Lost in translation

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(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)

About old dogs, of which I am one:

If my wife and I were to relocate to the United Kingdom — something we have considered because our daughter lives in London and, more to the point, last year gave birth to a grandboy — what new tricks might be involved?

We haven’t seen the little bugger in person yet, since he arrived a couple of months into the pandemic. So the theory is that — because of layers of possible quarantining, testing, maybe even the near-future need to search out vaccine booster shots — a routine coming and going between jolly old England and this former colony might present enormous, expensive hassles.

Pack up and go for good, then? My wife and I are semiretired, which is one less reason to remain on Long Island, much as I like the place.

But a major concern is that I would have to learn to speak English.

I’d have to start walking on pavements instead of sidewalks, wearing a jumper instead of a sweater, going on holiday instead of vacation, spelling such words as flavor and color with a “u.”

Did you know that the English don’t wear underpants? No, really. Those things are pants over there, and the longer garments on top of them are trousers, essential because nobody is supposed to see their pants. They don’t wear vests, either (not that I do); they wear waistcoats. And soccer players — sorry, footballers — wear kits not uniforms.

The admission here is that I don’t have a particularly good ear for language. In a half-century as a journalist, fortunate to experience a fair amount of international travel, I never got much past bare-bones translations that could be mystifying. Czech for “yes” is “ano,” pronounced “ah-no.” No? Yes? In Japanese, “yes” is “hai,” which sounds like a friendly greeting: “Hi.”

Kind natives in far-off lands always helped with words for “please” and “thank you,” “good morning” and so on, so temporary foreign visits never were a problem. But there is this nagging feeling that, if I were to attempt full-time residency in Great Britain — try to really fit in — might I be expected to know something about Old English? Be able to recite a few lines of “Beowulf”?

   Hwaet. We Gardena in geardagum,

   Beodcyninga, brym gefrunon,

   Hu oa aebelingas ellen fremedon.

Or, at least some “Jabberwocky.”

   ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

   All mimsy were the borogoves,

   And the mome raths outgrabe.

My first car was British-made. An MGB. So way back in college days I became familiar with the fact that a trunk is a boot and a hood is a bonnet. Years ago, I even drove a rental in England and Wales — on the other side of the road! — though my familiarity with standard transmission wasn’t much help because I kept reaching for the stick shift with the wrong hand, putting myself in constant danger of opening the door instead of progressing from first to second gear.

I recall an essay by Sarah Lyall, an American who spent years as a newspaper correspondent based in London, asking why Brits “keep apologizing? Were they truly sorry?” And it’s a fact that the English, who certainly strike me as a polite lot, say “sorry” a lot. They also say “brilliant” all the time. Which, frankly, is a decided improvement on the overused American “awesome.”

Probably, the adjustments in communications would be no more daunting than during my youth, spent in five states because my father’s job included regular transfers. It turned out that dollar bills, “singles” in some places, are “ones” in others; that a “bag” sometimes is a “sack” and a “stoop” is a “porch.”

For a while there, if I asked for a “Coke” to drink, I got the question: “What kind?” Because a “coke” was any brand of “soda” in some climes. And though I never lived in a house with a “basement” then, I still don’t. Because, for my wife and her family’s New England roots, it’s a “cellar.”

You get the point. We could rent a flat, enjoy biscuits instead of cookies, mind how we go. Just have to work on being linguistically nimble. With a stiff upper lip.

New (NFL) math

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Though hardly a watershed moment in NFL history, the recent revision of rules related to uniform numbers nevertheless has stirred discussions of athletes’ traditional (almost spiritual) attachment to their numbers as well as the league’s long-perceived stodginess.

Nothing new there. In the 1970s, during my days covering the New York Giants, there was a wide receiver named Danny Buggs, drafted out of West Virginia, who requested jersey No. 8 when he showed up at rookie camp. Sorry, he was told; wrong number. Requirements at the time—just now changed—were that Buggs, as a wide receiver, had to pick something from 80 to 89.

Buggs was given 86 and later 88, but remained uncomfortable with both. “8 means a lot to me,” he said. “I wore it in college….It’s psychological or something. I don’t know. I feel lighter in 8.”

Bobby Hammond, a running back who was briefly Buggs’ teammate, also requested 8, which he had worn at Morgan State. He too was informed of that impossibility because, starting in 1972, NFL running backs had been restricted to digits from 20 to 49. Hammond was assigned 46, though he stubbornly wore 8 in practice.

A half-century later, we have a recount. For the upcoming 2021 season, NFL wide receivers and running backs will be allowed any number from 1 to 49 and 80 to 89.

With this new numbers racket, articles naturally have surfaced taking the league to task for its past sin of being too buttoned-up—The No Fun League—over all these years. Why, before this, couldn’t players wear any number they wanted?

The answer was that codifying numbers by position benefited officiating crews to instantly differentiate, for instance, interior linemen from eligible receivers (which the new system essentially continues). The NFL also believed it was “simpler for fans” to be able to associate numbers with players’ roles. So in 1972, the league decreed: 1-19 for quarterbacks and kickers; 20-49 for running backs and defensive backs; 50-59 for centers and linebackers; 60-79 for defensive linemen and interior offensive linemen (except centers); 80-89 for wide receivers and tight ends; 90-99 for exhibition game use only (when teams’ rosters are larger).

No exceptions! Except…The Giants had signed a celebrated linebacker out of Michigan State for the 1973 season named Brad Van Pelt, and Van Pelt had included a stipulation in his contract—shortly before the numbers rule passed—that he wear No. 10.

Which he did for 11 seasons. Until he was traded to the Raiders—who then were based in Los Angeles—and took advantage of a 1984 tweak in the numbers’ rule (allowing 90s for linebackers) by wearing No. 91.

Football observers even older than myself know that long, long ago, on a planet far, far away, no number was out of bounds on the gridiron. Red Grange, a superstar halfback of the 1920s and 30s (before that position was known as “running back”), wore 77. The University of Michigan back Tom Harmon, who twice led the nation in scoring in the 1940s and played briefly for the Rams, was widely referred to as “Old 98,” his unique uniform number.

These days, smaller numbers—and, specifically, single digits—are all the fashion, as a glance at any college roster demonstrates. What hasn’t changed is that players get attached to their numbers, often as early as high school, and acknowledge that they “feel like an 85” or “feel like a 7….” and prefer to take the number with them as long as they are playing.

Now, basically, they can, though there is a financial catch. Any NFL veteran wanting to switch numbers for the 2021 season will have to buy out the existing allotment of his personalized jerseys that are on the market featuring his old number. Still, this is a matter of identity, and the NFL Network analyst Andrew Hawkins, who had worn 2 as a college wide receiver and 0 in the Canadian League, expects, for instance, to see single-digit wide receiver numbers proliferate. Because, he said, “You look good, you feel good, you play good.”

And maybe, as Danny Buggs said long ago, you feel lighter.

Anybody have a problem with that?

“Good luck trying to block the right people now!” lamented old pro Tom Brady in a tweet. What if his linemen won’t know who to knock down if their opponents are wearing smaller jersey numbers? “DUMB,” Brady railed. “Why not let the Linemen wear whatever they want, too? Why have numbers? Just have colored jerseys…Why not wear the same number?…DUMB.”

It has been reported that Brady’s former coach, New England’s Bill Belichick, likewise is against the new number allowances. That guy across the line dressed in No. 3 might be either a cornerback or a linebacker—maybe a kicker—and then what?

In the end, the sum of all this doesn’t seem to amount to much.

Go figure.

Here’s the pitch…

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So baseball will reconnoiter its physical arrangement of pitcher-to-hitter. Big news. An experiment to be conducted in an independent minor league will extend the traditional 60-foot, six-inch separation of the game’s primary antagonists by one foot. This, under the scrutiny of the Majors’ mad scientists, apparently desperate for more action, more balls in play.

Will moving the pitcher’s mound back one foot curb the recent proliferation of strikeouts? Will it juice up a sport futzing around with various schemes to speed its pace and rope in a generation of younger fans drawn to the non-stop chaos of football and basketball?

Or will it be messing with a sacred balance, tilting a competitive edge away from pitchers and mollycoddling batsmen? (At a time, ironically, when there also are complaints of too many home runs.) Also: Might the change produce more runs and further lengthen already endless games?

Two fairly outrageous thoughts came to mind upon reading the move-the-mound plan:

The first was having come across an article, years ago, by someone named Eisenstein, who suggested that the home run is a dull play and that balls hit over outfield fences should be outs. It seemed sacrilegious enough that I should immediately poll some players about the idea.

One of them was Atlanta Braves outfielder Dale Murphy who, at the time, was walloping homers at a Ruthian pace. Murphy politely dismissed the home-runs-are-outs proposal as silly. On the other hand, the Braves’ dominant relief pitcher, Bruce Sutter, who that night had served up a grand slam to New York Mets catcher Gary Carter, suggested that “when they hit it out, it should be a double play.”

Then, as now, one man’s RBI is another man’s hanging curve.

The other reflection regarding this mound-relocation trial balloon had to do with my long-ago attendance at a 19th-Century re-enactment of a game of Base Ball (it was two words then) at one of those “living museum” restoration villages. On display was a reminder that there is nothing new about the sport’s moving targets on rules and specifications.

In 1859, shortly before the first professional league was formed, there was no sliding into bases permitted. No stealing. No bunting. No arguing with the umpire (in his top hat, white shirt, black vest and bowtie). No cursing (25-cent fine; roughly $800 in 2021 money). No popcorn and Cracker Jack.

The pitcher—then called the “bowler”—threw underhand and the batter—“striker”—was permitted to call for his preferred location of the pitch. Fly balls fielded on one bounce were outs.

Things change. It hasn’t been that long ago that basketball poobahs considered raising the basket to counter the increasing size of players. But soon settled instead on the three-point shot to open the court. It’s not exactly ancient history that the NFL literally moved the goalposts—from the front to the rear of the end zone—to offset the escalating length and accuracy of kickers. Then moved the scrimmage line back for extra-point attempts.

Long, long ago, pitchers were a mere 50 feet from home plate. Foul balls didn’t count as strikes. Batters were allowed four strikes and weren’t awarded a walk until the ninth ball. As recently as 1969, the strike zone was shrunk—from top-of-the-shoulder, bottom-of-the-knee to armpit and top-of-the-knee—and the pitcher’s mound was lowered by five inches.

All manner of inconsistencies forever persist in baseball—odd-shaped playing fields that turn long outs into homers; the thin air of parks at altitude that add distance to fly balls; “the wind blowing out” in Chicago’s Wrigley Field. With the pitcher’s mound an additional foot distant from home plate, will that tamper with the physics of when curveballs break on their way to the batter? Will it physically wear down pitchers attempting to get their fastballs through that extra foot before the batter can react?

In 2008, there was a rumpus over Japanese pitchers claiming to throw a revolutionary “gyroball,” which was said to change directions horizontally and therefore bring an entirely new challenge to hitters. But David Coburn, head of the research department at Popular Mechanics, whose editors had released a book explaining why a curveball curves, wrote that the gyroball was “The Bigfoot of baseball, an urban legend born in a Japanese lab and racing across the Internet…either the first new pitch in nearly four decades or a complete and total sham.”

The pitch hasn’t been heard of since.

Will the 61-foot, six-inch pitcher-to-hitter dynamic ruin careers? Save baseball? Mean anything at all? Will some sub-committee on analytics—part of a committee on velocity, rotation, launch angle and tobacco-chewing—be able to recommend parameters that are beyond reproach by any athlete, fan, manager, GM and owner?

Robert Adair, the Yale professor who authored “Physics and Baseball,” once gave me this definitive answer to these related matters: “Seeing as how I’m one of them, I would say that if you want something really stupid, get an intellectual to tell you about it.”

Because, what it all will boil down to is players—pitchers and hitters, within the prescribed rules—just doing what they do best.

Nothing good rhymes with “pandemic”

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It’s that challenging time of year again. National Poetry Month. And this April also is the 14th month of the pandemic. So…..

Back before this Covid-19 thing

We were just as free as birds,

With no longing to participate in

The immunity of a herd.

 …

People weren’t yet made of cardboard,

Weren’t dressing up like Jesse James.

There was no such thing as quarantine

Or looking for whom to blame.

… 

So we’re locked up in our houses

Preoccupied with getting the shot.

At least that’s those who aren’t suspicious

That this is all a government plot.

 …

Now there’s warning from the doctors

There might be another surge.

Just as we are all reminded

Some folks aren’t known for fighting the urge.

… 

Here’s where optimism is needed.

Send the word out on the Zoom.

There must be a call for patience

Or corona will lower the boom.

 Again.

April Fool!

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(Stan Isaacs)

Among the countless, brilliant concepts in newspapering worthy of my jealousy was Stan Isaacs’ annual ranking of decidedly inconspicuous topics. Each April Fool’s Day, Isaacs—a Newsday colleague and mentor who died in 2013 at 83—published his whimsical list, which he called IRED: The Isaacs Ratings of Esoteric Distinction.

I wish I had thought of something like that. Goofy, worldly and creative, Isaacs’ long and distinguished career as a serious journalist included an awareness of when and where to find a giggle. His IRED spoofed Ring Magazine’s boxing ratings because, Isaacs wrote, there was “an unrecognized need for evaluations of quantities” like The Bridges Across the River Seine; of People Who Were Neither On the Way Up or Down; of Fred Astaire’s Dancing Partners; of Bowling Pins. Just to cite a few of the categories he presented for judgment over the years.

Anyway, since Stan is gone, I have endeavored to make it my yearly duty to honor his memory on April Fool’s Day with my ersatz version of his ratings. Not in his league, admittedly. Still, herewith the 2021 listings:

Vaccines: 1 (tie), Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson.

Pandemic accouterments: 1, (see above); 2, mask; 3, hand wipes; 4, quarantining; 5, 10-foot pole.

Doctors I have known and appreciated: 1, family physician; 2, cardiologist; 3, neurosurgeon; 4, dermatologist; 5, allergist; 6, podiatrist; 7, dentist; 8, optometrist; 9, audiologist. (And still counting.)

Famous doctors: 1, Livingston; 2, Spock; 3, Jill Biden; 4, Holliday; 5, Severinsen; 6, Martin; 7, J.

British police procedurals: 1, Poirot, 2, Vera; 3, Endeavour; 4, Inspector Lewis; 5, Grantchester; 6, Father Brown; 7, Bletchley Circle.

Zoom buttons: 1, Share screen; 2, Breakout Rooms; 3, Chat; 4, Mute; 5, Gallery View; 6, End Meeting.

Swiss Army Knife tools: 1, hoof cleaner; 2, corkscrew; 3, USB stick; 4, can opener; 5, pliers; 6, scissors; 7, fish scaler; 8, nail file; 9, toothpick.

Floating vessels (until they didn’t): 1, Ever Given (unstuck from the Suez Canal); 2, Exxon Valdez; 3, Deepwater Horizon; 4, Costa Concordia.

March madness: 1, daylight savings time; 2, dandelions; 3, spring break; 4, taxes; 5, college basketball.

Favorite M&M colors (tie): 1, blue, green, brown, yellow, red, orange.

Words that don’t begin with Z: 1, xenops; 2, xylophone; 3, xenophobia; 4, Xerox; 5, Xenia, Ohio; 6, antidisestablishmentarianism.

Impeding the swift completion of postal workers’ appointed rounds: 1, gloom of night; 2, snow; 3, heat; 4, sleet; 5, rain; 6, Louis DeJoy.

Pies: 1, apple; 2, blueberry; 3, pumpkin; 4, chicken pot; 5, shepherd’s; 6, 3-point-14159….

Baseball action rarely seen anymore: 1, pickle; 2, stealing home; 3, bunting; 4, basket catches; 5, two-hour nine-inning game.

Cars I have owned: 1, MGB; 2, Saab; 3, VW; 4, Toyota; 5, Chevy.

Newspaper sections: 1, sports; 2, news; 3, op-ed; 4, obituaries (as long as they aren’t about me); 5, arts; 6, business.

Original favorite newspaper section: 1, funnies.

Just to drop a name….

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Celebrity is a peculiar thing. It bestows a sort of mythic aura on its subject and engenders public reverence.

I’m thinking of Tiger Woods, lately in the news because, mostly, he’s a celebrity whose recent single-car accident landed him in the hospital with multiple injuries that have jeopardized his singular talent. Long ago, his ungodly and thoroughly chronicled skill at golf established him as a star. And, as Duke University anthropologist Orin Starn wrote in his 2011 book, “The Passion of Tiger Woods,” “ours is a starstruck culture.”

What’s interesting is how Woods’ celebrity took on the form of manifest destiny, claiming special virtues, as if he had some redemptive mission, an irresistible bent for grand accomplishments far beyond his craft.

Woods was only 21 in 1997 when Charlie Pierce’s lengthy Esquire profile revealed Woods’ sense of entitlement, a habit of telling dirty jokes and an apparent susceptibility to his father Earl’s belief, proclaimed to Sports Illustrated, that “Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity.”

That was long before the series of scandalous reports that included a 2007 DUI arrest, 2009 SUV crash and marital infidelities, though Pierce was already—and reasonably—skeptical of the jock-to-savior leap. “This is what I believe about Tiger Woods,” he wrote, “…that he is the best golfer under the age of 30 there has ever been….He is going to be rich and famous and I believe he’s going to bring great joy to a huge number of people because of his enormous talent on the golf course…the most charismatic athlete alive today…”

But: “I do not believe that a higher power is working through Tiger Woods,” Pierce continued. “I don’t believe—right now, this day—that Tiger Woods will change humanity any more than Chuck Berry did.”

Pierce was following the perceptive old journalistic advice, dispensed by long-ago sports editor Stanley Woodward to celebrated columnist Red Smith, to “Stop godding up the players;” to recognize that the ability to reach astonishing athletic heights does not automatically translate to being a sainted person.

Still, Woods transmitted the strong pull of celebrity. Starn wrote that, while witnessing the 2004 U.S. Open tournament, “I was struck by the nervousness, even fear, among the spectators about coughing or moving during his swing and being singled out for his withering displeasure. Tiger was like Apollo, a glorious yet frightening god.”

In the spring of 2004, officials at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg sent out a “hear ye, hear ye, hear ye” press release announcing that Woods would join the camp’s professional soldiers for a week of bootcamp-type activity. Newsday assigned me to be there, and it turned out there was no real access to more than second-hand tales of Woods being outfitted in BDUs (the battle dress uniforms that most citizens call camouflage); of Woods’ participation in sun-up four-mile runs; of Woods firing a variety of weapons and taking two parachute jumps tethered to another jumper.

If the real soldiers were offended by Woods’ play-acting at being in the military, they did not say so. Because, one 20-year-old explained, “It’s like when Kid Rock came to Iraq while we were there and gave a concert. We know they’re there to keep the morale up.” Bob Hope entertaining the troops. A celebrity.

Rather than sharing a barracks with the enlisted men then, Woods was bivouacked in a VIP housing unit described by one G.I. as “like a bed and breakfast”—where such luminaries as vice president Dick Cheney and an Uzbekistan general stayed previously.

Some 3,000 spectators had been invited to the base for a brief trick-shot exhibition by Woods, to which he came riding up the 13th fairway of the base’s course, amid red smoke, in an awkward Michael Dukakis moment (ask your grandparents). His upper body was visible through the sunroof of an army-green Humvee as he perched behind a 50-caliber automatic machine gun. Wearing golf clothes and a smile.

Everyone was on Tiger Standard Time, just as they were the next time I—seldom dispatched to golf-related events—was sent to report on another Woods command performance. That was June of 2014. Woods was in Bethesda, Md., to play competitively for the first time since back surgery 3 ½ months before. He was 38 and had been stuck at 14 major titles for six years, but he remained, according to his fellow golfers, “the lifeline of our tour.”

He did not play well. “Rough” did not adequately describe the places he found his ball—among trees, clinging to a downhill slope above a small creek, on the wrong side of a cart path. He failed to make the cut for the final two days of the tournament—only the 10th time that had happened in 18 years on the tour, and the first time in 27 events.

Yet, while a mere handful of spectators watched the tournament’s leaders, crowds at least 40 times larger shadowed Woods around the course. On a mid-week workday. The extra attention to Woods wasn’t necessarily about the golf, but the golfer.

Celebrity is a magnetic thing. And it boosts a fan’s self-importance.

Quarantined, still

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(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)

Going on a year now, they have been strictly quarantined. Distanced from the rest of society. Haven’t been out in public at all.

I speak of my neckties.

Wait. Don’t assume the standard coronavirus cliché. I get fully dressed every day. Haven’t worn sweatpants since about 1992, and only then to referee beginners’ basketball games for young grade-school kids. Shirts-with-collars have remained standard equipment.

But given the COVID reality, that my semi-retirement duties teaching a college journalism course are restricted to Zoom sessions, my neckwear continues to shelter in its place. Arrayed there on a downsized version of the dry-cleaners’ rotating racks.

There are scores of ties. Stripes, paisleys, polka dots, plaids, knits, solids. Novelty specials with miniature paper airplanes, license plates, animals. I have ties with stars, flowers, Peanuts characters, images of Beatles lyrics, a much-favored “marathon” tie featuring literally hundreds of little cartoon runners.

All hanging around in three separate closets. Frankly, the majority of them have been there since pre-pandemic days, waiting to become fashionable again—the far-too-wide ones and really skinny ones. The Fatty Arbuckle kinds and Blues Brothers versions. But thanks to my wife’s good taste, keen eye for style and commitment to keep me presentable, I have plenty of ties that—just to stick with the raiment metaphor—will knock your socks off.

To be perfectly clear: In a half-century as a newspaper reporter, I’d guess I wore a tie maybe 50 percent of the time, which hardly qualifies me as a Beau Brummel. Typically, in that line of work, to include a tie in one’s wardrobe is something of a default position, as with my boxing-beat colleague who told me he did own a single necktie, but kept it in his car in case of emergency. To show up in the newsroom with a tie could bring a sarcastic, “D’ya get the job?”

A friend who spent several years in the reporting business—always better dressed than the rest of us—wound up going to law school and now, as an attorney, not only wears a tie all the time but told me he has a different suit for every day of the week. Which only reminds me that, despite the Oscar Wilde observation that “a well-tied tie is the first serious step in life,” I still wouldn’t know a Windsor knot from a Gordian Knot.

Anyway, academics always seemed more formal—more grown-up—than us ink-stained wretches, so when I began teaching parttime a decade ago, I committed to wearing a tie whenever on campus. And it wasn’t as if that was totally unfamiliar territory. As a child of the ‘50s and ‘60s, before T-shirts with writing on them somehow became chic, I was surrounded by tie-wearing as a daily routine. My father would transition from his day at the office to after-work play with his wood-working tools without bothering to ditch the dress shirt and tie; he merely added a pair of overalls to his look.

I must have been about 10 when, expected to don a tie for dress-up occasions, I opted for a Dick Tracy red-with-small-black-stripes model. (I skipped the yellow Tracy fedora.) When members of our high school basketball team were required to wear ties to away games, I briefly undertook the renegade photo-negative gangster look—black shirt, white tie—probably inspired by some forgettable movie about Prohibition.

Fresh out of college, with a job in Manhattan and determined to look professional, I discovered a hole-in-the-wall place next to a Midtown newspaper stand, Tie City, where one could purchase ties for $1 apiece—and splurged on two or three. Hardly fashionista stuff. Nor were later attempts—chintzy clip-ons, psychedelic tie-dyed cloth ties, a pre-tied bowtie—particularly successful at substantiating an especially jaunty appearance.

There is a quote by one John T. Molloy, author of the book “Dress for Success,” that proclaims, “Show me a man’s ties and I’ll tell you who he is trying to be.”

Actually, if I show you my ties—still in the closets where they have been since last March—they mostly tell you about my wife’s good judgment regarding apparel. And their location reminds everyone that the pestilence—the monster under our beds—is still lurking.

Favor Curry

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This week seemed like a good time to check out a Stephen Curry performance at Madison Square Garden. He recently had produced career-high scoring games of 62 and 57 points. And it was at this very stage of the NBA season in 2013—late February—that his 54-point outburst at the Garden prompted Wall Street Journal sports reporter Ben Cohen to conclude that Curry became “singularly responsible for a fundamental shift in basketball strategy that filtered down to every level of the sport.”

Curry’s audacious utilization of the three-point shot that night was featured prominently in Cohen’s 2020 book, “The Hot Hand; the Mystery and the Science of Streaks.” Curry’s Golden State Warriors lost that game to the New York Knicks. But so riveting was the Curry show that the partisan Knicks crowd increasingly threw its emotional and vocal support his way.

Double-teamed, hounded off the dribble, cornered in far reaches beyond the three-point arc, Curry kept hurling his long-range thunderbolts, a lesson in the physics of the perfect parabola. Flawless arches, launched with a sudden flick of his wrists through considerable space, right to the bottom of the net.

I was working that evening as Newsday’s second-banana, tasked with coming up with some pertinent sidebar to go with our beat reporter’s game story and, by halftime, Curry obviously was my topic. He ultimately converted 18 of 28 field-goal attempts, including an impossible 11 of 13 three-pointers, some of those on which Knicks players swore Curry “couldn’t even see the basket.”

And it wasn’t just those sublime rainbows that were redefining an event as Garden-variety, the very antithesis of “commonplace.” Curry’s game was displaying all colors to the Knicks, lacking no imagination whatsoever. Deft passing, whirligig circumnavigation of defenders, soft floating layups.

The complete procedure resembled a basketball version of triple bypass surgery on the Knicks, giving them whiplash with his darting crossover dribbles. Only his height—6-3—was not outsized. He played all 48 minutes, had team highs in rebounds (six) and assists (seven.)

Afterwards, Curry compared the escalating perfection to a pitcher finishing a no-hitter, aware that “my teammates were jiving,” that there “was a lot of energy in that arena….Once I started to get some numbers, you could hear the crowd a little bit. It was electric. So I was kind of running off adrenaline down the stretch.

“When I get good looks and see the ball go in a couple of times, I was going to take it, no matter where I was on the floor.”

At the time, Curry was a fourth-year pro. His two league MVP honors, seven All-Star designations and three championship seasons still were in the future. But he had been a breakout college star for Davidson, and his Warriors coach in 2013, Mark Jackson, made it clear that the 54 points were not so surprising.

“To the viewing audience, that’s getting hot,” Jackson said. “To us, that’s Steph Curry. That’s who he is. He’s a knockdown shooter as good as anybody who’s played.”

Jackson had spent 11 years playing for St. John’s University and the Knicks at the Garden, the so-called basketball Mecca, and pointed out that “I’ve seen a lot of great performances in this building. But this goes up there. That shooting performance was a thing of beauty.”

And within four years of that night, Cohen wrote in “The Hot Hand,” Curry “was the most influential basketball player alive….the best shooter on the planet.”

So this week, seven years since Curry lowered the boom on his sport, he and the Warriors were back at the Garden after a fruitless pandemic-infested season—the Warriors finished in last place and Curry played only five games. And the Hot Hand sense was reviving, with Curry’s 62-point game on Jan 3 and 57 on Feb. 6.

For the first time since March, the Garden allowed some spectators to attend—2,500 rattling around the 19,000-capacity joint—and I was drawn to the small screen. It wasn’t the same as that rollicking 2013 affair, of course, but Curry was Curry, playing with the same deceiving nonchalance—no-look passes, sneaky steals, casually dispatched attempts from great distances.

He led all scorers with 37 points, 26 in the second half, including the go-ahead three-pointer with 3:38 to play. A lesser meteor strike, yes. But another pretty hot hand. Another first-chair virtuoso presentation. Bravo.

Not just another game

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A few things have changed since I was last directly involved in Super Bowl coverage for Newsday 20 years ago. There was no pandemic then, of course. At the time, Tom Brady was nothing more than a low-round draft choice who had just finished his rookie season, during which he appeared in one game, tried three passes and completed one. He was David; he would become Goliath later.

At the 2001 Super Bowl, in fact, the perceived impact of the opposing quarterbacks was the very antithesis to this year’s ballyhooed star-power Brady-Patrick Mahomes expectation: Which of them, Baltimore’s Trent Dilfer or the New York Giants’ Kerry Collins, would avoid fouling up the situation? (Collins threw four interceptions, so Dilfer was the default winner.)

For that game, the Giants’ second-string quarterback, not afforded the opportunity to bail out Collins, was Jason Garrett, who these days is the team’s offensive coordinator and, in some minds, has underdelivered in that role. Garrett’s current job belonged in 2001 to Sean Payton, now head coach of the New Orleans Saints, who were just denied a spot in this Super Bowl by Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The world turns. Things evolve, things disappear altogether. The venues for four of my first five Super Bowl adventures have been demolished—Houston’s Rice University Stadium (1974), New Orleans’ Tulane Stadium (1975), Miami’s Orange Bowl (1976 and ’79).

But this year’s championship game returns, for a third time, to Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, which first hosted the event in 2001, when I witnessed Baltimore’s 34-7 walloping of the Giants. That big pirate ship—made of concrete, eminently sinkable—remains behind one Raymond James Stadium end zone.

Tampa, furthermore, is still a town where you can get a really good victory cigar—and therefore seems an ideal place for the Big Game. Tampa’s historic Latin quarter, Ybor City, endures as a Cigar Capital, and it was there that I found “master roller” Roberto Ramirez, considered No. 1 in his craft in his native Cuba before he defected in 1996. He was cigar maker to U.S. celebrities and politicians, had been invited to the White House, and was still at his job in his mid-70s, according to the most updated internet information I could find on him from 10 years ago.

The other Super Bowl constant, as true now as when I was immersed in the hullabaloo for the first of seven times in January 1974, is the event’s status as the Great American Conversation Piece. The Great American Timeout (maybe even more so now, in the midst of the plague and political division). The Great American Spectacle.

The Super Bowl’s exalted position in our national culture can be explained, at least partially, by the phenomenon that hot air rises. This Great American Sideshow is inflated, like the blimp overhead. Its scale is exaggerated; the Great American Fish Story. It is undeniably hard-wired into the circuitry of our American lifestyle. Citizens avoid planning weddings and other major happenings on Super Bowl dates.

And the NFL’s manifest destiny marches on. Super Bowl sites already are set for 2022 (at the Rams/Chargers new home in Inglewood, Calif.), 2023 (Glendale, Ariz.), 2025 (New Orleans.) The only reason the 2024 location isn’t set is because the league’s upcoming regular-season expansion to 17 games would set up a conflict with that year’s Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans, which had been the designated host. Speculation is that the 2024 game will end up in Las Vegas, emblematic of Great American Overindulgence.

The Super Bowl’s place, as something akin to a national religion, is such that in 1990 a Columbia, S.C., Presbyterian pastor named Brad Smith conceived the “Souper Bowl of Caring,” asking churches to organize the collection of $1 contributions after services on Super Bowl Sunday for soup kitchens and charities.

At the 2001 Tampa Super Bowl, Smith was permitted by the NFL to stage a press conference for his project—“Enjoy the game but think of the less fortunate,” was his pitch. Only a single reporter and two TV cameras showed up, while thousands or other journalists were busy reporting on Baltimore star linebacker Ray Lewis’ year-old murder case and Tampa’s reputation for strip clubs. Smith was not deterred. “Why not use the power of sports?” he said then. “Nothing transcends divisions in our culture like the Super Bowl game.”

So the annual frivolity is upon us again. This time, many of the spectators in Tampa will be of the cardboard variety. This time, Covid-19, the monster under our beds, is lurking, and among the consequences is exacerbating food insecurity across the country. But Smith’s organization, tapping into the power of the Super Bowl, now reports having raised $163 million. Which sounds worthy of a good victory cigar.

Really?

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A good Latin phrase always is handy for extraordinary Olympic moments. (The Games official motto is in Latin: citius, altius, fortius—faster, higher, stronger.) So, in regard to the Florida official who has volunteered his state as alternative host of this summer’s coronavirus-threatened Tokyo Games, I suggest non compos mentis.

The translation is “Not in control of the mind” or, less formally, “insane; mentally incompetent.” Though etymologists aren’t in full agreement about the exact origin, one theory is that non compos mentis evolved into “nincompoop.”

That seems about right for the classically blockheaded offer, sent to the International Olympic Committee in a letter by Jimmy Patronis, who is Florida’s chief financial officer. In what must be described as nothing more than a publicity stunt, Patronis announced that, since Tokyo’s nabobs appear to be hesitating about going ahead with the Olympics in the face of the pandemic, the Sunshine State is ready to step in.

The headlines produced by that cockeyed suggestion, Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff wrote in The Nation, “looked like something out of The Onion.”

Patronis, oblivious to reality on several levels, argued that, while Tokyo organizers had chosen to postpone last summer’s originally scheduled Games for one year, Florida went about staging the NBA playoffs in the Disney World Covid-19 bubble. And Tampa is about to pull off the pandemic Super Bowl. And there have been several Jacksonville-based UFC events during the plague. (UFC events!)

Patronis is a finance guy; I got a C in my college economics course, so what do I know? Except that, in the process of covering 11 Olympics, I became aware that the Summer Games consist of 33 sports, requiring such diverse facilities as a swimming hall, track and field stadium, equestrian venue, cycling velodrome, rowing site, shooting and archery ranges, multiple soccer fields, separate arenas for fencing, gymnastics and badminton. And much more.

There are 206 Olympic nations eligible to compete in the Games; compare that to the measly 193 countries in the United Nations. Roughly 11,000 athletes—as well as coaches, game officials and physicians—must be fed and housed and transported to both competition and training locations during the Games. Logistics and details are such that cities are designated Olympic hosts seven full years in advance of the 2 ½-week international festival. One decision-maker at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics said the task amounted to “putting on a Super Bowl every day for 17 days.” In fact, it’s more complicated than that.

Another minor detail, spelled out in the Olympic Charter, is that the IOC “shall have no financial responsibility in respect to the organization, financing and staging of the Olympic Games other than the contribution determined in the Olympic Host Contract, unless otherwise agreed in writing.”

So, while recent polls have found that 80 percent of Japan’s population favors cancelling the Games altogether, Tokyo has sunk about $25 billion into its operation, a major factor in opting to (fingers crossed) soldier on. That Florida would have the resources, the time or the ability to waltz in as Olympic savior—let alone to get the IOC’s backing—is “bonkers,” Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist told the Huffington Post. “This is an idiotic, delusional, uninformed, ignorant Florida politician trying to put his name out there. It’s got no chance. It’s just stupid.”

Humor columnist Dave Barry’s sly take in the Miami Herald was that “chief financial officer Jimmy has already done the hard part, writing the letter. All we need now is a detailed plan and thousands of workers and $25 billion.”

Money issues and crushing deadlines aside—July 23 is designated as the Games’ opening day—there remains the primary problem of the still-spreading, mutating virus. Patronis portrayed Disney World as “an incredible model for how to run a complex organization in the midst of Covid-19.” (Hmmm: A Mickey Mouse Olympics?) He apparently is ignoring the fact that Florida has had more virus cases (1.7 million to 99,000) and deaths (26,000 to 880) than Tokyo.

Daytona Beach News-Journal columnist Mark Lane dismissed Patronis’ Fantasy Land proposal as  a “cheesy bit of hype” that “also demonstrates a more depressing truth—that the state continues to do everything in its power to minimize the seriousness of [the deadly] illness…”

The Patronis angle does sound familiar, in a way. Quid me anxius sum?

Which is Latin for “What, me worry?”