Thursday, August 12, 2010

Sportswriting as transcendence


PEOPLE TEND TO THINK of sports as a brute act, requiring nothing more than brawn. The word “athlete” evokes images of sweaty locker rooms, bleachers, balls being dribbled, players locked in competition. Yet, as The Best American Sports Writing 2008 demonstrates, athletes are all-too-human -- they realize that the game has caught up with them, are bilked out of their retirement funds, are rendered crippled for life. Football players rely on aspirin too, only these once-proud gridiron kings no longer move around, unable to afford a month’s supply of analgesics. A former two-sport star, Bo Jackson, tries to keep his identity hidden while trying to move around society. Everyone in baseball, so it seems, is dependent on performance-enhancing drugs. Even those who write about sports, it seems, are not immune to success and the trappings it carries. Chinese cities move forward in the name of sporting glory, while the countryside is left behind.

The 2008 anthology has its inspiring moments, nonetheless. There is an account of the search for the world’s tallest tree; an article on a long-running football (“ba’”) rivalry between uptowners and downtowners in a Scottish island; pieces on college football coaches, both with championship traditions (USC and Alabama); a day in the life of arguably the best active NBA player (Kobe Bryant). Many of these articles were written by some of my favorites: Rick Reilly, novelist Rick Bragg, Wright Thompson, Mark Kram Jr (who has a tribute of sorts to both his father, the late Mark Kram, and the writing profession itself).

So far, though, one of the two the runaway winners in this collection is Harper’s Weekly contributor Sam Shaw and his “Run Like Fire Once More”, a piece on Sri Chinmoy’s Self-Transcendence Run. The essay also appears in The Best American Essays 2008.

At first glance, the aim seems simple: Do a lap around a city block. Repeat until you reach 3,100 miles, making sure the 3,100 miles are completed within 51 days. Pause for a breather once in a while. Set Coldplay's "Fix You" on repeat, pause to hear violins in the distance, imbibe in words of wisdom from your guru. Then start running again. Sam Shaw embeds himself in the effort, putting on shoes himself and logging the equivalent of two marathons in one day. Sadly, though, the distance falls six miles short of the daily quota for the Guru's disciples.

He resigns himself to documenting the proceedings from the sidelines instead, throwing in an occasional reference to a now-obscure fin de siècle long-distance runner, snippets from Robert Browning’s panegyric to the original Marathon runner Pheidippides (who died after carrying news of the Greeks’ victory over Persia on foot –- something alien to this IM generation), and peeking into the work of the guru. Sri Chinmoy, it appears, is quite the Renaissance Man. He counts Carlos Santana among his former disciples, has composed a thousand songs, and has painted two million “Soul Bird” paintings, whatever they were. His disciples pledged to run ultra-marathons in his honor, and have done so for years.

The center of the narrative, though, is the running itself. Shaw traces the steps of the disciples Madhupran Wolfgang Schwerk and Abichal Watkins – the former an opera singer-turned-ultra-marathoner from Berlin, sponsored by a plastics company; the latter a Welshman who edits a running website. One breaks his record, the other one manages to run the requisite 3,100 miles but feels everything “falling away” in the end. Surrounding them is a cast of choristers, violinists, airplane-lifting gurus, and TV reporters, all running against the backdrop of a sweltering afternoon in Jamaica, Queens, in itself transcending heat-wave records. It all seems ironic, though, that only a few months after the article was published, Sri Chinmoy himself succumbed to a heart attack.

If only for “Run Like Fire Once More”, get a copy of The Best American Sports Writing 2008. I got mine at the Booksale at Starmall Shaw, and there should be at least one more copy left in the shelves. The Bo Jackson and Kobe Bryant articles are just a bonus.

Rating: ★★★★☆ -- Go, read. You will thank me later.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Reading with four eyes

I've been wearing glasses since I was eight years old. The eye doctor took one look at my eyes, small from all the squinting I had to do while reading The New Book of Knowledge way before everyone woke up, and came up with one diagnosis: Myopia.

It's been both a boon and a bane for me. I couldn't get into fights that much since glasses were expensive, so I had to remove my specs before engaging in fisticuffs. Predictably, I ended up with a black eye most of the time. Also, my eyesight (or lack thereof) impeded my ability to hit three-point shots; I think I hit my first three-pointer when I was already in fifth grade. Which was a pity, come to think of it, since I could run and jump better than most ballers my age.

This is all moot and academic now, and I have made peace with my corrective lenses. People say my glasses make me look older and that I shouldn't hide my eyes, but what the hell. I still play basketball, and I've more or less mastered the art of taking long-distance shots by echolocation. I've sneaked in an uppercut or two and left a few bullies out cold.

Still, short of actually taking them off at bedtime, I can't imagine myself not wearing glasses. Not even with contact lenses nor LASIK. They give me some semblance of credibility. After all, I
am nearsighted precisely because of my misguided attempts at literacy. So just indulge me. I'm here to write about what I read, and trust me, these spectacles I'm wearing now will serve their purpose.