The Other Sports

I began last week’s newsletter a tad pretentiously: “The season has begun. Yes, THE season. For the baseball season is THE season. Football, basketball, hockey–they’re all nice sports. But baseball is the national pastime. And even if one might actually enjoy watching other sports more…”

 

It’s lucky I added that last qualifying sentence, “And even if one might actually enjoy watching other sports more…” Because no sooner had the newsletter gone out than the NCAA men’s basketball tournament concluded with one its greatest final games ever, in which Marcus Paige of North Carolina hit an amazing shot with less than 5 seconds left to tie, only to be followed by a three-pointer at the buzzer by Kris Jenkins of Villanova to win. (Here’s the last minute and a half of action for you to watch, to remind yourself how spectacular it was.)

 

Meanwhile, the pro basketball season was winding up, featuring a truly extraordinary year from the Warriors’ Steph Curry (here’s a fine profile of Curry from yesterday’s Washington Post, by Sally Jenkins). Combine all of this with Irwin Stelzer’s terrific piece in the new issue, “The Sporting Life in New York: Hoop Memories,” and one could convince oneself of the case for basketball.

 

And then the Masters featured one of the greatest of many pretty remarkable final-day reversals in the history of that tournament, with the leader from the get-go, Jordan Spieth, taking a quadruple bogey on the 12th hole of the last round, and Danny Willett shooting a final-day 67 for the win. At 5:05 pm ET Sunday, Spieth was five shots ahead of Willett; by 5:48 pm, Willett had a three stroke lead. So golf has something to be said for it too, when it comes to the thrill of victory and agony of defeat.

 

I suppose I’ll just have to resolve in the future to be more open-minded in my occasional sports commentary? Or maybe I should just tip my hat to ‘Nova, Curry, and Willett, but stick to my Baseball Exceptionalist guns? The safest conclusion is that the question requires more study, and therefore more time spent watching sports over the next months. That’s a resolution I think I’ll be able to keep. I’ll report back with my findings.

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