We can become jaded with professional sports. This past off season saw LeBron James creating a three-ring circus out of his move from Cleveland to Miami. The grand entrance of players into the arena on any given night seems almost parodic, more in the spirit of P. T. Barnum than epic invocation. Therefore it’s good […]
Tag Archives: Sports
Basketball’s Lyric Slipknot of Joy
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Slam Dunk & Hook", Basketball, Yusef Komunyakaa Comments closed
The Suicidal Beauty of Football
Sports Saturday I’ve always been haunted by James Wright’s poem about high school football in working class Ohio. Wright’s fathers, living ruptured lives, hope for some kind of escape, some kind of renewed virility, through the football prowess of their teenage sons. Perhaps picking up on their parents’ desperation, their sons “gallop terribly” against each […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry Ohio", Football, James Wright Comments closed
San Fran Giants Strike out Mighty Casey
Sports Saturday We are well into the World Series but I want to hearken back to game six of the National League championship series where the San Francisco Giants won the pennant. It was a game eerily reminiscent of that described in poetry’s greatest poem about baseball, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat.” Baseball […]
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Walt Whitman, William Blake, and Baseball
Film Friday The World Series between the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants gives me an excuse for posting on what is, in my opinion, the greatest movie on baseball. Among the many virtues of Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham are its literary allusions and its literariness. Each year Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) chooses to […]
Football’s Culture of Violence – A Response
Sports Saturday Discussion of violent football hits has dominated the sports airwaves ever since the nation witnessed a series of frightening high-impact collisions last weekend. In apparent panic, the National Football League has been handing out large fines and threats of suspension to players, including a $75,000 fine to James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Circe Mud Poems, Football, Margaret Atwood, violence Comments closed
Real Men Play Football AND Read Poetry
Sports Saturday Professional football is a super violent sport and its 16-game season is a war of attrition. One never knows, from one week to the next, what team will have its Super Bowl hopes derailed by critical injuries. For a while this year, everyone was certain that the NFC would send either the New […]
Doc Halladay No Longer Blushing Unseen
Sports Saturday The baseball postseason is off to an amazing start, what with Roy “Doc” Halladay pitching only the second no-hitter in playoff history to begin it. And it was his first game ever pitching in the postseason! The other no-hitter is enshrined in legend: Yankee Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Baseball, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Roy Halladay, Thomas Gray Comments closed
Washing Away Michael Vick’s Sins
Spiritual Sunday In a follow-up to yesterday’s post on football quarterback Michael Vick, I want to elaborate further on Coleridge’s argument for penance. Penance is not only the right thing to do. It also can make you feel very, very good. Coleridge gives us images in Rime of the Ancient Mariner that drive this point […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Football, Michael Vick, Redemption, Religion, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sin, T. S. Eliot, Wasteland Comments closed
Michael Vick, Escape Artist Extraordinaire
Why do I find myself rooting for someone guilty of an abominable crime? And yet this Sunday, when the Philadelphia Eagles play the Jacksonville Jaguars, I will find myself cheering for Michael Vick. The stories of the dog fighting ring run by Vick will turn any stomach. He went to jail for it and now […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beggar's Opera, Br'er Rabbit, Football, Homer, Joel Chandler Harris, John Gay, Michael Vick, Odyssey Comments closed
