Propeller 3.3

Propeller JULY 2011

E H T ORTS SP UE ISS

books music art film life

CHANNING FRYE

KICKS IT CITY TO CITY Sports Touchstones, letters, Q/A’s, & more FICTION BY CHRIS LESLIE-HYNES | POEMS BY KEVIN GONZALEZ & MICHAEL ANICHINI

Neal Pollack Talks Jewball

Robert Redford hits the slopes

Propellercontents 22 | Neal Pollack Writes Jewball

“My main concern was to give the narrative of feeling of immediacy and urgency, for it to feel not like a history book, but instead like something pulpy and fun written on neardeadline.” A Q&A with Neal Pollack

36 | Lost Racer

“Redford’s character has wanted everything in life to be about success in the field of skiing, and thus finds himself enduring a world in which everything is about success in the field of skiing.” By Dan DeWeese

72 | Fear of a Little White Sphere

“The thing looked so innocent in the photo, just a little white ball in an old lady’s hand. I knew it was silly to be so afraid of it, yet here I was, wishing that I had taken up tennis.”

By Derek Stackhouse

16 | Channing Frye

“Phoenix: These tamales are EXTRA hot!

Portland: This DEFINITELY isn’t organic.”

The former Blazer / current Sun finishes analogies.

Propellercontents Touchstones

Writers discuss the athletes and moments that inspired them.

14 | Abebe Bikila

by Will Jones

8 | Sports Moniker Madness

Grant Brisbee of McCovey Chronicles chats with us about baseball nicknames.

56 | Sports Glass Joe

Nico Alvarado and Geoff Hilsabeck mull the meaning and reality of the weakest fighter.

100 | Sports Jackie Stiles 20 | Nadia Comaneci

by Keri Thomas

34 | Bud Harrelson

by Matthew Hein

86 | Anderson Hunt

by Chris Leslie-Hynan

The NCAA’s all-time leading scorer talks about drive, discipline, and being an underdog.

110 | Brian Holman

by Andy Stallings

66 | Poems Kevin Gonzalez

“To Roberto Clemente” and “To Harry Caray.”

106 | Poem Michael Anichini “Goal”

80 | Fiction Chris Leslie-Hynan “Calyph in Walworth”

“Well, Dick, here’s the deal: I’m the best there is, plain and simple. I mean, I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence. And nobody can hang with my stuff. You know, I’m just a big, hairy, American winning machine. If you ain’t first, you’re last, you know? You know what I’m talkin’ about?”

—Ricky Bobby

Propeller Volume 3, Issue 3 July 2011 Editor in Chief Dan DeWeese Managing Editors Lucas Bernhardt Benjamin Craig Contributing Editors Alex Behr Shea’la Finch Matthew Hein Mary Rechner Evan P. Schneider Design Context Blog News www.propellermag.com Archives Store Letters letters@propellermag.com Submissions submissions@propellermag.com Publication January April July October

propellersports

MONI

CHAIR

“DAVE PARKER’S NICK LIST OF NICKNAMES

GRANT BRISBEE

IKERMCCOVEY MADNESS CHRONICLES

RMAN OF THE BOARD • MOON MAN • WHISKEY SLICK

KNAME WAS ‘COBRA,’ WHICH IS PRETTY BADASS. IT’S ON THE YOU’D PROBABLY GIVE YOURSELF IF NO ONE WAS LOOKING.”

propellersports

Q/A

Grant Bisbee is the writer of McCovey Chronicles, the San Francisco Giants blog on SB Nation.

Additional details of Bisbee’s life are unavailable because he lifted his entire bio from former major league pitcher Mike LaCoss. At the time of his retirement in 1991, LaCoss had recorded two career homeruns, which he hit in consecutive atbats in 1986.

—Benjamin Craig PROPELLER: Grant, I read your blog on the San Francisco Giants. I’ve been following the Giants from afar since I was a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest. It caused some trouble. In eighth grade I defaced a Ken Griffey Jr. candy bar with a Sharpie and an image of Will Clark cut out from a Donruss baseball card, and ended up on top of a dugout slapping at my best friend’s hands while he tried to climb up and exact his revenge. When I decided to do a bit on

nicknames for this issue I didn’t even think of emailing the Mariners bloggers. You seem like a clever guy who has something to say about baseball. What are your favorite nicknames?

GRANT BRISBEE: Well, there’s Johnny “Ugly” Dickshot. But that might have to do with the poetry of it all.

PROPELLER: Some nicknames are meant to assets and consuming them to spit out a sucreally evoke the personality of the player. I think cessful product, and apparently Ford was in my favorite of this kind is “Charlie Hustle.” You? charge of it all. Greg “Moon Man” Minton was one of one of my favorites—he got it because he GRANT BRISBEE: I’ve always liked Whitey was so danged weird.

“Chairman of the Board” Ford. So commanding. So badass. It’s perfect, too, because the Yan- PROPELLER: One of my favorite weird sports kees are like a corporate steamroller, acquiring nicknames is World B. Free. I mostly like it be-

propellersports

cause it takes a special kind of eccentric to pull “Cobra,” which is pretty badass. It’s on the list it off. of nicknames you’d probably give yourself if no one was looking. Ron Cey’s nickname was “The GRANT BRISBEE: Ruben Sierra was called Penguin,” which doesn’t make sense until you “The Village Idiot” by Tony La Russa, but I don’t see him run. He’s a short-legged weirdo who know if that ever stuck. It’s probably not some- had no business being a professional athlete, thing that Sierra has on a coffee mug some- and the nickname was ridiculously appropriate, where. yet he almost had a Hall-of-Fame career. Also, I still love “Panda” for Pablo Sandoval -- it conPROPELLER: Animal nicknames? “Crime jures up an image of a fluffy, rotund, and agile Dog,” “Big Donkey, “Iron Horse?” creature, a graceful, if rotund, animal -- perfect for Pablo. Hard to do in just one word, but there GRANT BRISBEE: Dave Parker’s nickname was it is. It’s like “Big Cat” for Andres Galarraga, but

without the need of an adjective. I hate, hate, hate “Kung-Fu Panda.” It conjures up an image of a Burger King cup.

PROPELLER: Sometimes they just sound right—roll off the tongue like “Sweet Lou,” “Still” Bill Hill,” or “Old Tomato Face.”

GRANT BRISBEE: Billy Martin’s nickname fore anyone said “You the man! I’m the man! was “Whiskey Slick,” and that seems so danged The man.” Just “Stan the Man.” Ω evocative. I like it. I’d have to say “Stan the Man” was like that, especially since it came long be-

propellertouchstone

bikila I first heard Mingus’s “Better Git It In Your Soul” in 1960 when I was eleven-years-old.

It changed my life. I became an instant jazz fan and have remained a fan ever since. How many life changing experiences can an elevenyear-old have in one year? In my case, two.

The second occurred in early September during the Rome Olympics. Imperial Bodyguard Abebe Bikila, a last minute addition to the Ethiopian Olympic team, won the marathon in record time…in his bare feet. It was the first Olympic Gold Medal ever won by a Sub-Saharan athlete. I watched the race on my parents’ newly purchased Zenith color TV at our home in Philadelphia.

The 1960 marathon started and ended at the Arch of Constantine, next to the Colosseum.

In a spectacular and mesmerizing display of romance and artistry, the last few miles of the race were run in the dark with only occasional spotlights to illuminate the course. Bikila, tall

and graceful in red shorts and green singlet, the Ethiopian colors, outsprinted his lone challenger to the finish line and through the Arch, the lights of the Colosseum behind him. Bikila became my hero and I vowed to someday run a marathon.

Bikila again won the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. In 1969 he was paralyzed in an accident while driving the Volkswagen given to him by Haile Selassie for his Olympic conquests. The accident occurred when he swerved to avoid student protesters on the streets of Addis Ababa. He died of complications in 1973. He was 41.

On December 18, 1983, three days before the birth of my son Willie, I ran my first marathon, finishing in three hours and twenty-six minutes. I dedicated my training and race to my wife, my unborn son, and my inspiration, the great Abebe Bikila.

—Will Jones

propellersports

PORTLAND TO PHOENIX

CHANNING FRYE PHOENIX TO PORTLAND

ROMANTIC COMEDY • INSECTS • LIGHTBULBS

“MY LIPS ARE SO JUICY THEY WILL QUENCH BOTH OUR THIRSTS.”

Q/A

Channing Frye is a six-year veteran in the NBA who currently plays center and power forward for the Phoenix Suns. From 2007 to 2009, his smooth jump shot and companionable demeanor made him a fan favorite on the Portland Trail Blazers.

Channing still lives in Portland during the offseason, and hosts charitable events both in Portland and in Phoenix. We asked him to compare these two cities the only way that makes sense: through analogy.

—Lucas Bernhardt

PROPELLER: You’re eating a garden salad when you notice an insect in the lettuce. If Phoenix/ Portland were that insect, what species would it be?

CHANNING FRYE: In Phoenix it would be a flying roach. In Portland, a ladybug.

PROPELLER: If Phoenix/Portland were an ancient epic, what would be the monster, and what weapon would the hero use to kill it?

PROPELLER: If Phoenix/Portland were a romantic comedy, what would be the dialogue CHANNING FRYE: The monster in Phoenix leading up to the first kiss? would be the Phoenix, and the weapon of conquest a bottle of Fiji water. In Portland the enCHANNING FRYE: emy is pollution, and the hero is the weapon: Phoenix Boy: It’s so hot.

Captain Planet.

Phoenix Girl: My lips are so juicy they will quench both our thirsts.

PROPELLER: How many Phoenixers(?)/Portlanders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Portland Boy: Your lips look so good. Is that organic lipgloss?

CHANNING FRYE: Three residents of PhoePortland Girl (stage whisper): Of course! nix: one to screw in the light bulb and two to fan

propellersports

the person, preventing heatstroke. One Port- Persephone, and for my son grant me...”? lander…to ask if it’s a lifetime bulb.

CHANNING FRYE: PROPELLER: If Phoenix/Portland were an ac- Phoenix: “the money for him to attend the Unition film, what would the protagonist say before versity of Arizona, for it is the greatest univerblowing the place sky-high? sity in the history of the world.”

Portland: “a public transit pass to take the MAX CHANNING FRYE: to Saturday market.”

Phoenix: These tamales are EXTRA hot!

Portland: This DEFINITELY isn’t organic.

PROPELLER: If Phoenix/Portland ordered a club sandwich, it would say, “Hold the _____.”

PROPELLER: If Phoenix/Portland were a hole on a mini-golf course, what would its features CHANNING FRYE: Phoenix wouldn’t hold be? anything, but she’d say (in a valley girl voice), “Now I can’t eat for 3 days! I’m sooooo on a diet.”

CHANNING FRYE: On the Phoenix hole, you Portland might regret whatever it held, or say, “I have to contend with a cactus, sheriff Joe Arpio, should have asked for vegan cheese.” Ω U of A, and a thermometer. The Portland hole makes you thread it between Portlandia, a sturgeon, a hipster, and a hippie.

PROPELLER: How would Phoenix/Portland complete this Homeric Hymn: “Queen Deo, be gracious, you and your daughter all beauteous

propellertouchstone

nadia A t the 1981 world gymnastics championships in Moscow, former gold medalist Kurt Thomas ventured into the stands to interview a colleague, the intense, sidewaysglancing Nadia Comaneci. Nadia performed solidly in the 1980 Moscow summer Olympics and was expected to be a contender in the coming championships. Instead, she sat like a gray cloud in the bleachers among anonymous onlookers. “Why?” Thomas asked. With a heavy Romanian accent she spoke into the air around him: “Not enough time to prepare.” It was not an entirely forthcoming answer. Her career until that moment had been inflected with drama, its full trajectory perhaps most evident in her performance at the 1979 World Championships when, in the middle of the competition, she was hospitalized for blood poisoning caused by the metal buckle on her hand grip. In defiance of medical advice, she discharged herself and returned to the competition, winning the gold in beam and helping Romania win the team title.

It had become a familiar Nadia narrative: the schizophrenia of state neglect and control, the see-saw of physical depletion and regeneration, life-saving mental fortitude and, finally: transcendence.

It’s true that Nadia liked to be preternaturally prepared, but her lack of preparation for the championships probably had less to do with time than with a state apparatus that drove its finest to self-destruction or defection. Nadia’s coach, the cherubic monolith, Bela Karolyi, chose defection that very year. One sensed that

Karolyi was less the coach of a famous gymnast and more the founding father of a brand new universe – one with Nadia at the center. By 1981, that universe had begun to atomize: Nadia would never compete internationally again and Karolyi, whose name had been nearly synonymous with hers, began a new little project – named Mary Lou Retton – in the U.S. For Nadia’s fans it was too swift a scattering.

We’d only just met her at the momentous 1976 Olympics in Montreal where, at 14, she scored the first 10 in gymnastics history on the uneven bars and achieved perfection six more times before the games were through. It’s not an overstatement to say she shifted the paradigm.

Watching her routines now, particularly those on the uneven bars and beam, one notices not only a rare elegance but also a level of power and control that was new to women’s gymnastics and that, from then on, exploded its possibilities. Before Nadia was the Russian, Olga Korbut, all braided ringlets and jaunty steps.

After Nadia, and with the help of Karolyi, came an ever more pumped and distinctly American crew: Mary Lou, Kerri Strug and Shawn Johnson, to name just the shortest and the buffest.

For better or worse, gymnastics post- Nadia has become a transparent game of strength and each new high-octane machine has the quadriceps to prove it. But Nadia gave us more than explosive performances. She gave us a narrative, underpinned by mystery and propelled by grace.

—Keri Thomas

propellercraft With his new novel, the author of Alternadad and The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude steps boldly into the world of direct digital publishing.

His subject: 1930s Jewish basketball noir.

NEAL POLLACK WRITES

JEWB

CK S

BALL

propellercraft

Q/A

When Neal Pollack announced that he would be publishing his next book, Jewball, straight to the Kindle, the author whose first book was The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature: The Collected Writing of Neal Pollack did so with characteristic boldness: he said so in The New York Times Book Review. The author of Alternadad and Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude kindly responded to questions on Jewish domination of early pro basketball, the pleasures of reading and writing noir, and the potentials of digital publishing in the era of e-readers.

PROPELLER: When did you first become interested in writing about the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball team? Was there something particular about the SPHA’s (one of the more powerful American pro basketball teams of the 1930s) that made you feel there was a novel to be found there?

NEAL POLLACK: The idea for this book arrived as so many ideas do—during a conversation in a steam room in Utah. Several years ago, I was attending a retreat weekend for a Jewish organization called Reboot. The NBA playoffs were ongoing, and during a group schvitz, some

of the guys started talking about the history of Jewish basketball. I’d never really heard about such a thing, but the more they talked, the more it sparked my imagination. Jews may not have invented the game, but they had a hell of a lot more to do with its development, I learned, than one might think. By the time I left the weekend, I knew that I’d have to write a book.

When I returned home, I started doing some research, and discovered the SPHAs, who were the most dominant basketball team, not just Jewish, but period, over a 15-year period spanning from the late 20s to the early 40s. They were really the forefathers of the modern game.

Their coach and owner, Eddie Gottlieb, ended up founding the Philadelphia Warriors, and the SPHAs themselves became the Washington Generals, who were the Harlem Globetrotters’ punching bags for decades. The team also appealed to me because they were from Philadelphia, a city where I lived for a couple of years.

I have a pretty ambivalent relationship with Philly, but it’s definitely a potent setting, full of grit and intrigue, that doesn’t get as much play as, say, Chicago or Boston. Jews in Philly rarely get talked about; New York dominates the conversation, for obvious reasons. Some of Jewball

propellercraft

does take place in New York, but it’s definitely a Philly novel. I liked the idea of a whole team having a chip on its shoulder because of where it’s from.

PROPELLER: There’s obviously a genre we know as “historical fiction,” but that phrase tends to suggest writers who approach the history aspect of their work with a degree of reverence. You’ve mined history more than once in your books, but definitely without the reverence. What do you think draws you to working with history and/or historical figures? And despite the fact that you bring a wicked sense of humor to your subjects, what kind of writing opportunities and challenges have you stumbled upon that wouldn’t be much different from those encountered by someone wanting to write straight historical fiction about, say, the Spanish Armada, life during the American Revolution, etc?

NEAL POLLACK: I’m attracted to stories with big scope and big characters. The times we live in are as dramatic as any other time in history, but it’s hard to feel that way when you’re immersed in the day to day.

Many people do fiction in contemporary settings quite well, of course, but other than the occasional short story, it’s not how I want to write.

My previous fiction books had historical elements, but they were both straight-up satire. Not so with Jewball, which has comic elements but is a mostly straight hard-boiled narrative. Writing about Jewish basketball, I could have chosen any 1900s mini-period of its

heyday—the late teens, the late 40s and early 50s— but as I did my research I was attracted to the late 30s, because Jewish basketball was at its height, coinciding with the height of German-American fascist patriotism, which was particularly strong in Pennsylvania. That history caught my attention and interest as much as the Jewish basketball stuff did. So my challenge was to try to integrate those two elements, which were obviously related but not directly, into a reasonably coherent plot.

I wanted to get as many historical details right as possible, but the plot was much more important to me. In general, when it comes to historical fiction, American writers spend too much time respecting the struggles of the immigrant and not enough time telling a fun story. I tried to make Jewball feel, as much as possible, like a book that actually might have been written during that era, and to give the narrative an urgency and immediacy that historical fiction tends to lack.

PROPELLER: The idea of a book that feels like it might have been written during that era is compelling, in that it opens up so many questions about how one sets about that task. Are you referring to something stylistic—something about pre-WWII prose style—or something more structural in terms of what the novel’s narrative voice knows and discusses and what it doesn’t know or discuss? Or are you thinking more about general differences in the contract

propellercraft

between writers and readers in those pre-tele- so you didn’t come to this challenge cold. Did vision, pre-computers, pre-all-media-we-now- you have strategies for how (or how much) you consider-standard decades? would describe basketball games or players’ skills or moves in the book? Are there sportsNEAL POLLACK: Stylistically, I’m not sure if writers (or any other writers) whose work has this is a 1930s book or not; there were different been helpful to you in this area—and how so? styles of writing back then as there are now. My main concern was to give the narrative a feeling NEAL POLLACK: I find writing about physical of immediacy and urgency, for it to feel not like activity relatively easy. It’s nice to have a subject a history book, matter that gives but instead like “My main concern was to give the nar- you so many acsomething pulpy rative of feeling of immediacy and ur- tive verbs with and fun written gency, for it to feel not like a history which to play. on near-deadline That’s one of the book, but instead like something pulpy by a guy desperate hardest things for money. Given and fun written on near-deadline.” about writing ficmy constant state tion—giving your of financial panic, that wasn’t too hard for me characters something to actually do. Sportsto accomplish. I didn’t want to overwrite and writing wasn’t much help, because most conoverintellectualize the material. Sure, there’s the temporary sportswriting is about LeBron James’ occasional wink and/or nod to the present-day “legacy,” and a lot of it gets gummed up by senreader, but there aren’t many, and you’d have to timent and melodrama. Older sportswriting look pretty hard to find them. tends to be slangy. Instead, for stylistic inspiration, I read old-school noir writers like ChanPROPELLER: There are particular challenges dler, Goodis, Thompson, and Donald Westlake, to writing about physical skills—describing all not for subject matter, per se, but for style and the dancers’ moves in a particular ballet tends mood and tone. I consider Jewball a noir novel to make the ballet boring and/or confusing that happens to have basketball as a partial subto a reader, for instance, rather than captur- ject matter, not a sports novel with some noir ing what the ballet actually looked or felt like. elements.

You’ve written about the body before, though, in Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude, PROPELLER: What kind of things struck you

propellercraft

when reading those writers with stylistic inspiration in mind? Any strategies, techniques, or particular decisions you found them using that struck you as interesting or illuminating? Were there a couple novels among that crew that stood out as particularly good examples?

NEAL POLLACK: I turned to them for mood.

The sentences tend to be short and observant. A good noir novel has several paragraph or even page-length interludes that aren’t much about the plot or characters, but rather about the feeling of a time or place. This is the stuff that sticks with me from books. Who killed whom means nothing, in the end, but the feeling of life richly obversed goes on forever. The Blonde on the Street Corner by Goodis had a lot of influence early on, as did They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Later, as I wrote the book, I started reading Donald Westlake (and his psuedonym Richard Stark) who does those sorts of surprise expository grafs better than almost anyone.

PROPELLER: One challenge in writing noir in the twenty-first century seems to be that we’re awash in so much visual media now, and the noir of television and, especially, the movies, has developed conventions that involve shadows, night, neon on wet pavement, etc.—a whole visual code for immediately signaling to the audience “This is noir!” But literary noir, because it’s

not visual in the same way, is a bit of a different creature. What kind of stories or experiences do you feel noir-on-the-page (for lack of a better term) offers readers that is distinct from noiron-the-screen?

NEAL POLLACK: As I said above, the least interesting stuff about noir are the “mystery” elements, and the stylistic elements you mentioned are detective-fiction clichés. There’s often less of that in noir books than you might think. The Postman Always Rings Twice, one of the genre’s best, barely has any nighttime scenes at all, for instance. Jewball contains no detectives. Cops rarely make an appearance. It’s about a time and a place and a vibe. There is no mystery, just a story.

PROPELLER: You’re self-publishing this book straight to Amazon’s Kindle store. In your recent New York Times piece, you wrote that “for a writer like me, which is to say, most working writers—midcareer, midlist, middle-aged, more or less middlebrow, and somewhat Internet savvy—self-publishing seems to make a lot of sense at this point.” Early on—which I guess means only like a year-and-half ago—I read a lot of prognosticators saying that books sold straight to the e-reader market would probably be mass-market fiction (or what some people call “airplane books”) and possibly textbooks.

propellercraft

That doesn’t seem to be how the economics of the e-book market are actually shaking out, though. How and when did you first start thinking, from an economic standpoint, about doing a straight-to-digital book? And was there a moment when the aesthetic experience of reading on a particular device—I’ll assume the Kindle— won you over?

published book advance was half of the last one, which was half of the one before that, I got the message. The traditional publishing model was great because you got paid a decent amount of money to work on a book, and, yes, you had to wait for it to come out, but at least there was a little credit in the bank account waiting for you.

Now, though, you still have to work on the book, but for a lot less money, and for a publisher that NEAL POLLACK: When my latest corporate- is increasingly less interested in devoting re-

sources to books that may or may not succeed. using this publishing model with Jewball? And This isn’t a mark on my publisher—I work with what kind of things are you doing to address some great people there and they try very hard those challenges? to make and sell good books for me—but the economics of the business don’t favor a writer NEAL POLLACK: I wouldn’t say it doesn’t in my position. As for when I started enjoy- require a huge financial risk. Yes, the capiing the Kindle, I got a Kindle about 18 months tal outlay is pretty small for writing—I write ago, downloaded my books on the a book, read it, “Now, you still have to work on the book, same machine thought, this is but for a lot less money, and for a pub- where I check my okay, and then fantasy-baseball lisher that is increasingly less interested went back to stats and watch reading regular in devoting resources to books that may my porn—but the books. But when or may not succeed.” outlay of time is I traveled with tremendous. So if the Kindle for the I put in hundreds first time, now that’s when it won my heart. I’ll or thousands of hours on Jewball and then only never have to lug a shoulder bag full of books get 500 downloads (and, subsequently, less on a trip again. In that sense, it’s one of the than two thousand dollars), then my per-hour greatest inventions of all time. rate is pretty laughable. But I can’t think of it in those terms, at least not exclusively. Jewball PROPELLER: One of the nice things about is a book I’ve been dreaming about for years. writing is that it doesn’t cost anything to cre- I enjoyed writing it, and now I’m on the verge ate the product—you just sit down at the key- of trying to sell it digitally door-to-door. I’m board, which is far different from someone say- going to work hard and send out hundreds of ing, “Dammit, I finally am going to start that emails and Tweet and Facebook and Tumblr restaurant I’ve been dreaming about! I’ll just go the sucker until my eyeballs bleed. If it flops, ahead and go $70,000 into debt to get the thing I’ve got no one to blame but myself, but at least open, because I believe in this restaurant...” The I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I went economics of digital publishing don’t require down on my own terms. Self-publishing is the a huge financial risk. Are there other risks, future, or at least a big part of it, and I’m proud though, or challenges you feel you’re facing by to be giving it a try. Ω

propellertouchstone

bud B

ud Harrelson, Super Shortstop is the title of a throwaway book I briefly owned, but that’s not the book that made me a Mets fan. That book is How to Play Better Baseball, written by the super shortstop himself and edited by Joel H. Cohen. With my mom standing somewhere behind me, I picked that book off the shelves of a public library in the Pacific Northwest of the late 1970s. Bud Harrelson’s self-identification as a “little guy” in his introduction got me right away. He wrote that “big guys,” around “180 pounds,” play other positions, but that a slick-fielding little guy could play shortstop. Harrelson did just that, wearing a (presumably extra-small) Superman T-shirt under his uniform, and contributing to Met roommate Tom Seaver’s incredible outings as the pair played in the 1969 and 1973 World Series.

In fact, Tom Seaver was injured on the bench for the opposing 1986 Red Sox when Harrelson, then coaching third base, waved in the run that scored as a grounder trickled between Bill Buckner’s legs—making Harrelson the only Met in uniform for both of their championships.

Of course, that didn’t happen until I was a teenager, and had lost interest in sports. During those years in the sportless desert, however, Harrelson’s Mets kept showing up in the things I did care about (“It was the year man landed on the moon. The year of peace and love at Woodstock. And the year the underdog Miracle Mets won the World Championship: 1969”). I still like undersized underdogs, libraries, and the Mets; now that the fearsome prospect of ending up in a high school locker room has faded, I like baseball again, too.

—Matthew Hein

propellerfilm

R

IS MICHAEL RITCHIE, ROBERT REDFORD, AND GENE HACKMAN’S 1969 FILM ABOUT DOWNHILL SKIING THE QUINTESSENTIAL SPORTS FILM OF “THE NEW HOLLYWOOD”? IF SO, WHY HAS IT BEEN IGNORED FOR FORTY YEARS?

LOST RACER

by Dan DeWeese

propellerfilm

H

alfway through Michael Ritchie’s 1969 film Downhill Racer, David Chappellet, a brash young skier from Idaho Springs, Colorado, wins a downhill event on the European circuit. When one of his fellow U.S. Ski Team members congratulates him later and tells him he ran a good race, Chappellet agrees, happily reporting that he only missed one turn—he took it too wide. Traveling from mountain to mountain in Europe in order to skitter down icy slopes on two slivers of wood hardly seems the kind of thing one could be perfect at, and Chappellet’s suggestion that he was nearly there is too much for Crich, the team’s other top skier. “All right, he’s good, and he’s fast, and he wins a couple races,” Crich complains to the team’s assistant coach, “and I’m the first one to admit that a good racer turns everybody on.

But he’s not for the team and he never will be.”

The coach, played by a young, straight-shooting

Dabney Coleman, offers a matter-of-fact response: “Well it’s not exactly a team sport, is it?”

The question of what, if anything, a talented individual owes others arises again and again in Downhill Racer. It helps greatly that the talented individual in question is embodied by a freshfaced Robert Redford, and that Gene Hackman fills the role of the team’s head coach, a man who believes not only that downhill skiing is indeed a team sport, but also that Chappellet might be the U.S.’s best chance at a first Olympic gold medal. Hackman has always been a master of the small pause, during which he assesses the person he’s speaking to—he often smiles while doing so, as a cover for the fact this his gaze has gone coldly analytical. That gaze—and Redford’s return of it—brings an energizing frisson to their scenes together. The two men need each other to fulfill their individual goals: Hackman wants to be the coach who brings the U.S. ski

propellerfilm

team its first Olympic downhill gold; Chappellet wants to be better than every other person.

Though they want the same result—that gold medal—it’s also clear that they’re too similar to ever really like one another. They don’t even really bother to try.

Depending upon which source you consult, Downhill Racer was either a victim of a distribution hang-up at Paramount, or was possibly just rejected by audiences expecting the charming Redford they’d just seen in Barefoot in the Park rather than the aloof version he was giving them as Chappellet. Either way, the film fell into a cultural void until a Criterion Collection edition returned it to view a couple years ago, and it now seems to slip nicely into what has been a tough position to fill: among the formidable wave of American films and directors loosely referred to as “The New Hollywood,” where is the movement’s take on the sports film? Most critics suggest The New Hollywood spirit starts with Bonnie & Clyde, expands throughout an exhilarating era of filmmaking that includes titles like Five Easy Pieces, M*A*S*H, Dog Day Afternoon, and dozens of others, and is then

savagely annihilated by Steven Spielberg via the invention of “the blockbuster” in the person (fish, I suppose) of Jaws. The era includes other sports film candidates, of course: The Longest Yard, Rollerball, or maybe something scruffier, like the Jack Nicholson-directed college basketball counterculture film Drive, He Said.

But Downhill Racer, viewed from the perspective that forty-two years provides, seems the best of these films that had the luxury of existing pre-Rocky. Though the rags-to-riches, pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps narrative Rocky milked was hardly invented by Sylvester Stallone, the impact Rocky had, and continues to have, on American sports films shouldn’t be underestimated. The procedure of having an underdog do well, encounter difficulty, train hard to a pop-music assemblage (Q: “Hey Sly, how do you stay in shape?” A: “Montage”), and then vanquish his opponent in a rousing final battle hadn’t been as strictly formalized as a moneymaking formula before Rocky as it would be afterward. Rocky itself doesn’t follow the pattern correctly, of course, since Rocky (spoiler!) loses at the end, which is why if no sequels had ever

propellerfilm

Gene Hackman and Robert Redford in Downhill Racer. Though they want the same

e result—that gold medal—they’re too similar to ever really like one another.

propellerfilm

been made, Rocky might be esteemed as highly as On the Waterfront or Raging Bull. Instead, of course, we have a tradition that includes not only Rocky’s II-XXIII, but also wrestling Rocky’s, arm wrestling Rocky’s, dog Rocky’s, hockey Rocky’s, and kid hockey Rocky’s, to name just a few. Or several. You know what I mean.

Downhill Racer, though, isn’t a film that uses sport to extol the virtues of love, teamwork, or the human spirit. It is, instead, a film whose characters are suspicious of clichés about love, teamwork, and “the human spirit.” These people are interested in winning, and that’s it. The result is a film about skiing that resists attempts to be about anything other than winning at skiing.

There’s a semantic issue here, of course: it’s possible that Downhill Racer does say something about the human spirit, it’s just that the human spirit referenced isn’t what we usually refer to as “the human spirit.” In other words, rather than promoting fairly conservative social virtues—and by conservative, I just mean traditional and safe, since no one is going to argue against teamwork or friendship or love or whatever other noble qualities heroes usually learn and then utilize in order to win their championship—Downhill Racer is about human beings focused on the pursuit of individual excellence.

Chappellet, for instance, doesn’t appear to have or want any friends. He picks up an old girl-

Robert Redford and Camilla Sparv in Dow friend on a break in Colorado, and falls into bed with a European beauty, but neither relationship is feasible as something beyond the moment, and he doesn’t seem motivated by women—he needs no Adrian who, after difficult childbirth, tells Rocky to “Just win,” and for whom Rocky then works mightly (in montage) to just win. In

wnhill Racer, directed by Michael Ritchie (1969). fact, director Michael Ritchie—who would later debase the homilies of Little League baseball by presenting foul-mouthed, cigarette smoking kids in The Bad News Bears—presents Chappellet as someone whose pursuit of excellence isn’t instrumentalized in any of the ways we almost always see excellence instrumentalized, i.e. by

someone who does it for God, for parents, for a spouse or a kid, to score with women, or to get rich. What probably alienated viewers of Downhill Racer is that in most Hollywood movies, the hero’s acquisition of a skill is used as a means of achieving a goal. Redford’s Chappellet, however, doesn’t want to be the fastest skier in the

propellerfilm

world in order to vanquish a dragon, defeat a personal demon, or win a damsel. He just wants to be the best in the world so he can know he’s the best in the world.

Some might label obsessive pursuit of personal victory a brand of narcissism, and fair enough—the issue is certainly in play. But the beauty of the film—and especially of James Salter’s adaptation of the Oakley Hall novel The Downhill Racers—lies in the degree to which it dramatizes the contradictions bound up in the pursuit of excellence. Even though Chappellet pursues racing just for the sake of racing, the purity of this focus doesn’t result in any kind of beatific or inspired openness on his part, and in fact seems to push him only farther away from orthers. His teammates enjoy a sense of camaraderie, but Chappellet doesn’t share it.

A crucial difference might be that the team’s other members come from well-defined social backgrounds. When a teammate explains that he’s from Dartmouth, Chappellet repeats the word quietly, as if it’s from another language: “Dartmouth.” Chappellet is from nowhere, of course, and though he has built his whole world around nothing but downhill skiing—the film begins when an injury to another skier results in Chappellet getting called up to the team—he nevertheless remains entirely alienated from the actual world of downhill skiing. The things he

propellerfilm

In Talladega Nights, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell have a great time satirizing the takes joy in—feeling he was almost perfect in a race, for instance—are the exact things that cause others to keep him at a distance.

When Chappellet goes home to visit his father (there’s no mention of his mother or what became of her), we see that the man actually lives outside of town, in a rundown house that is, for lack of a better term, just up there in the mountains. Chappellet is keenly aware

of class—or perhaps it’s the film that is keenly aware of class, while Chappelet is only vaguely and suspiciously aware of it—possibly because there is no word he can say (“Dartmouth”) that will immediately convey to others the context of his background.

And yet, despite this discussion of Chappellet as alienated and absent a mother, he’s not antisocial, and is hardly ill at ease. Rather than

e pursuit of excellence—“I piss excellence,” Ricky Bobby intones. making Chappellet a young man wracked with lence. He doesn’t hate class, he hates mediocrity. class envy, Salter, Richie, and Redford craft a It’s easy to satirize this kind of character. Adam character aware of class, but who doesn’t have McKay and Will Ferrell have a great time doing any particular point to make about it. For Chap- so in Talladega Nights—“I piss excellence,” Ricky pellet, rather than being some totalizing social Bobby intones—but Ricky Bobby wins race after concept that one can never escape but must end- race, so what’s depicted as “pissing excellence” is lessly struggle against, class is just one of many a position of total dominance. In the first thirty obstacles that threaten to mire one in a plane minutes of Downhill Racer, on the other hand, Amy Cutler somewhere beneath the exalted realm of excel- we see all of one David Chappellet race. In fact, Tiger Mending, 2003 Gouache on paper 17-3/4 x 14-3/4 inches Courtesy of Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York

propellerfilm

there’s an entire sequence devoted to Chappellet being given the 88th starting place in a race he’s entered in immediately after joining the team, and he’s so annoyed that the course will be too destroyed by that point for him to possibly win that he declines to race. He just skips it. When his Dartmouth teammate naively asks why he didn’t race, Chappellet says, “Well they had me seeded about 150, so I told ’em I didn’t want it.”

And then after all of this build-up, when we finally get to see Chappelet race at Kitzbuhel, he wipes out. This isn’t handled in a melodramatic manner in which Chappellet made a crucial error, or there’s some skill he doesn’t have but desperately needs. We just watch him racing...and then he crashes. Afterward, when he struggles to explain to Hackman that it wouldn’t have happened if he were given a better starting position, Hackman cuts him off. “You just weren’t good enough, that’s all,” Hackman says. We’ve seen Hackman’s character make the rounds raising support and money for US Skiing by suggesting that victory will follow funding, so Hackman, too, is there to just win, and meets Chappellet’s flatness with his own: “You just weren’t strong enough.” So Hackman is driven, Chappellet’s teammate Crich is driven, the woman Chappellet chases in Europe is driven—this is the world of driven individuals, and regardless of what they say, none of them appears to actually live

for some notion of team glory. Each person believes he or she is the hero, and there is no story other than skiing.

The narrative’s leaps and elisions of time are unexplained—you pick up the contours of the relationships from the way in which the characters speak to one another, or from other cues.

A night scene of Chappellet walking alone

through town seems strangely devoid of other people until you realize that it’s Christmas, and he’s alone in Europe. He has wanted everything in life to be about success in the field of skiing, and thus finds himself enduring a world in which everything is about success in the field of skiing. Play—the innocent practice that begins most pursuits of excellence—is no longer al-

lowed. “Nobody races unless I say so,” Hackman tells Chappellet at one point. The screenplay is not always this direct, though. At one point, a ski manufacturer hoping to outfit Chappellet looks at him and says, “The skis are stiff—it gives them much more stability.” It’s clear that the man is attributing Chappellet’s personal qualities to the merchandise.

propellerfilm

Chappellet has wanted everything in life to be about success in the field of skiing, and fin

nds himself enduring a world where everything is about success in the field of skiing.

propellerfilm

Films like Dodgeball mock the old Rocky conventions, but Downhill Racer reveals the degree to which a filmmaker can simply walk away from those conventions, if he or she desires— the film straightforwardly reveals the degree to which the conventions are not only ridiculous, but unnecessary. “Isn’t it stupid, how we used to talk about the justice of sport?” Crich laments late in the film. When a journalist asks Chappellet what his plans are after the Olympics, he has no answer. “This is it,” he says almost glumly. The race sequences throughout the film feature no conversation, no talking, and precious little explanation of who the other racers are.

Even late in the film, we enter sequences by being dropped into the middle of things, and the characters, too, seem to be trying to keep up.

“Chappellet—you can win,” is all Hackman says at one point. He delivers the sentence at normal volume, in the tone of one reporting a surprising development rather than offering any particular encouragement.

One of the film’s early shots of Redford finds him squinting against the light as he pauses to look at the peaks that surround him. His insignificance—the transience of one human being when measured against the grandeur of epicmountain ranges—is smartly translated to the level of sport in Downhill Racer’s conclusion. At that level, it isn’t the drama of man versus nature, but instead the ephemeral, time-bound quality of any achievement made in competition with others. After all, just because you might actually win doesn’t mean the game will end. There is always a next race, just as there are others pursuing excellence as intensely as you are. Failure is never more than a fraction of a second away. Ω

JIM BLANKA • CUTESY FREELANCE • BELIEF

GEOFF HILSABECK

GLASS JOE

NICO ALVARADO

propellerwork

Correspondence Rue d’Hiver 16 Ardennes 1100-009 France Dear Jim Blanka, You are no doubt wondering who I am and why I am writing to you. Those are good questions. I ask them of myself, often. Who am I? I left France twenty years ago barely a man and returned, well, I feel old. I bear the marks of hundreds of different hands. Listen to me! I have grown painfully moody.

I write as a friend. I offer myself to you as a friend! A mutual friend—Link—gave me your address and suggested I contact you, that you might know better than him the particular difficulties of the life of a former simulated, 2-dimensional, poorly designed fighter. Do you?

Do you understand me when I ask you who are we once we leave the ring, or, in your case,

the street? Who are we if not fighters? Once, I moved to the will of some invisible master, but now, suddenly, for it still seems sudden, I am masterless, adrift, without ore or rudder. Who now moves my limbs? Is it simply me? Is it me that bends my body down to dig out a radish from my garden or that slides a few coins across the counter in exchange for some bread?

Perhaps what I say is strange to you. If it isn’t, please consider responding to my letter, with encouragement, wisdom, or simply understanding.

Yours truly, “Glass” Joe Lefleur Dear Joe, I know whereof you speak. Let me explain.

Today I went to the market and wandered the stalls. Mothers gasped and pulled their children close, as always. And as always I hardly noticed.

propellerwork

I am a hulking, orange-pelted, green-skinned beast-man charged with electricity -- how else should they respond? So I perused the great heaps of cashews and guavas and little dried fishes (although I was known for leaping onto an opponent’s chest and eating his face, I abhor red meat), and—

have wasted your time but I can’t hold up my end. Can we try another way?

Nico starts anew, no longer pretending to be Jim Blanka from Streetfighter, but writing directly to Hilsabeck:

“I liked whipping Joe’s ass, but I bogged down pretty quickly with the next two or three opponents. Point being I remember Joe but no one else...”

Geoff man, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this this way.

I spent like an hour last night writing the thin sentences above, and I just hate doing it. I think maybe what’s happening is that I’m writing really cutesy freelance articles (I mean truly vapid, braindead shit) this summer to try to make some extra money and it’s causing me to be hypersensitive to and intolerant of anything cute in my “real” writing.

And trying to write as Blanka feels cute. Anyway I have one feeble thought: maybe we can just have a lively, witty correspondence on GJ and JB and it can be awesome and interesting in the way that if you look deeply into anything for long enough it can yield real stuff? The DFW approach or something?

I like what you wrote and I think it’s totally charming and actually kind of eerie and I want to be on board and I really don’t want you to

Dear Geoff, I had forgotten that Glass Joe was French. I played my share of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (the fact that there are two exclamation points instead of one or three seems suddenly meaningful to me—like the biographies of the characters, they kind of just hang there, off-balance, incomplete and excessive at once, pushily insisting on themselves then falling apart under scrutiny) during a fuzzily remembered couple of years in the late ‘80s, when I was ten and eleven and twelve. (I had my own NES, but I don’t recall if I owned that particular game. The whole Nintendo thing was, like flesh-and-blood sports, sort of beside the point for me; I mostly just played to pass the time.) I liked whipping Joe’s ass, but I bogged down pretty quickly with the next two or three opponents. Point being I remember Joe but no one else, and I don’t know if that’s because he

propellerwork

was first and so you had to fight him every single time, or because he was special, sorrowful, tragic. His name feels deeply literal. I think of him and I think He is made of glass. The French thing is just stupid.

Nico

be Rimbaud and Verlaine can be some kind of counterpoint here.) Like you, all I remember about Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out is Glass Joe, and all I remember about Glass Joe is his name. It’s so strange. I wish it had been literal. It would have been cool if when you punched him out he actually shattered. That would have made the game more trippy and less about swinging punches but not actually swinging them just pounding on a controller. Remember those kids who, instead of gripping the controller and pressing the buttons with their thumbs, put the controller down and used their pointer fingers? They were more serious. My best friend was way into video games and subscribed to Nintendo Power. Is it silly to point out that Nintendo Power is just a (very) clever (and sinister) way to market products? One thing I wish about my childhood is that people had pointed things like that out to me at the time. But I guess that would have put me in a funny position vis-a-vis my friend, and to be honest I admire his devotion, even if it is to bullshit.

Dear Nico, I’m not sure that looking at Glass Joe or Blanka can yield anything real, since they themselves are not real, nor do they come from a real, or really very interesting, place. And I do mean Japan. But I’m willing to try. (Although I will say I thought I was onto something with the absurd-but-under-that-absurdity-somethingearnest-and-maybe-even-existential approach.)

(Although, reading over what I wrote to you, it does sound pretty ridiculous. Ardennes is Rimbaud’s home town--or region--it’s where he wrote A Season in Hell after returning from his European tour with Verlaine, which ended with Verlaine drinking way too much and shooting Rimbaud in the hand. That was after Verlaine had left his wife and child. Anyways, a silly al- Geoff lusion in an article about Glass Joe.) (But may-

propellerwork

Dear Geoff, Clearly, you are out of your mind. How can a figure of irredeemable degradation not yield anything real? I went and watched Little Mac KO Joe on YouTube. It took me back: Joe’s worried eyes and bad hairdo over his bulging pecs and six-pack; Joe’s worried eyes bugging out with each body blow; the spongy bleeps thereof.

Man, the monotony of the beatdown. But when he falls it’s with this lurching dancerly grace -- I want that move for myself!

The more I think about Glass Joe the more I think he’s beautiful. He never runs from a fight he is doomed to lose, and he exits the stage (consciousness) with great style. I’ll take that as a working definition of heroism.

Nico Dear Nico, Your descriptions of Glass Joe make me think of Buster Keaton (“but when he falls it’s with this lurching dancerly grace”), who is one of my heroes, and very real. But what is this “real”? Real and fake. Our discussions of Glass Joe and Blanka have me wondering if I have a misguided idea of the real, that somehow Glass Joe isn’t a real creation because he was created to sell video games. Whereas the Illuminations are real because they were created to, well, who

knows why Rimbaud wrote those. “I is another.”

Maybe he thought it would kickstart his career as a celebrity chef. Was there a better exit than Rimbaud’s? One hundred years later and he’s still shrouded in mystery.

But to get back to your point about heroism.

Glass Joe can’t run; it isn’t in his digital DNA. He doesn’t have the option of turning down a fight (based on the boxing movies I’ve seen, that might actually be pretty true to life). But how can that make him a hero? Doesn’t the hero have to decide to fight? I’m worried that Glass Joe is a loser, and that’s it. I guess with my original letter, I was trying to give him a little redemption, another act done on his own terms, free from all the controlling interests in his life--Nintendo, teenage boys in basements--but which is his Don King?--that pug Little Mac. Geoff Dear Geoff, You are right and I was wrong: “Glass Joe is a loser, and that’s it.” Yes! I think that is it. I think my fumbling around trying to find choice and dignity in his losing missed the point -- he’s a loser, and that’s why he’s great. Why did neither of us have any lingering connection with the game’s protagonist? Little Mac has moxie. Little Mac goes up against the big bad guys and wins.

propellerwork Little Mac is spectacularly boring. But Glass Joe: there’s a character to love: failed, bruised, bloody, debased. What healthy eleven-year-old boy wouldn’t feel a secret, visceral connection with such a chump?

Nico p.s. Also, I think Rimbaud would get a bang out of Glass Joe, ambassador of France.

Nico, I guess we’re saying that Glass Joe is a believer.

The hero always believes--in himself, his idea, his country, love, justice--but are any of these things real? The hero believes things are real.

He believes in reality, and so makes unreal things real. The hero makes the hero real. What a magic act!

Glass Joe is a weatherman. He is a rat on a pier.

He carries water. Glass Joe can really whistle.

He imitates a radish. He drops a deuce in the bushes because there’s nowhere else to go. The song goes like this: There goes Glass Joe Thunder on the plains A goose under his arm A field of sugarcane Glass Joe, Glass Joe Why’d you leave so soon?

Now I got a bone to pick With Bad Old Mr. Moon G

Dear Geoff, Despite the fact that Glass Joe was invented in order to sell video games to children, and that to call him a fictional character is to insult even the lowliest comic-book drudge, and that his makers are marked by a poverty of imagination

and a paucity of means, yes, I think he has some the way, is realer and more moving to me than.... measure of reality because he is bound up in I don’t know. Lots of stuff. I believe in him. belief—not in himself, but in being something others might believe in. The nerds who made Nico him knew not what they did. But there he is.

Your imagined—believed-in?—Glass Joe, by

KEVIN GONZALEZ Two Poems

To Roberto Clemente

Like you, Roberto, I went from the town of giants to the city of steel, where smoke arcs over antennae & signals drown in the Ohio, where the same broken carburetors sleep still in cribs of mud at the bottom. The people, still in love with your arm, your bat-speed & speed, your broad range at Forbes Field, your eternal gold glove.

Do you miss the bridges, their fortified shadows, the three rivers exhaling their vapor?

There is something to be said for this: how every morning I open the paper to the weather forecast page & scan for Pittsburgh, though we don’t live there anymore.

To Harry Caray

Like all summer nights, you had the call between North Clark, Sheffield & Addison— Barry Bonds at the plate, a runner on first, & Greg Maddux beginning to stall on the mound, the count two strikes & three balls, one out. The boys in blue up a run after a “Might Be! It could be! It’s gone!” crashed deep beyond the ivy-screened wall in left, past the veiled bricks, to discover the pavement of Waveland. Maddux laces it in; Bonds pounds it into the clover— one gloves & flips, & two play their base, & you call it like you know it’s over when it goes Dunston to Sandberg to Grace.

propellerinquiry

FE

FEN

“I LIKED THE IDEA OF A BALL HAVI AS I EVERY TIME IT HAD RICOCHET

FOUL BALLS

EAR OF A LITTLE WHITESWOLLEN SPHERE HANDS

NWAY • DOUBLEDAY • MARIANNE MOORE

ING ‘MEMORY,’ AS IF IT COULD RECALL AS VIVIDLY TED OFF MY SHIN OR SKIDDED UNDER MY GLOVE.”

BY DEREK STACKHOUSE

propellerinquiry

O

n an especially humid July day in 1995, I grabbed my Red Sox hat and baseball glove from my bedroom dresser and rushed out into the growing heat. As I wandered around the yard, I caught a glimpse of my dad, washing the car that would carry us to the game. Knowing it takes about two hours to drive down I-95 to Boston, I assumed that we would be leaving soon: the man refused to be late. With gray hair curling from underneath a faded blue ball cap, Dad turned off the hose and tossed me the keys to the car, joking that I could drive. Being twelve, I moved towards the driver’s side before tossing them back with a laugh.

Winding through the neighborhood towards the highway, Dad said, “How’s the glove?” He had given me a tip for breaking it in, making it more able to snag a ground ball or pop fly. The previous several nights, I’d oiled the mitt, placed a baseball inside, and wound it closed tightly with twine. Then, I sandwiched the bundle between my mattress and box spring, hoping that this process would somehow grant me newfound skills on the diamond, knowing that it would take a lot more than some oil and string to accomplish this feat. “Great,” I lied.

My father hadn’t been home the day before, when a couple of neighborhood kids had come over to practice. Trying to replicate the drills we had learned during Little League practices in

the spring, we took turns smacking grounders at each other. This was a precarious situation, seeing as my bumpy yard hardly mirrored the relatively groomed infield at the schoolyard. Every time one of those hard balls skipped up toward my chest or face, I’d turn away and simply throw my glove in the general direction of the culprit.

More than once, my well-oiled glove was useless against the onslaught, and the ball would sail past my hand and strike me in the sternum with a resounding thud. I knew that there existed a softer version of the regulation-size baseball, but I was far too embarrassed to suggest these to my friends. Trying to seem tough in front of the others, I’d shake it off and pound back some of my eerily blue sports drink, asking myself why don’t they make the balls softer?

As the car merged onto the interstate, I lightly touched one of the bruises suffered during our “practice.” My dad, humming some tune, was oblivious to the terror I felt when it came to that damned little ball. After my friends left, I rummaged around the garage and discovered a tube of tennis balls. This was more my style, throwing the soft orbs into the air and catching them with relative ease. My dog looked on anxiously, expecting me to involve her in this at any moment. Was it the fear of getting hurt that kept me from being able to do the same with baseballs? The suggestion by my mom that “softballs

propellerinquiry

might be good practice” did not end well. It turns Baseball Archeology by Gwen Aldridge and out that “soft” is a misnomer, for the first tricky Bret Wills documents many of the objects groundball that caught me square in the knee- that make up the history of the game, and the cap did not feel very soft. I didn’t fancy myself first image of the book is indelible: the famous an especially “wimpy” kid, often partaking in “Doubleday Ball,” found a few years ago in upthe usual stunts my state New York. parents so despised “This gives the ball a kind of resiliency, or Historians date for being danger- memory. I liked the idea of a ball having it back to 1839, ous. Only when it making it the “memory,” as if it could recall as vividly as came to this object earliest known I every time it had ricocheted off my shin did I cower in fear, ball still in exthen in shame. istence. It was or skidded under my glove.”

As we sped the first exhibit across the Piscataqua River Bridge into New brought into the Baseball Hall of Fame in CooHampshire, I asked my father if he knew how a perstown. A close-up shot shows every stitch baseball is made. He attempted a rough estima- torn open, exposing a loose mass of grayish yarn tion of the process, which includes beginning inside. I had heard the term “dead ball era” used with a rubber-cased pill, a sphere in which a in reference to the game of the 19th and early smaller cork is nested. Several sorts of yarn are 20th century, and this thing sure looked dead intricately wound around this, and the type of to me. This particular baseball is important, for material used becomes finer as you move away some hold it up as the physical embodiment of from the center. This gives the ball a kind of the birth of the game, though the myth of Abner resiliency, or memory. I liked the idea of a ball Doubleday being the founding father of basehaving “memory,” as if it could recall as vividly ball has long been discredited. Despite the dubias I every time it had ricocheted off my shin or ous origin of the ball, to many, including sportsskidded under my glove. Eventually, the ball is writer Steve Wulf, it is an endlessly fascinating covered in two identical pieces of cowhide that object: are carefully sewn together. With all of the labor and drying cycles, one ball takes about a week It’s not just stuffed with cloth but also to be readied for use in a game. with the dreams of boys and the sweat

propellerinquiry

of men…the perfect symbol of a game bursting at the seams with 150 years of history and lore. Out of that homely ball, which is the oldest physical evidence of the game anywhere, have sprung the thousands of other artifacts in Cooperstown.

Not only was my dad a fan of the game, he was endlessly interested in “baseball culture.” He voraciously read books about the game, and his study was filled with autographed pictures of Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski and other legends. My favorite picture he had in this room was of the poet Marianne Moore, a lifelong baseball fan, just before she tosses out a first pitch at Yankee Stadium. Whereas most who are given this honor stand on (or at least near) the pitcher’s mound and throw the ball towards a crouching catcher at home plate, the elderly Moore stands next to her seat with her fellow fans. She holds the baseball aloft, but does not seem readying to throw it. Rather, she is displaying it to the crowd, as one may do after snagging a foul ball. When I look at the picture, I always get the feeling that Moore knows the cheers raining down at that moment are for her, but in her gesture there is a deflection of praise: cheer for the baseball, not for me. The thing looked so innocent in the photo, just a little white ball in an old lady’s hand. I knew it was silly to be

“I always get the feeling that Moore knows the cheers raining down at that moment are for her, but in her gesture there is a deflection of praise: cheer for the baseball, not for me.”

so afraid of it, yet here I was, wishing that I had taken up tennis.

Dad loved poetry, songs, movies, books and art in general that was about baseball. Mark Twain and Walt Whitman romanticized the game, and this only solidified its lofty position in his eyes. Robert Frost wrote: “baseball is the fate of us all. For my part I am never more at home in America than at a baseball game…in beautiful weather and my side winning. Beyond this, I know not. And dare not.” My dad was quick to remind that Frost’s “side” was our beloved Red Sox. Buster Keaton, one of my father’s other heroes, used to play baseball on the sets of his films, between takes. We watched the Ken Burns documentary “Baseball” countless times, especially the tapes covering the 1950s and 60s, the years of Dad’s own childhood. Footage of men like Red Sox shortstop Billy Klaus effortlessly scooping up a ground ball and tossing

propellerinquiry

it to first made it seem as though it were all so easy. I bet Billy didn’t lie in bed at night, dreading the next day’s game. After a viewing of The Sandlot, Dad turned to me and said, “Now that’s a movie!” It involves a group of children attempt to retrieve a baseball lost in a neighbor’s yard, which is guarded by a ferocious dog. This ball is particularly important, as it belongs to one of the boy’s stepfather, and is signed by none other than Babe Ruth. The significance of this is lost on the young man, who sees the baseball as something easily replaced, not some object of veneration.

Soon, we parked outside of Fenway Park and walked into the festivities stretching down the length of Yawkey Way. People slowly shuffled towards the gates of the stadium, sausages sizzling over the din. Cops mounted on horses looked on as men ducked into doorways to buy and sell tickets. Office workers sipping coffee watched as the crowd slowly grew smaller as the first pitch approached. Shuffling through the chaotic corridors, the dimness of the stairwell leading into the park gave way as the field came into view. Everything shimmered: the edges of the scoreboard, the players sunglasses, the bright white ball tossed back and forth between the center and right fielder. We stopped at the top of the stairs to survey the scene, my dad pushing the brim of my hat down, smiling ear to ear. John Updike felt baseball, “with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white… best suited to accommodate a loner. It is an essentially lonely game.” My experience has

always been the opposite, that of camaraderie.

It can be a quiet game, but I never feel alone.

As my excitement grew, I patted the inside of my glove, only to be reminded of why I had brought it here in the first place. My dad always told me to bring it so that I could “catch him a foul ball.” If only he knew that the thought of

a ball hurdling towards the crowd, towards our section, towards me felt like a firm fist to the stomach. Though an average of forty fouls end up in the stands during the course of a big league game, the number of severe injuries due to errant balls is quite low. Bob Gorman, in his article “Foul Play: Fan Fatalities in Twentieth Century

Organized Baseball,� mentions that at least thirty-five deaths have been reported during either minor or major league games since 1900, but of these, five are due to someone being struck by a ball, and only two of these five were foul balls hit into the crowd. Minor injuries are more common. One strange story involves Richie

propellerinquiry

Ashburn, who in 1957 struck Alice Roth twice them. Bats were originally rudely fashioned and with two separate foul liners. As she was being crude clubs. But without a baseball, or some helped to the exit after the first ball, the second object remotely resembling an airworthy spherhit her in the back. Thankfully, Roth escaped oid, the game could not exist. with relatively minor injuries. A look at the sta- The piece (subtitled “A Selective History of tistics, though, the Round Object would have been “One strange story involves Richie Ash- That Gives the of little comfort burn, who in 1957 struck Alice Roth twice National Game Its for me that day. with two separate foul liners. As she was Name”) discusses Just as the probthe “poetic pribeing helped to the exit after the first ball, ability of dying macy” of the ball, in a plane crash the second hit her in the back.” how it holds such is extremely slim, a distinct place many people still harbor an intense fear of fly- American culture and the collective imaginaing. As we settled into our seats, I placed my tion. In particular, Klein sees the baseball as “a glove under my seat and dug into a bag of pea- rarity in sports – the in-play, physical connectnuts. Dad looked over and said, “You’ll be need- ing object between the fan and the sport.” For ing that in a minute. This area is foul ball cen- my father, this may be what the ball represents, tral.” You wear it, then, I thought. I lowered my but to me, the only “connecting” I could envihat to shield my downward eyes, both from the sion was a fierce line drive connecting with my now scorching sun and the slow burn of embar- face. rassment.

This day was beginning to feel like the inside I was fully aware that the equipment I had ac- of an oven, with the sort of weather that makes cess to was vastly superior to that used during a native New Englander forget the achingly the “olden days,” but the padding on the palm cold winter of only a few months prior. Oddly of my glove did little to quell my fear. Robert enough, the beginning of baseball season in Klein’s essay “Play Ball!” considers the dangers Maine often takes place before this chill has liftof the sport early on: ed. On more than one occasion, snow had to be The baseball is absolutely essential to the shoveled from the field and piled along the foul sport. Indeed, early contests were played with- lines in order to play a game. Wool hats replaced out gloves, or with just vague approximations of the usual caps, and I recall more than one of my

teammates being made to wear his winter coat during batting practice by a concerned mother.

This cold meant that the ball would often be even harder than usual, its cowhide nearly crystallized with frost. One crisp April night, I was hit on the forearm with a wayward fastball, and the bump left behind had the perfect imprint of the ball’s stitches. For the rest of the game, I was referred to as “the monster.” Only in hindsight does this seem like a funny anecdote, for the pain and embarrassment in the moment sent me behind the dugout so my teammates could not see me sob.

A few innings went by without incident, and as my father began to stand to wave down a nearby vendor, I felt the crowd around us surge upwards. I glanced up and saw a ball sailing high above, just a speck at first but growing rapidly larger. Looking down, I saw my glove sitting pathetically between my feet. I quickly turned towards Dad, his eyes fixed on the plummeting projectile. Every hand seemed to reach up at once. Every hand, that is, but mine. I turned away, ducking slightly and hoping for the best.

The crowd’s ahhs grew louder and louder. Suddenly, the man to my right looked past me, towards my dad and exclaimed, “Wow!” Turning the other way, I saw my father’s beaming face, the ball resting in his bare left hand. He looked down at me, seeming not to know whether to laugh or cry. My drooping jaw slowly returning

to place, he handed me the ball, hoarsely saying, “You’ve got the next one, okay?” Once the excitement wore off, the throbbing pain emerged, though the stoicism of the man was cranked up to ten as he lightly rubbed his red and swollen palm. I inched the glove further under my seat with my foot while pretending to be intrigued by the statistics of the left fielder, not wanting to consider the symbol of my cowardice. I almost forgot it when we readied to leave, and only remembered it when I saw my dad lightly flexing his hand and making a tentative fist.

During the drive home, Dad seemed especially quiet, and I interpreted this as his being disappointed in my reaction to the oft-discussed “foul ball situation.” Maybe Updike is right, that baseball brings about loneliness. I asked Dad how his hand felt, and he said he was sure it was not broken, and it was nothing some ice couldn’t take care of. We sat listening to a warbling tape of Creedence Clearwater Revival, talking sparingly about the game: the seventh inning home run, the first baseman’s strange moustache, the close play at the plate. We crossed back over the bridge into Maine, and looking down I saw my glove pressed between my seat and the door.

The dim yellow light of the highway didn’t allow me to see much else in the car, but I did catch a small smile form on my father’s face when I told him that I wanted to play catch when his hand was feeling better. Ω

propellertouchstone

hunt M y aspiration toward being something other than a white person began when I was ten, and fell in love with UNLV. Most of my extended family had either attended or been rejected from Notre Dame, and the faces of Lou Holtz and Digger Phelps hung over the wooden paneling of the family room like the stern visages of ersatz patriarchs, asserting our values. Watching the NCAA tournament with my mother one spring, she pointed out the names of all the good schools in the brackets, the Dukes and Princetons, and though she tried to make me cheer for them, I was never taken in. I was going to be just as successful as those floppy-haired people, I told her, but I was going to UNLV. When the Rebels beat Duke by thirty to win the title, I strutted around the house and said I was Travis Bice. I was lying: Travis Bice was just the only white kid on the team who played any kind of minutes. The hair he wore out of the eighties poofed just as awkwardly in a sweaty arena as that of the Duke players. I wanted to be one of the true Rebels, the black rebels. I didn’t want to be Greg Anthony or Stacy Augmon, who were nondescript to my eye, nor did I want to be Larry Johnson, even though he was the star. I wanted to be Anderson Hunt, the flattopped 3-point specialist who would declare a year early with his more talented teammates and go undrafted. Hunt had been the MOP of the ‘90 tournament, scoring 29 points in the

championship win, yet his game was collegiate and a little one-dimensional. But with his picturesque, high-arcing shot and the white t-shirt he wore beneath his jersey, he was the kind of black player a kid from a wannabe suburb could get behind. He was from Detroit, but if he had street cred I happily overlooked it. Larry Johnson, with his dubious academic status, his gold teeth and his woofing, physical game, seemed a mix of traditional black caricature and actual black hardship, neither of which a whitey my age could easily square up to, then or now.

Johnson’s game made you want to use uncomfortable words like savage and bestial, words he was historically-aware enough to turn on you.

He liked to talk about coming out of slavery, famously pointing out that he and Avery Johnson were “from the same plantation...Massa Johnson’s plantation.” I was ten, and wore enormous glasses and shirts that changed color with my body heat; I was not prepared for this kind of blackness. But I was prepared for Anderson Hunt. It was Hunt who got the final shot in the 1991 Final Four when the undefeated Rebels were beaten by Duke, and Hunt who promptly faded away afterward, a silky and slightly mystical figure embedded in my memory, to stand for my idealization of black people until such a time as I could get older and actually meet some.

—Chris Leslie-Hynan

propellerfiction

Calyph in Walworth Chris Leslie-Hynan

I

t was the middle of November when my grandmother died, and in Wisconsin the water in the ditches was turning to ice.

The woman at the rental agency said only two weeks past, on election day, it’d been nearly seventy degrees, and a warm fall wind, the likes of which she’d never felt, had been blowing along the shores of Lake Michigan during the celebrations for the victory of our second black president. But now the leaves that had even then been pinwheeled through Grant Park by the gusts of summer undeparted shivered among the dry roadside grasses, as we drove southwest from General Mitchell into the reaped fields at the heart of the state.

To get to my town we had to pass along the shore of Lake Geneva, by the observatory and the stone pillars of old golf courses. Somehow their proud, dated air, a sad pretension in the hot high season, when the place was filled with Chicago summer people rushing by toward newer courses, seemed almost convincing in the early winter light. Their worn, bald driving ranges and chipped whitewash signs looked like victims of the season only, not of some more enduring slide.

Looking at the mileage signs, I was reminded how seriously the settlers of the area must have taken the idea of future distinction. Radiating out from the lake in any direction were towns

propellerfiction

with names like Waterford and Brighton and A little while after we came finally into WalAvalon, and even Harvard, Illinois. That these worth. With its six-by-six grid, we were halfway names of borrowed noblesse lay just down a through before we were there at all. county road from towns like Abells Corners and “This is it,” I said. “Go left at the light.”

Mukwonago, and the obliviously-named Bong “Walworth,” he said. “Like the store?”

State Recreation “We aren’t Area, gave the restore people.”

“He looked into an open garage as we gion its characWhen I guided ter and made me passed, as though expecting to see the him onto our feel I was almost body of an old man lain out on the oil- street, I saw our home. In college I fall come to life stained concrete.” remember telling for Calyph in the people that I was rusted frames from near Lake Geneva, and then adding “the and sagging bumpers of every old Buick on the American Lake Geneva” if they seemed con- block. In the yard of a house with a different fused.

Packers flag in each of its basement windows, a We came up on Fontana, and old brick houses mastiff was butting a broken Hot Wheels around with white shutters pinned back peered out at in circles in the driveway as a kid sat watching us from the shore of the lake through thin, de- primly from a still trike. nuded trees.

My Aunt’s house is at the end of a gravel lane, “Any of those your peoples?” Calyph asked. I with an old orchard on one side, and its thin think he was getting impatient for the appear- trees looked just gnarled and ghostly enough ance of something that fit in with the rich forg- that it might’ve still been possible for Calyph to eries of my past. believe that some resplendent ruin awaited us.

I shook my head. “I might’ve caddied for Even though I wanted him to know the truth someone,” I ventured. “They’re probably dead now, as we passed along the orchard so long falnow.” low I never knew its fruit, I felt a last surge of He looked into an open garage as we passed, love for the ruined things I’d made, and had a as though expecting to see the body of an old fleeting, wistful vision of what a terrific sort of man lain out on the oil-stained concrete. mouldering estate-house I would have had him

propellerfiction

driving us to in the great northern gothic of my imagined life.

But it was just a clean little brown house, and the only thing rusting was the basketball pole.

Even it was less rusted than I remembered; my Uncle must have touched it up.

Calyph turned the engine off and we sat for a bit in silence.

“So this is how you fall,” he said neutrally.

“Don’t ask them about that,” I said. “They won’t know what you’re talking about.”

He gave me a wary look, but I opened my door and looked away. I didn’t want to rehash what was already the best explanation I could give him. Just then my Aunt came around the side of the house, wearing a kerchief and a loud fall jacket.

“I was just doing some raking,” she said brusquely, extending Calyph a small, work-softened hand. “I’m Rose Lauren.” When he gave his name she nodded shortly, and repeated it back to him without a hitch. We went inside, and as she held the door for Calyph she didn’t even scrutinize him. She took him so much in stride I wondered if she was paying attention.

My Aunt’s is a small-roomed, leathery house, brown inside and out, and of course I was looking at it through Calyph’s eyes. The kitchen used to always smell like dry cat food, but that was gone now, though the cats still remained, lazing on chairs and warming the place. We went from room to room and had a little tour. In the

“In the living room Calyph bent to look at the framed picture of my uncle with Robin Yount, and one of the cats leapt across the room to collapse on his foot.” living room Calyph bent to look at the framed picture of my uncle with Robin Yount, and one of the cats leapt across the room to collapse on his foot. He lifted the little thing with one hand and set it backwards over his shoulder with an abstracted air. When we went into my old room and I saw my Aunt had returned it to its childhood condition, old basketball posters and all, I could only stare into the cat’s depthless eyes in mortification.

“J.R. Rider, huh? Wassup, Sheed,” Calyph said to the wall.

“You shouldn’t have, Rose,” I said, and she and Calyph turned to one another and laughed.

“Have you lived here long?” he asked her.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” she said.

s we stood outside after the funeral, preparing to make the processional, the first breaks in the family formality appeared. People shook hands in a relieved way, and I felt that mingled sense of warmth and

A

propellerfiction

danger from being among people who might be reverting to their natural selves. My Uncle Ron, who is not an Uncle at all, was the first to come over. He’d been among the pallbearers, and seemed enlivened by the physical task.

“Honored to have you,” he said, shaking both our hands. He asked where I’d been living, and repeated “all the way from Orry-gone” twice in an impressed voice.

“Have I seen you before, sir?” he asked Calyph. “Did you go to Carolina?”

“I did.”

“I thought so. I’m a Badger man, and you gave it to us pretty good in the tournament a few years back.”

“I guess we did,” Calyph said.

“Even Krakkenhofer couldn’t guard you.

Devin Harris, though—what a player he was!

Did you know he’s in the NBA now?”

“Is he.”

“New Jersey Nets! What are you doing these days?” Uncle Ron’s face shone with the relish of this questioning, and he put his hand on the crown of his houndstooth hat, as though to protect it from a stray gust.

“Just trying to get my knee right.”

“Well, you’ll always have the college days,” my Uncle said loudly. Tamping down his hat in a sort of bow, he turned suddenly away.

By the time we’d settled around the grave site, my family looked familiar at last. With their

“One of my shivered defi funeral wear taken aside an pull an ancien headband out et with trembl dark suits and restrained, formalized manners, they could have been almost anyone—even who I said they were. But it was a cold afternoon, and the topcoats had got buried beneath the parkas, and the severe coiffure beneath ragged knit hats.

One of my great-uncles shivered defiantly in his funeral wear until he was taken aside and induced to pull an ancient green Bucks headband

great-uncles A fiantly in his until he was nd induced to nt green Bucks t of his pockling hands.” out of his pocket with trembling hands. When he put it on he looked a fitting patriarch, and although I could read nothing from Calyph’s face I think it was clear we’d never been heirs to anything but spirit and dirt.

fter the funeral, we went back to my Aunt’s for a meal. There was a honey ham and there were meatballs with grape jelly and brandy Old Fashioneds, and since the meal was eaten in the afternoon it felt as though it were a holiday, an informal one where the uncles were allowed to bring a can of beer to the table. Afterward there were even presents. It was the birthday of a thin, blackhaired boy who might have been a distant cousin and who liked to lift up his shirt and suck in his stomach until his ribs bulged out.

“Not at the table, Travis, God,” his mother said.

“I’m from the Sudan,” the boy said proudly. He was just young enough not to be punished for this in public and probably he knew it.

“Travis is five today,” his mother said, directing a shamed look halfway down the spread, near Calyph’s plate. “He doesn’t know better.”

“I’m six,” Travis said.

“He’s five,” his mother repeated desperately. “If he was six we’d have to shoot him.”

Then the presents were over, and people were slipping away. As the grid of cars that filled the drive loosened, we heard a light rhythmic thudding from outside, interspersed every few seconds with a heavier sound.

The sound brought Travis’s head up from where he’d been dragging the edges of his plate for cake frosting. “I want to play,” he said, to no one in particular, and then his empty chair was

propellerfiction

rocking slightly side-to-side and his mother was calling without confidence for him to come back.

Outside a couple of neighborhood boys were shooting at the rim with an old ball, and Travis was hounding them and chasing the rebounds.

When Calyph followed me out, they all just stopped. Even the birthday boy stood awed. It was as though Calyph had only now become a six-nine black man who wore a gravely resplendent suit and whose hands moved too quickly even when he was doing something so minute as reaching for his napkin.

One of the boys shot a self-conscious airball and they all ran after it ravenously. Someone snatched it up, and passed it to Calyph. He turned it in his hands, feeling the worn grain, then passed it softly back.

Immediately it came back to him.

“Can you dunk?” one of the boys asked.

“Look at his leg,” his friend whispered loudly.

“It’s messed up.”

“Shoot,” Travis urged. “Shoot.”

Calyph looked down at the ball. Time had smoothed it and drained it of its color, and the leather was peeling a little in places. It was the kind of ball that looked like it ought to have been held by a man in spectacles and tiny shorts in a black and white photograph.

He lifted the ball for a second, and gave a

“Time had smoothed and drained it of its color. It was the kind of ball that looked like it ought to have been held by a man in spectacles and tiny shorts in a black and white photograph.”

grimace of a smile. Then he put it down again against his hip. The kids were staring at him, waiting. We all waited, to see if he would shoot.

I looked into his face and saw that his eyes were narrow and inward-seeing. What if he missed?

I think we all considered the ball’s spinning, soundless drop through the tattered net an inevitable conclusion. But he was injured, and though his new contract was still good, he could be traded any day to a team that might try to get him to retire for cap relief; at any time his place might be taken by younger men who smiled benignly for the fans and made no trouble, and who might in a single game declare a talent that would render his second-rate and expendable.

And if he did miss, who knew the judgment that would come from my skeletal cousin from the Sudan?

Finally he lifted the ball. Then he put his oth-

er arm over his face, covering his eyes with the crook of his elbow. Careless and blind he heaved the thing like a baseball toward the backboard.

It hit with a tremendous crash, slipped through the net on the carom, and hit my cousin on the side of the head. Instantly he began to cry.

Calyph swore exultantly. “You ain’t hurt!” he called down, laughing.

He took my shoulder and lowered his voice to a whisper. It seemed a needless intimacy, and once more I was thrilled and terrified. “Clean this up for me, Jeeves, for once in your life,” he said softly, and turned and went into the house.

I went over to Travis and put my hand awkwardly around his shoulders, pretending to examine him. Sure enough, as soon as Calyph was gone he stopped crying and his eyes took on a sly look.

“Tell on him,” he urged. “Tell them he hurt me.”

“Wasn’t that fun?”

“That guy’s mean. I’ll never speak to one again.”

“You might have to,” I said.

“No,” he told me definitely. “They’re just for television. They’re cool on television. In real life they’re dicks.”

I nodded at him sagely, for I could see that this too was a put-on, that he was after all glad to be hit and so to be the center of things once more.

I think he’d even leaned into the path of the ball a little.

I felt him turning in my grasp, the young life of him straining to be free. “I never want to meet another one,” he said fiercely.

“You will,” I said, and when I did it seemed, for the first time, the voicing of a slightly tired feeling, that would soon run its course, and then I let my cousin go, and watched him run off through the freezing grass, to tell the story to everyone. Ω

propellersports

SMSU LADY BEARS

JACKIE STILES WNBA

PRIDE • GOALS • NOT HAVING FACEBOOK

“THEY THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO SCORE AT THAT LEVEL. IT ALWAYS REALLY MOTIVATED ME.”

Q/A

Jackie Stiles, an undersized guard from a miniscule Kansas town, emerged from obscurity to become the leading scorer in NCAA Division I basketball history. After a promising start to her pro career, which included a rookie of the year award and an All-Star appearance, styles battled through injuries for several years before retiring in 2006. I asked Jackie her thoughts on hoops and intransigence.

—Lucas Bernhardt

PROPELLER: By the time you reached college, had the way you thought about and thought while shooting changed?

JACKIE STILES: Not really, I just am also so competitive. For my team to win in college I had to be able to score. I wanted to make a Final Four so bad and I wanted to give our amazing fans at MSU something to cheer about. I had so much pride putting that Lady Bear uniform on.

PROPELLER: A lot of people I know have That is what drove me, helping my team reach warm memories of shooting baskets as kids, of the Final Four. the ways their minds would wander or focus in on something. Do you remember the sorts PROPELLER: The WNBA has a shorter histoof things you thought about during your many ry than the NBA, and because it was born into hours of shooting around when you were a the multimedia age it’s had to grow up quickly. child?

Which era of the NBA (for example the early barnstorming days, the Celtics 60s dynasty, the JACKIE STILES: The main thing I was focused freewheeling 70s, the present, etc.) do you think on when I spent all that time in the gym was your years in the WNBA were most similar to? reaching my goals and working to be the best I could be. A couple of my big goals were to play JACKIE STILES: To be honest I am not familiar D1 basketball, play pro, and make the Olympics. with the older NBA to be able to compare the Also growing up—I never verbalized this—but WNBA with the NBA. The main era I watched in my mind I wanted to be the best to ever play in the NBA was the Michael Jordan era. I was the game as a female. I idolized Michael Jordan, also a big fan of Bird, but was pretty young when watched all his games and videos, and read all he was in his prime. of his books. I did not want anyone out there to work harder than me. I did not want to have PROPELLER: One of the things I liked about any regrets when my career was over. I got my the Portland Fire was the way the team, havconfidence through my work ethic. ing entered the league through expansion, and

propellersports

certain players, like DeMya Walker and Amber Amber Hall (both of whom had gone undrafted), seemed to thrive in the role of the underdog. Did you feel like an underdog at the time?

to score at that level. It always really motivated me when people thought I would not be able to accomplish something. It made me work that much harder.

JACKIE STILES: I have always been an underdog my whole career. When I was growing up in Claflin, KS, a town of 600, people said I would need to go to a bigger school to get a D1 scholarship. Then when I went to MSU they said that I needed to go to a major D1 school to become an All-American. Then they said I was too small to play at the pro level, especially as a two guard. They thought I would never be able

PROPELLER: What are your most vivid memories from your time in Portland?

JACKIE STILES: My most vivid memory on the court was my first exhibition game versus the Minnesota Lynx. I was able to hit a last second shot to win the game. Then it was my first actual game as a pro versus them as well, just knowing that I really did make it to the pro level. I could

not believe I was really going to get paid to play basketball, something I absolutely love to do. I also loved how beautiful Oregon was, and I really liked the people in Portland.

basketball a lot longer than us. I don’t think the WNBA gets enough media coverage. The women’s college game has really grown in popularity in the US because every game now is on national TV(ESPN). Women’s basketball was very popular in Australia. I liked Australia a lot, just wish I would have been able to stay healthy. They gave me quite a bit of media coverage while I was there. I was pretty surprised by that.

PROPELLER: In a number of other countries around the world, professional women’s basketball has risen in popularity more quickly than in the U.S. Why do you think that is? When you were in Australia, did people view women’s basketball differently than we do here?

PROPELLER: What’s the best player nickname(s) you’ve ever heard?

JACKIE STILES: I think one of the reasons is because they have had women’s professional JACKIE STILES: I really liked Air Jordan and

propellersports

Pistol Pete. A girl off my MSU team was nick- out there and gone for it. One of the reasons I named Hooks—it had two separate meanings. I worked as hard as I did was because I did not will not go into detail. want to have any regret when I walked off the floor. I could not always control the outcome, PROPELLER: Jerry Rice in his Hall of Fame in- but I could control how prepared I was. I did duction speech remarked: not reach my ultimate dream of the Olympics, but I can live with myself because I know I did “I wasn’t the most physical or the fastest reeverything in my power to try to reach that goal. ceiver in the NFL, but they never clocked me on the way to the end zone. The reason noPROPELLER: You have noted that a lot of body caught me from behind is because I ran young basketball players today seem more disscared. That old fear of failure again...I was tracted than your generation of college athletes. always in search of that perfect game, and I Do you have any advice for the student athlete never got it. Even if I caught 10 of 12 passes, or with Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr accounts? two of three touchdowns in the Super Bowl, I would dwell on the one pass I dropped.”

JACKIE STILES: I would just tell them to be careful what they put out there, because it will This reminded me of Bob Knight’s comment never go away. They have a lot of young athletes that he always has an easier time getting over looking up to them, so they want to be careful wins than losses. Do you think a degree of neg- about how they carry themselves off the court, ativity—the fear or resentment of failure—is a and what they put out there for all to see. I really necessary part of being competitive? take pride in being a good role model. It could also really hurt them in future job interviews.

JACKIE STILES: I was definitely never satis- My sister just applied to Med School and got in. fied, and I always thought I could be better/get They strongly advised incoming students to debetter. I was the same way, focusing on the shot lete their Facebook accounts. You just have to I missed instead of the ones that I made. I defi- be very careful to not waste too much time on nitely hated losing more than I liked winning. those kinds of things. That is why I don’t have I would rather die than loose. I was not scared Facebook. I can hardly keep up with emails, of failing, though. I have always put myself phone calls, website, etc... Ω

MICHAEL ANICHINI Poem

Goal I need to trade for a massage with you I don’t know what I could give you but I need one soon a good one soon well please well billions need maybe a massage maybe millions don’t miss a massage or know the feeling the missing or care once alerted and millions don’t care that not having a massage after a while it feels like life the feeling needing a massage the feeling bearing no massage fibrous knots and twisted stalks a stream from the eyes wild a scorching repressed cough through the earth’s hearty crust of sad amazement the earth’s mouth and ears of toddling antiquity burrowed phantom stresses seeping into buried flashes of light

propellertouchstone

holman B aseball, at its most fundamental level, is two things: (1) a series of discrete convergences and outcomes and (2) an argument concerning the abilities and contributions during those outcomes of 2-50 athletes, 1-4 umpires, the dimensions of a playing field, several or many thousand spectators, a few hours worth of weather (and occasionally wildlife) patterns and events, and various pieces of equipment.

The subject toes the rubber, pauses, throws the pitch. It is neither his first or last pitch of the evening. In fact, he has thrown roughly 100 prior to this one, and will throw three more afterwards. The subject (singular) is Brian Holman, 25 years and 2 months old, born in Denver, raised in Wichita. Brown-haired, handsome, an adversary to the Oakland A’s, called here the “home” team, and to the majority of the 44,000 spectators reported to be in attendance.

The subject is Ken Phelps, one-time property of the Seattle Mariners, the current ballclub of the subject (Brian Holman). The subject is Ken Phelps, the batter at the plate, wearer of glasses and distinctive mustache, namesake of the Ken Phelps All-Stars, a type rather than collection of ballplayers, dubbed thus by independent genius Bill James, a type of player who is worthy (as Phelps was for so long) of a major league job but relegated perpetually to the minor leagues by circumstance or oversight. The subject is Ken Phelps, who eventually ceased to be himself a Ken Phelps All-Star. The subjects (plural)

are Andy Stallings, 9 years old, and Danny Stallings, 7 years old, of Lynnwood, WA. The subjects (plural) are Walt Weiss and Harold Reynolds, the hitter of and fielder of the groundball to second base which was the outcome of the previous pitch thrown by the subject (Holman), resulting in a putout at first base, the 26th out of the game recorded by the adversarial side, the Seattle Mariners, in what given the specific restraints of the game (9 innings, 3 possible outs in each inning) is known as succession.

The subject is a “perfect game,” but nobody will talk about that, because it is considered bad luck to do so when one is in progress. In the many thousands of major league baseball games played prior to this date, April 20, 1990, there have been 12 perfect games thrown. In the 21 years since, there have been 8 more. The subject is a perfect game, in which the pitcher records 27 successive outs without allowing a runner to reach base by any means. The subject (Harold Reynolds) is a national television presence to this day, in spite of a high-profile firing several years ago. The subject is Rickey Henderson, (the recipient of the three pitches from Holman that will soon follow the pitch presently suspended by narrative), certainly one of the 5 greatest players to ever play baseball, of whom Bill James once had the following (loosely quoted) to say: “If you cut him in half, you’d have two Hall-ofFamers.” Rickey Henderson, who will strike out on those three pitches, the minimum number in

propellertouchstone

which a batter can strike out, and end the game whose complexion will by the time he steps to the plate have altered entirely. The subject is Drew Coble, in the 9th year of an 18-year career as a major league umpire, who will just less than 18 months later make what is remembered as an ignoble call in what may have been the greatest World Series of all-time. The subject is Dave Valle, a present-day Seattle Mariners radio broadcaster, who during the pitch in question is playing the catcher position, situated and squatting between Holman and Coble, to the right (facing) of the batter. There is a radio, it is in a bedroom. There is a babysitter, it is late. The subject is Ken Phelps, one-time property of the Montreal Expos, who drafted, developed, and brought Brian Holman to the major leagues in 1988, the same year that the subject (Andy Stallings) became aware of a game called baseball.

The subject is youth, the subject is awareness, present and past. The subject is Henry Cotto, playing right field as a defensive replacement for Greg Briley, Henry Cotto whose son of the same name will, in the 41st round of the 2008 Major League Amateur Player Draft, be selected by the Seattle Mariners, but will not sign a contract. The pitch is not a perfect pitch, it hangs high up to the inside (left, facing) of home plate before dropping directly over the center of the plate. The subject is Ken Phelps, who takes a solid, level swing and brings his bat into con-

vergences with the pitch. The subject is Henry Cotto, who turns and races towards the wall in right field, the natural boundary of the playing field. In the radio broadcast, there is a sense that he will catch the ball, though in the video record, the ball moves very quickly past the wall, a home run. The subject is Ken Phelps, who prior to this date has hit 122 home runs in the major leagues, make it 123, but who will never hit another home run in the majors. The subjects (plural) are Andy and Danny Stallings, who believe that if the subject, Henry Cotto, were a few inches taller or could jump a few inches higher, the desired outcome (the perfect game) would have been attained. The argument ensues. The subject is Brian Holman, who pitches in the major leagues 55 more times before injuring his arm, an injury from which his career never recovers. The subject is Brian Holman, whose son David will, in the 2009 Major League Amateur Player Draft, be selected by the Seattle Mariners in the 47th round, but will not sign, only to be drafted again by the Seattle Mariners in 2010, but not sign, only to sign as a free agent with the Seattle Mariners in June 2011. The subject is Ken Phelps, a treasonous man. The subjects are height, speed, velocity. The subjects are time, memory, record. The record shows the outcome (home run) to be irrefutable. The record (transmission, youth) does not exist. —Andy Stallings

Contributo WILL JONES recently retired after nine years as principal at San Luis Obispo High School.

KERI THOMAS is a writer and filmmaker. In the October 2009 issue, she wrote about the emotional lives of animals.

DEREK STACKHOUSE writes about literature and film. He has written, most recently, about use of the term “sublime” in casual conversation.

CHRIS LESLIE-HYNAN is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and lives in Portland, Oregon.

GEOFFREY HILSABECK trains at the Cambridge-Somerville Y but hasn’t yet been in the ring.

ors KEVIN GONZALEZ is the author of Cultural Studies (Carnegie Mellon, 2009).

MICHAEL ANICHINI holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is from Chicago, where he currently lives and works.

ANDY STALLINGS lives in New Orleans, where he teaches poetry and has a family but spends most of his free time thinking about baseball.

MATTHEW HEIN was a British musician best known as the lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Queen. He died in 1991.

NICO ALVARADO’S recent writing is in Witness, Jacket2, and Transom.

Propellerbooks “With no frills, no gimmicks, just a gimlet eye and quicksilver prose, Rechner defamiliarizes the mundane and makes it marvelous.”

—Malena Watrous, The Believer “Cockeyed smart, sharply written, and very funny.

A much-needed new voice for women and men has arrived.”

—Nancy Zafris, Kenyon Review

Nine Simple Patterns For Complicated Women

Stories by Mary Rechner Available now at Amazon, Powells, and in many fine independent bookstores information: www.propellerbooks.com