Sleeping in October
For the past week, everyone in the Nation, as well as all the haters -- in fact pretty much all of my readers -- have been able to catch up on their sleep. Last night was a perfect example. That could have been a Phillies-RedSox game last night, that game that didn't get started until almost ten o'clock. So instead of going to bed a bit after midnight, after Utley and Howard had hit back to back homers, I would have been staying up until almost two in the morning. Keep in mind too that Game Three ended only because the Rays had first a wild pitch, and then a throwing error in that crazy bottom of the ninth. Had it been the back of our bullpen, probably no wild pitch. And with Tek behind the plate, no throwing error, so we'd have gone into extra innings, and then it wouldn't have ended until 3:30, or thereabouts. And if the Sox had hung on to win, say in twelve innings, if Timlin hadn't given up a couple home runs, so that the Sox had time to score and hang on, at that late hour, I'd have never fallen asleep. The adrenaline, the nervous energy, and then the elation of an extra-inning game? Forget about it. No sleep last night. Instead of all that, I feel well rested today. And not all that envious of the Rays, even though I think we would have bested the Phils had we the chance. After all, Sox have owned the NL East in interleague play the last couple years.
So while I'm resting, and trying to catch up on my sleep, I'm hoping to mine the old comments, particularly from last fall, when the Sox were winning the AL East, and the Evil Empire was being eliminated from the post-season, but the haters were making predictions about 2008. Take this one for example, "we will plan on ring 27 in 2008." That was Danny, and I'm not sure, but I think he was talking about a mood ring.
We've got the Haters' Ball coming up soon, and my goal is to have a collection of similar quotes, to distribute on little place card things for the ball. You know, like the little program you're given when you show up at say, Jeremy and Kristin's wedding, and it says, "The bride and groom wrote their own vows, which were inspired by the sacred writings of the Bhagavad Gita." If nothing else, since no one made it to the series this year, the quotes will give us something to argue about at the ball.
And while I'm doing research for the Haters' Ball, I went to see The Express last night, the biopic about Ernie Davis' life. It's hard for me to be objective, because the story was so close to me in my childhood. Much of the movie is a fairly inaccurate description of the 1959 championship season; for example, the 'sizable seven', SU's overpowering line, which played on both sides of the ball, never gets a mention, despite featuring a couple All-Americans, and several guys who went on to play in the NFL, and the old AFL. And then the Cotton Bowl is depicted as Ernie Davis' running game, against the Longhorns' dominant defense. In fact, Cuse had the toughest defense in the nation that year, giving up fewer than 200 rushing yards , all year long. An average of 19 rushing yards per game.
But never mind all that, because the championship season was framed in the larger context of the civil rights movement, and Davis' story became a part of a much larger canvas. The result is that the sports story becomes a vehicle for telling a more important, and more moving story. I was glad they showed the original picture of Davis meeting JFK, after he won the Heisman. Kennedy was in New York that weekend, and sent for Davis. Imagine what it was like for a kid from Elmira, the first kid in his family to attend college, to meet JFK in person. Then of course, the movie pulls at everyone's heartstrings, as Davis becomes sick with Leukemia, never gets to play next to Jim Brown, and then passes away at the age of 23. Susan and Peggy went through an entire box of Kleenex. But I was probably as moved as anyone; for me, the Ernie Davis story is the saddest sports story ever. Ever.
But in all this reminiscing last night I recalled one Saturday afternoon, maybe in '60 or '61, when we were playing touch football after returning home from Archibold. That's what we always did when we were kids. We'd go to the ball game, and then afterward, we'd all be playing football somewhere in the neighborhood, usually Animal's yard. So while we're playing, Chipper shows up, and tells us all to look at something. And he pulls about a pound of dirt and grass out of his jacket pocket. We all said, "What the hell is that?" "Ernie Davis stepped on this grass!" Chipper has taken some of the Archibold sod home with him, because Davis had trod on that piece of turf, after the game, as the players were walking off the field, and bunches of kids our age ran after them begging for chinstraps. I don't know if Chipper saved that turf, but seeing The Express brought me right back to those days.
So while I'm resting, and trying to catch up on my sleep, I'm hoping to mine the old comments, particularly from last fall, when the Sox were winning the AL East, and the Evil Empire was being eliminated from the post-season, but the haters were making predictions about 2008. Take this one for example, "we will plan on ring 27 in 2008." That was Danny, and I'm not sure, but I think he was talking about a mood ring.
We've got the Haters' Ball coming up soon, and my goal is to have a collection of similar quotes, to distribute on little place card things for the ball. You know, like the little program you're given when you show up at say, Jeremy and Kristin's wedding, and it says, "The bride and groom wrote their own vows, which were inspired by the sacred writings of the Bhagavad Gita." If nothing else, since no one made it to the series this year, the quotes will give us something to argue about at the ball.
And while I'm doing research for the Haters' Ball, I went to see The Express last night, the biopic about Ernie Davis' life. It's hard for me to be objective, because the story was so close to me in my childhood. Much of the movie is a fairly inaccurate description of the 1959 championship season; for example, the 'sizable seven', SU's overpowering line, which played on both sides of the ball, never gets a mention, despite featuring a couple All-Americans, and several guys who went on to play in the NFL, and the old AFL. And then the Cotton Bowl is depicted as Ernie Davis' running game, against the Longhorns' dominant defense. In fact, Cuse had the toughest defense in the nation that year, giving up fewer than 200 rushing yards , all year long. An average of 19 rushing yards per game.
But never mind all that, because the championship season was framed in the larger context of the civil rights movement, and Davis' story became a part of a much larger canvas. The result is that the sports story becomes a vehicle for telling a more important, and more moving story. I was glad they showed the original picture of Davis meeting JFK, after he won the Heisman. Kennedy was in New York that weekend, and sent for Davis. Imagine what it was like for a kid from Elmira, the first kid in his family to attend college, to meet JFK in person. Then of course, the movie pulls at everyone's heartstrings, as Davis becomes sick with Leukemia, never gets to play next to Jim Brown, and then passes away at the age of 23. Susan and Peggy went through an entire box of Kleenex. But I was probably as moved as anyone; for me, the Ernie Davis story is the saddest sports story ever. Ever.
But in all this reminiscing last night I recalled one Saturday afternoon, maybe in '60 or '61, when we were playing touch football after returning home from Archibold. That's what we always did when we were kids. We'd go to the ball game, and then afterward, we'd all be playing football somewhere in the neighborhood, usually Animal's yard. So while we're playing, Chipper shows up, and tells us all to look at something. And he pulls about a pound of dirt and grass out of his jacket pocket. We all said, "What the hell is that?" "Ernie Davis stepped on this grass!" Chipper has taken some of the Archibold sod home with him, because Davis had trod on that piece of turf, after the game, as the players were walking off the field, and bunches of kids our age ran after them begging for chinstraps. I don't know if Chipper saved that turf, but seeing The Express brought me right back to those days.
posted by pops | 6:15 PM
1 Comments:
David, thank you so much for remembering that moment with the piece of turf - that would be like me to do that. One of my favorite memories from my childhood was playing touch football at Animal's yard. If my memory serves me well, Bruce and I were a deadly pass-catch combination.
I also have a very clear memory of shaking hands with Ernie Davis, I believe it was at a JCC sports banquet. While I, of course was star-struck shakings hands with my hero, I remember clearly his smile and thinking, this is a very, very good person.
I saw "The Express" two weeks ago in a theater in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. There were only about five people in the theater. I will admit that my eyes teared up about five times in the movie, but the entire moved me like no other, as our childhoods were so tied up in SU football. The only home game I did not attend between 1959 and 1966, was November 17, 1962. It was the day of my Bar Mitzvah and my parents wanted me to rest before the party - we beat Georege Washington 35-0.
After the movie I went up to my fellow attendees, none of whom I knew, and I couldn't stop talking about how important Ernie Davis was to me and how I had shaken his hand.
These days, except for vacations, I don't read much outside of health policy, but I recently read a quote from the writer Milan Kundera, who observed that the word nostalgia, translated more closely from its Greek derivative would read: "Suffering caused by the unappeased desire to return." You know, I wouldn't mind being 11 years old and playing a game of touch football at Animal's on a Saturday afternoon. Thanks for taking us back there.
ps: And yes, it bothered me that they changed the score of the SU-Texas game to 22-14, for draamtic effect (as I'm sure you remember the final score being 23-14).
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