Mid-June, summer is bearing down, and it's well past time to cease tilting at windmills and just let Ken Griffey Jr be. He's earned as much . . . and maybe it's not too late to start catching up to the fastball again, maybe it's not too late to put time's passage at bay for a few months. From Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes:
In late September Frank Gifford once again began to engage me. Having dropped his pugnacity by admitting that "it" -- on his back on a stretcher -- "had been a hard way to go out," he had the year before come out of retirement; after a year's layoff spent nursing his concussion, he had had a better year than anyone had a right to expect, a season which had encouraged him to play still another.
When it came time for him to leave finally, if not to the adulatory roar of the crowd, I was sure he wanted to walk out of the stadium with his legs under him and his wits functioning. In the same way that I yearned to be able to go from this place without rage, he wanted to go out without the bitter memory of that Bednarik tackle. He was thirty-three now; at times his speed and his timing seemed unreservedly gone; and watching him I began to wonder if it weren't his destiny to go out on his back, more remembered for having been the victim of that Tartarian tackle than for anything else. Because he was so ungraciously trying to negate time's passing, I couldn't feel all that distressed for him. What did distress and send me back to him with a passion was the glibness with which fans dismissed him.
As the season got into its third and fourth weeks, from down the bar I heard strangers in what came to be a continual conversation about the Giants, and whenver Gifford's name came up, I immediately heard, spoken with disarming and chilling certainty, "He's had it!" Had I known any of the men and had they not been such rugged-looking bastards, fishing guides and farmers and construction workers, I would have turned to them and snapped, "Aw, for Christ's sake, let him be. He wants to go out like a man!" I'm sorry now I hadn't the guts to say as much.
The following Sunday, weaving full speed down the middle of the field, Gifford reached back between the two defenders flanking him, even as he was losing his balance took a Tittle pass over his left shoulder, toppled furiously over in a forward somersault, and ended flat on his back in the end zone, the ball still clutched precariously to his stomach. It was an artful, an astounding, a humbling catch; and I can't say whether it or the studied avoidance of his name at the bar the next week pleased me more.
Hunched up on the edge of one of the apartment's leather chairs, I watched him intently from that week on. The story became somewhat absurd. Week after week he made one after another catch more incredible than its predecessor; and in the final week of the season he made that one-handed catch against the Pittsburgh Steelers which gave the Giants their divisional title and sent them into the NFL championship game. I laughed with glee. Oh, how I laughed and jumped up and down, exclaiming, "Oh, good, Frank! Good! Very good indeed! I mean, swell! Really swell!"
One had to hand it to the guy, his gift for living out his dreams. As much as for any other reason, I was jubilant because of the irony. By that time my own naive dream of coming to terms with home had already gone sour.
Tags: A Fan's Notes, Frederick Exley, Frank Gifford
Posts
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment