The Best American Poetry

On Jackie Robinson Day

“It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first

—“To do what he did has got to be the most tremendous thing I’ve ever seen in sports.” -- Pee Wee Reese

 

Ben Hogan Wins US Open (June 11, 2015)

On this day in 1950, Ben Hogan won the United States Open in a three-way playoff. What made it almost miraculous was that Hogan had suffered multiple injuries sixteen months earlier when a Greyhound bus swerved out of its lane and hit Hogan's car head on. Hogan, attempting to shield his wife, Valerie, from the impact, went to the hospital with a broken collarbone, broken ankle, broken ribs and a double fracture of his pelvis. (Valerie escaped with minor injuries.) A blood clot in Hogan's leg required emergency measures; doctors tied off the surrounding veins to prevent the clot from reaching his heart. As a result, Hogan’s legs atrophied. Would he ever play a round of golf again? The more pressing question was whether he would ever walk again.

Yet here he was at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, PA, site also of the 2013 U. S. Open. Hogan defied the skeptics, playing four rounds of superb golf, walking from hole to hole unassisted. At the 72nd hole, he needed a par to tie Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio for the lead and join the pair in a June 11th playoff. Hogan's one-iron shot to the green, one of the great moments in golfing history, occasioned Hy Peskin's photograph, above, undoubtedly the sport's most famous. A year later Hollywood turned the inspiring tale into a movie, Follow the Sun, with Glenn Ford as Hogan and Anne Baxter as Valerie. Click here or here for more on Hogan's heroics. -- DL

The Joker's Wild (Happy Birthday, Novak Djokovic)

Jackie Robinson

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He played first base. In  subsequent years he was the game's premier second baseman. The first black player in the major leagues endured insults, taunts, threats, slurs. He was a terrific player, a Hall of Famer and World Series hero, with guts and nerve to match his god-given abilities on the field. On April, 15, 1947, some teammates bitched about having to play with a black man. To them Dodger manager Leo Durocher said "I don’t care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a ... zebra. I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make all of us rich. And if any of you can’t use the money, I will see that you are traded.” Jackie's uniform number 42 is permanently retired and April 15 now universally observed as Jackie Robinson day in the major leagues. And to think I would have seen him steal home at Ebbets Field if the man in front of me, a man of gargantuan size, hadn't stood up, blocked my view, and shouted, "Jackie's stealing home! Jackie's stealing home!" -- DL

Willis Reed, Legendary Center of the World Champion N. Y. Knicks, RIP [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Basketball great Willis Reed spoke about his literacy project. David was eager to get his predictions for the upcoming Knicks season.

In 2003, then chairman of the NEA Dana Gioia, invited David to join him in Washington for the annual Washington Book Festival, hosted by Laura Bush. It was a great event. Dana had even arranged for David's mom Anne to come along and for all of us to join him at the White House for the breakfast ceremony preceding the Festival. 

Just as the guests were taking their seats for Bush's opening remarks, David saw former Knicks great Willis Reed enter the room. He was impossible to miss, of course; at 6'10" he towered over just about everyone in the room, with the exception of former Detroit Pistons center Bob Lanier (6'11"), also in attendance. 

Reed was on hand to talk about his literacy project. 

I watched David from across the room (he was seated among the day's speakers; I was elsewhere, with Anne). He lit up when Reed took the podium. When the proceedings adjourned and guests made their way to the exits, David practically lept over seats with the finesse of a point-guard making a layup shot with two seconds on the clock. I've seen him focus on an objective, but this was masterly. 

He reached Reed and I snapped the photo, above. 

As it so happened, my office in New York City was at One Penn Plaza, across the street from Madison Square Garden. On a whim, I phoned the Knick's publicity department with the request that Reed sign the photo, which he graciously agreed to do. I've given David many gifts over the years, but I think this signed photo of the basketball great ranks among his favorites.

-- sdl

The moment no Knicks fan will ever forget: when Willis Reed hobbled onto the court in the deciding game of the 1970 championship series with the LA Lakers. When Reed came out, the crowd roared. Reed, injured, played well. The great unselfish Knicks of Reed and Walt Frazier, Dave DeBuschere, Bill Bradley, and Dick Barnett, coached by Red Holtzman, won the game, the series, and the hearts of New Yorkers.

-- DL

Lunch with Tim McCarver in February 1987 [by David Lehman]

Tim McCarver died yesterday at age 81.

Back in spring 1987, McCarver, a terrific catcher who caught Bob Gibson with the Cardinals and Steve Carlton with the Phillies, was calling plays for the New York Mets. He made the cover of Esquire and had a book coming out (wotking with professional sportswriter Ray Ropbinson). I wasn't crazy about the book's title: Oh, Baby, I Love It! but the book confirmed that McCarver was as good a baseball analyst as there was. The Mets had won the 1986 World Series in the most exciting post-season of the decade, and a piece on the book made sense. At Newsweek the editors always preferred a feature to a straight book review, so I proposed flying to Philadelphia, taking Tim to lunch, and writing it up. I got the okay. 

McCarver, who lived in Gladwin, Pennsylvania,  proposed Le Bec Fin, the best French restaurant in Philadephia, for our lunch, and they gave us a private room. It was probably the most expensive lunch I ever charged to the magazine, with wonderful wines, and it lasted three or more hours, with Tim's wife stopping by for a few minutes and a cigar delivered to the room when it was time for espresso. According to my notes I wore a gray blazer with a knit tie and he wore a cashmere sport coat with a blue silk patterned tie and navy trousers.

With unforced pleasure Tim answered my questions and appraised various players and prospects. Tim, who had a lot of opinions and wasn't shy about sharing them, felt that a good sinking fastball made the batter feel as if he were "striking an anvil with sugar cane." Bob Gibson regarded the pitcher's mound "as his prIvate office." Spitballs should be made legal, because "nearly all pitchers throw them."  The "scuff" ball thrown by Mike Scott of the Astros, who gave the '86 Mets a fit, was "more illegal," but the Mets made a mistake in obsessing over it. "Of course if I'd been on the team, I would have probably done the same thing." What was the biggest psychological problem confronting a professional baliplayer? "Fear of failure." Also, "the hell of being alone." Tim agreed with Joe DiMaggio about opening day: "It's like a birthday party when you were a kid."

There was a rumor at the time that the Mets were offering Ron Darling and Mookie Wilson in a trade for the Dodgers' Orel Hershiser. "Ain't ever gonna happen," Tim said. "Hershiser is one of the great pitchers in the game." (This was before Hershiser's Cy Young year when he threw nearly sixty straight innings aithout a run and beat Oakland twice in the World Series, once by shutout.) As a traditionalist, he said "I hate the designated hitter," because it changes the very nature of the game. 

Tim loved Gerswin, Berlin, Cole Porter. When the Mets, tired of being loveable losers, started winning games in 1984, Tim hummed Duke Ellington's "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" on the air. Who was the best ptcher he ever faced? For sheer talent, no souithpaw could compare with Sandy Koufax. Keith Hernandez was "the most artistic fielding first-baseman" Tim had ever seen. Solidly built, six feet tall, Tim may have been the most artistic play-by-play man this side of Vin Scully.   -- DL

Happy birthday, Sandy Koufax (born December 30, 1935)

"Epiphany" [by David Lehman]

The announcer for the opposition
is so one-sided in his commentary
so unabashedly partisan
that I dash off a pissed-off post
likening him to the Yankees’s Phil Rizzuto
but without Phil’s endearing traits
that made him perfect for the role
of Private Maggio in From Here to Eternity.
But I do not post the pissed-off post
when I learn the guy went through
an infernal medical ordeal.
Instead, I decide to develop the conceit
that Frank Sinatra played shortstop
for the World Champion Yankees.

from the Harvard Review (Published on October 28, 2022) See, too: https://harvardreview.org/content/the-end/

Breaking, ballrooming, tumbling, poésie: is dance sport? [by Tracy Danison]

Daily life is getting back to… dance… sport … art ... life. Collectif de danse Move And Art. Photo © Sarah Meunier

October already!

Daily life has definitely been regaining substance.

Neighbor photographer Sarah Meunier has turned her lens back to life in public, especially to our newer, neighbors.

From the bright and shiny evidence, some of these youngest sweetest neighbors, at least, must have only just learned their break, just when it became an Olympic sport.

But break stays dance, right? Just like ballroom dancing – “dancesport”?

Dance as sport. How can that happen?

Though I’m sure tourist-board marketing geniuses have been toying with the pairing since France got the 2024 games, I only touched on the topic just before the Covid lockdowns, with Christina Towle, the programmer at Regard du Cygne. At the time, Christina was putting together her Bounce Back, a choreography for four that mixes contemporary dance, basketball and electronic music.

I went back to Christina, who is now working on a new sport-dance choreography around the 400-meter relay tentatively titled Près feu (“Ready, set”), and asked about the relationship of sport with dance. She was fairly definitive.

Collectif de danse Move And Art. Photo © Sarah Meunier

Sport is strictly-coded choreography, she says, adding that movement analysis bears her out on the choreography part of the equation. The strict coding - there are moves you always must and always must not do in sequence to achieve certain results - which generally allows scoring by points, also sets sport apart.

There are athletes that use the strict coding to go beyond “sport” and become dancers. Christina cites Muhammad Ali, reminding me that the greatest boxer of all time described his boxing method as “float(ing) like a butterfly, stinging like a bee”, and consistently referred to himself as a dancer. The video evidence and my own memory suggest Christine isn’t wrong.

Christina’s experiments in bringing out the dance in sport apart, for me, anyway, the theme of “sport” + “dance” has been floating around only since late Spring, when Carreau du Temple hosted a Festival Jogging. Part of the city’s “Formes Olympiques” program to drum up interest in the 2024 games, Jogging, which picked up again as Atelier de Paris’“Dansez sport!” in early September, featured quality choreographers and performance such as Valeria Giuga & Anne-James Chaton’s Coaching, Marine Colard’s Le Tir Sacré and Alban Richard’s Vivace.

Roughly, but close enough, Coaching and Le Tir Sacré treat shared sport-dance themes of unity of body and mind, elegance & perfection, as well as surrounding language or rhetoric. Alban Richard’s Vivace sews an incredible variety of dance intentions and styles into a vivacious 35-minute relay race.

“Dansez sport!” had a family-oriented pedagogical complement, highlighting in-practice links between sport and dance, offering, among many other beguiling workshops, a “Krumpfest back to school de Wrestler Danse”, complete with battle. Krump is a particularly expressive form of break dance: very apt to make one think about the sense and sensibilities of its performers. Also on offer: classes on break-dance footwork, table tennis, roller and blade skating and sports commentary. 2024 Olympic visitors might do well to look at dance activities at Carreau du Temple and Atelier de Paris, as well as other dance-venues, to liven up and deepen their experience.

Collectif de danse Move And Art. Photo © Sarah Meunier

Since he took up the directorship of the National Dance Theater at the Palais de Chaillot just a few years back, Rachid Ouramdane has been playing with the dance + sport/athletics theme, especially through his work with the 19-member cie XY circus troupe. Cie XY is, perhaps, an expression of Ouramdane’s looking to blaze a trail, as he told the webzine Danses avec la plume, towards “diversity within a common culture” - e pluribus unum, as the US dollar puts it.

Karine and I saw Cie XY’s Möbius in early September. The show was first of all a demonstration of very intense, carefully choreographed, up-close and physical interaction. From the beginning, a seeming casual confidence in which truly remarkable feats were executed highlighted the individual responsibility of each performer to the rest as well as to the whole troupe. Real physical contrasts among performers and an obvious distribution of roles by tested capacity and choreographic goal rather than by gender or even size and other “visible criteria” – catching a body that has casually leapt 20 feet in the air takes more than will, after all, even if the catcher doesn’t have to be male, 7-foot high –  drove home this reified interdependence. Think of Möbius as a perfection in which proprioception, empathy and compassion have replaced common sense, morality and reason.

Karine and I both saw dance in it. But a pair, at least, of our fellow spectators, felt Möbius remained sport, saying dance is a story the performers tell about themselves while sport is a test of the human body. For them, while the performers did tell their story, the performance lacked “poésie” – that quality of going beyond itself, the “self-transcendence” where Christine Towle sees sport becoming dance. Karine agrees but claims that the perfection of cie XY’s movement together by itself created dance. Insufficiency in the self-story and poésie, she says, is the responsibility of the choreographer, adding that the same disconnect of performance-movement and choreography-performance happens in Swan Lake – “dance dance”.

So, I think I’ve identified about seven ways of approaching the couple “dance + sport”. Sport becomes dance by surpassing itself; sport is a form of dance; dance is a form of sport; dance and sport are part of a larger art of movement; movement is dance, whatever you call it. As to my own idea, for the moment, I have decided that while dance cannot be competitive, sport must be. I’m with my fellow Möbius spectators: the goals make dance and sport chalk and cheese. It’s intention and perception that make them different and physics that makes them alike.

The Mets are in the post season [by Greg Pattenaude]

On Monday evening in Milwaukee, the Mets defeated the Brewers 7-2 and with the victory, guaranteed their first post season appearance in six years.  Max Scherzer, returning from the Injured List, was brilliant, retiring all 18 batters he faced with apparent little effort.  If not for wanting to limit the number of pitches, he may have been on his way to a perfect game.  He had to settle for two-thirds of one and his 200th  Major League victory.

The Mets broke the ice in a scoreless game in the 4th inning.  Pete Alonso connected with a 3-run homer, his 36th of the season. In the 6th, back-to-back triples by Brandon Nimmo and Francisco Lindor followed by a double from “cult hero” Daniel Vogelbach made it 5-0.  After Scherzer left the game in the 6^th, the Brewers plated two on a two-run homer by Rowdy Tellez.  But any thought of a Brewers’ comeback was put to rest in the 8th, when the Mets tacked on two more, thanks to RBI singles by Tyler Naquin and Tomas Nido.

After the game, the Mets celebrated in subdued fashion.  Rather than the usual oft-repeated champaign spray madhouse in the locker room, players were seen holding flutes of bubbly, more like receiving Prosecco while heading into the cocktail hour of a wedding reception.  Clearly, they knew that more and bigger celebrations lay ahead, but nevertheless acknowledged a significant achievement.

What has been the difference this year’s success story, as opposed to other recent years?  The answer is manager Buck Showalter.  His old-school, no-nonsense approach is exactly what this young team needed.  Combined with adding veterans like Scherzer and infielder Eduardo Escobar, professionalism has returned while still allowing the team to shine with individuality and personality within those bounds.  An example of that is Edwin Diaz's 9th inning anthem of Narco by Timmy Trumpet which heralds in victories.  Gone are players giving thumbs-down gestures to fans or stuffed ponies in the dugout for riding after non-consequential home runs.  Having an owner Steve Cohen that actually cares about the team’s success other than the financial bottom line also helps.  

The Mets still hope to win the National League’s Eastern Division. May that be the next celebration with several more to follow.  Stay tuned!

5 Poems from "The Big Smoke" [by Adrian Matejka]

Hubert’s Museum & Flea Circus (1937)

Below constellations of pool balls clattering
geometry’s grace. Below pinball machines
ringing like a telephone full of congratulations
& the street-car stutter of a movie projector:
Jack Dempsey clubbing Luis Firpo or being
clubbed by Gene Tunney, depending on the reel
& the day. Below the heavy bag that, with each
hit, pulls down parts of the ceiling like confetti
at the tail end of a parade. Behind the man
with the sagging eye who makes change by touch
& past the turnstile that sticks sometimes,
so he has to push himself up, dust sunflower
shells from his blue trousers & exit his smudged
booth to collect tickets. After Congo the Wild
Man’s caterwaul & Sealo the Seal-Finned Boy’s
slick handclaps as tenacious as fresh meat
in a butcher’s palm, out comes Jack Johnson.
Dog-eared blue suit, blue beret. Red wine sipped
through a straw: What would you like to know?

Battle Royale

Back then, they’d chain a bear
in the middle of the bear garden

& let the dogs loose. Iron chains
around a bear’s neck don’t slow

him too much. A bear will always
make short work of a dog. Shakespeare

said Sackerson did it more than twenty
times to dogs & wildcats alike.

& since most creatures are naturally
afraid of bears, there wouldn’t

always be much of a show in the bear
garden. So the handlers sometimes put

the bear’s eyes out or took his teeth
to make the fight more sporting.

I believe you need eyes
more than you need teeth in a fight,

but losing either makes a bear a little
less mean. Once baiting was against

the law, some smart somebody
figured coloreds would fight just

as hard if hungry enough. So they
rounded up the skinniest of us,

had us strip to trousers, then blindfolded
us before the fight. They turned us

in hard circles a few times on
the ring steps like a motor car engine

before pushing us between the ropes.
When the bell rang, it seemed

like I got hit from eight directions.
I didn’t know where those punches

came from, but I swung so hard
my shoulder hasn’t been right since

because the man said only the last
darky on his feet gets a meal.

Sporting Life

People always talking about if
& suppose like those words are worth
more than money, more than the crease
a silk stocking makes on a woman’s

thigh. More than the grumble of a Thomas
Flyer engine. So I take the side of my
pleasures. Two small words, if & suppose,
& nobody can explain them. We get

in this world what we’re going to get.
After all, one man can roll out of bed
& be killed, while another man falls
from a scaffold & lives. A man can get

a bullet in the brain & keep his life
while some other poor sap dies
from a shot in the leg. It’s all luck
& perspective: pleasure is both to me.

Rememory

I’ve forgotten some prizefights,
the names of men I beat more

than they beat me, but how can
I forget Divine Intervention

with a scar dividing my thigh
like Wabash splits Chicago?

That horse back-kicked so hard
my leg bone broke, split skin

like a lazy plum. I layed back
in that stall bleeding & hollering

in the dirty hay, that horse looking
over his shoulder at me like

it was my fault & the flies
& the flies’ humming stuttering

like telegraph type until Jim
found me. I couldn’t tend horses

after that. The scar is purple now.
Jagged as a pant’s hem.

Even though the bone healed
all right, I rub the scar for luck.

Most times, I forget I’m rubbing
until Etta reminds me.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore

The first time I heard the aria,
it was like sun up after the Great Storm.

The man’s voice rising, then rising more
as if the want of it all wouldn’t allow

him another breath. Like road work
when you’ve punched yourself out.

Like Tommy Burns catching my gut hook.
Like the first I saw of Etta.

Like the sound of the crowd in Reno
when Jeffries couldn’t go on. Like going

up the steps of the Café de Champion
after the crash of a gunshot in Etta’s

rooms. Like finding Etta on the floor,
a halo of blood getting bigger

by the minute. Like the nurses not nursing,
but crying & pointing at the gun,

still hot in Etta’s own hand. Like realizing
Etta’s still breathing, whispering

a libretto on the heels of her last breath:
You did this, Papa. You did this.

from The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka

IM Vin Scully (1927-2022) Laureate of Play-by-Play Poetry [by David Lehman]

When Kirk Gibson hit perhaps the most unlikely home run in baseball history – when, hobbled with injuries, he pinch-hit with two out and a man on first base, and the Dodgers were one pitch away from losing the game, and with one swing Gibson reversed the team’s fortunes – play-by-play man Jack Buck said “I don’t believe what I just saw.” Beautiful: a totally colloquial line of iambic tetrameter. Vin Scully, describing the same at-bat, let a few seconds of silence pass before saying, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

I am going from memory and I may have a word or two wrong there, but the point of this piece is an appreciation of play-by-play announcers and the memorable things they say. This (2016) is Vin Scully’s last year as the voice of the Dodgers, and I dedicate these musings to him, the red-headed gentleman who invites viewers to pull up a chair and join him in Dodger Stadium.

There were many anecdotes about Scully making the rounds as he completed his astounding career – having broadcast or telecast Dodger games since 1950. Everyone loves his call of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. In October of that year, when Koufax on two days’ rest shut out the Minnesota Twins to win the World Series for his team, Vinny said, “Sandy, two days ago you said you felt like a hundred years old. How do you feel now?” “Like a hundred and one,” Koufax replied.

Every so often Scully will surprise you with a literary allusion, and he usually doesn’t repeat himself, though Milton’s “They also serve who only stand and wait” has served him well for years. When he broke the news of the untimely death of Don Drysdale, the great pitcher who had become his broadcast partner, Scully said, with simple eloquence, “Never have I been asked to make an announcement that hurts me as much as this one. And I say it to you as best I can with a broken heart.”

Left: Sandy Koufax (center) and the late Tommy Lasorda at a ceremony honoring Vin Scully at Dodger Stadium, May 3, 2017

Added on August 4, 2022:

Vin Scully died this week, a year after his beloved wife passed. He was 94. The eulogists were justly extravagant in their praise of the Hall of Fame broadcaster, voice of the Dodgers from 1950 through 2016. Nor did the plaudits come exclusively fom Dodger fans. Honoring Scully, the team's bitterest rivals, the Giants of San Francisco,  did something very classy prior to Wednesday's evening's contest between the two squads. Jon Miller, the Giants' lead broadcaster since 1997 and one of the best in the business, calls him "the greatest broadcaster there ever was." Miller does a tremendous impression of Vin - in English,Japanese, and Spanish!

Here's Vin's call of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September 9, 1965. "I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium is the loneliest place in the world right now" on 9:43 PM. Koufax ended the game with a strikeout; in fact he struck out the side in both the eighth and ninth innings. "Swung on and missed, a perfect game!" Andf then Vin had the wit to keep quiet and let the crowd noise take over "in the city of angels." 

When the Sandy Koufax statue was unveiled at Dodger Stadium in June of this year, the great southpaw said “Vin Scully is the greatest of all time, period." 

Some of Vin Scully's best lines, with thanks to Houston Mitchell of the Los Angeles Times:

“Football is to baseball as blackjack is to bridge. One is the quick jolt. The other the deliberate, slow-paced game of skill, but never was a sport more ideally suited to television than baseball. It’s all there in front of you. It’s theater, really. The star is the spotlight on the mound, the supporting cast fanned out around him, the mathematical precision of the game moving with the kind of inevitability of Greek tragedy. With the Greek chorus in the bleachers!”

“He pitches as though he’s double-parked.” — on Bob Gibson

A Joey Gallo home run off Clayton Kershaw looked like "a marble" when it went way over the right field fence.

“He’s like a tailor; a little off here, a little off there and you’re done, take a seat.” — on Tom Glavine

“It’s a mere moment in a man’s life between the All-Star Game and an old-timers’ game.”

"Statistics are used the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination."

“Roberto Clemente could field the ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pittsburgh.”

"Losing feels worse than winning feels good."

"Fernando ready, and the strike-two pitch is hit back to the box, dribbling to second, [Juan] Samuel on the bag, throws to first for the double play! Fernando Valenzuela has pitched a no-hitter at 10:17 in the evening on June three 29th, 1990. If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!"

Calling Hank Aaron‘s 715th home run: “What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. … It is over, at 10 minutes after 9 in Atlanta, Georgia, Henry Aaron has eclipsed the mark set by Babe Ruth. You could not, I guess, get two more opposite men. The Babe, big and garrulous and oh so sociable and oh so immense in all his appetites. And then the quiet lad out of Mobile, Alabama — slender and stayed slender throughout his career. Ruth, as he put on the poundage and the paunch, the Yankees put their ballplayers in pinstripe uniforms, because it made Ruth look slimmer. But they didn’t need pinstripe uniforms for Aaron in the twilight of his career.”

His final words as a Dodgers broadcaster:

“You know, friends, so many people have wished me congratulations on a 67-year career in baseball, and they’ve wished me a wonderful retirement with my family, and now, all I can do is tell you what I wish for you. May God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile; for every care, a promise; and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life seems, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for each prayer. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know, in my heart, I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me, and I’ll miss our time together more than I can say. But, you know what, there will be a new day, and, eventually, a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ooh, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodger baseball. So, this is Vin Scully wishing you a pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be.”

So pull up a chair and listen to the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's greatest pitching feat.

Sometimes the humor of play-by-play announcers is wonderful if unintentional. Michael Kay, the Yankees’ TV announcer, remarked that some pitcher had a zaftig ERA.” The color man, I forget who it was, a former player, David Cone maybe, looked blank. “What,” Kay said. “You don’t know zaftig?” The other guy said sheepishly that he may heard the word “in English class.”

The Mets at the moment have an outstanding trio calling their games on television: Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. The versatile Howie Rose and Josh Lewin handle the radio. Columbia graduate Cohen (a government major) is like a one-man encyclopedia of Mets’ history. Here is his description of one of the greatest catches in Mets’ history, the catch made by Endy Chavez in the National League Championship Series in 2006, which the Mets ultimately lost to St. Louis:

 “Edmonds at first and one out, and Pérez deals. Fastball hit in the air to left field, that's deep, back goes Chávez, back near the wall, leaping, and....he made the catch!!  He took a home run away from Rolen! Trying to get back to first is Edmonds... he's doubled off! And the inning is over! Endy Chávez saves the day! He reached up high over the left field wall, right in front of the visitors' bullpen, and pulled back a two run homer! He went to the apex of his leap, and caught it in the webbing of his glove, with his elbow up above the fence. A miraculous play by Endy Chávez, and then Edmonds is doubled off first, and Oliver Perez escapes the 6th inning. The play of the year, the play maybe of the franchise history, for Endy Chávez. The inning is over.”

I savor "He went to the apex of his leap" followed by a sterling example of iambic pentameter: "and caught it in the webbing of his glove,"

All announcers have their signature phrases. When the Mets’ win, Howie Rose says, “Put it in the books.” The late Bob Murphy -- who could radiate enthusiasm when, in the September of a last-place season, the Mets turned an ordinary 6-4-3 double play -- would say, after every Mets’ victory, that he’d be back “with the happy recap” after the commercial break. At game’s end, Cohen says “and the ballgame is over,” accenting the “o” in “over.” Cohen’s home run call is “it’s outta here!”

The classic home run call is Mel Allen’s when with a straw hat and a smile he covered the Yankees of Mantle, Maris, Berra, and Ford. When Mickey launched one, Mel would follow the course of the ball and conclude “it’s going. . going. . .gone.” I cannot leave unmentioned Russ Hodges’ immortal call of Bobby Thomson’s home run off Ralph Branca in the 1951 playoffs. “The Giants win the pennant!” he exclaimed and repeated the sentence four times.

What prompted this post was my dissatisfaction with the national announcers on TV and the whole strategy of continual chatter interrupted by graphs, statistics, interviews, close-ups of fans in the stands. I hate such current catch phrases as "are you kidding me!" or "do you believe it!" I hate statcast and "redemption" and other artificial sweeteners. Red Barber, who was Vin Scully’s mentor, advised him not to root openly for the home team and to keep to facts. Radio announcers have no choice but to concentrate on each play rather than on marginal elements. Often I turn off the sound and listen to a radio feed of the visiting team's play-by-play guys.

from the archive; first posted October 15, 2018

There were many anecdotes about Scully making the rounds as he completed his astounding career – having broadcast or telecast Dodger games since 1950. Everyone loves his call of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. In October of that year, when Koufax on two days’ rest shut out the Minnesota Twins to win the World Series for his team, Vinny said, “Sandy, two days ago you said you felt like a hundred years old. How do you feel now?” “Like a hundred and one,” Koufax replied.

Every so often Scully will surprise you with a literary allusion, and he usually doesn’t repeat himself, though Milton’s “They also serve who only stand and wait” has served him well for years. When he broke the news of the untimely death of Don Drysdale, the great pitcher who had become his broadcast partner, Scully said, with simple eloquence, “Never have I been asked to make an announcement that hurts me as much as this one. And I say it to you as best I can with a broken heart.”

Left: Sandy Koufax (center) and the late Tommy Lasorda at a ceremony honoring Vin Scully at Dodger Stadium, May 3, 2017

Added on August 4, 2022:

Vin Scully died this week, a year after his beloved wife passed. He was 94. The eulogists were justly extravagant in their praise of the Hall of Fame broadcaster, voice of the Dodgers from 1950 through 2016. Nor did the plaudits come exclusively fom Dodger fans. Honoring Scully, the team's bitterest rivals, the Giants of San Francisco,  did something very classy prior to Wednesday's evening's contest between the two squads. Jon Miller, the Giants' lead broadcaster since 1997 and one of the best in the business, calls him "the greatest broadcaster there ever was." Miller does a tremendous impression of Vin - in English,Japanese, and Spanish!

Here's Vin's call of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September 9, 1965. "I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium is the loneliest place in the world right now" on 9:43 PM. Koufax ended the game with a strikeout; in fact he struck out the side in both the eighth and ninth innings. "Swung on and missed, a perfect game!" Andf then Vin had the wit to keep quiet and let the crowd noise take over "in the city of angels." 

When the Sandy Koufax statue was unveiled at Dodger Stadium in June of this year, the great southpaw said “Vin Scully is the greatest of all time, period." 

Some of Vin Scully's best lines, with thanks to Houston Mitchell of the Los Angeles Times:

“Football is to baseball as blackjack is to bridge. One is the quick jolt. The other the deliberate, slow-paced game of skill, but never was a sport more ideally suited to television than baseball. It’s all there in front of you. It’s theater, really. The star is the spotlight on the mound, the supporting cast fanned out around him, the mathematical precision of the game moving with the kind of inevitability of Greek tragedy. With the Greek chorus in the bleachers!”

“He pitches as though he’s double-parked.” — on Bob Gibson

A Joey Gallo home run off Clayton Kershaw looked like "a marble" when it went way over the right field fence.

“He’s like a tailor; a little off here, a little off there and you’re done, take a seat.” — on Tom Glavine

“It’s a mere moment in a man’s life between the All-Star Game and an old-timers’ game.”

"Statistics are used the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination."

“Roberto Clemente could field the ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pittsburgh.”

"Losing feels worse than winning feels good."

"Fernando ready, and the strike-two pitch is hit back to the box, dribbling to second, [Juan] Samuel on the bag, throws to first for the double play! Fernando Valenzuela has pitched a no-hitter at 10:17 in the evening on June three 29th, 1990. If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!"

Calling Hank Aaron‘s 715th home run: “What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. … It is over, at 10 minutes after 9 in Atlanta, Georgia, Henry Aaron has eclipsed the mark set by Babe Ruth. You could not, I guess, get two more opposite men. The Babe, big and garrulous and oh so sociable and oh so immense in all his appetites. And then the quiet lad out of Mobile, Alabama — slender and stayed slender throughout his career. Ruth, as he put on the poundage and the paunch, the Yankees put their ballplayers in pinstripe uniforms, because it made Ruth look slimmer. But they didn’t need pinstripe uniforms for Aaron in the twilight of his career.”

His final words as a Dodgers broadcaster:

“You know, friends, so many people have wished me congratulations on a 67-year career in baseball, and they’ve wished me a wonderful retirement with my family, and now, all I can do is tell you what I wish for you. May God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile; for every care, a promise; and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life seems, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for each prayer. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know, in my heart, I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me, and I’ll miss our time together more than I can say. But, you know what, there will be a new day, and, eventually, a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ooh, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodger baseball. So, this is Vin Scully wishing you a pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be.”

So pull up a chair and listen to the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's greatest pitching feat.

2022 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony [by Greg Pattenaude]

On Sunday July 24, I made the trip to Cooperstown to be part of the induction ceremony of this year’s class to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I was there to watch Gil Hodges, who I wrote about in January, be inducted posthumously. In addition to Gil, there were six other former baseball players being honored: three posthumously - Minnie Miñoso, Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil – and three others who were present – Jim Kaat, Tony Olivia and David Ortiz aka Big Papi. 

If you are a baseball fan, but have never attended the induction ceremony, it is celebration of the best baseball can offer.  Fifty-thousand or so travel many miles to be part of the festivities.  The huge, open field of the Clark Sports Center, located about a 15 minute walk south of the village’s Main Street, is dotted with lawn chairs, umbrellas, tents, signs, and uniforms of many teams.  This year, there were plenty of flags from the Dominican Republic, the native land of Big Papi, being waved proudly from those of Dominican heritage.

The field is already crowded when I arrive at 11:30, two hours before the scheduled start time of the ceremony.  I put my folding chair down on an open spot near the center but pretty far back from the stage.  When I return from a quick walk to get water, I’ve been surrounded.  To my left are three chairs with those seated wearing a Mets, Yankees and Red Sox jersey, respectively.  I commented that this is a great mix.  The Mets fan said that they have a fourth person with them, a Phillies fan, but he forgot a chair.

To their left are a large group of Dominicans.  They are having an animated conservation, talking loudly, smiling and laughing, and enjoying some really big cigars, whose smell reminded me of my youth at Shea Stadium.  To my right are five people who quietly sat there with a large cooler of Coronas.  My only judgement on them was that they had no idea who Tommie Agee was, but I refrained from telling them to go on YouTube to watch Game 3 of the 1969 World Series.

The ceremony gets underway on time with the usual welcome to Cooperstown by Jane Forbes Clark, Chair of the Hall of Fame and introduction of today’s master of ceremonies, Brian Kenny from the MLB Network.  He noted that due to bad storms forecast for later in the afternoon, some usual features, like video montages for each for the inductees shown on the huge screen and across the live televised feed, would be omitted to get the crowd out of there before the thunderstorms arrived.  It was greatly appreciated; the ceremony still lasted three hours.  And it was a good call; the ceremony was over at 4:30pm and Cooperstown was drenched by 5:15pm. Then comes what can only be described as a living “Field of Dreams” moment.  The previously-inducted Hall of Famers are introduced one by one – a who’s who of those that were the best in the game.  As noted in the introductions, only 1% of ballplayers are selected to the Hall of Fame.  It’s a surreal experience seeing all these greats in one place.  Included in that group was Sandy Koufax, inducted in 1972 and the oldest Hall of Famer attending at 86 years old.  He started the first major league game I attended against the Mets in 1966 and I was glad I returned to my house before leaving to grab some extra tissues.

Now it’s time for the newest honorees or those representing them to be introduced followed by the plaque presentation ceremony and a speech by the inductee or those selected to speak on his behalf.  Former pitcher Jim Kaat thanked his catchers over his twenty-five year career; several were in attendance.  Tony Oliva thanked his adopted city of Minneapolis where he met his wife despite he not knowing any English and she no Spanish.  Minnie Minoso’s wife talked about her late husband’s enduring love of baseball and the organizations who supported him.  Hall of Famer Dave Winfield spoke about Bud Fowler, whose life I knew little of.  As an African-American born in Fort Plain, New York and raised in Cooperstown, Bud played professional baseball in the late 1800s, going from team to team before owners established a “gentleman’s agreement” that only white ball players should have that privilege.  Buck O’Neil’s niece, Dr. Angela Terry, thanked the selection committee for its broad interpretation of selection criteria to include the totality of contributions to the game, not just statistics and mentioned his favorite phrase “man oh man, nothing could be better.”  Today’s marque inductee was Big Papi, the larger than life ballplayer who helped the Boston Red Sox end their long World Series championship drought in 2004, then helped contributed to two more World Series titles in 2007 and 2013.  He spoke glowingly about the island nation he grew up, encouraged those present and watching to visit the island and its pristine sandy beaches, and thanked his Boston teammates, many of whom were in attendance.

In the middle of these speeches was Irene Hodges, Gil’s daughter.  She spoke of her humble father who would have been proud to be there.  He loved baseball, but didn't get to play it right away; after his major league debut for the Dodgers in 1943, he enlisted in the Marines, and saw combat in Okinawa, earning a bronze star.  While there, he showed the native children the game of baseball.  Irene spoke of her father’s character, never any pretense or thought he was better than anyone.  During the 1950s, he was the premiere first baseman, with the most home runs, runs batted in, hits and games played.  He always wanted to win, but as Irene said, never to the point of putting himself above anyone else. “Never lie” was his credo according to Irene; you should look into a mirror and respect the person you see.  He demonstrated this ethic with his Dodger teammates, with his players while managing, and with his family.   He was part of the Brooklyn community.  She noted that, while managing, some players feared him.  Some complained about his managerial style of platooning players.  But they all respected him.  Four of those players from the world championship 1969 Mets were there, as well as the widow of the aforementioned Tommie Agee and the late Tom Seaver’s daughter Sarah.  At Seaver’s induction 30 years earlier – my first induction ceremony – Seaver closed his speech tearfully noting his two greatest regrets where that neither his late mother or Gil Hodges were there.  

Irene noted that he was a supporter of teammate Jackie Robinson and shared this story; one I had not heard.  One game, the opposing dugout was “heckling” Jackie, but I assume it was much more than heckling.  Gil, a quiet but imposing figure at six foot one, had had enough.  He walked over to the opposing dugout and said “if anyone else has anything to say, come out right now and we’ll settle it.”  No one came out or said anything.  This powerful moment might be the reason Jackie wept at Gil’s funeral in April 1972, saying that next to his own son, it was the worst day of his life.  Jackie passed away several months later.

When the ceremony was over, I gathered my belongings and walked back to town, along with most of the gathered who decided not to wait for shuttle buses.  On the way back, someone on his Victorian front porch was giving away beer to passersby.  While tempted, I opted for the free bottles of water the kids across the street were giving away in exchange for a donation to a children’s hospital.  Refreshed, I saw someone ahead of me with a Hodges jersey so I struck up a conversation.  He had flown up from Virginia to be there.  A native Brooklynite, he saw Gil play when he was a kid and promised that he would never step foot in Cooperstown until Gil was in the Hall of Fame.  He made good on his promise.

"Our Love Affair": Which one? [by David Lehman]

Unsung heroes Arthur Freed (left; who produced The Wizard of Oz and rescued "Over the Rainbow" from extinction) and Roger Edens (who composed the "Dear Mr Gable" intro to "You Made Me Love You" for Judy Garland) teamed up to write the "Love Affair" that I prefer of the two great contenders in movie history. The rival, composed by Harry Warren, orchestrates the 1957 Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr tear-jeker,An Affair to Remember. That one has its appeal, god knows; I believe Nora Ephron regards the film and everything about it as the epitome of romance, and it's great for the string section.

But the one I vote for is the musical emblem of Strike Up the Band (1940) -- a movie directed by Busby Berkeley, in which, in one show-within-a-show scene, "demi-tasse" is the unlikely euphemism for hanky-panky. "Our Love Affair" carries the overture beyond the Gershwin title track, is sung thirteen minutes into the movie by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and recurs throughout as background music for the young romantics. I love Freed's lyrics in general -- he also wrote the songs in "Singin' in the Rain." I will write more about him some other time -- about Roger Edens, too, who, according to reliable sources, shared a birthday (November 9) with Kay Thompson. From 1942 through 1957 they gave joint birthday parties during which each presented a surprise production number using special material featuring their friends— Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Dorothy Dandridge, Maureen O'Hara, Ray Bolger, Ann Sothern, Danny Kaye, Charles Walters, Cole Porter, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane — with secret rehearsals, and neither telling the other what to expect.  Anyway -- See Strike Up the Band once and you'll know "Our Love Affair" forever.

The tenderness here coexists with brass. The song can be done in swing time or full of the most wistful longing. If you get a chance listen to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with the Sentimental Gentleman himself on the 'bone and boy singer Sinatra (24 or 25).  crooning the words.

https://youtu.be/sy_A62FKpbE?t=1

  -- DL

Born on the Eleventh of June [by DL]

Our Birthday (June 11)

Dear Beth, Leo, Allan, and Pauline,
Lawanda, Sabrina, Deborah,
Joshua, Lise, and Christine,
Born today, like us, were Jonson, Ben,
and Googe, Barnabe, two men
of poetic greatness; and how about some confetti
for Vanzetti (of Sacco and Vanzetti)
and Loeb (of Leopold and Loeb)? Ready
or not, here comes coach Vince Lombardi,
who said winning is the only thing,
and Joe Montana, who won more than one ring;
also, Gene Wilder, a funny man of note,
and Erving Goffman, who wrote
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life;
Irving Howe, whose name’s a terse
question of the universe,
and William Styron, beset by inner strife.
So let me praise this day on which, in 1966,
Tiffany Cohen was born, who made us smile
when she won the 400 and 800 meter freestyle
in Los Angeles in the 1984 Olympics.

Gil Hodges in the Hall of Fame at last

The Dodger great managed the 1969 Mets to the World Champoionship. He would have been 98 on April 4. Great first-baseman, clutch hitter, drove in both runs when the Dodgers won the 7th game of ther 1955 World Series,beloved in Brooklyn.

“Not getting booed at Ebbets Field was an amazing thing. Those fans knew their baseball, and Gil was the only player I can remember whom the fans never, I mean never, booed.” — Clem Labine

“Gil Hodges was the most important person in my career. Above all, he taught me how to be a professional.” — Tom Seaver

Angell of the Basepaths Fondly Remembered [by David Lehman]

From an encyclopedia article on Roger Angell: << In a Newsweek article titled "Angell of the Base Paths," David Lehman made note of what he called Angell's "poetic resonance" and quoted Angell: "If I was influenced by anyone, I guess it was by my stepfather, E. B. White…. He suffered writing but made it look easy. >>

What prompted the question that provoked the quote? It was January 1988 and Roger had a new book coming . The Newsweek editors much preferred a fetaure article to a regular book review, and I pitched the idea of  going to Arizona and spending time with Roger (and some friends of his) during Spring Training. We watched a couple of games and dined with Roger and former Giants manager Bill Rigney who remembered every pitch of the ninth inning of the third game of the 1951 playoffs between the Giants of New York and the Dodgers of Brooklyn. "It was my life," he explained.

I asked Roger whether he thought anyone would surpass another Roger's record of 61 home runs. "If anyone can do it," he said in Scottsdale, "it's Mark McGwire with that short sweet swing of his." Roger introduced me to Bart Giamatti, then president of the National League. Of the barrel-chested former president of Yale, Roger told me "Bart will be our next commissioner. . .if he doesn't drop dead of a heart attack." Bart became commissioner and, alas, his fate was as Roger forecasted. The piece in Newsweek ran under the heading "Angell of the Basepaths."

In a  2017 piece on Red Smith, I asked readers to "consider these sentences from his piece about the 1947 World Series game in which the Dodgers' Cookie Lavagetto ruined the Yankees' Floyd Bevens's no-hit bid with a bottom-of-the-ninth game-winning two-out double. 'In the third [inning] Johnny Lindell caught Jackie Robinson's foul fly like Doc Blanchard hitting the Notre Dame line and came to his feet unbruised. In the fourth Joe DiMaggio caught Gene Hermanski's monstrous drive like a well-fed banquet guest picking his teeth.' In the same game, Tommy Henrich of the Yankees took a hit away from Hermanski: 'Henrich backed against the board and leaped either four or fourteen feet into the air. He stayed aloft so long he looked like an empty uniform hanging in its locker. When he came down he had the ball.'"

Roger wrote me a letter -- always a big event -- saying that Red Smith "was a hero of mine, long ago, because he always made it clear that it was OK for sports fans be smart and educated enough to own an extended vocabulary. and also to appreciate and, above all, enjoy sports. To be like him, that is.  He was serious about this but never took himself seriously.  He was also (by the way) a heavy drinker and often filed copy with seriously shaking hands.

"My only beef about your review is that you omitted Red's weird ending in that column about that Bevans-Lavagetto near no-hitter: a line saying  that the unhappiest man in North America when the tilt ended was a sportswriter there with a broken "v" on his typewriter, which made it it impossible for him to write either of those names.  This was Red himself---he told me later that the "v" snapped off along about the fifth inning and flew like an escaping sparrow out of his Smith-Corona and out of sight over the lip of the pressbox.

"Thanks for bringing this all back.  I've got the Okrent collection and now I'll actually read it."

The Big Three. . .as Roland Garos Begins

Footbawl! Footbawl! Footbawl! [by Mitch Sisskind]

"Footbawl! Footbawl! Footbawl" by Mitch Sisskind
Los Angeles Review of Books, February 12, 2022

Super Bowl time is here. Let’s get in the mood:

It is a game of blood and muscle and fresh air. It renders distasteful the trivial dissipations that sap the energies of the youth of the wealthier classes. It is all very well for old grandmothers at their tea to sigh at the cruelties of the game. But it doesn’t do Cholly or Fweddie any harm to have his collarbone smashed occasionally.

                                                                                — Willa Cather, 1894 

Does anyone have a problem with that? Not Jack Kerouac, whose last novel Vanity of Dulouz renders a Columbia football practice like a chapter of the Iliad. Not Jack’s buddy Neal Cassady, star quarterback for the New Mexico Boys Reformatory. Those guys could write, as well as punt, pass, and kick. But for the best literary appreciation of the game with the funny ball, nothing is in a league with Don DeLillo’s End Zone, first published in 1972.

There’s a Ludwig Wittgensteinian, Roland Barthian, post-structuralist, semiotic aspect of the book, so let’s deal with that real quick. DeLillo’s concept of “end zone” refers to the outer limits of language where words struggle to express ultimate phenomena such as hydrogen bomb explosions and perfectly run football plays. DeLillo ponders racial or racist aspects of football as they appeared in 1972. He also introduces a character who says he’s trying to “un-Jew” himself by playing football, although there have been plenty of great Jewish football players from Marshall Goldberg at the University of West Virginia to Mitchell Schwartz, late of the Kansas City Chiefs.  

What’s terrific about End Zone, however, is DeLillo’s success in getting the experience of football onto the page. True, it might not be for everyone. Willa Cather’s old grannies might find DeLillo’s portrayal of football players to be overdrawn. But those grannies wouldn’t know Steve Largent from Ernesto Laclau — and who was Ernesto Laclau, anyway?

Certainly there are colorful names for the ballplayers in End Zone, but what’s really celebrated are the names of the football plays. They’re poems in a crazy shorthand. They’re prayers for salvation and victory. 

All teams run the same plays. But each team uses an entirely different system of naming. Coaches stay up well into the night in order to name plays. They heat and reheat coffee on an old burner. No play begins until its name is called. Out-23, near-in belly toss. Counter-freeze, blue-2 wide, swing inside delay. Middle sift-W, alph-set, lemmy-2.

The names of the plays are what make them unique, since the plays themselves are pretty much the same. This was made clear in an episode of Jon Gruden’s “QB Camp” TV show. Gruden — an NFL coach, television commentator, and football fanatic — was interviewing Carson Wentz, a pro quarterback. “What did you call this play in college?” Gruden asked, referring to a rather conventional passing formation. But his eyes were bright with expectation. “All right,” Wentz replied, “you would probably call it one strike slot, but we called it gun rocker pro, pass ten, superman, z-steal.” Gruden heard this and giggled like a child. It took his breath away. 

A long section of End Zone is devoted to a play-by-play description of an entire football game. Two obscure college teams are battling it out in the middle of nowhere. This is the book’s most radical departure from conventional narrative and it’s entirely successful. Echoing Willa Cather, DeLillo starts by dismissing any “grandmothers, sissies, and lepidopterists.” Then we’re on the field with the boys: 

“Footbawl,” George Owen shouted. “This is footbawl. You thow it, you ketch it, you kick it. Footbawl. Footbawl. Footbawl.”

“I guarantee you I’ll mash his little mimmy. I’m serious, man. I’ll waste that diddly before this thing’s over.”

“I’m feeling happy,” I said. “Look at the arc lights, the crowd. Listen to those noises out there. Pop, pop, pop. Ving, ving. Existence without anxiety. Happiness. Knowing your body. Understanding the real needs of man.”

“Let’s ching those nancies! Monsoon sweep, string-in left, ready right!”

Fifty years after it was written, I find this wonderful and completely convincing. Still, it’s worth noting some of the changes that have taken place in football since 1972. In football’s first years, from early games in the 1860’s until World War I, football was largely played by “the youth of the wealthier classes,” as Cather says. Baseball was the plebeians’ game. The football powers were Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. Professional football really got started only in the 1920’s, when Red Grange — the Galloping Ghost — played on several teams under more than one name. Well into the 1950’s NFL players had offseason jobs: farmers, gym teachers, insurance salesmen.  

Today football, at least NFL football, is again played by a wealthier class, albeit not from Harvard or Yale. Every player on every team is now signed to a million-dollar contract at least, and most players earn much more. Nor is modern football a matter of Cholly and Fweddie getting a collar bone smashed. The game is a lot faster, more violent, and much more dangerous. The players know that. But, oh, what the hell. 

So now it’s Super Bowl time. Download your copy of End Zone from Amazon and start reading. Do it now, before the game, and be in front of your television at least ten minutes before kickoff. As the coach says in the Don DeLillo’s book, “Do not drag-ass. Anything I have no use for, it’s a football player who consistently drag-asses. Move swiftly from place to place, both on the field and in the corridors of buildings.”

-- Mitch Sisskind is the author of Visitations (1984), Dog Man Stories (1993), and Collected Poems 2005-2020. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Best American Poetry 2009 and Best American Poetry 2013. Photo of Julian Edelman making an spectacular gravity-defying catch in the super bowl (Sports Illustrated).

from the Los Angeles Review of Books, February 12, 2022

Nabokov on Chess

You wrote this marvellous novel The Luzhin Defence: are you a very good chess player? And what do you think of [Bobby] Fischer’s attitude?

Forty years ago I was a good enough player of chess, not a grandmaster, as the Germans say, but a club player sometimes able to set a trap for a heedless champion. What has always drawn me in chess is the trick move, the hidden combination, and that’s why I gave up live play to devote myself to composing chess problems. I don’t doubt that there exists an intimate link between certain mirages of my prose and the texture, at once brilliant and obscure, of enigmatic chess problems of which each one is the fruit of a thousand and one nights of insomnia. I especially like so-called suicide problems, where White forces Black to win.

Yes, Fischer is a strange being, but there’s nothing abnormal in the fact of a chess player’s not being normal. There was the case of the great player Rubinstein, at the start of the century: an ambulance would drive him each day from the insane asylum, his home, to the café room where the tournament was taking place, and then drive him back to his dark cell after the game. He didn’t like to see his opponent, but an empty chair across the chessboard also irritated him, so they put a mirror there, and he saw his own reflection.

See https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/melting-with-tenderness/

from the archive; first posted November 19, 2019

Koufax: Hurricane Sandy Strikes Out the Side [by David Lehman]

The first Major League baseball game I ever saw took place in May 1957 at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Dodgers, my team, were taking on the New York Giants, and my father took me on the long subway ride from Washington Heights, where we lived, to deep Flatbush, where Duke Snider patrolled center field, Carl Furillo played the caroms off the right field wall and nailed the runner trying to stretch a double, Pee Wee Reese gobbled up grounders with Gil Hodges completing the putout, and Roy Campanella won three MVP awards.

And who should be pitching for the Dodgers that day? A local boy, who played first base at Lafayette High and basketball at the U of Cincinnati: a Jewish "bonus baby" with a fantastic fastball, a lot of potential but somewhat erratic results thus far in his Major League career: Sandy Koufax, born on this day in 1935.

Auspicious. Also, of course, heartbreaking to fall in love with a team that would move to California at the end of that very season, taking the Giants along with them. The Dodgers settled in Chavez Ravine, and Dodger Stadium, erected in 1962, remains the most elegant baseball park in the nation. It is also, amazingly, the third oldest. The Giants have given strutting San Franciscans something extra to cheer about in the last couple of years, but I like the Dodgers' chances with their astute new management this season.

On that May day in 1957 Duke Snider stroked his 1,500th major league hit. He also homered and made a graceful running shoestring catch of the line drive that ended the game. Koufax pitched into the eighth inning when Clem Labine relieved him. The final score: Brooklyn 5 -- New York 3. Ray Jablonski homered for the Jints (the authenticating detail!). I was eight years old and still remember Gil Hodges's smile when, before the game, he turned in our direction and acknowledged the greeting of a devoted fan.To this day I have never had a better seat at a ballpark than that one some ten rows back from first base at little Ebbets Field.

I have known a number of Sandys -- such as Sanford ("Sandy") Friedman, my classmate at Clare College, Cambridge, who quarterbacked our occasional touch football games and knew more than most of us about pipe tobacco, English cheeses, Renaissance poetry, and Wittgenstein.

But I am told that Sandy (like Leslie) is now assumed to be a girl's name -- as you could tell from the coverage of Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. That tempest did terrible damage, and was altogether lamentable, but it did suggest a nickname and an image for the greatest pitcher, who totally owned home plate for a stretch of six years in the early half of the 1960s. Hurricane Sandy. He had the most beautiful curve ball -- it bent like the semicircle that forms the top of a question mark -- but he could beat you even when that pitch deserted him. A steady flow of fastballs mastered the fearsome Minnesota Twins sluggers (Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison) in game seven of the 1965 World Series, won by the Dodgers 2-0.

Now what brought on that memory?

Desire for spring as the winter of our discontent refuses to go gentle into the past?

All of that, plus the chance to praise my Dad, who took me to that game in May 1957 as he had taken me to the United Nations years earlier when it seemed like a significant entity; who gave up a Wednesday afternoon at the office years later for a pair of choice orchestra seats at "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," that perfect musical for the period; and who drove me to Yale (1965) and Harvard (1969) for memorable visits?

Nice to praise the greatness of Sandy Koufax and your own father in the same column, I must say.

--- DL

Originally posted on Sandy Koufax's birthday, December 31, 2015.