You Can Smell It

Unconscious Jon Diebler undid us the other day. The young Buckeye poured in threes as easily as teddy bears nestle with toddlers snoring in their beds. It was sleepwalking against the Wisconsin Badgers. Who needed stalwart Jared Sullinger inside when beyond the arc was the comfort zone for the Ohio State University?

As earthly mammals, we all seek comfort even as we strive to overcome our fellow mammal, each of whom is born live with fur and warm blood and the drive to overcome his or her brethren. Winning requires comfort, a condition that requires the ability of holding two opposing ideas in the mind and still function, a daunting task that makes this sporting life fraught with tension.

Want to bet on West Texas Intermediate crude going to $150 a barrel? There is another mammal who would take your action and relish in your loss. How about Ford Motor Co. breaching $20 a share this year? Plenty of short-sellers who’ll go the other way.

We attended our first boxing match the other night, watching young men in blue and gold (for entertainment purposes only) and managed to escape without blood on our jacket, which we considered a victory. A delicious slice of lemon meringue pie and a cup of coffee topped the evening off, and we mused that competition makes liars of us all. Martha Stewart wasn’t convicted of insider trading, but lying to the U.S. government about it.

We had a class long ago in Hawthorne and Melville, during which, in a discussion of the latter’s “The Confidence Man,” a young man of tender sensibilities actually broke down crying, exclaiming that no one can be trusted and the professor had to go to his side and pat him on the back. We chuckled at the time, but now we wonder if he wasn’t right to despair. Comfort zones are just that -- zones. When the world is turned upside down and we see it for what it is, all the bromides, sweater vests of coaches and protestations of integrity disintegrate.

Now, we are no saint, but Jim Tressel, the pigskin coach of the Ohio State University, keeps trying to be one. C’mon man. There is no comfort zone for a phony unless he wins.

“There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity...You can smell it.” (Tennessee Williams, Cat on Hot tin Roof).

Meanwhile, expect the Crimson and Cream of Cleveland County Indian Territory to cover against the Bears of Waco and the Johnnies of Queens County to cover against the Scarlet Knights of New Brunswick.

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?