October 27, 2010 On Sports The San Francisco Freak Show By Louisa Thomas Dear Will, The Texas Rangers made a strong bid for my allegiance too, and not just because Neftali Feliz roped A-Rod with that curve to clinch the American League championship. There’s something ebullient and, yes, winning about the Rangers. They’re slightly cocky, sweet, and sly, smiling like they’ve gotten away with something—which, as you point out, several of them have. (And don’t forget catcher Bengie Molina, traded by the Giants to the Rangers over the summer; he’ll get a ring regardless of who wins.) I love to watch Josh Hamilton’s swing, injured ribs or not—the long extension and the letting go. And I love to watch Elvis Andrus dash around the base paths—so foolish, so daring. Still, there’s something a little too Manifest Destiny about the team. I can’t help but think of the Rangers’ former owner, George W. Bush, not to mention James K. Polk. So I’ll take San Francisco, thanks. The Giants call their style of baseball “torture,” their star “the Freak,” their NLCS MVP “Cody” (I don’t care if that’s his real name). I’m smitten with a kid named Buster Posey. Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid,” would fit right in. The Giants hit home runs, or not at all. And their pitching! This team plays baseball like it’s a great game of catch with diverting interruptions. The whole team is weird and improbable. After Juan Uribe homered in the eighth to break a tie in game 6 of the NLCS, Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said, “The big blow was by what’s his name? The shortstop.” Never mind that Uribe was playing third base. Plus, when the game was over, I got to do my best imitation of Russ Hodges hollering, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” (My grandfather was at the game where Bobby Thomson hit his famous shot and swore he’d never attend another game—baseball couldn’t get any better.) Read More
October 26, 2010 On Sports The Tea Party vs. Nancy Pelosi World Series By Will Frears Dear Louisa, I’m going for Texas, if for no other reason than because A-Rod taking a called third strike is one of the first things that happens when you get to heaven. The Rangers did so many things on Friday night that made me like them: striking out Rodriguez; nobody thanking God in their postgame interviews; and spraying ginger ale rather than champagne so that now-sober Josh Hamilton could be in the middle of it. It made them seem so kind. Also they have Cliff Lee. Last year in game 1 of the World Series against the Yankees, Lee made a behind-the-back catch of a line drive by Robinson Cano, and then afterward gave this little smile like he just couldn’t help being delighted by how awesome that was. Then, in a postgame interview, he said—I’m paraphrasing here—something about knowing he could do it, and that that was what they paid him for. I have very deep feelings for Cliff; he reminds me of Gary Cooper. Read More
October 21, 2010 On Sports Of Playoffs and Boston Politics By Louisa Thomas Dear Will, It seems we’re going to have lots to talk about over the next few weeks, from haircuts to hurt. For starters, an answer your question: A fielder’s choice is recorded when the batter reaches base or a runner advances while another runner is put out. The infield fly rule prevents a trick double play on a pop-up. It’s important to note that The Paris Review team does not play with the infield fly rule in effect. I became a fan the old-fashioned way: My father took me to a baseball game. Dad cut work, I cut school, and the Orioles beat the Indians, 2–0. Around that time (I was ten years old), my father also bought me a baseball glove. (OK, it was a softball glove, but I insisted on breaking it in with a baseball.) My little sister got one too, but after I showed off my arm by throwing at her head a few times, she went inside for good. A few years later, when I was beginning my mornings with box scores, my dad started giving me books: David Halberstam’s Summer of ’49, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Wait Till Next Year, a copy of Out of My League inscribed by one George Plimpton. In high school, I worked summers and Friday nights in the Washington Post sports section; in my interview for the job, I discussed the relative merits of Roger Angell and Roger Kahn, the Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio of baseball scribes. Read More
October 20, 2010 On Sports October Baseball and the Meaning of Hurt By Will Frears Dear Louisa, I’m very excited to be writing about the World Series with you. When I moved to America, I knew that it was important to find a sport, something to fill the void that my enforced separation from Arsenal Football Club was going to create. I settled (the term implies, inaccurately, some level of critical thinking) on baseball. I have an uncle who lives on the Upper West Side, and for Christmas every year he would send me Yankee paraphernalia. I did ask for it, he wasn’t imposing on me, and so, since I already had the cap and because I would be living in New York and am a locavore when it comes to sports teams, I settled into Yankee fandom. This was easy to do at the time—1993—because the Yankees were terrible. There was nothing fair-weather about it. I enjoyed the first few Yankee triumphs: My girlfriend in college was in love with Joe Girardi, who wasn’t a threat; I went to the Leyritz walk-off game in 1995; and after graduating from college, my friends and I used to go sit in the bleachers with a flask and a selection of loose joints. On May 17, 1998, the last time I took ecstasy, David Wells pitched a perfect game. It was a good time to be a fan. And then my team betrayed me. On the Internet one day, I discovered the Yankees, a team that so far had provided me with nothing but the occasional good time, had signed a deal with Manchester United. You know how people in Brooklyn can never forgive the Dodgers for moving to LA—well imagine they had killed your grandmother as well. Read More
September 27, 2010 On Sports The Saddest Man in Professional Football By Miranda Popkey My love for Brett Favre—it was always Favre, and only incidentally his team, that I loved—made me something of an oddity in Northern California. “What a bum,” my grandfather, a 49ers fan, would grumble, examining my first serious crush. “The man can’t even shave for Monday Night Football.” This was true. Favre’s manly scruff was a trait I found charming as a child, seductive as a teenager, and slightly depressing as a young adult. It’s also the key to his allure. Brett Favre can play perfectly without being perfect. He has—still—one of the best arms the NFL has ever seen, but he isn’t a Tom Brady touchdown-making machine. He’s not a robot from the Manning factory. He’s just a guy, trying to do his job, who often forgets to shave in the morning. He’s played hurt, he’s played sad, he’s played bearded, and yes, he’s played terribly. In fact, how terribly he sometimes plays is part of the magic. In the early days, with the Packers, he would throw four interceptions in the first half, come back in the third quarter with a few well-placed passes to put the Pack within six, and then, with thirty-five seconds left on the clock in the fourth, he would go into the no-huddle offense, calling audibles just before the snap, sneaking forty-yard completions into double coverage, emerging breathless, victorious, arms raised. Even then, his heart was more powerful than his body. But after a heartbreaking NFC Championship loss to the Giants in the winter of 2007, a game essentially ended by an interception (last-minute interceptions had, by that point, replaced his Hail Mary completions), even I knew it was time for him to retire. I also knew that he wouldn’t be able to until he had made it back to the Super Bowl. Favre has one Super Bowl ring, which he won in 1996, as a shaggy-haired twenty-seven-year-old. He took the Packers back the following year, but they lost. He spent the next decade trying to prove that victory wasn’t a fluke, but with close of the 2007 game, he had squandered his last chance. We both cried when he announced his retirement. And when he changed his mind, it was tempting, given my emotional investment, to feel betrayed. It seemed like a classically cocky move from an aging athlete who didn’t know when to quit. But it wasn’t. Most people know when it’s time to retire. At thirty-eight, Brett Favre had just given up the one thing he had likely been perfecting since he was an impressionable eight-year-old. He was a confused middle-aged man doing one of the most pathetic, desperate, moving things a human being can do. He was a guy begging for a second chance. He was the saddest man in professional football. When Favre pleaded with the Packers to take him back, detractors focused on Aaron Rodgers, Favre’s backup, who was ready to be QB1. But Rodgers is young—only twenty-six. He has seasons to prove himself; Favre doesn’t. And though more than a decade older, Favre is still the better quarterback, still better than most quarterbacks. Last year he led the Vikings to the NFC conference game. He threw an interception in the last seconds of the fourth quarter, and his team lost. I cried because, at this point, watching Brett Favre play football may be the only thing sadder than being Brett Favre. Every loss is proof that desire gets you less than ten yards. Every completion, every victory reminds me of his tearful pleas, even as he makes good on their inherent promises. He is asking for just one more season, one more game, one more chance. And because he’s still good enough, because his heart aches for redemption so badly it (almost) trumps logic, physics, and modern medicine, I am still saying yes. Editor’s note: This post originally stated that Brett Favre threw an interception in overtime in the 2009 NFC Championship game. We regret the error.
September 14, 2010 On Sports An Honor to Watch By Louisa Thomas Sunday mornings can be such a bummer, time for reflection and for regret. So it was the morning after Roger Federer’s loss to Novak Djokovic in the men’s semifinal. New York was chilly and soaking—weather for brooding, not for tennis. Who was in the mood for tennis, anyway? There would be no Federer-Nadal final. The match so much desired, so long expected, would not happen. Djokovic had outplayed Federer. And it was thrilling. I couldn’t help it, at times I was thrilled. Facing two match points in the fifth set, Djokovic saved the first with a gutsy swinging volley. He saved the second with a forehand walloped into the corner—an astonishing shot. Reader, I gasped with joy. I didn’t mean to cheer for Djokovic, a man who smashes his racket against his head to pump himself up. I didn’t want to cheer against Federer. Federer is the player I enjoy watching more than any other, the most beautiful player of the most beautiful game. After the match, I felt empty and a little guilty. On Sunday, I felt even worse. (That the women’s final was so lame didn’t help—hadn’t I, on some level, asked for Vera Zvonareva’s mental collapse? Forgive! And congrats to Kim Clijsters!) On Monday, though, things looked up. The sun was out and Nadal still playing. Rafa, always reason for cheer! Against Djokovic, Nadal easily won the first set. But during the second, Djokovic came to life, zooming around the court, skinny limbs flying. He went for the lines and hit the corners. Djokovic is not a man who immediately inspires. His haircut is bad, his temper idiotic, his style slightly spasmodic. But he’s daring and quick, gentle at net and fierce in the backcourt, and his defensive play is unreal. When he broke Nadal’s serve twice in the second set, I felt, again, spontaneous pleasure. It would have been impossible to suppress it. Not just impossible: I think it would have been wrong to try. But he couldn’t keep it up, and Nadal … Nadal is something else. Even when he stumbles, as he did a few times last night. He sprinted to every ungettable shot and moved the ball in unbelievable ways, knifing his volleys and spinning those forehands. Until the last set, when Djokovic simply faded, the Serb gave Nadal a good match. But I wanted Nadal to beat him. I wanted to see him yank Djokovic like a yoyo with his magnificent groundstrokes; I wanted to see him rip up the ball. I wanted him to win so badly that I felt slightly sick. And Nadal did. When he won the 2010 U.S. Open, he became the seventh man to win the career grand slam. He’s 24 years old. He is as great as can be imagined. Greater, maybe. It’s tempting to call tennis an art, and a lot of people do. It’s graceful and intuitive, and one responds to it as one responds to something beautiful, with the desire to describe it and remember it, and to applaud those who made it. But its value is not symbolic, though it lends itself to metaphor. It works in other ways. A single shot is so fast, the physics so complex, that it’s hard to picture, even when you’re watching it live. It can’t be aestheticized or really captured. Instead it captures you, the watcher, in wonder. At least, it captures me. There’s something incredible about all those straight lines and arcs and angles, the speed and the spins, the strength, and the drama of two people, alone, facing each other. I don’t know what it all adds up to, exactly, or why I care so much. It should be silly, a game with a bouncy, fuzzy yellow ball. But it isn’t. It’s awesome, and sometimes it’s an honor to watch. It was an honor to watch Nadal last night.