3:33 Sports Shorts

The rain season in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Thunderclouds obstruct the northern mountains. It is as if they’ve disappeared from earth, and the ancient scholars were right: the world is flat. The wind picks up. Palms sway like dancing fingers. Litter scatters across tarred pavements. And though the city speaks in rumbles and horns, the wind roars over every sound. 

It’s a strange day to be at a driving range near the airport and mall, a busy district of Chiang Mai. The driving range is a hundred yards long; only wedges are allowed. An awning shelters us from the weather bubbling and boiling above.

After front page photos in The Kansas City Star

1. October 29, 2014

Alex Gordon’s hands crossed atop a tar-smeared helmet. The once and future captain, held up and halted. Smudge of ruddy dirt on his right hip and above the letters over his scapula. Muscles taut in the neck, downturned in front of a wall of blue-clad faces. Cinderella on the front stoop with broken glass in her hands.

In my seat on the third base line I am surrounded by children. I want to save them but it’s too late. They’ve already seen the field. They’ve already watched the first inning and a half. Some are so far gone they’re keeping score. Is any of this my fault?

Say the runner on first takes off with the pitch. Is it my fault if this move alone creates a joy bordering on depravity? Say the hitter hits the ball behind the runner into right and the runner makes it all the way to third and depravity becomes a gulf of immorality. We were all innocent when we came through the turnstiles. 

But we organized our pain onto this green lawn. We squandered fine night air on suffering. We pushed children into wickedness. Now we want the runner to come home. We want the beauty that corrupted us to bring salvation. 

“An Arabian will take care of its owner as no other horse will, for it has not only been raised to physical perfection, but has been instilled with a spirit of loyalty unparalleled by that of any other breed.”  American Arabian Association

Corine and I watched as Dad seemed to be dragged to death along our road, Nonpareil.  We stood on the damp pavement, Dad twisting while Nikkia reared, hoofing the sky above the camas. The heels of his black rubber boots dug into the soft, sloppy gravel, leaving tracks that waved back and forth like he was water skiing.  It almost looked fun.  There was a pain in my chest.  It was love.  Love for Nikkia.   Dad was not letting go of the rope.

His body is shot through with tension. He trains his ears on the woods. I look through his ears, through the bare branches and staggered trunks to see what he is sensing. A squirrel darts along the snow. His ears flicker, head lowers, and his breath clouds out. My knees are snugged into the saddle knee rolls. I shake my shoulders. I murmur something to him; his ear twitches in response. He is bold. When I accept this motion as part of my own, I too am bold. I press my heels to his side and tip forward into a gallop. Snow crunches underfoot. We are a glimmer through the dark trunks of the forest.

I feel weak right now, flabby and fat, truly a sack of potatoes like Mr. B. always threatened.  I don’t dance anymore, and when I do it’s wrong: I give myself a short barre, stepping off my bad leg as soon as it starts to complain; I slip back into the easy, languid movements of Javanese dance, tricking my muscles into doing something, tricking my body into thinking it’s strong.  I never do center combinations.  Somehow I’ve become this person who doesn’t dance anymore.  If I sit too long, I feel it.  If I eat too much, I feel it.

Today's pair of Sports Shorts center on one of the most physically demanding endeavors of all: ballet. D. Thomas's piece below focuses on the physical and mental perfection that ballet demands of its practitioners, while Zoë McLaughlin's "After Ballet" contemplates what happens when you leave dancing behind.

Consider the power of the foot: pushing against the ground, elevating the heel, fourteen phlanges pressing up to pointes or propelling one hundred, two hundred pounds of flesh into flight—two feet, three feet; high jumpers might fly seven or eight feet up—. And landing: sink into the metatarsals, absorb the impact through the twenty-six foot bones, and plié when you land.

This week's final Sports Short comes from Demetri Raftopoulos. It's about Greeks and Colombians finding shared community through soccer in Long Island. Hope you enjoy! And check back next week for more Sports Shorts.

I walked out of the catering hall holding a soccer ball. New Hyde Park Wildcat logos were printed around the white of the ball; the first team I had ever played for at five years old, when positions were irrelevant and every player attacked together. My coach in middle school called it herd-ball.

The other valets followed me to the parking lot, unbuttoning their white collared uniforms. Summer had yet to relinquish its hold on Long Island, now early in October. Waiters emerged from the back of the catering hall, as we appeared from the front, meeting in the middle of the long, wide, now empty, lot. They removed their black suit jackets and vests, fighting the unexpected humidity.

It’s a sufferer’s game, designed for Protestants and folks who get buried by snowstorms, and I come back to it week after week.

I thread a beautiful ball into the 1-3 pocket and instead of exploding the rack like it should, the ball slices the head pin high, causing it to helicopter around the left side and ricochet off the sidewall taking out only the corner 7. Now I’m looking at the left diamond, 2-4-5-8, a common leave that, since the pins are in a cluster, should be an easily convertible spare, but which I will not convert because to do so I need to spray the 2-4-5 triangle just so while keeping the ball on line to take out the 8 pin in the back.

The game is candlepin bowling. It is what we play in New England because we like to torture our souls for fun.

Today we bring you two posts about a little-known variation on bowling... candlepin bowling! It's much more difficult to excel at than it's more popular cousin, with the highest recorded score being 245 out of a possible 300. E. Thomas Finan touches on this and more in his piece below, and Neil Serven waxes poetic on the maddening "physics" of the sport here. Enjoy!

The imposing outlines of Puritan divines can be seen in the oiled lanes of candlepin bowling—a sport of human frailty and the austere wonder of difficulty.  Candlepin began in Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1880s, and New England has served as a citadel for the sport ever since.