The Best American Sports Writing 2011

by Jane Leavy

  Pickerel have palatal teeth. They also have teeth on their tongues, not to mention those razor jaws. On their bodies, they sometimes bear scars from the teeth of other pickerel. Pickerel that have been found in the stomachs of pickerel have in turn contained pickerel in their stomachs. A minnow found in the stomach of a pickerel had a pickerel in its stomach that had in its stomach a minnow. Young pickerel start eating one another when they are scarcely two inches long. How did I know all this that was tumbling out? I was mining a preoccupation. I am the owner of not one but two copies of An Annotated Bibliography of the Chain Pickerel, E. J. Crossman and G. E. Lewis, the Royal Ontario Museum, 1973.

  In uncounted millions, they live in the lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers of the Atlantic watershed from the Canadian Maritimes to the whole of Florida, and across to the Mississippi, and up it to the Current River in southern Missouri. They seem about as endangered as mosquitoes. In midwestern states and elsewhere, walleyes are often called pickerel and sometimes walleyed pike. A walleye is not a pickerel, nor is it a pike; it's a perch. A bluegill maneuvers better than most fish do. Blue sharks and tunas are ultimate cruisers. In the department of acceleration—the drag race of the deep—almost nothing comes near a pike, pickerel, or muskellunge. A pickerel's body is 60 percent muscle. Undulations move along the body in propulsive waves that culminate, like oar sculling, in straight-tine forward thrust. A particularly successful tuna will catch about 30 percent of the fish it goes after. A trout catches half the fish it strikes at. A chain pickerel, on a good day, nails 80 percent. The last time a frog escaped a pickerel must have been in Pliocene time.

  The young doctor returned, 24 hours exactly after his earlier visit. He touched the patient with fingers and steel, and qualified for compensation. He said there had been no change and not to expect any; the patient's comprehension would not improve. He went on as he had the day before. My father, across the years, had always seemed incapable of speaking critically of another doctor, perhaps, in a paradoxical way, because he had been present in an operating room where the mistake of another doctor had ended his mother's life. Even-tempered as he generally appeared to be, my father could blow his top, and I wondered, with respect to his profession, to what extent this situation would be testing him if he were able to listen, comprehend, and speak. Silent myself now, in the attending physician's presence, I looked down at my father in his frozen state, 89, a three-season athlete who grew up in the central neighborhoods of Youngstown, Ohio, and played football at Oberlin in a game that was won by Ohio State 128–0, captained basketball, was trained at Western Reserve, went into sports medicine for five years at Iowa State and thirty-six at Princeton, and was the head physician of U.S. Olympic teams in Helsinki, Rome, Tokyo, Innsbruck, and elsewhere. The young doctor departed.

  In a small open pool in the vegetation, about halfway down The Patch, there had been, this year and last, a chain pickerel that was either too smart or too inept to get itself around an assemblage of deer hair, rabbit fur, turkey quill, marabou silk, and sharp heavy wire. The swirls had been violent every time, the strike consistently missing or spurning the fly, and coming always from the same place on the same side of the same blue gap. In the repetitive geometries of The Patch, with its paisley patterns in six acres of closed and open space, how did I know it was the same gap? I just knew, that's all. It's like running a trapline. You don't forget where the traps are; or you don't run a trapline. This gap in the lily pads was 30 yards off the mainland shore between the second-tallest white pine and a granitic outcrop projecting from Ann's island. As I was getting back into the story, again speaking aloud in the renewed privacy of the hospital room, I mentioned that I had been fishing The Patch that last morning with my father's bamboo rod, and it felt a bit heavy in the hand, but since the day he had turned it over to me I had taken it with my other rods on fishing trips, and had used it, on occasion, to keep it active because it was his. Now—just a couple of days ago—time was more than close to running out. Yolanda was calling from the island: 'John, we must go! John, stop fishing! John!" It was time to load the canoe and paddle west around some islands to the car, time to depart for home, yes; but I meant to have one more drift through The Patch. From the northwest, a light breeze was coming down over the sedge fen. I called to Yolanda that I'd "be right there," then swept the bow around and headed for the fen. Since I had failed and failed again while anchored near that fish, I would let the light breeze carry me this time, freelance, free-form, moving down The Patch like the slow shadow of a cloud. Which is just what happened—a quiet slide, the light rustle on the hull, Yolanda calling twice more before she gave up. Two touches with the paddle were all that was needed to perfect the aim. Standing now, closing in, I waved the bamboo rod like a semaphore—backcasting once, twice—and then threw the line. Dropping a little short, the muddler landed on the near side of the gap. The pickerel scored the surface in crossing it, swirled, made a solid hit, and took the tight line down, wrapping it around the stems of the plants.

  "I pulled him out of there plants and all," I said. "I caught him with your bamboo rod."

  I looked closely at my father. His eyes had welled over. His face was damp. Six weeks later, he was dead.

  Fetch Daddy a Drink

  P. J. O'Rourke

  FROM GARDEN AND GUN

  I HAVE THREE badly behaved children and a damn good bird dog. My Brittany spaniel, Millie (age seven), is far more biddable and obedient than my daughters, Muffin (eleven) and Poppet (nine), and has a better nose than my son, Buster (five). Buster does smell, but in his case it's an intransitive verb.

  My dog is perdition to the woodcock and ruffled grouse we hunt hereabouts and death itself to the pen-raised Huns, chukars, and quail she encounters at the local shooting club. Millie hunts close, quarters well, points beautifully, is staunch to wing and shot, and retrieves with verve. My children ... are doing okay in school, I guess. They look very sweet—when they're asleep.

  As my family was growing, I got a lot of excellent advice about discipline, responsibility, respect, affection, and cultivation of the work ethic. Unfortunately this advice was from dog trainers and was directed to my dog. In the matter of child rearing there was also plenty of advice, all of it contradictory—from family and family-in-law, wife, wife's girlfriends, pediatricians, nursery school teachers, babysitters, neighbors and random old ladies on the street, plus Dr. Spock, Dr. Phil, and, for all I know, Dr. Pepper: Spank them/Don't spank them. Make them clean their plate/ Keep them from overeating. Potty train them at one/Send them to Potty Training Camp at fourteen. Hover over their every activity/ Get out of their faces. Don't drink or smoke during pregnancy/ Junior colleges need students too. And none of this advice works when you're trying to get the kids to quit playing video games and go to bed.

  It took me years to realize that I should stop asking myself what I'm doing wrong as a parent and start asking myself what I'm doing right as a dog handler.

  The first right thing I do is read and reread Gun Dog by the late Richard A. Wolters. This is the book that revolutionized dog training in 1961. (Of course, the dogs are now 49 years old and not much use, but the book is still great.)

  "Start 'em young" is the message from Wolters. And that's why, if we have another child, he's going to learn to walk pushing on the handle of a Toro in the yard instead of teetering along the edge of the sofa cushions in the living room. Wolters, along with a number of other bird shooters, had realized that waiting until the traditional one-year mark before teaching a puppy to hunt was like carrying your kid in a Snugli until he was seven. Wolters was sure he was right about this, but he wasn't sure why. Then he came across the work of Dr. John Paul Scott, a founder of the Animal Behavior Society. Dr. Scott was involved in a project to help Guide Dogs for the Blind, Inc. Seeing Eye dog training was considered almost too difficult to be worthwhile. Using litters from even the best bloodlines, the success rate for guide-dog training was only 20 percent. Dr. Scott discovered that if training began
at five weeks instead of a year, and continued uninterrupted, the success rate rose to 90 percent.

  It goes without saying that the idea of Seeing Eye kids is wrong—probably against child labor laws and an awful thing to do to blind people. But I take Dr. Scott's point. And so did Richard Wolters, who devised a gun-dog training regime that had dogs field-ready at as early as six months. That's three and a half in kid years. My kids weren't doing anything at three and a half, other than at night in their Pull-Ups.

  The Start-'Em-Young program turns out to be a surprise blessing for dads. Wolters writes in (Gun Dog of a puppy's first 28 days (equal to about six months for a kid), "Removal from Mother at this time is drastic." That's just what I told my wife about the care and feeding of our infants—drastic is the word for leaving it to me. According to Wolters, I'm really not supposed to get involved until the kid is one (equivalent to a 56-day-old pup). Then I can commence the nurturing (Happy Meals) and the "establishing rapport" (sitting with me on the couch watching football).

  Next the training proper begins. "Repetition, more repetition, and still more repetition," enjoins Wolters. I've reached the age where I'm repeating myself all the time, so this is easy. "Commands should be short, brisk, single words: SIT, FETCH, WHOA, COME, NO, etc." In the case of my kids the "etc." will be GETAJOB or at least MARRYMONEY

  "Keep lessons short," writes Wolters. And that must be good advice because notice how all the fancy private schools start later, end earlier, and get much more time off at Christmas and Easter than P.S. 1248. Wolters also points out that body language is important to the training process. "Your movements should be slow and deliberate, never quick and jerky." Martinis work for me.

  "Don't clutter up his brain with useless nonsense," warns Wolters, who is opposed to tricks such as "roll over" or "play Dick Cheney's lawyer" for dogs that have a serious purpose in life. Therefore, no, Muffin, Poppet, and Buster, I am not paying your college tuition so you can take a course called "Post-Marxist Structuralism in Fantasy/Sci-Fi Film." And, meanwhile, no, you can't have a Wii either.

  Wolters favors corporal punishment for deliberate disobedience. "Failure to discipline is crueler," he claims. I do not recall my own dad's failure to discipline as being crueler than his pants-seat handiwork, but that may be my failing memory. In any case, a whack on the hindquarters is a last resort. Wolters prefers to use psychology: "You can hurt a dog just as much by ignoring him. For example, if you're trying to teach him SIT and STAY, but he gets up and comes to you, ignore him." When I was a kid, we called this dad working late every day of the week and playing golf all Sunday.

  According to Wolters, the basic commands for a gun dog are SIT, STAY, COME, and WHOA. With no double-entendre intended concerning the GIT OVER HERE directive, those are exactly the four things my boy, Buster, will have to learn if he wants a happy marriage. My girls, Muffin and Poppet, on the other hand, seem to have arrived from the womb with a full understanding of these actions—and how to order everyone to do them.

  "The last two, COME and WHOA," writes Wolters, "are so important that if a dog had good hunting instincts and knew only these two commands he would make a gun dog." It's the same for accomplishment in every other field, among people and pooches alike. If you had to give just two rules for success in business, politics, family, friendship, or even church, you could do a lot worse than SHOW UP and SHUT UP.

  Wolters begins, however, with SIT and STAY. And these are important too. Kids today are given frequent encouragement to STAND UP FOR THIS AND THAT. But SIT TIGHT 'TIL IT BLOWS OVER is wiser counsel. Wolters employs a leash to pull the head up as he pushes the rump down. I've found that the collar of a T-shirt works just as well. Wolters uses praise in the place of dog biscuits; he writes, "I do not believe in paying off a dog by shoving food into his mouth." I, on the other hand, try to make sure the kids eat their green leafy vegetables once I've got them seated.

  Wolters teaches STAY by slowly moving away from the dog while repeating the command and making a hand signal with an upright palm. But I've found that if your kids get Nickelodeon on cable TV, you don't have to say or do anything. They'll stay right there in front of it for hours.

  Once SIT and STAY have been mastered, you can go on to COME. Wolters lowers his palm as a signal to go with the command, but a cell-phone signal will also work if your kids are properly trained. Mine aren't. Getting a kid to come when he's called is a lot harder than getting a dog to, probably because the dog is almost certain that you don't have green leafy vegetables in the pocket of your shooting jacket. Wolters suggests that if you're having trouble teaching COME, you should run away, thereby enticing the dog to run after you. This has been tried with kids in divorce after divorce all across America, with mixed results.

  The command that's the most fun to teach using Wolters's method is WHOA:

  "The dog," writes Wolters, "is ready to learn WHOA as soon as he will STAY on hand signal alone and COME on command. When he has this down pat, my system is—scare the hell out of the dog. Put the pup in the SIT STAY position. Walk a good distance away from him. Command COME. Run like hell away from him. Make him get up steam. Then reverse your field. Turn, run at the dog. Shout WHOA. Thrust the hand up in the STAY hand signal like a traffic cop. Jump in the air at him. Do it with gusto. You'll look so foolish doing it that he'll stop."

  Personally, I don't have to go to this much trouble. Just my morning appearance—hungover, unshaven, wearing my ratty bathrobe and slippers Millie chewed—is enough to stop my children cold. I reserve the antics that Wolters describes for commands to this idiot computer I'm writing on. Gun Dog was authored in the days of the simple, reliable Royal Portable. Thus Wolters has nothing to say about computers. Besides, dogs don't use computers. (Although, on my Visa bills, I've noticed some charges to rottenmeat.com.)

  Children don't need computer training either. Muffin, Poppet, and Buster—who can't even read—have "good computing instincts." When the Internet says COME, they come. Mom and Dad try WHOA on certain websites, but whether that works we can't tell. I'm the one who should be taught some basic commands, to make this darned PC...

  "What's the matter, Daddy?" Muffin asks. With one deft flick of the mouse thing, she persuades the balky printer to disgorge all that I have composed. I see her frown. "Daddy, Millie chews everybody's shoes. She bit the teenager that mows the lawn. She killed Mom's chickens. And every time you come home from hunting, you're all red in the face and yelling that you're going to sell her to a Korean restaurant. And..."

  And here is where my Richard A. Wolters theory of parenting goes to pieces. There is one crucial difference between children and dogs. You can teach a dog to lie. DOWN.

  Trick Plays

  Yoni Brenner

  FROM THE NEW YORKER

  The Quadruple Play Fake

  The quarterback receives the snap from the center and fakes a handoff to the running back. Then he pivots right and fakes another handoff to the fullback. Then he fakes two more handoffs in quick succession: to a wide receiver, and then, once again, to the running back, who looped back behind the line of scrimmage during all the faking. Pretty soon, the defense catches on and goes after the quarterback, at which point the actual trick is revealed: the first fake handoff was real.

  Musical Chairs

  The offense arrives on the field with a two-receiver, two-end package. The receivers bunch to the left and the first tight end splits out wide to the right. Then the quarterback starts patting his pockets and looking around anxiously, as if he can't find his keys. Meanwhile, the second tight end—who has a beautiful singing voice—drifts into the backfield and croons selections from A Little Night Music. This continues until the referee blows the whistle for delay of game.

  This play will not yield any yards, but it will get the defense thinking.

  Double Trick Inside Stunt

  Essentially, a well-disguised variation on the strong-side blitz. For the first trick, the strong-side linebacker "stunts" inside the defensive
tackle to confuse the blockers. The other trick is that they're all on steroids.

  The Open-Source Sweep

  A week before the big game, team officials engineer a "chance encounter" between the opposing quarterback and the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. The pair become fast friends, attending a number of folk concerts and rummage sales together. As their relationship blossoms, Gyllenhaal inculcates the quarterback with progressive ideas about transparency and freedom of information, and by the end of the week he convinces the quarterback to post his team's playbook on WikiLeaks. The team loses five of its next six games, and the quarterback is benched. As for Jake Gyllenhaal, he is eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, and is hired by Fox Sports to join Howie Long and Michael Strahan on the Sunday NFL pregame show.

  Last Man Standing

  In a single-back, four-wideout formation, the quarterback accidentally sends the receivers on identical crossing routes, causing a spectacular collision at midfield. The defense seizes the advantage: they overpower the offensive line and pancake the quarterback for a substantial loss, leaving only the running back to tell their stories and sing their songs and pass on their proud traditions of hunting and leatherwork.