After listening to my report on how the trip had gone, MacWeeney handed me a slip of paper with the names and telephone numbers of the men I should get in touch with at Lahinch, Killarney, and Ballybunion, on my second loop, which I would be starting the next morning; with his invariable tidiness, he had phoned them that afternoon to make certain that everything was in order. Then we just talked golf. Somewhere in our conversation, I remarked that the courses I had visited had far surpassed my considerable expectations. “They are good,” MacWeeney said. “We haven’t thrown away what nature provided. And we’ve been sufficiently intelligent to call in the best golf architects. Old Tom Morris not only did Newcastle County Down but the original layout at Lahinch. H. S. Colt did Portrush and County Sligo; Alister MacKenzie, the modern remodeling of Lahinch; Sir Guy Campbell, Killarney; Tom Simpson, some of the revisions at Ballybunion. When you stop and think of it, at one time or another we’ve lured over just about all the top English and Scottish architects. For example, take the course at Mullingar. James Braid did the course there, and it’s an exceedingly good one. It has a wonderful plan: No hole is more than four hundred yards from the clubhouse.” MacWeeney paused a moment and smiled to himself. “I was just thinking of the story of how Braid laid out Mullingar. The old boy must have been close to seventy at that time—back in the nineteen-thirties. He was the professional then, as he was throughout his later years, at Walton Heath, outside London. He did his architecture on the side. He was very Scottish, you know, and he hated to throw away time or money just as much then as he had when he was a young man and winning those five British Opens. In the case of Mullingar, you could sympathize with him for not wanting to dawdle around—his fee was some ridiculously small amount like twenty-five pounds. Anyway, he left Walton Heath one afternoon and caught the Dublin night boat at Holyhead. He was met at the dock the next morning by the committee from Mullingar, and they whisked him by auto to the club property, two hours away. ‘Gentlemen,’ he told the committee, ‘I would prefer to be left alone while I do my work. I will let you know when it’s finished.’ And with that he began to walk over the property, looking for natural green sites, and so on. Four hours later, when he had the whole eighteen staked out, he called in the committee, showed them what he had done, and issued a few instructions for the construction superintendent. Then he shook everyone’s hand, motored back to Dublin, and caught the night boat for Holyhead. The next afternoon, he was back in his shop at Walton Heath.
“There’s a sort of companion story about Mullingar,” MacWeeney continued, with a fresh smile. “Some three years after the course was opened, a foursome of fairly good golfers was playing one of the par threes—the second hole, I think, a tough one-shotter about a hundred and ninety yards long. None of the four managed to put his tee shot on the green, and this led to some loud grumbles about how unfair the hole was, because the green wouldn’t hold a well-hit shot. At this, an old gentleman who had been sitting unnoticed on a bench by the tee, taking it all in—Braid, of course, over on an inspection trip—asked one of the golfers to lend him a two-iron and a few golf balls. Without removing his jacket, he hit four lovely shots, all of them on the green within twenty feet of the flag. ‘Gentlemen, I don’t see anything wrong with this hole,’ he said. ‘I think it plays verra well.’”
We talked until nearly three. When MacWeeney left, he cautioned me once again about Irish hospitality. “If you don’t watch them, the people here will keep you up all hours,” he said. “They simply hate to go to bed.”
1971
“I’m thinking!”
TENNIS PERSONALITIES
MARTIN AMIS
I have a problem with—I am uncomfortable with—the word personality and its plural, as in “Modern tennis lacks personalities” and “Tennis needs a new star who is a genuine personality.” But if, from now on, I can put “personality” between quotation marks, and use it as an exact synonym of a seven-letter duosyllable starting with a and ending with e (and also featuring, in order of appearance, an ss, an h, an o, and an l), why, then, personality and I are going to get along just fine.
How come it is always the old “personalities” who lead complaints about the supposed scarcity of young “personalities”? Because it takes a “personality” to know a “personality”? No. Because it takes a “personality” to like a “personality.”
Ilie Nastase was a serious “personality”—probably the most complete “personality” the game has ever boasted. In his memoir, Days of Grace, Arthur Ashe, while acknowledging that Nastase was an “unforgettable personality,” also recalls that Ilie called him “Negroni” to his face and, once, “nigger” behind his back. Ilie, of course, was known as a “clown” and a “showman;” i.e., as an embarrassing narcissist. Earlier this year, his tireless “antics” earned him a dismissal and a suspension as Romania’s Davis Cup captain (“audible obscenities and constant abuse and intimidation”). Ilie is forty-seven. But true “personalities” merely scoff at the passage of time. They just become even bigger “personalities.”
Jimmy Connors: another total “personality.” Imagine the sepsis of helpless loathing he must have inspired in his opponents during his “great runs” at the U.S. Open. There’s Jimmy (what a “personality”), orchestrating mass sex with the Grandstand Court. It’s great for the mild-mannered Swede or Swiss up at the other end: He double-faults, and New York goes wild. Jimmy was such an out-and-out “personality” that he managed to get into a legal dispute with the president of his own fan club. Remember how he used to wedge his racket between his legs with the handle protuding and mime the act of masturbation when a call went against him? That’s a “personality.”
Twenty-odd years ago, I encountered Connors and Nastase at some PR nightmare in a Park Lane hotel. Someone asked these two bronzed and seersuckered “personalities” what they had been doing with themselves in London. “Screwing each other,” Nastase said, and collapsed in Connors’s arms. I was reminded of this incident when, last fall, I saw an account of a whistle-stop tour undertaken by John McEnroe and Andre Agassi. Questioned about their relationship, Agassi described it as “completely sexual.” Does such raillery inevitably come about when self-love runs up against mutual admiration? Or is it part of a bonding ritual between “personalities” of the same peer group?
By turning my TV up dangerously loud, I once heard McEnroe mutter to a linesman (and this wasn’t a Grand Slam event but one of those German greed fests where the first prize is something like a gold helicopter), “Get your fucking head out of your fucking [personality].” Arthur Ashe also reveals that McEnroe once called a middle-aged black linesman “boy.” With McEnroe gone, it falls to Agassi to shoulder the flagstaff of the “personalities”—Agassi, the Vegas traffic light, the “Zen master” (B. Streisand) who used to smash forty rackets a year. And I don’t think he has the stomach for it, funnily enough. Nastase, Connors, McEnroe, and Agassi are “personalities” of descending magnitude and stamina. McEnroe, at heart, was more tremulous than vicious; and Agassi shows telltale signs of generosity—even of sportsmanship.
There is a “demand” for “personalities,” because that’s the kind of age we’re living in. Laver, Rosewall, Ashe: These were dynamic and exemplary figures; they didn’t need “personality” because they had character. Interestingly, too, there have never been any “personalities” in the women’s game. What does this tell us? That being a “personality” is men’s work? Or that it’s boys’ work?
We do want our champions to be vivid. How about Pete Sampras, then—so often found wanting in the “personality” department? According to the computer, Sampras is almost twice as good as anyone else in the sport. What form would his “personality” take? Strutting, fist-clenching, loin-thrusting? All great tennis players are vivid, if great tennis is what you’re interested in (rather than something more tawdrily generalized). The hare-eyed Medvedev, the snake-eyed Courier, the droll and fiery Ivanisevic, the innocent Bruguera, the Wagnerian (and Machiavelli
an) Becker, the fanatical Michael Chang. These players demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to have, or to contain, a personality—without being an asshole.
1994
“We beat the spread!”
PROJECT KNUCKLEBALL
BEN MCGRATH
As season-ending home runs go, Aaron Boone’s eleventh-inning shot for the Yankees against the Red Sox last October looks pretty unimpressive in retrospect. Watch the video replay once more: A paunchy, goateed pitcher, his cap pulled down low, begins to wind up for what appears to be a practice pitch—hasn’t a batter stepped in already?—and releases the ball from a contorted claw’s grip, right pinkie finger extended, with a prim, abbreviated follow-through, the right foot landing in quick succession after the left, as though in a limp. The miles-per-hour indicator flashes “69” at the top of the screen as the ball floats, then hangs. If you didn’t know better, you might not believe that the Boston pitcher—he’s quietly walking off the field now, as Yankee Stadium erupts with joy—intended to get Boone out, or that he had any business being on the mound in a postseason Game Seven in the first place, much less during extra innings. In fact, though, Tim Wakefield, the pitcher in question, had beaten the Yankees more often than any pitcher all season by doing much the same thing. Sixty-nine mph is routine for a sophomore in high school; it is on the fast side for a Wakefield delivery.
The Yankees and the Red Sox are engaged in what is often called an arms race. This past off-season, the two teams, already possessing stratospheric payrolls, went about adding more firepower to their rosters. The Sox, most notably, added a couple of hard-throwing All-Star pitchers (New York allowed fewer runs last season), while the Yanks added a couple of All-Star sluggers (Boston scored more). In Fort Myers, on the first Sunday in March, the Yankees arrived at City of Palms Park (Florida’s Fenway) to play the Red Sox in a meaningless early spring-training game that was nonetheless billed by various players and writers as “Game Eight”—the continuation of last fall’s epic series, which seemed merely to have paused for the winter. Before the game, several fans paraded around the grandstand carrying signs taunting Alex Rodriguez, New York’s studly new third baseman (he’d recently posed with his wife for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue), and alluding to the simmering steroids controversy (the Yankees’ new right fielder, Gary Sheffield, was among those called to testify before a grand jury). Obscured by all the commotion was the fact that, in this cold-war buildup, the weakest arm may still make all the difference.
Two miles down the road, at about the same time, a twenty-four-year-old former art student named Charlie Zink was throwing from a practice mound at the Red Sox’ sprawling Player Development Complex, while the rest of the hundred or so minor-leaguers in the Boston organization, spread out over five diamonds, took batting practice and shagged fly balls. Zink was twelve when he first saw Wakefield—then a rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates—pitching in the National League playoffs, in 1992. Now, although he is capable of throwing standard-issue jock heat, Zink was trying to mimic the Wakefield delivery as well as he could, right down to the apparent lack of exertion and the junior-varsity speed. From a side view, there was nothing at all remarkable about Zink’s pitches, except that occasionally the catcher didn’t catch them. In those instances, the coach who was standing behind the mound tended to exclaim, “That is outstanding!” Zink, who went undrafted as a fastball pitcher, is, at the Red Sox’ urging, reinventing himself as a rare specialist: a knuckleballer. With Wakefield, one of only two knuckleball pitchers currently on a major-league roster, and now Zink, the Red Sox are cornering the market on low-grade weaponry. Project Knuckleball is only just beginning its second year, but, according to Baseball Prospectus, a leading baseball-analysis website, Zink is already the Red Sox’ top-rated prospect.
The knuckleball—also known as the knuckler, the fingernail ball, the fingertip ball, the flutterball, the floater, the dancer, the bug, the butterfly ball, the moth, the bubble, the ghostball, the horseshoe, the dry spitter, and, curiously, the spinner—has been around, in one form or another, for nearly as long as professional baseball itself, though for much of that time it has been regarded with suspicion. Spinning is precisely what it does not do. In fact, a lack of spin is about the only identifying characteristic of the pitch. There is no right way to hold a knuckleball when throwing it (seams, no seams; two fingers, three), and no predictable flight pattern once it leaves the hand. “Butterflies aren’t bullets,” the longtime knuckleballer Charlie Hough once said. “You can’t aim ’em—you just let ’em go.” The pitch shakes, shimmies, wobbles, drops—it knuckles, as they say. Which is doubly confusing, because the term knuckleball is itself a kind of misnomer, a holdover from the pitch’s largely forgotten infancy.
Depending on how you look at it, the first knuckleball was probably thrown in the late nineteenth century, by a bricklayer named Toad Ramsey, or shortly after the turn of the century, by the famous junkball ace Eddie Cicotte. Ramsey, who pitched for Louisville in the old American Association, severed a tendon in his left middle finger (that was his pitching hand), and thereafter adopted a peculiar grip, in which he curled his middle fingertip on the top of the ball, exposing the knuckle. His newfangled pitch probably more closely resembled what is now known as a knuckle curve—a pitch that, despite the name, bears little in-flight resemblance to Wakefield’s floater. (The knuckle curve, thrown today by the Yankees’ Mike Mussina, is released with topspin, or overspin, and so does not even belong in the flutterball’s extended low-spin family.)
Cicotte, for his part, discovered early in his career that by pressing the knuckles of his middle and index fingers against the ball’s surface, and steadying the ball with his thumb, he could produce a spinless pitch, which would behave erratically and set batters on edge. In 1908, pitching with the Red Sox, he took the nickname Knuckles—by which point others had already begun to figure out that the same flitting effect could be achieved, and with greater control, by simply clamping down on the rawhide with one’s fingernails. The actual use of the knuckles in pushing the ball plateward has essentially been out of style for ninety years.
All told, there have been about seventy pitchers who have entrusted their livelihoods, at one point or another, to the vagaries of the knuckleball (by the count of baseball writer Rob Neyer). Some have preferred to throw a faster, harder-breaking version of the pitch, which arrives in the 70–75-mph range, exhibiting only minor turbulence en route to a crash landing. Others have favored a more arcing, directionally indecisive floater—the Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell called it “a butterfly with hiccups”—which takes care to obey interstate speed limits. Neither enterprise is a growth industry. In the past fifty years, the fluttering ranks have dwindled to just a few per generation.
Once comfortably ensconced in the flourishing community of odd-ball pitches—spitball, palm ball, shine ball, eephus—the knuckleball has fallen victim, in recent decades, to a prejudice against deception and a fear of the unknown. If a kid throwing 95 mph has a bad outing, scouts chalk it up to growing pains; at least he can bring it. If a knuckleballer flounders, it is proof, somehow, that the craft itself—just look at it—is unreliable.
“Catchers hate it,” Jim Bouton, the author of Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues, said recently. “Nobody likes to warm up with you. Coaches don’t respect it. You can pitch seven good innings with a knuckleball, and as soon as you walk a guy they go, ‘See, there’s that damn knuckleball.’”
The pitch is minimally taxing from a physical standpoint, and thus affords its practitioners the ability to pitch in virtually any situation, on any day. Knuckleball pitchers seldom need to ice their arms after working. They lift weights only sparingly, and almost never get injured. The knuckleball favors old age—or at least doesn’t discourage it—and forgives weakness. These are considerable advantages, yet the pitch is, for the same reasons, taken as an affront to the entrenched jock ethic of blood, sweat, and
tears.
“Baseball science isn’t rocket science,” Robert K. Adair, a professor emeritus at Yale and the author of The Physics of Baseball, says. “It’s a lot harder.” To understand how a knuckleball works, it helps to have a basic familiarity with Bernoulli’s principle, the Magnus effect, and the Prandtl boundary-layer theory, for a start. This much is easy: The stitches on a baseball interrupt the flow of air around the leather surface. Then it gets complicated. The air meeting the ball speeds up as it’s disturbed, to compensate for the initial holdup. This increased airspeed causes the pressure (on the side of the interrupting, forwardmost stitch) to drop. The ball follows the lower pressure.
That’s the short story, at least. Wake, drag, aerodynamic regime changes in midflight: All these and more come into play. When the knuckleball is dancing with particular verve and inspiration, as Wakefield’s did (pre-Boone) against the Yankees last fall, batters and their fans tend to argue, only half in jest, that it is unfair—unhittable, even. (“You’re better off trying to hit Wakefield when you’re in a drunken stupor,” the Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi said recently.) This may in fact literally be the case. “A knuckleball can change so close to the batter that he cannot physiologically adjust to it, so in some sense it’s impossible to hit a breaking knuckleball,” Adair says. “I mean, you can close your eyes and swing, and you might hit it….”
The Only Game in Town Page 46
