Sweetness and light

A milestone causes reflection on the positives in sports

Somewhere in the bowels of National Public Radio, someone is keeping score, and I have thereby been advised that this column for CNNSI.com is based on my 1000th commentary for NPR. This is quite astounding, especially since I have never repeated myself. I have never repeated myself.

I began these sports seances in February of 1980. Don't you hate people who dress up what a time was like back then by telling you who the president was and what the Dow Jones industrial averages were? Boy, I do. But I thought you would like to know that Jimmy Carter was president when I started and the Dow Jones average was 790. Also, Pittsburgh had just beaten the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl. Yes, it was so long ago, Los Angeles had a football team.

Enough. Isn't it awful when people reach some kind of anniversary and spend all their time looking back on purportedly better days past? I think so. I would rather take this excuse to talk about the things in sports that make me happy, right now -- especially since I probably don't do that enough.

I carry one quotation in my wallet. No, it is not, "When the going gets tough the tough get going." It is from Jonathan Swift, 1703, when there was no president and the Dow Jones average was zero. Mr. Swift wrote: "Instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light." I believe that this is a thought all journalists might aspire to, even if they can only rarely pull it off.

Well, I like playoffs, the more the merrier. I like Donovan McNabb. He is so infectious. I think he is my absolute favorite athlete right now. I like Brett Favre, too. I like beach volleyball. I like Chris McCarron riding a horse in a big race. I like Charles Barkley because he is so politically incorrect. Never shut up, Charles. You too, Mark Cuban, the one owner with some moxie. I like having a Pimm's Cup at Wimbledon and watching players dressed in white play on God's green grass, because it is all so quaint and impractical. In a sport full of power, I like Ichiro and Greg Maddux, because they are cunning and crafty.

The best place to be in sports is still the backside of a race track, when the horses are working out at dawn and everybody has, guaranteed, a full card of winners this afternoon. I like Jason Kidd and the New Jersey Nets. Yes, the New Jersey Nets. I like them. I think I like Phil Mickelson. I know I want him to win. I like Mario Lemieux. I like Geri Diorio, who has been my radio engineer for 11 years now. I like Picabo Street. Whenever I see it, I like Scott Ostler's sports column in the San Francisco Chronicle. I like bowling shoes.

Most people will be shocked to hear this, but I like the World Cup -- well, so long as I'm watching it in a bar in a European country that is represented in the World Cup. I like Monica Seles -- probably more than anybody else -- for what she endured with courage and grace. I still like Nike commercials and the seventh-inning stretch. I never thought I could possibly like a sports talk show, but I like Pardon The Interruption on ESPN, with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Let's not get sappy, but I really do like Red Sox and Cubs fans. I like Rick Majerus, Derek Jeter, Mary Carillo, Emmitt Smith, Gustavo Kuertin, Sammy Sosa and the cute little Bichon Frise who won the Westminster Kennel Club championship last year. I like seeing an America's Cup yacht sail back into the harbor at Auckland under an afternoon sun. I like it when the champions pick up the Stanley Cup and hold it high.

There is still a lot of sweetness and light in sports, which is, I guess, why I am still here. And now, ladies and gentlemen, for my 1,001st . . .

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

 

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