Having just seen the documentary film Glickman, I found myself reflecting on the influences sports have had on me. I
have written about it in these blog entries, but more subtly than I realized. My years of teaching writing taught me that
we often put words on paper that carry our feeling or meaning “in disguise.”
For over thirty years I asked students
what a phrase might mean, and they knew very clearly what they wanted to say -- but they hadn’t done it. “That’s what I meant,”
is different than having actually written it to convey their intended meaning.
I told them that when they wrote about something I didn’t want to read
about that something as much as I wanted to read about how they connected to
that something. I didn’t want to know if they won or lost, I wanted to know how
they felt about it. If they scored the winning goal or won the math olympics, that
was no different than giving up the winning goal or losing the math olympics
unless I could, in some way, feel their reaction through their writing.
And for eighth graders (or anyone),
that was often a tough task, so to demonstrate the process I usually wrote a
poem as they watched and talked them through the process and as we collaborated
on the piece their most important task was to understand how I felt about what I was writing…to sense
my emotion and the impact of the moment.
So, in thinking about Marty Glickman and
how his life unfolded after a painful sport-based event in that life, I recalled
this poem and the event it reflects on and the inevitability of life changing
and flowing moment to moment, and I understand that from my brief, painful,
sport-based moment, sprang the moments and the life that followed
Dead Solid
Perfect
In my
classroom, in a beautiful 1930s building,
a seven
foot wooden pole serves to open the
windows.
I roll it in
my hands, stare deep into the grain.
It might be
a Louisville Slugger,
Model D115, 34 inches, 32 ounces,
Syracuse University
branded on the barrel.
I stand at
the plate,
game tied, two
out, bottom of the ninth,
winning run
on second, my heart pounding.
The
All-American pitcher, who last year cracked my rib with a fastball,
throws that
same fastball, waist high on the outside,
to the spot
where my swing is just right.
The contact
-- dead solid perfect --
the
nothingness of a ball hit on the sweet spot,
no sting, no
vibration,
just the
bat-on-ball sound of wood on leather,
a flawless
marriage under the laws of physics.
A
white-tailed rocket streaks toward the gap in right
the winning
run on the way to the plate,
until the
right fielder, at full sprint, dives,
and as
leather meets leather,
changes the
story,
turns my
heroics into his.
I stare into
the distance,
everything
out of focus,
my perfect
moment cut short.
I rest my
hands on my knees, remember
that my mother
would be ashamed if I swore,
that my father
would expect me to show some class.
I inhale
deeply to slow my heart,
turn toward
my spot at third base,
then walk to
the front of my classroom.
*****************************
Coda: This was my last college game as a player -- the loss kept us out of the NCAA tournament.
Coda: This was my last college game as a player -- the loss kept us out of the NCAA tournament.
