Those of us who grew up in the jaunty sunlight of the Kennedy clan are now at twilight. Time to pass the torch to those who will wake up in the morning with places to go and people to see. Kev, a Ted Kennedy delegate at the 1980 Cleveland County (Oklahoma) Democratic convention, is bereft but optimistic. Those with the torch will do better than us.
Playing football at noon recess at Christ the King in Lubbock, Tex., on Nov.22, 1963, a new Cajun kid in school from Louisiana ran onto the dirt field to announce JFK had been shot. Father McGovern canceled the altar boys’ meeting for that weekend.
And now it’s on to Chicago, Bobby said, as I turned off the TV, only to be awakened by mother that June day in 1968 to be told that the third brother had fallen.
Ted Kennedy, flawed as we all are, refused to accept his flaws as a definition of his life and legacy. He picked himself up and said give me the ball, just as OU’s bad boy Joe Don Looney told coach Bud Wilkinson and QB Monte Deere in 1962 and took the handoff for a 60-yard touchdown run to beat Syracuse in the waning moments (you can look it up), just as the Pinstripers’ 2003 hero Aaron Boone seeks a comeback to baseball from heart surgery.
The torch, the pigskin, the horsehide. We hold on to them as long as we can, and then they must be passed, handed off, tossed to the best of us. They'll do the same.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Second Acts
As Big Daddy said in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” the odor of mendacity is powerful, sister girl.
Louisville basketball maestro Rick Pitino, “success book” author and motivational speaker, is revealed as less than the man he pretended to be. Who made “six years ago” the statute of limitations?
The bloody ankles’ David Ortiz, “big poppie” and lovable slugger, says somebody slipped him a performance-enhancing mickey in his blueberry-banana smoothie. Who put the lemonade in my lemonade?
And now Michael Vick, who gets $1.3 million this year as long as he stays away from your poodles, is working overtime at the Philadelphia Eagles training camp. Who let the dogs out?
There are plenty of second acts in American sporting life, so we have that going for us. Which is nice.
But the checkered past can never be repealed. It can only be repeated (the definition of insanity) or addressed by excuses and apologies to allow one to limp along, the latter option not as good as a time machine, but the best that the real world offers.
Pitino will never sell another “how to be like me” book. Ortiz may be done, too, not because he is a bad guy but because he can’t turn on the inside pitch. Vick, however, will go to the Super Bowl (write it down), not because he’s a super guy, though he might turn out to be. The premise of Christianity, my preferred religion, is to deny the power of Satan, who whispers seductively that you can’t change.
Can’t repeat the past? Of course, you can, old sport, Gatsby confidently told Nick Carraway. But who would want to?
Louisville basketball maestro Rick Pitino, “success book” author and motivational speaker, is revealed as less than the man he pretended to be. Who made “six years ago” the statute of limitations?
The bloody ankles’ David Ortiz, “big poppie” and lovable slugger, says somebody slipped him a performance-enhancing mickey in his blueberry-banana smoothie. Who put the lemonade in my lemonade?
And now Michael Vick, who gets $1.3 million this year as long as he stays away from your poodles, is working overtime at the Philadelphia Eagles training camp. Who let the dogs out?
There are plenty of second acts in American sporting life, so we have that going for us. Which is nice.
But the checkered past can never be repealed. It can only be repeated (the definition of insanity) or addressed by excuses and apologies to allow one to limp along, the latter option not as good as a time machine, but the best that the real world offers.
Pitino will never sell another “how to be like me” book. Ortiz may be done, too, not because he is a bad guy but because he can’t turn on the inside pitch. Vick, however, will go to the Super Bowl (write it down), not because he’s a super guy, though he might turn out to be. The premise of Christianity, my preferred religion, is to deny the power of Satan, who whispers seductively that you can’t change.
Can’t repeat the past? Of course, you can, old sport, Gatsby confidently told Nick Carraway. But who would want to?
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Korea, Greece and Ireland
Yin and Yang were on the Hazeltine golf course today in Minnesota. The red-shirted one had yin but no yang, striking the ball with characteristic panache, but taking the name of his father Zeus in vain when his ambrosia-fed muscles failed to make putts sink as they should. Doesn’t Tiger mean godlike in Greek?
I know how you feel, Eldrick. Well, maybe not exactly, because my six- and ten-footers succeed with such rarity that my partners and the foursome behind us look on with shock at a brown leprechaun dancing around the green when his Titleist dips into the cup.
The unflappable Y.E. Yang, on the other hand, had both going for him. The South Korean flag with its yin-yang motif was a suitable symbol for his game down the stretch. You can’t have one without the other if you expect to win, in life or in golf. Scoring an eagle on the par four 14th to take the lead, Yang curled a 200-yard shot on the 18th with a hybrid club and sank the birdie putt to claim the victory while Mr. Woods, probably doubtful of his Olympian heritage, slouched toward Orlando as television cameras predictably followed him first after his bogey putt on 18.
Yang, dressed in all-white like a lamb to the slaughter, didn’t get the memo that you’re supposed to sweat when teamed with Woods when he has a 54-hole lead in a major tournament.
Meanwhile, Padraig Harrington did a favor for all of us weekend duffers by singing “Frosty the Snowman” on a par three. To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart, Patrick Moynihan said. I’m sure mine will be broken this week on some par three when I don’t have my yin and my yang.
I know how you feel, Eldrick. Well, maybe not exactly, because my six- and ten-footers succeed with such rarity that my partners and the foursome behind us look on with shock at a brown leprechaun dancing around the green when his Titleist dips into the cup.
The unflappable Y.E. Yang, on the other hand, had both going for him. The South Korean flag with its yin-yang motif was a suitable symbol for his game down the stretch. You can’t have one without the other if you expect to win, in life or in golf. Scoring an eagle on the par four 14th to take the lead, Yang curled a 200-yard shot on the 18th with a hybrid club and sank the birdie putt to claim the victory while Mr. Woods, probably doubtful of his Olympian heritage, slouched toward Orlando as television cameras predictably followed him first after his bogey putt on 18.
Yang, dressed in all-white like a lamb to the slaughter, didn’t get the memo that you’re supposed to sweat when teamed with Woods when he has a 54-hole lead in a major tournament.
Meanwhile, Padraig Harrington did a favor for all of us weekend duffers by singing “Frosty the Snowman” on a par three. To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart, Patrick Moynihan said. I’m sure mine will be broken this week on some par three when I don’t have my yin and my yang.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Screenplay
I’m writing a three-chord song, “The Left Wing Blues,” which will accompany an epic moving picture that has even more than the health care debate and Wall Street bonuses to keep audiences riveted.
In one scene, for instance, our hero thinks he is squared up perfectly with his target and strikes the ball flush, yet it rockets sharply to the sinister side instead of straight down the fairway. His buddy immediately places a club at his feet, which revealed that his perception of the landscape before him was severely skewed. The obvious correction is to aim at what he perceives to be the right of his target. But the mind’s eye is a terrible thing to lose, to paraphrase Dan Quayle (the Sarah Palin of his time).
Later, our hero (let’s call him the Marlboro Man) finds that rivals on the rodeo circuit are flinging their lariats with much better effect when it comes to capturing calves and tying their hooves together. The loop keeps missing the young bovine’s head to the left, falling limply to the dust of the arena. Is human growth hormone the answer? No, MM, solid citizen that he is, insists he will only take over-the-counter supplements and protein shakes.
In the middle plot point, MM confronts big government, which is trying to turn him into – gasp! – a Western European. He escapes with the help of a comely pharma/HMO lobbyist (our Bond girl). “They seek him here. They seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.”
The climax finds MM and lobbyist (think Claudine Auger in Thunderball), guns blazing, rescuing derivatives traders clinging to George Washington’s statue at Federal Hall on Wall Street from the clutches of Mr. Big’s socialists who would confiscate well-deserved wealth made possible by fiscal deficits and taxpayer largesse. They fly to the sports books in Las Vegas and parlay their way into even more-deserved riches by correctly betting the over-under in a Hamilton Tiger Cats - Montreal Alouettes game.
The dénouement: Back on the golf course, our Bond girl points MM to the right and his ball effortlessly soars in a Ruthian blast to the far reaches of the short grass.
The sequel: if she can only correct the putting stroke and save us all from the yips and the evils Mr. Big is plotting.
In one scene, for instance, our hero thinks he is squared up perfectly with his target and strikes the ball flush, yet it rockets sharply to the sinister side instead of straight down the fairway. His buddy immediately places a club at his feet, which revealed that his perception of the landscape before him was severely skewed. The obvious correction is to aim at what he perceives to be the right of his target. But the mind’s eye is a terrible thing to lose, to paraphrase Dan Quayle (the Sarah Palin of his time).
Later, our hero (let’s call him the Marlboro Man) finds that rivals on the rodeo circuit are flinging their lariats with much better effect when it comes to capturing calves and tying their hooves together. The loop keeps missing the young bovine’s head to the left, falling limply to the dust of the arena. Is human growth hormone the answer? No, MM, solid citizen that he is, insists he will only take over-the-counter supplements and protein shakes.
In the middle plot point, MM confronts big government, which is trying to turn him into – gasp! – a Western European. He escapes with the help of a comely pharma/HMO lobbyist (our Bond girl). “They seek him here. They seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.”
The climax finds MM and lobbyist (think Claudine Auger in Thunderball), guns blazing, rescuing derivatives traders clinging to George Washington’s statue at Federal Hall on Wall Street from the clutches of Mr. Big’s socialists who would confiscate well-deserved wealth made possible by fiscal deficits and taxpayer largesse. They fly to the sports books in Las Vegas and parlay their way into even more-deserved riches by correctly betting the over-under in a Hamilton Tiger Cats - Montreal Alouettes game.
The dénouement: Back on the golf course, our Bond girl points MM to the right and his ball effortlessly soars in a Ruthian blast to the far reaches of the short grass.
The sequel: if she can only correct the putting stroke and save us all from the yips and the evils Mr. Big is plotting.
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