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We Won't Forget  A staff artist's impression of a glorious sports photo of John Isner's unforgettable victory moment at Wimbledon. |
In The Week That Was:
A TV Sports Jambalaya
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
Sunday June 20 to Thursday June 24
US Open Golf...Graeme McDowell…BP oil…Baseball…ESPN 1…Wimbledon… Roger Federer ...General Stanley McChrystal…President Obama…General David Petraeus…ESPN 2…John Isner-Nicolas Mahut 1…World Cup…England-Slovenia…USA-Algeria…Landon Donovan…ESPN U…Isner-Mahut 2…Jimmy Rollins…Mariano Rivera…Isner-Mahut 3.
It was the week the TV screen coruscated with sports of all sort, a phantasmagoria of golf balls, tennis balls, baseballs, soccer balls--runs, smashes, hits, runs, goals, points. All this in a dizzy whirl in the midst of machinations of high political drama involving generals and a President. The week had started with the U.S. Open golf tournament, Sunday June 20, and was still going strong when this was written on Thursday, the 24th.
ESPN ruled.
The Yankees beat the Mets…Graeme McDowell would not permit any heroics by Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson…Roger Federer came back from a two-set deficit in the first round at Wimbledon….Jimmy Rollins hit a two-run walkoff homer for the Phillies…The Yankees remarkable Mariano Rivera had three men on base with none out in the ninth inning but got out of the jam with two pop-outs and a strikeout…The damn oil belched and belched oil into the Gulf…President Obama spoke at the White House, flanked by his Afghanistan war henchmen…Landon Donovan scored a later-than-late goal for U.S. glory in the World Cup…Isner and Mahut hit aces on and on and on into a third day at Wimbledon. Even the Queen watching Andy Murray came up on the ESPN screen.
All this didn’t quite happen in that order, but there is no order when surrealism takes over.
I had hoped to settle into the comfort of the TV hearth watching the World Cup, learning a few things about soccer by reading the American Boswell of soccer, George Vecsey of the Times--with added help from my friend Steve Melville, the onetime premier goalie for his grammar school team in Connecticut.
Some of my World Cup notes: I am happy to see that most of the players shake hands with their opponents and the officials before the matches…England star Wayne Rooney is one of only two England players who don’t mouth “God Save the Queen"….The noise from the vuvuzelas-horns that is--is as annoying as a horde of motorcycles…The announcers are excited that New Zealand has scored its first ever goal in the World Cup; there is Cup history at almost every turn….Some juicy names of the past and present turn up: Zinedine Zidane, Zlatko Zahovic, Herculez Gomez.
I wonder why the goalies wear different uniforms from teammates. Friend Steve Melville says, “I’ve always assumed it had to do with the goalie being the only player allowed to use his hands in play. You can imagine how hard it might be to tell what is really going on in one of those corner-kick scrums if the goalie was in the same uniform as everyone else.”
I think it is a mistake for ESPN not to use an American announcer during play as a surrogate for unknowing non-soccer fans. Announcers could help viewers immensely if they used uniform numbers when calling out names of players. And I can do without struggling to understand the Scottish announcer.
Americans are not impressed by soccer artistry because the best soccer players can’t do as much with their feet as American basketball players can do with their hands. For me little of consequence happens in the back-and-forth tedium of so much soccer action. So the announcers make a big deal of any good pass or attempted shot. When Jermain DeFoe scores England’s only goal in its victory over Slovenia, we see three immediate replays, and five more before the end of the half. And a few more during the half-time review. Replays are the salvation of soccer.
As I watched with Steve Melville he smiled at my discomfort when goals were disallowed by calls of “off-side.’’ “The offside rules must go,” I said time and again. And I would not allow the clock to run continuously during delays. I would put in a basketball-like clock and cut the game to 60 honest minutes. Melville smiled again.
Still, the pageantry in the arenas, the nationalism and patriotism that don’t turn ugly grew on me during the week. I would dare say that if 32 nations entered a tiddly-winks World Cup and advanced from round to round amidst pageantry, with countrymen cheering them on, it, too, would take hold on cynics. I won’t say this to George Vecsey, though.
The ESPNs provided an extraordinary Wednesday. Here is Vecsey in the Times describing the dramatic extra-period goal that enabled the U.S. to advance to the next round:
“[Goal keeper] Tim Howard threw the ball upfield, and the fleet Donovan caught up with it at midfield in full strike, racing into Algerian territory. After a few wide-open steps, Donovan flicked the ball to the right to Jozy Altidore, the Haitian-American, who banged into the center to Clint Dempsey, who grew up playing with his Mexican friends in the dusty fields near the border in Texas. Dempsey tapped the ball at the keeper, who could not hold on to it, and there was Donovan to bang it home at 90:45.” [two minutes and 15 seconds from the actual end of play].
This was the greatest victory ever for the U.S. in the World Cup. Celebrations from Pretoria to Peoria. For sure we would expect that nothing could rival the World Cup drama of the U.S. surviving with last-second heroics. No way.
But at Wimbledon, almost at the same time, Isler and Mahut were battling in the fifth set on the way to the longest game in tennis history. Eleven hours and five minutes of play over three days by two guys admirable for the respect they showed for each other. Back and forth they went, Tuesday to Thursday-ace, winner, ace, error, ace, winner…,It was exhausting for the players, sometimes exhausting, excruciating, even giddy for TV viewers. After awhile the the gabble of the announcers passed into the ether.
On this remarkable Wednesday they had entered the perilous territory of Wimbledon’s form of sadism, a fifth set without a tie break.
The American Isler and Frenchman Mahut
probably were no more punch drunk than viewers by the time play
was called Wednesday night at 59-all. Then, on Thursday it took
an hour and five minutes and 19 more games before John Isner
prevailed. The scorecard for the historic 11-hour and five minute
epic would read, 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, and then--a separate line
for this:
70 games to 68
The mind reeled.
©2010 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted June 28, 2010.
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