Why does golf seem to treat death differently than other hobbies and pass-times, even down to its most unheralded practitioners? One possible answer could be in the way golf is defined, which is the subject of much debate. Is it a sport or a game? This question has been asked ad nauseum, and if any sports radio hosts are silly enough to pose it anymore, they can be assured of a precipitous ratings drop.
But when discussing the way golf treats death, it might be worth revisiting. Flab and pudge abounded. Indeed, golf is the only sport in recent memory where a professional player can actively be seen smoking a cigar during a round. There are certain major league pitchers who appear wide in the mid-section, but can you imagine any one of them with a Camel in the corner of his mouth as he winds up for a pitch?
This is not to say the golf legends I mentioned did not have great hand-eye coordination, superior concentration, and nerves of steel. Of course, to a man, they did, but compare them to golfers of the present day. There are exceptions, naturally. There are overweight golfers John Daly and Brandon de Jonge immediately spring to mind and averaged-sized men on the pro tours, but the rule is a tall, lean, toned, intimidating figure. A yard drive 30, 40, and 50 years ago was seen as near-miraculous. Now it is routine, with drives of yards or more not too jaw dropping.
Pro golfers are muscled and physically prepared in ways their forbearers would not have thought about.
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Bridge and golf were games in the s, but cards remain a game in the 21 st century while golf, the arriviste, has gone athletically mainstream. Thus, if we see golf as a sport, the urge to memorialize its participants on the field of battle, so to speak, is more understandable. But on the golf course, where the mighty strode and struck — just like the heroes of the Iliad — an impermeable tribute is fitting. Both can be places of calm and rest and contemplation. These sui generis attributes bind course to player, and after the player is gone those left behind understand how much the course meant to that person.
Thus, they wish to mark forever the synergy of environment and man. Both settings have exquisitely tended grounds and invite tranquility. On the golf course, you can pause your round to view a plaque in bucolic settings. Lastly, golf is a sport that reveres tradition and history. Golf predates most other modern sports, and what other contemporary athletic endeavor has more picayune rules and devotion to etiquette than golf? No one would think it odd if a baseball player was ejected from a game for corking his bat, but should a player be disqualified from a tournament for kneeling on a towel?
The latter example did indeed happen when a professional golfer Craig Stadler had to hit a shot from a kneeling position. No matter to the rules committee: Pickup basketball is a far rougher experience than a refereed game. What constitutes a foul in the NBA would be considered patty-cake on the playground court.
But amateur golf can be just as serious as the top ranks. You will find little tolerance for such a breach of etiquette no matter what level of golf. Some golfers naturally — unfortunately — cheat, but gaining an edge by getting away with a rule breach, which is seen in most other sports as admirable, is frowned upon in golf. Golfers are famous for turning themselves if an infraction occurs. But in golf, if a player accidentally moves a ball he is addressing, more often than not, he will announce the violation.
How does this relate to life after death in golf? Most athletes, no matter what sport they play, see themselves as part of a brotherhood, but I believe fraternity in golf is stronger than all others. Thus, we take our golf identity with us to the grave, and it is no surprise that those who survive us seek to keep the fires burning brightly for the fallen. And they do it on the golf course, which bonds the quick and the dead to its terrain, its traditions, and its etiquette in a far more palpable way than can any other sport. My grandfather passed away in in Florida. My grandmother moved closer to us after that to Massachusetts , and she died in They were both lifelong golfers, avid fans of the sport and most anything related to it.
Combined, they easily played the sport more than years. At the funeral service for my grandmother, everyone was encouraged — per Jewish custom — to throw a handful of dirt on the casket. I opted for a sprinkling of golf tees. I recall, before I made the offering, looking to the Rabbi for any signs of disapproval. A more orthodox interpreter of the faith, he did not have a problem with this gesture. There was a smattering more controversy when my mother inquired as to what kind of headstone she could fashion for her parents. She wanted it to be in the shape of a golf green or something to that effect.
Perhaps if you were to emblazon my name on the 18th green of a course I frequented, where it could never be missed, I might agree to the gesture. Every golfer who played the course, each round, would have to see my name and even perhaps aim for it depending on pin placement. But on a bench, beneath a tree, fastened to a ball washer. Again, I beg pardon to those who have paid tribute to a loved one with this kind of memorial. My thoughts on their efforts to remember a father or a husband may seem condescending and rude, but from an eschatological point of view I wonder if any of it matters.
When the sun burns out in another five billion years and flares in its own death throes, the planet earth will most likely be engulfed and incinerated. When this happens, if humanity is even around and still playing golf, all the courses and the Golf Hall of Fame and all of our memories and tributes and everything else will be gone. What of life after death in golf then? Will any of this matter — this essay included — when the solar system is gone, and there is no one to remember the memories of anything, let alone golfers? Whether you prefer plaques on the golf course over golf imagery on a cemetery headstone, or vice versa, your best hope is that God or the supreme being or whomever is a golfer.
For one thing, it would make all those golf jokes in which God or Jesus figure that much more appropriate. More importantly, all the ball washer and bench markers and graveyard ones too will most assuredly matter, for God will have taken note.
The Lost Cause
People might not remember the tribute on the rock or the tree or the headstone, but the Lord will. This may not be much comfort to the atheist-golfer, but for all the praying golfers out there it will be sweet redemption. As for me, I prefer to remain agnostic about golf, religion, and golf-course memorials. He taught screenwriting at BU from This is his second Sport Literate essay.
He lives in the Greater Boston area. It was the final day of the Tour de France, and French rider and race leader, Laurent Fignon, sat in the start house at the head of the course, straddling his Raleigh, preparing himself for the kilometer mile time trial that would take him from Versailles to Paris: After three weeks and over 2, miles, it had come down to this final stage.
What was he thinking? Was he contemplating his strategy? The second advantage he held over American Greg LeMond, whom had just departed the start house ahead of him? Nor, for that matter, did he elect to wear a helmet, as LeMond and many of the other riders had — a choice less about practicality, perhaps, than vanity. Fignon had a blond ponytail which would flap in the breeze as he made his way onto the Champs Elysees in front of, not only tens of thousands of spectators lining the Paris streets, but also three billion television viewers around the world who were watching what had turned out to be the most exciting Tour de France in recent memory, and, one that, in less than 30 short minutes, would deliver the closest finish in its long history.
At last, Fignon sat up in the saddle and clipped his shoes into the pedals. Now clutching the handlebars, he took a deep breath and exhaled, listening as the official counted down the final five seconds. Mild panic set in. I stood among a small crowd that day, watching the race from inside a sporting goods store in a Carlsbad, California shopping mall.
I was 19 years old and a passionate cyclist who hoped to one day turn professional and ride in the Tour de France. Like my father, I was heavily involved in bicycle racing. It was easy to understand why. LeMond was a nice guy. He was always smiling and willing to talk to the press. The French loved him because he was fluent in their language. Fans around the world admired him because he gave them hope. After surviving a hunting accident only a few years earlier, and now vying for the Tour de France title, with residual shotgun pellets still imbedded in his body, he seemed to suggest that anything was possible.
Watching him sail along the streets at 34 miles-per-hour, hunched over the aerodynamic handlebars in an efficient, wind-cheating posture, he reminded me of Superman. Fignon exuded a different kind of charisma. With his wire-rimmed spectacles and thin, blond hair, he was the most unique and interesting rider in the peloton, as far as I was concerned. When he did give an interview, he appeared guarded and mysterious. His responses to questions were often witty quips. He had an appetite for Stephen King novels.
I liked that, too. What many reporters and fans disliked about him was his arrogance. After his Tour victory, Fignon traded his Renault for a Ferrari. He threw water bottles at reporters, spat at cameras, and generally allowed the world to see him at his absolute worst. Still, I liked him. I assumed the saddle sores were tormenting him. Having begun the day with a second advantage over LeMond, it seemed reasonable that he would win, even if the American turned in a brilliant performance.
It was a crash that heralded the end of my cycling career. I remember looking down at my front wheel veering into the other wheel and knowing I was going to go down. A moment later I was sliding across the highway, feeling the pavement peeling away the skin on my knees and elbows, and burning a hole into my chin. I was out of commission for several days. I might have overcome this setback — rather quickly, even — but my day job prevented me from spending more time in the saddle.
Time I needed to reacquaint myself with high speeds, and to put in many miles on the road. Time I spent, instead, at the office. Eventually, I sold my bike and took up running. It was a sport I loved, and still do, for its inherent simplicity. Not only this, but running shoes are much less expensive than a racing bicycle. And I can get a great workout in 45 minutes — the same amount of time it used to take me to warm up before a long bike ride.
Fignon always considered himself a winner.
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Instead, especially during his prime years in the mid- to lates, Fignon rode in these races to win, preferring to bask in the glory himself. By virtue of his previous Tour de France wins, and all-around talent, he was a star and allowed to do things his way. Things like climbing off his bike, ducking into the team car and abandoning a race if he started poorly or if the weather conditions were not to his liking.
Others might criticize him, but Fignon always found a way to come back and contend for another victory. As a professional, he knew the exact conditions necessary for him to have the best chance of winning, and, in the absence of such criteria, he had no problem waiting for the next race, and favorable conditions.
In my own athletic endeavors, from racing bikes to running, I have always remembered Fignon, his temperamental personality and the competitiveness he displayed throughout his career. While serving in the Marine Corps, I ran 20 miles or more every week. As enthusiastic as I was about competition, I entered races and sometimes won them. Much of my semiannual performance reviews were based on my Physical Fitness Tests PFTs , which consisted of a 3-mile run, 20 pull-ups, and 80 sit-ups within a two-minute period. These reviews were actually competitions, with accolades and bragging rights going to the winner.
I trained for them like someone obsessed, usually finishing at or near the top of my company. I still run, primarily for enjoyment, but also for the health and psychological benefits it brings. Going out on a hot summer day and putting in five miles is one of the most invigorating and cleansing things I know of. When I see another runner up ahead, something in me changes and I find myself turning the situation into a race. Regardless, I give it everything I have to catch and pass the other runner.
Even more motivating is spotting another runner behind me. As I pedaled, I would try to emulate Fignon, even his facial gestures. I even forced myself to smile while ascending steep hills. Though my legs and lungs were burning, I persevered, knowing it would certainly demoralize my opponents to see me smiling while they, too, were suffering. Granted, at the time, these strange triathlon handlebars were still a novelty in the European peloton. And because of the obvious aerodynamic — and time saving — advantages they afforded, they were also controversial.
It has also been proposed that, had Fignon worn an aerodynamic helmet, as LeMond did, he would have won the Tour de France. Some have dared to suggest that Fignon could have won the Tour simply by cutting off his wind-catching ponytail. But of all three scenarios, this was certainly the least likely. After all, if there is anything the French expect of their champions, it is panache , the concept of verve, style, flamboyance. When one wears the maillot jaune , they believe, this person, above all others, must ride with panache. Fignon understood this, perhaps better than any other rider in the Tour de France.
And he upheld this concept to the best of his considerable abilities, which led to his defeat. Part of what intrigued me about Fignon was the Tour de France, itself: The event is so arduous and demanding that teams groom their young riders, limiting their involvement to a select number of stages, sometimes for several years, before allowing them to complete an entire Tour. It was his first time competing in the event and, at 22, he became the youngest rider in half a century to win it.
Over the years, I lost track of Fignon. After I took up running, I no longer subscribed to the cycling papers which had once kept me informed about the sport, and I found myself less interested in following the Tour de France, probably because I no longer recognized any of the riders. To my great surprise, however, some years ago, during graduate school, one of the students I tutored brought his physiology textbook into the writing lab one day. He sat on a treadmill in what looked like some kind of medical laboratory, his long, blond hair falling onto his bare chest, to which was connected all sorts of electronic devices to monitor his heart and lungs.
There was even a tube fitted into his mouth to measure his maximum rate of oxygen consumption. Elite cyclists have always astounded scientists for their seemingly superhuman endurance capacities, and I suppose Fignon was at the top of this list for not only for his athletic abilities, but also his colorful character.
He made you want to look at him and listen to what he might say next. And, like him or not, you respected him for what he could do on a bicycle. By now we were well into the Internet age and Fignon had long since retired from professional cycling. Occasionally, something would remind me of him and one day it occurred to me that I could search the Web to find out what The Professor had been up to in recent years. I was also shocked to learn that he had just died of cancer at the young age of It took several weeks to receive the book, which shipped from England.
But I was saddened by the pain he surely carried around with him in the years since the Tour de France. News and World Report , and elsewhere. He lives in Oklahoma. They root us in PGE Park for a triple A game between the Portland Beavers and the Tacoma Rainiers while a father and son, for five dollars a piece, reinforce bonds in a way that seems possible only at a baseball game. They root us in Walloon Lake and the Odawa Casino while three friends find a meal after a long hike. And through these places and events, Brice roots us in reflection, nostalgia, the importance of being still and listening.
Family, friends, nuns and pitchers populate his poems and his subjects are brought to life and treated with compassion. The poems are finely crafted and provide a measured and valuable glimpse into the complexity of the human condition. Brice was kind enough to take time out of a busy summer to field SL inquires.
Warning, there are frightening, though heartfelt, accounts of nuns. What does poetry mean to you? Poetry names the unnameable. What does sport mean to you? To me, sport is something, along with poetry, music, dance, that makes life worth living. The Penguins just won the Stanley Cup and all of Pittsburgh came together to celebrate.
Sport is a way of connecting to people, something precious we have in common. Of course, my great friend, Jim Hutt is a big Sharks fan, so it can also be a means of lording a win over a good friend from now until eternity! Is the intersection between poetry and sports a natural one for you? Especially when it comes to baseball. Was a love of sports a common denominator in your house? I lived the first 18 years of my life in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My dad was a great baseball fan. I used to love listening to Diz ruin the English language.
I was a coach for five years, until Ari became good enough to be on an all-star team. I loved every minute of it. So yes, sports have always been a big deal in the Brice family. Oh, one more thing: So she is no great fan, but she was a terrific sport. Twenty-one years of Ariel beam from under a baseball cap. Five dollars a piece that night to sit behind home plate.
It turns out that the difference between triple A baseball and the major leagues is 25 bucks a seat. The scoreboard is hand operated: Ten barbers stationed in PGE Park give fans their choice of haircuts. A radio announcer sits in the 20 th row, swinging his arms over his head, doing a Harry Caray imitation during the 7 th inning stretch.
I kiss his cheek, laugh out loud; slap him on the back. On one level it seems to act as a metaphor for the current American consciousness. Triple A vs MLB. The haves and have-nots. And ultimately it is a poem about family and love. Can you speak to the ways in which sports unite us? About their importance to our communities? Sport ties us all together and makes for memories that will outlive all of us. The first time I took our son to a hockey game, he was five years old. At some point, Mario Lemieux scored his 17 th goal of the season.
He broke the puck in the process. The ref took a look at Ari and me, skated over, and flipped that puck over the plexiglass and gave it to us. Ari still has that puck. At baseball games, no matter what age he was, Ari would talk and talk to me. We could talk about anything at a game. This is still true. In your house, what is it like when your team loses? When your team wins? Big celebrations with wins, philosophical statements about another day when we lose. Sports just lend themselves to poetry. Anytime I can, I use sport as a subject. All kinds of subjects are kicked off by contemplating the deeper meanings of sports.
That slider is what I am. Can you talk about that poem a bit more and where you found the inspiration? You are analyzing the analyst! You have made me read my own poem differently now. We humans are never static or positional unless we are dead. We are always there, always throwing, always out ahead of ourselves. I am a poet so long as I write poems. Charlie is his slider until he throws a curve ball! The layers go from Cheyenne to Longfellow to.
What did this first poetry teacher mean to you? If she liked you, Sister Humbert would pull out her pen and draw a red check mark on your cheek, grab that cheek between thumb and forefinger, and shake it back and forth until you screamed. She knocked Ronnie on his ass with a hard right to the nose. People crossed themselves while Ronnie rose up like some sixth grade god and landed one to her gut. She fell like a huge cottonwood strewn with Halloween toilet tissue. She made us memorize poems that year. People crossed themselves, but they found him dead in the snow the next day: Mary Humbert, OP, was my sixth grade teacher.
Clinically, she was a sadist through and through. She was also very stupid, as were most of the nuns that taught me. I went on a road trip about 10 years ago with a friend of mine, Jim Hutt, who was also taught by Dominican nuns and who is also a psychologist. He felt, and I concurred, that we had been psychologically abused by those nuns.
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Silvester, slapping my friend Bill who, she was convinced, was smirking at her. He had been badly burned in the face over the summer and what she took as a smirk was his attempt to smile through scars. You know, in Ireland, the priest molestation scandal metastasized to include nuns who had horribly mistreated mostly young pregnant women.
I sometimes wish that some of these people could be held accountable in this country, but mostly I want to let it go. Humbert would mark us with pens, grab our cheeks and aggressively shake our mouths around. Not all the nuns were like that. Johanna who, along with Sr. Marie both English teachers , inspired me to read good literature and to think. Sadly, these were the only two who were encouraging.
They may have been sadistic dolts, but they were terrific muses! Spirituality, as it relates to the natural world, seems central to your sensibility. It is a poem that is driven by Buddhist tenants and also a Midwestern appreciation of nature. How did you find that intersection?
And I dare ask, what is the importance of spirituality to the poet? Rusty feathers hug their shoulders like prayer robes, as maples and ashes ablaze in crimson and orange, conduct cornstalk symphonies in the dying autumn sun. Their hunched silhouettes mark the force of sun over meadow, breeze over grass: That combination comes from the influence of Jim Harrison on my writing. I was lucky enough to know Jim and spend some time with him. He was a totally original American character. We were especially intrigued by how smell was represented in the dog brain.
Anyway, it was his fascination with the natural world and his respect for Native American spirituality that rubbed off on me. I am an atheist, so the spirituality to which I refer has to do with what Nietzsche or Sartre meant when they spoke of the human spirit. Nature presents us with something that is strictly beyond us. Every time I walk down Townsend Road which is near a cottage we have on Walloon Lake in Petoskey , I experience something new, something completely beyond me. The idea that all we are is what we are in the moment makes us appreciate the moment.
My idea in this poem was to capture a moment that I was present to, that lifted me out of myself. So neat that you asked about the title. I had a number of titles before settling on Flashcuts: In the meantime I was writing a screenplay with my friend Ivan Rami and, of course, I was involved with all the screenwriting lingo. A Flashcut is an instantaneous switching of one scene to another. How many times in life are we involved in one thing, only to have something else completely take us into another realm—whether that be illness, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the publication of a book, or even a gorgeous sunset?
For me it has no ultimate meaning. We must make meaning where we live: Everything dying up here is so alive. We walk through a maple leaf blast, the deep red explosion coating us in color, anointing. Judy sits on a step. We watch in reverence. On the way back Judy wants to turn right when I know we should turn left. Jim knows it, too, and we watch as Judy finally reads the road sign, sighs, and says we should turn left.
They once owned all we just saw: We get the senior buffet special, all you can eat for seven bucks apiece. She dreams of leaves that fly away from her like the moths and butterflies she loves to chase. I dream that we four will take this walk again, this flashcut out of chaos, this path with all the right turns.
A walk through the woods and you consider mortality. These moments demand meaningful perspective. Can you speak to how those walks, those moments, influence your writing? Poetry, like sport, lives in the details and awareness of the details makes life more worthwhile. A walk down Townsend Road in Michigan is enhanced because you start to notice all the details. The same happens when you notice how Melencon dances on both feet before going into his windup, or how Stargell pumped his bat before waiting for the pitch.
If you pay attention to these details, the world is a brighter more vibrant place. Do you see any parallels between preparing for a game and preparing to write? This is a great question! I guess the parallel for me is the anticipation: Often the endings are very surprising. Sometimes the poem I thought I was writing is really about something else. The same happens when getting ready to watch a game, or even play a game: Your collection, Flashcuts Out of Chaos , deals with family and relationships, politics and sports, the liminal and the metaphysical.
Can you speak to the unique opportunities that poetry offers the author, and the reader, to communicate in new and authentic ways? Poetry is a succinct form. Done correctly, it gathers vast amounts of experience, expression, and feeling into a very small space. Poetry is the only art form where each line, each word, becomes tremendously important and where stanza breaks become critical. Because of this, the communication value of poetry is tremendous.
It packs a punch in each line, each stanza. In the end, what value have sports brought to your life? I am who I am because I write and because I love sports. The bonds brought by both interests are tremendous.
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Of course, we hardly watch the game. We gab about our children and our careers and complain about our spouses, you know, the usual. This last question is broad, I know, but I expect your answer to be illuminating. What brought you to poetry? What brought me to poetry? When I was 16, my mother bought me a portable Royal typewriter. For some reason I immediately began to write poems on it. At that time, however, I was a drummer in a rock band, and later in a soul band, and my world was music.
In senior year of high school we were allowed to bring in the poems of a writer we admired. This was in Sr. I have no memories of what poet I found, but one of the other students, a girl named Bonnie, brought in e. I was blown away and became a huge fan. I read her poems, which were terrific, and decided that I had no talent. Judy, by the way, published a splendid book of poetry three years ago entitled, Renditions in a Palette David Robert Books. I wanted to be a novelist and short story writer. I met some incredible poets there: Liebler, Tomas Lux, and others.
I just sort of tossed it off. While I kept writing stories, I started writing poetry in earnest. I have had tremendous success as a poet. My poetry has appeared in over 45 publications. I write poetry every day. Brice is a recovering psychoanalyst. Nicholas Reading is the poetry editor of Sport Literate. Two years ago last spring I was in Minneapolis on a Saturday night, looking for something to do. It was early April, a cold, drizzly evening. This perks me up a bit. As a kid I used to haunt major league ball parks.
Back then, there were only eight teams in each league. And its three ball parks were our houses of worship. And each had its own idiosyncratic character. The left and right field foul lines at the Stadium were less than feet from home plate, while the left center and right field powers alleys were over feet away.
The Polo Grounds was shaped like a horseshoe and had even shorter foul lines — down the left field line, and in right field — while the clubhouse in dead center was almost feet from the plate. Both parks had seating capacities of over 50, But to me, Ebbets was the most alluring of the three. A 32,seat bandbox of a park set in the heart of Flatbush, it radiated a cozy intimacy and a quirky ambiance that the others lacked.
At Ebbets the double-decker grandstand in center field dramatically jutted away to a foot high black concrete scoreboard that extends to a foot vertical screen. Then there was the seeming ease with which Duke Snider could crank rainbow home runs over the huge scoreboard. Our cab approaches the Metrodome. Through the mist the stadium looks like a gigantic parachute.
Still, I feel a twinge of anticipation when I step up to the outside ticket kiosk and ask for the two best field boxes between home and first. It kicks me back in time to the moment when I bought my first set of tickets at Ebbets Field. My throat tightens with anticipation when the five of us approach the rotunda entrance to the old gray concrete and steel park at 55 Sullivan Place, on the corner of Franklin Avenue. I felt so grown-up, so important, when I stepped up to the General Admission window and squinted through the wire mesh screen where the chubby, bald-headed ticket seller perched.
He was wearing a green see thru visor and puffing on a stinky cigar. And not behind a post, okay? The guy blows stale cigar smoke in my face, and without looking up he fanned the orange tickets like a deck of cards and pulls four from the middle. For a buck and a quarter apiece, we got four upper deck seats, third row, right between third and home. I was 12 when I saw Ebbets Field for the first time. When my four friends, Heshie, Kenny, Sugar, Billy and I passed through the third base portal, I surveyed the field for a long moment, entranced by what I saw: The echo reverberated throughout the canyons of the slowly filling ball park.
Throughout pre-game warm-ups, the five of us kept up a steady stream of chatter: It jump-started me back to that early October afternoon last fall. I was at Hebrew School recess when I heard the news. For the rest of the lesson, I sat under a tree and cried. While the others swapped stories, I was remembering an early June afternoon when my dad picked up my brother Alan and me at school, and took us to a day game against the Cubs.
By the fifth inning though, he was bored. I still remember how exhilarated I was on the last play of the game. When Eddie Miksis hit an easy ground ball to Pee Wee Reese, I neatly penciled in my scorecard and then jumped to my feet to watch as players and fans headed for the mound to celebrate. All throughout batting practice, we stood with our mitts on behind the box seats between third and home, and sometimes when foul balls bounced crazily off the concrete promenade we wrestled for the prized souvenirs with Bensonhurst hoods — guys who sported greasy D. Gil grabbed a bat and hit a bunch of easy grounders and pop flies to three kids.
They were all about our age, and each wore his Little League baseball uniform. He also got to go to the dugout with Hodges. We walked away grousing about the injustice. Old Hap looked up and smiled at us. Then he turned away, unclasped his microphone and shuffled his cue cards.
As Dodger players perched on the top step of the dugout, a wave of cheers cascaded down from the upper stands. On the field, the players stood silent and still. Once everyone settled in and the game was underway, I sat quietly, scorecard resting in my lap, recording each put-out neatly in pencil.
It takes a few seconds for it to register. Sometimes at Ebbets, it was fun just to watch the characters in the stands. We stood up and yelled with everyone else. I instinctively started tapping my toes as they played tinny, off key Dixieland jazz. Like a church choir, we all joined in.
On this day, Newcombe and the Dodgers beat their nemesis, Sal Maglie. The game winner was a three run homer by Gil Hodges in the bottom of the seventh.
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As the ball disappeared over the Brass Rail sign in left center field, people behind me began to shower the lower grandstand with confetti; and all around us we saw grown men and women standing on their seats and hugging one another. When the game ended, the exuberant crowd refused to leave until the team emerged from the dugout to wave their hats at us. Later, we stood at the third base entrance outside the park and watched the younger kids impatiently waiting for the players to come out. Some players signed for a few minutes, then ducked into touring cars or taxis taking them, I imagine, to exotic Manhattan destinations.
It looks like an immense pool table. And what about the ambiance?
Loud, intrusive rock and roll assaults you from all sides — interrupted by infomercials for local automobile dealers, supermarket chains, and real estate agencies. Each sales pitch is accompanied by an animated graphic that appears simultaneously on the four message boards surrounding the playing field. Especially the starting pitchers who are warming up in the bullpens. The between inning commercials are timed to play at specific intervals. An overhead blimp drops souvenirs into the crowd every three innings.
Sometimes, I notice, it gets piped in between pitches. I notice that some fans have brought their electronic toys with them. A teenager two rows in front of us is wearing headphones. A middle aged man with his baseball hat on backwards channel surfs on a palm sized TV. The woman to my left is chatting on her cell phone, while her young son plays video games on his lap-top computer. And in some ways, we are. I grew up playing sandlot baseball and rooting for the Dodgers. Both were a big piece of my adolescent identity. I was chubby, scared to death of girls, and an undistinguished student.
So, naturally I felt a simpatico with this team of hopeful underdogs. Throughout high school, from June to early September, Ebbets became my sanctuary—a place where I was happy and secure — where I fit in. As an avid Dodger fan, I belonged to a fraternity of like-minded dreamers. The news seemed to have dropped suddenly from the sky. I felt betrayed, stunned. Just like that, I no longer had a refuge, nor a team to root for. It was purely by coincidence that I happened to end up in L. Two years had passed and I was still angry at the Dodgers.
I thought it over for a few days before my curiosity got the best of me. The speeches by city officials, turncoat Dodger brass, and a few Hollywood celebs were pompous and self-serving. And except for Duke Snider, Johnny Podres, Gil Hodges, whose best years were behind them, most of the players I remember had either been traded or had retired. Before the move to L. I inwardly cheered when Robbie decided to leave the game. The stadium irked me even more than the ceremony. The Dodgers had temporarily moved here because their new park at Chavez Ravine was still under construction.
The inner structure is a round, dirty white concrete slab with no tiers, no upper deck, and no backs on the bleacher style seats. Like most football stadiums, the interior is a widening band of concentric circles. The higher you sat on the circle, the further away you were from the game. And what about these oddities? There was more room in foul territory behind the plate than on the entire left side of the field; and the left field wall was only two hundred and fifty feet away from home plate.
A wind-blown fly ball to left stood a chance of drifting over the outfield screen. And because the right side of the field angled out away from the plate, a foot fly ball to left or right center was a routine out. None of it seemed to bother the fans, though. At first, they acted as if they were charmed by what was happening on the field.
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Every time a player hit a high pop fly, they cheered like it was a home run. But by the third inning, most of the conversation around me was about movie agents, lunch meetings, and script deals. Nobody talked the old Ebbets Field lingo, and only a handful of people took the trouble to score the game. I also took note that there were only a handful of fathers and sons in the crowd. At 19, I was one of the youngest males in attendance. Many of the older men wore garish, flowered shirts and monogrammed sun visors. Some of the younger ones even brought their surf boards.
Several women dressed in gauzy see-through blouses, form-fitting short shorts, and tongs. By the seventh inning of a one run game, the Coliseum was less than half full. When I left that afternoon, I knew I would not return. At 20, I was a typical college kid; I went to fraternity parties, slept in, and chased girls. I pitched middle inning relief on the baseball team, majored in English and wrote sports for The Hofstra Chronicle , the school weekly. My vague hope was to someday become a writer and teacher. Marion Barry talked about his book, Mayor for Life: Friends and associates held a tribute for Mayor Marion Barry.
They celebrated his work in politics and his achievements…. Mayor Marion Barry discussed his recent unsuccessful bid for the Washington, D. Muriel Bowser Mayor-elect District of Columbia. Louis Farrakhan Minister Nation of Islam. Representative Former [R] Georgia. Gray Mayor [D] District of Columbia. Don Peebles Chair Peebles Corporation. More information about Funeral Service for Marion Barry. Public Affairs Event Format: Dec 06,