Thursday, November 14, 2013

Dead Solid Perfect



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.