love and football.
The first game I've been able to watch live in approximately a month, and it just had to be the dire one. No matter, the game on Sunday is much more important.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how goals are scored. Not even the goal itself, but the final pass, the point of perfect harmony. And not the mechanics of it, either, but how it feels. I've never scored a goal in my life, so I couldn't say for sure. But watching it makes me think of falling in love. Two hearts beating in unison, yearning and courtship rewarded with a very real, very loud crash. This is not an original thought, but it's my current obsession, so I'm sharing it.
I thought about it when Stevie touched the ball up for Keane today. I thought about it on Sunday, when one of the Maroonies took on three defenders down the left, somehow forced his way past all of them, and sent in a beacon of a ball -- and yes -- there was someone on the end of it, to receive it, and to match the first man's fervor with his own.
Also, I meant to do this long ago, but I suppose it's a rather timeless meme.
Not pictured: Among the Thugs (Bill Buford, left it in S.F.), Inverting the Pyramid (Jonathan Wilson, coming soon, I hope!), Summerland (Michael Chabon, children's baseball fantasy, I'm currently reading this so I forgot to include it in the picture), Men with Balls (Drew Magary, should be arriving anytime now, no seriously, today), and The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac (FreeDarko, drool, it's my early Christmas present to myself).
1. The Samurai Way of Baseball, about Ichiro, cultural differences, and the global game. Originally bought for my Sports, Society and Science class. I will read the whole thing someday, I promise.
2. The Physics of Baseball, self-explanatory, also for the class, although I don't think I've even opened this thing.
3. The Natural, Bernard Malamud. One of the greatest sports novels of all time. The opening sentence is one of my favorites, and it's just a fascinating, unapologetic, and honest piece of fiction (if such a thing exists).
4. The Great American Novel, Philip Roth. Another great baseball novel, although more for its vivid world building, wild parody, and extreme characterizations.
5. Sportsex, Toby Miller. Short but dense read on sexual identity and sports. I couldn't take this book out in public because of the cover.
6. The Big Show, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. These two represent the pinnacle of American sports reporting, but perhaps even more importantly, they allegedly inspired the creation of Sports Night. Bonus points for leaving ESPN with a gaping hole in their wake.
7. God Save the Fan, Will "Deadspin" Leitch. I interviewed the man, wrote a review of the book, and then took two buses and a train out to the suburbs so he could sign my copy, so I'm obviously biased. But really, Leitch has a refreshing take on sports fandom in general, and his long-windedness is thankfully divided up into short chapters.
8. Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger. This is the best and most startling investigative piece of sports journalism/literature in my recent memory. Watching the movie or the television series is no substitute for reading the source, to be honest, even though the adaptations are amazing in their own way.
9. El fútbol a sol y sombra, Galeano. A friend gave me this original Spanish version as a birthday gift a few years back, and sometimes I take it out and read it softly to myself, even if I don't understand all the words. The poetry of this transcends linguistic boundaries.
10. The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup. Graduation present from my old roommate. Got through it pretty quickly, forgot about it pretty quickly. There are several essays in the collection that are rather striking, however, and worth rereads when the fancy strikes.
11. Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby. No need to introduce or describe this one, I presume.
12. The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt. If my as-yet-unfinished tribute to this book hasn't convinced you to purchase and pore over it yet, you're probably a lost cause. :(
13. 43 Years with the Same Bird, Brian Reade. I loved this book from the first page to the last. I never expected to love it even more than I love Fever Pitch, but I've found this realization surprisingly easy to cope with, because Reade is Liverpool through and through. It's a simple affinity that I feel for this book.
14. Anfield of Dreams, Neil Dunkin. Purchased this at the recommendation of Paul Tomkins, but I tried to read it directly after Reade's novel, and exhausted myself of sports literature about 100 pages in. It's yet another memoir by a Liverpool fan who experienced the glory years and lived to tell the tale, but as long as I'm a fan of this team, I'll likely never tire of these things.
15. Faith of Our Fathers, Alan Edge. See above, but this one deals mostly with the sports-as-religion phenomenon. Nothing really extraordinary about this book aside from the usual pangs of commiseration and identification.
16. Ian Rush's autobio. I unearthed this on my last visit back to S.F., but haven't gotten to it yet. Le sigh.
17. Dynasty, Paul Tomkins. The newest addition to my growing shrine to PT, although like Rushie, Shanks is still waiting patiently for my rapt absorption.
18. Above Us Only Sky, Paul Tomkins. He's retracted a lot of what he wrote in this book, after last season's fiasco, but it remains an emblem of what the Hicks-Gillett ownership could have been.
19. The Red Review, Paul Tomkins. This book has one of my favorite covers ever, and besides that, I loved the integration of statistical analysis. It's something you don't see often in books about football, and I appreciated the attempt at quantifying an entire season's results and performances, even if the effectiveness was mixed.
20. Red Revival: Rafa Benitez's Liverpool Revolution, Paul Tomkins. Your basic PT-caliber review of the 05-06 season.
21. Golden Past, Red Future, Paul Tomkins. Oh, that beautiful Champions League season, captured in passionate, gritty detail by my favorite Liverpool writer (COULD YOU TELL?). My first PT purchase, and one of my treasures.
22. The Rough Guide to Liverpool. I think this happened because I needed like $4 more to qualify for free shipping on Amazon, so I just threw this in there. It's an old-old-old copy, with like Emile Heskey in it, so I've never gave it more than a flip-through.
23. The Football Factory, John King. Had to read this (along with the two baseball novels) for my Male Fantasy Sports class last year, which ended hilariously for me when I pretty much stopped dead in my tracks and refused to write the final paper -- which was on Fever Pitch, of all fucking books. I don't know my brain shut off. I think I was too afraid of what it would mean to treat Hornby with anything less than reverence, especially when my professor kept trying to characterize the entire novel as a raging mass of liberal white guilt. Anyway, The Football Factory reads a bit like Palahniuk but overall it was a decent romp.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how goals are scored. Not even the goal itself, but the final pass, the point of perfect harmony. And not the mechanics of it, either, but how it feels. I've never scored a goal in my life, so I couldn't say for sure. But watching it makes me think of falling in love. Two hearts beating in unison, yearning and courtship rewarded with a very real, very loud crash. This is not an original thought, but it's my current obsession, so I'm sharing it.
I thought about it when Stevie touched the ball up for Keane today. I thought about it on Sunday, when one of the Maroonies took on three defenders down the left, somehow forced his way past all of them, and sent in a beacon of a ball -- and yes -- there was someone on the end of it, to receive it, and to match the first man's fervor with his own.
Also, I meant to do this long ago, but I suppose it's a rather timeless meme.
Not pictured: Among the Thugs (Bill Buford, left it in S.F.), Inverting the Pyramid (Jonathan Wilson, coming soon, I hope!), Summerland (Michael Chabon, children's baseball fantasy, I'm currently reading this so I forgot to include it in the picture), Men with Balls (Drew Magary, should be arriving anytime now, no seriously, today), and The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac (FreeDarko, drool, it's my early Christmas present to myself).
1. The Samurai Way of Baseball, about Ichiro, cultural differences, and the global game. Originally bought for my Sports, Society and Science class. I will read the whole thing someday, I promise.
2. The Physics of Baseball, self-explanatory, also for the class, although I don't think I've even opened this thing.
3. The Natural, Bernard Malamud. One of the greatest sports novels of all time. The opening sentence is one of my favorites, and it's just a fascinating, unapologetic, and honest piece of fiction (if such a thing exists).
4. The Great American Novel, Philip Roth. Another great baseball novel, although more for its vivid world building, wild parody, and extreme characterizations.
5. Sportsex, Toby Miller. Short but dense read on sexual identity and sports. I couldn't take this book out in public because of the cover.
6. The Big Show, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. These two represent the pinnacle of American sports reporting, but perhaps even more importantly, they allegedly inspired the creation of Sports Night. Bonus points for leaving ESPN with a gaping hole in their wake.
7. God Save the Fan, Will "Deadspin" Leitch. I interviewed the man, wrote a review of the book, and then took two buses and a train out to the suburbs so he could sign my copy, so I'm obviously biased. But really, Leitch has a refreshing take on sports fandom in general, and his long-windedness is thankfully divided up into short chapters.
8. Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger. This is the best and most startling investigative piece of sports journalism/literature in my recent memory. Watching the movie or the television series is no substitute for reading the source, to be honest, even though the adaptations are amazing in their own way.
9. El fútbol a sol y sombra, Galeano. A friend gave me this original Spanish version as a birthday gift a few years back, and sometimes I take it out and read it softly to myself, even if I don't understand all the words. The poetry of this transcends linguistic boundaries.
10. The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup. Graduation present from my old roommate. Got through it pretty quickly, forgot about it pretty quickly. There are several essays in the collection that are rather striking, however, and worth rereads when the fancy strikes.
11. Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby. No need to introduce or describe this one, I presume.
12. The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt. If my as-yet-unfinished tribute to this book hasn't convinced you to purchase and pore over it yet, you're probably a lost cause. :(
13. 43 Years with the Same Bird, Brian Reade. I loved this book from the first page to the last. I never expected to love it even more than I love Fever Pitch, but I've found this realization surprisingly easy to cope with, because Reade is Liverpool through and through. It's a simple affinity that I feel for this book.
14. Anfield of Dreams, Neil Dunkin. Purchased this at the recommendation of Paul Tomkins, but I tried to read it directly after Reade's novel, and exhausted myself of sports literature about 100 pages in. It's yet another memoir by a Liverpool fan who experienced the glory years and lived to tell the tale, but as long as I'm a fan of this team, I'll likely never tire of these things.
15. Faith of Our Fathers, Alan Edge. See above, but this one deals mostly with the sports-as-religion phenomenon. Nothing really extraordinary about this book aside from the usual pangs of commiseration and identification.
16. Ian Rush's autobio. I unearthed this on my last visit back to S.F., but haven't gotten to it yet. Le sigh.
17. Dynasty, Paul Tomkins. The newest addition to my growing shrine to PT, although like Rushie, Shanks is still waiting patiently for my rapt absorption.
18. Above Us Only Sky, Paul Tomkins. He's retracted a lot of what he wrote in this book, after last season's fiasco, but it remains an emblem of what the Hicks-Gillett ownership could have been.
19. The Red Review, Paul Tomkins. This book has one of my favorite covers ever, and besides that, I loved the integration of statistical analysis. It's something you don't see often in books about football, and I appreciated the attempt at quantifying an entire season's results and performances, even if the effectiveness was mixed.
20. Red Revival: Rafa Benitez's Liverpool Revolution, Paul Tomkins. Your basic PT-caliber review of the 05-06 season.
21. Golden Past, Red Future, Paul Tomkins. Oh, that beautiful Champions League season, captured in passionate, gritty detail by my favorite Liverpool writer (COULD YOU TELL?). My first PT purchase, and one of my treasures.
22. The Rough Guide to Liverpool. I think this happened because I needed like $4 more to qualify for free shipping on Amazon, so I just threw this in there. It's an old-old-old copy, with like Emile Heskey in it, so I've never gave it more than a flip-through.
23. The Football Factory, John King. Had to read this (along with the two baseball novels) for my Male Fantasy Sports class last year, which ended hilariously for me when I pretty much stopped dead in my tracks and refused to write the final paper -- which was on Fever Pitch, of all fucking books. I don't know my brain shut off. I think I was too afraid of what it would mean to treat Hornby with anything less than reverence, especially when my professor kept trying to characterize the entire novel as a raging mass of liberal white guilt. Anyway, The Football Factory reads a bit like Palahniuk but overall it was a decent romp.