins
apartment. His most recent poem to be rejected by The
New Yorker is Brought to You by the Letter A; his most
recent poem to be rejected by the Atlantic Monthly is A
Manual for Jerry Manuel; his most recent poem to be
rejected by Zyzzyva is The Fools Golden Retriever.
PAUL CULLUM has written for The New York Times,
L.A.Weekly, Variety, Details, Radar, Salon and hundreds of
tiny magazines that pay comically little. His Los Angeles
Times article The Big Show by Little People on the
Mexican Midget Rodeo appeared in the Houghton Mifflin
anthology Best American Sports Writing of 2007.
BLACKCLOCK
1 65
STEVE ERICKSON is the Editor of BLACK CLOCK. He
is the author of eight novels, receiving a Guggenheim
Fellowship in 2007 and this year a literature award from
the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His website
is SteveErickson.org.
MALLORY FARRUGIA is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
IVAN FELTs latest book, Unconscious Instruments, a
history of punk rock, will be published by ZeroSum this
fall. Long a professor at Hunter College, he presently
holds the Diane Sawyer Visiting Professorship in Perversity
Studies at the Wellesley College Alumnae Center.
COLIN FLEMING writes for Slate, Rolling Stone, BookForum,
and the New Yorker, and his fiction has appeared in
TriQuarterly, Boulevard, New York Tyrant and Pen America.
He is completing a story collection called Friends Are
Ends: Relationship Tales, and a novel, Drivel in Wormwood,
and can be found at colinfleminglit.com.
SARA GEROT is an Associate Editor of BLACK CLOCK and
in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
TOD GOLDBERG is the author of seven books including
the novel Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize, and the short story collection Other
Resort Cities. He directs the MFA program in Creative
Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at UC Riverside-
Palm Desert.
ARIELLE GREENBERG is the Poetry Editor of BLACK
CLOCK and author of My Kafka Century, Given, Shake
Her and Farther Down: Songs from the Allergy Trials. She
co-edited the anthologies Starting Today: Poems for
Obamas First 100 Days and Women Poets on Mentorship:
Efforts and Affections and Gurlesque.
DENNIS DANZIGER is the author A Short History of a Tall
Jew and Daddy, The Diary of an Expectant Father. His essays
have appeared in Huffington Post, Premiere and Education
Week. He teaches English in a Los Angeles high school
and still shoots hoops with his students.
NIKKI DARLING is an Editorial Assistant of BLACK CLOCK
and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
KENNETH DEIFIK has read his poetry at MOMA, St.
Marks Church in New York, the Philadelphia Art Institute,
Beyond Baroque and Cal State Northridge. He also is
a musician who has recorded with Laurie Anderson,
Kenward Elsmlie and Marty Robbins. Phillip Glass wrote
his only harmonica music for Mr. Deifik.
ANIA DIAKOFF is a Los Angeles-based graphic designer
who deeply believes in the future. Her work can be seen in
this issue of BLACK CLOCK and on her website
aniadiakoff.com.
KATHERINE DUNN has been a boxing reporter for three
decades. A collection of her boxing essays, One Ring
Circus: Dispatches From the World of Boxing, appeared last
year. Dunns third novel, Geek Love, was a finalist for the
National Book Award.
SAMANTHA DUNN is the author of the novel Failing Paris
as well as two memoirs, and co-editor of Women on the
Edge: Writing from Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared
in the Los Angeles Times, Ms. and O, and she teaches in
the UCLA Writers Program.
ROBERT EISELEs work has appeared in Poem and his
plays have been produced nationwide. His teleplays,
screenplays and films have garnered the Humanitas
Prize, the Writers Guild of Americas Paul Selvin Award,
the Christopher Award, the Image Award and a Golden
Globe Award nomination.
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no. 12
HATNIM LEE is a London-based Korean-American
photographer. She self-published the nostalgia in 2010
and is currently working on her third book, a collection of
photographs from Haiti. Her work will be exhibited this
summer at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington DC and
the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
JONATHAN LETHEM, the author of Chronic City, Fortress
of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, is trying to pretend
hes not in this issue but the Editor wont let him.
KARA LINDSTROM is the author of the 2006 novel
Sparkle Life. She also works as a set decorator, production
designer and screenwriter for film and television, splitting
her time between Los Angeles and Paris. Her website is
karalindstrom.com.
CHRIS LOWRY is a writer from Dublin. His lifelong cricket
obsession culminated in a visit to Australia in 2006,
ostensibly for a friends wedding though his real motive
was to see the Aussies destroy England in the Ashes.
He later confessed to the friend, who forgave him. His
relationship with cricket also still thrives.
KATIE MANDERFIELD is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
LOU MATHEWS novel about street racing, L.A. Breakdown,
was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. He has
received a Pushcart Prize as well as NEA and California
Arts Commission fellowships in fiction. Racing in the
Street marks his fourth appearance in BLACK CLOCK.
DOUGLAS MATUS is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
JOE MILAZZO is an Associate Editor of BLACK CLOCK.
His work has appeared in Electronic Book Review, Tea Party,
In Posse Review and the anthology Chronometry. Hes the
Director of Community Education and Outreach at the
Writers Garret in Dallas.
ANTHONY MILLER is an Editor-at-Large of BLACK CLOCK.
His writing has appeared in Bookforum, LA Weekly, Los
Angeles CityBeat and Poets & Writers. He is at work on a
novel and a book about encyclopedic fictions and secret
histories.
CHRISTOPHER MORABITO is the Art Director of BLACK
CLOCK and a graphic designer and typographer based in
Los Angeles.
DWAYNE MOSER is an Editor-at-Large of BLACK CLOCK.
His visual art has been exhibited internationally and
currently he is co-writing a television project for CBS/
Paramount. He has taught at CalArts and Bard College,
and works for USCs graduate Fine Arts Program.
ELIZABETH HALL is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
JOHN HARLOW is the Los Angeles editor for the Sunday
Times of London and a globally-syndicated commentator on
American popular culture. He lives in Venice, California.
ELOISE KLEIN HEALY is the author of six books of poetry
and three spoken-word recordings, and the founding editor
of Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press specializing
in the work of lesbian authors. Her latest collection is
The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho.

COURTNEY JOHNSON is an Associate Editor of BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
CAROLYN KELLOGG is an LA-based book critic and the
lead blogger for the Los Angeles Times book blog, Jacket
Copy. She has been heard on NPR, was a judge of the
2010 Story Prize and earned her MFA in Fiction from the
University of Pittsburgh.
EMILY KIERNAN is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
KYOUNG KIM is the Assistant Managing Editor of BLACK
CLOCK and a writer, artist and policy researcher.
ANNE-MARIE KINNEY has written for Indiana Review,
Keyhole and Satellite Fiction. She is a graduate of the
CalArts MFA Writing Program and currently working on
a novel.
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RICHARD PEABODY has been editing Gargoyle Magazine
since before Elvis died. He also teaches fiction for the
Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Program. You can find
out more about him at gargoylemagazine.com.
KATY PETTYs dramatic writing has appeared in
Monologues for Women by Women and Radiation, which
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She currently
is finishing a novel.
RICHARD RAYNER is the author of nine books including
A Bright and Guilty Place, The Blue Suit and Los Angeles
Without A Map, the last having been made into the least
famous film ever to feature Johnny Depp. He writes for the
Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker and other publications.
He was born in England and lives in Santa Monica.
NINA REVOYR is the author of Southland and The Age
of Dreaming, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize. Her new novel, Wingshooters, will be
published next year. Revoyr teaches at Pitzer College and
is vice president of a non-profit childrens organization.
ALLIE ROWBOTTOM is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
BRAD SCHREIBER is the author of Death in Paradise,
What Are You Laughing At?, Stop the Show! and the
upcoming biography Becoming Jimi Hendrix. His website
is brashcyber.com.
MICHAELE SIMMERING is the Managing Editor of BLACK
CLOCK. A writer and designer, she is the recipient of a
Fulbright Fellowship and co-founder of Kalon Studios.
MARK SKIPTON is an Associate Editor of BLACK CLOCK
and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
CHRISTOPHER SORRENTINO is the author of the novels
Trance and Sound on Sound. Like fellow troublemaker and
smarty-pants J. Lethem in this issue, he isnt fooling
anybody.
CHRYSANTHE TAN is an Editorial Assistant for BLACK
CLOCK and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
LISA TEASLEY is the author of Heat Signature, Dive and
the award-winning story collection Glow in the Dark. She
currently is at work on a third novel, Echo Reynolds.
RICHARD TERRILL is the author of two collections of
poems, Almost Dark and Coming Late to Rachmaninoff,
winner of the Minnesota Book Award, as well as the
memoirs Fakebook: Improvisations on a Journey Back to Jazz
and Saturday Night in Baoding, winner of the Associated
Writing Programs Award for nonfiction.
LYNNE TILLMAN is the author of American Genius, A
Comedy, the recent novella Love Sentence, and the
forthcoming collection of stories Some Day This Will Be
Funny.
ASHLEY TOMECK is an Associate Editor of BLACK CLOCK
and in the CalArts MFA Writing Program.
DAVID L. ULIN is the book editor of the Los Angeles Times.
He is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes,
Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith. His
new book, The Lost Art of Reading, is due out this fall.
OSCAR VILLALON is a San Francisco writer and book
critic. His work has appeared in The Believer, the Virginia
Quarterly Review and on NPR.org.
MATTHEW ZAPRUDERs third book of poetry, Come On
All You Ghosts, will be published this fall. An editor for
Wave Books, he teaches at UC Riverside-Palm Desert.
ALAN ZAREMBO is an investigative reporter for the Los
Angeles Times. A month after finishing the piece in this
issue, he won his first bicycle race.
DANTE ZIGA-WEST is a disgruntled storyteller,
professional lyricist and Muay Thai prizefighter from the
Pacific Northwest, as well as lead vocalist for the group
Resident Anti-Hero. He recently completed his second
novel.
Black Clock is published in large part thanks to the
generous support of the Rosenthal Family Foundation.
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