Jonathan Grimes

Hey look! Jimmye Laycock is giving a six-part lecture on the history of the wheel route next door!

The William and Mary fan-police delightedly rush out of the room.

Hi. Can we talk? I’m sorry I had to do that earlier. The truth is, there is no lecture on the history of the wheel route. I made that up. It’s not that I wanted to lie to you. Heck, it’s not even that I think Laycock is a bad coach. I’d rank him second among current WM coaches (Chris Norris is first). I just wanted to talk about Jonathan Grimes a little bit and needed them out of the room.

Not JONATHAN GRIMES®. Jonathan Grimes. The one who was William and Mary’s tailback last season. I want to talk about the fact that last year was probably his worst year at William and Mary.

Look at the stats. He rushed for his lowest total in three years, only 887 yards on 207 carries. Yes, I know he essentially missed two games (North Carolina and Maine). But his yards per carry were about a half a yard less than his sophomore season, a yard and a half less than his freshman season. His average per game was twenty yards less than his junior season. I mean, his longest run of the season only went for 30 yards. The previous two seasons Grimes’ longest runs were for more than 60 yards. I know its bordering on heresy to say this, but I feel like Jonathan Grimes wasn’t that good last season.

Tangier

I call that trip “The weekend we all became beatniks.” From my hotel window, I could see a cluster of pristine white houses slowly descend along the landscape toward the Strait of Gibraltar.

In the distance, across the Strait, I could see Spain and the mountains. I had just arrived in Tangier, Morocco.

While studying in the country, my friends and I had decided to take a weekend trip. We stayed in El Muniria, the preferred hotel of William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. Our room was where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch.

We didn’t have much money. We knew our destination but had no idea how to get there and no plan for once we got there. We left class early with just some bread and one hardboiled egg to sustain the six of us through our trek to Tangier. It was oppressively hot and the train was leaving in 10 minutes.

With the prospect of catching a cab in Meknes being undeniably low, we enlisted the help of a local to hitch us a ride. Without thinking about the danger of getting in an unmarked car with a stranger, we hopped in and told him to step on it. The sense of escapade to experience the unknown overwhelmed traditional thinking. On this trip, it felt like we were writing our own rules.

1986 Chrysler LeBaron

There are over 30 games left, they’re one game back and the torture is far from over.

…

Some cars on the freeway have no business being on the road. Their fenders drag and spark, exhaust billows out of their tailpipes and the paint peels away in flakes. They’re toxic, polluted vehicles with drivers who are just as disgusted by the spectacle as the schmucks crawling behind them in the fast lane; left to chew the carbon monoxide as it putt-putts slowly toward home.

Of course, driving that burnt out shell has its perks. There is no agonizing over little nicks and dings. If you wreck it, you walk away knowing you probably rode that car for as long as it could possibly go. The bar is set so low that when it unexpectedly kicks into fourth gear driving up an on-ramp, you can’t help but be a little overjoyed.

When that car finally dies though—man, what a bummer. The 2011 San Francisco Giants are a shell of the team that won the World Series last year. I’m hoping they can at least take us home

A Quarterback of No Importance

This post is the first of what will be a series in which Crim Del Harris writers, ever striving to push the envelope in possibly nonsensical and obscure ways, consider the perspectives of classical writers on the modern sports world. So it is with this background that Oscar Wilde happened upon a scene recently in Denver…

…

The quarterback is the creator of beautiful things.

It is the fan, not the game itself, whom the quarterback really mirrors.

There is no such thing as a moral or amoral quarterback. Passes are well thrown or badly thrown. That is all.

All quarterbacks are useless.

The film room smelled of lilacs, freshly cut and hanging from the window sill near the dry erase board. From his Persian leather lounge chair in the corner where he lounged languidly, Kyle Orton could barely sniff the honey-scented blossoms that filled the room only a scant few minutes earlier.

Hope

“To hope, and not be impatient, is really to believe.”

— George Meredith

That a semi-obscure Victorian poet could so succinctly capture the essence of the ever-evolving modern sports fan speaks to the permanence of its makeup. George Meredith had likely never heard of the emerging game of base ball when he inked those words in 1871, but he did linger just long enough to possibly catch news of the Chicago Cubs’ last world championship before his death in 1909. While he knew nothing about modern sport, he would have fit neatly into the present culture of fandom for he understood the one characteristic that is both ubiquitous and immutable in at least the American classification of that genre: hope, or the unshakeable belief that a team’s future representatives will surely trump the current batch.

This is most neatly illustrated each August 15, a date which, on the sports calendar, formerly sat wholly empty. August 15 represents the deadline by which drafted baseball players must sign with their respective organizations, two months after MLB’s annual June entry draft. It has become a cat and mouse affair, in which agent and general manager circle each other warily, driven by the need to maximize value against the imperative to satisfy the client. Failure, when too frequent, means termination.

William and Mary

January 22, 1689. A Convention Parliament meets in London to discuss the next regent of England.

On one side of the aisle is William of Orange, later William III. Having recently invaded England and disposed of James II, William wanted sole power to reign as monarch over the English people. Opposed sit a group of loyalists who felt if James II could not be restored to the crown, the only suitable rejoinder would be to promote William’s wife Mary, daughter of James II, to the throne.

By February 6, a consensus is brokered. William and Mary would preside as joint regents over England under the condition that only William, alone, would hold regal power over the realm. Mary, for her part, is fine with the decision, “knowing my heart is not made for a kingdom and my inclination leads me to a retired quiet life.”

…

Two things never fail to shock me about Jimmye Laycock. First, he was the offensive coordinator at Clemson when the Tigers beat Ohio State in the 1978 Gator Bowl in the last game Woody Hayes would ever coach.

The second is this: in his thirty years at William and Mary, Laycock has a career playoff record of 6-9. He has won more than one playoff game in a season twice. By comparison, Villanova’s Andy Talley has an 8-8 career playoff record since 1985, including a national title. When Jim Tressell was at Youngstown State from 1986-2000, he had a playoff record of 23-6.

August in Pittsburgh

No one likes August and I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, so I can’t pretend to know what this must be like.

I can only imagine there are bugs. Big, mean, bloodsuckers that stick to your ankles and wrists and nibble you dry. I bet there’s a smell. Something like rotting mulch rising from the Allegheny—a Western Pennsylvania version of Carolina swamp water—where it isn’t polluted by toxic sludge like the Cuyahoga or rotting trash like the East River, but instead just a natural slime that coats everything it touches.

August heat must blanket PNC Park like a choleric fog, with an Old Testament mandate saying all lite beer must be warm by the time you sit down in its baked, clammy seats. The beautiful view of Pittsburgh’s skyline and the Allegheny River, which overpowered you when you first sat down, can’t matter by the time you hear “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and you stand up for the seventh inning stretch.

I have no idea though. There might not be bugs.

For those old enough to remember Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, the early years of Barry Bonds or even Bill Mazeroski’s World Series winning home run, this season must be even more painful than usual. Eighteen years of mediocrity gets comfortable.

I wouldn’t compare it to the sick, masochistic pleasure Cubs and (unfortunately, even now) Red Sox fans possess outwardly. Unlike fans of those teams, Pirates fans aren’t abrasive pricks, nor do they choose to root for unlikable teams with a knack for attracting blue-chip, underperforming talent. Maybe it’s not my place to judge, as I’ve never met a Pirates fan who was younger than 70.

Stagnation

At first glance, international soccer would seem to be the last refuge of the xenophobe. In few other contexts is it considered acceptable for the most genteel of Brits to intone combative verses celebrating the downing of World War II German bombers. The stereotypically neutral Swiss suddenly hate everybody. And Paraguayans morph into bellicose brawlers, particularly when hated Uruguay is involved. Even the impeccably mannered Japanese get involved, with nationalist chanting reverberating throughout a recent Asian Cup match against China.

Those tensions rapidly fade, however, when foreign players suddenly switch nationalities to suit up for a host nation. The United Arab Emirates—a society open in its pursuit of oil wealth, but regrettably despicable in its treatment of immigrant workers—was downright gleeful when Brazilian Alexandre Oliveira, a prolific striker who was an immigrant worker that just happened to play professional soccer, announced his intentions to suit up for Al Abyad. The Brazilian Alex has also found instant acceptance in another predominantly closed society, Japan, when featuring on the left side of the Japanese midfield. Throughout the world, players have switched nationalities like never before to maximize their international potential by flocking to weaker national sides—the most striking aspect of the oft-debated role of globalization in international sport.

Yet in many ways, the United States has existed apart from this construct. In others, it fully embodies it.

What does xenophobia mean for a much celebrated nation of immigrants? In a region in which the original inhabitants comprise 0.8% of the population, no single race is able to constitute more than a plurality, and 13% of citizens are born abroad?

These are questions without clear and direct answers. But they form the crucible into which a German steps as United States Men’s National Team head coach.

Manifest Destiny

For millions, soccer has always been a magical game. Perhaps its most attractive facet is how it reveals a certain outlook about the world. Baseball is not this way. The actual action in a baseball game is so isolated, and the offensive options so limited, that the action becomes robotic. Football, in its ever-evolving attempt to emulate warfare, has turned its players into soldiers and divisions on a battlefield. Their actions are heroic and brave but ultimately directed by someone else. Even basketball, the alleged improvisational jazz of sports, can become monotonous and derivative in the name of efficiency.

But soccer is different. The game is so long and demanding that we, as fans, get to see the personality of the players on the field manifest itself in their actions. English players are rugged if not foolhardy. Brazilians are dancers. Spanish players are tikki-takki wizards and Germans are Teutonic models of efficiency.

This was strongly evidenced in the events surrounding the United States women’s national team in the World Cup several weeks ago. Particularly the moment when Abby Wambach, long the frustrated, penultimate player in the world—the gritty and powerful runner-up to Marta’s grace and elegance, her resume lacking a World Cup title—managed an incredulous extra-time goal to force overtime versus Marta’s Brazilians.

American coach Pia Soundage gave the perfect description of Abby Wambach’s extra time goal versus Brazil. “I come from Sweden, and this American attitude, pulling everything together and bringing the best performance out of each other, that’s contagious,” Soundage said.

But it’s too bad most of us did not understand what she meant.

The Blacktop

The rhythm begins at four each Sunday, flowing out over the quiet neighborhood streets from the blacktop. It’s an outdoor court, and asphalt, so the familiar squeak of sneakers does not mingle with the grunts and dribbles of the players. Just bouncing basketballs, punctuated by the occasional clang of a bricked jumper. On this certain Sunday, the smothering heat cools the pace of the game to a languid crawl, every movement balanced against the desire for an economy of motion. Speech is a luxury in the afternoon’s dense humidity, and even trash talk is rare. The swish of the net is even less frequent.

Basketball is often compared to smooth jazz, but this iteration demonstrates the fickleness of that construct. Jazz musicians age gracefully, their craft maturing, becoming more enchanting with time. Wayne Shorter warming a smoky club late into his 70s. Basketball players creep ever upward, their spring and quickness fading as their paunches grow.

And these men were once basketball players, some time ago. Now they are lawyers, lobbyists and financial advisors, one doctor. But each Sunday afternoon they are basketball players. They are once again the Woodward High School Wildcats of 1974-75.

That Woodward High School no longer exists, it was folded into a nearby school in the 1980s and the building is now a middle school, is a fitting metaphor for these men’s basketball ability. They play as if they can still drain long three-pointers, turn their man in the lane for an easy backdoor layup, and sprint back to stifle a fast break with an emphatic block. They can’t.