Fever Pitch

A couple of years ago, I read an article that had to do with Nick Hornby, the English author. It might have been a review of the movie High Fidelity, which was based on his book. (We saw the movie. John Cusack starred in it and he's one of The Muse's favorites. It also had Lisa Bonet in what was apparently her one and only role between her departure from A Different World and the present. It was pretty good, but could have been a lot better. I'd give it a Movie+.) In this thing that I read, it referred to Hornby's book Fever Pitch and said that it was the best book about being a rabid sports fan ever. Well, being a pretty rabid sports fan, I knew that I had to read Fever Pitch at some point.

Thus began some mild weirdness in which I never quite found Fever Pitch. I could've just bought it on Amazon, I guess, but, for some reason, I got it in my head that I needed to find it in a used book store. It was one of those brainlocks that everyone has, I guess, maybe me more than others. It wasn't as bad as the times that I set a breadbasket on fire in a microwave or that I forgot to check whether the cap was on the A1 sauce before I shook it and thus wrecked my Los Angeles Dodgers 1981 World Champions shirt. (Damn it!)

I really liked Fever Pitch. It's about Nick Hornby's totally obsessive and dysfunctional relationship with the English soccer (football, in the book, of course) team Arsenal and, somewhat less pressingly, soccer in general. It took me a while to get used to, but basically 30%-35% of the verbiage in the book is totally incomprehensible to someone who doesn't know English soccer teams. I know a little bit about that subject, like how English soccer has different divisions, so if your team sucks, they'll get booted out of the top division and won't have any chance to win the league championship until they win their way back into the top division (according to the book, this process is called "promotion" and "relegation"). It would be like if the Kings wouldn't have had any chance to get into the NBA playoffs the first couple of years that they were good because they sucked so bad for the previous 15 years. I have heard of a few of the English soccer teams like Arsenal and Manchester United, but I sure didn't know that Liverpool was a big successful team. But a lot of the book's discussion of soccer was just lost on me.

This turned about to be just fine, however, because the book isn't about soccer, but rather about Hornby's obsession with it. You just have to let the descriptions of soccer wash over you as expressions of an obsessive to get to his descriptions of how soccer affected him. It's basically what I think The Muse does when I get started talking about how the Kings aren't screening for Peja well enough for him to get open shots or how Kevin Garnett has never set a legal screen on a pick-and-roll in his life. (He hasn't! He moves into the chasing defender every freakin' time and he never gets called for it. It's an offensive foul! Of course, he isn't yet as bad as Karl "Hip Check" Malone.)

And Hornby's discussion of soccer's effect on him is the best description of being a sports fan that I have ever read. It gets the highs and lows just right.

On the high side, he talks about how, in 1989, his team Arsenal was leading the championship standings ahead of Liverpool three games before the end of the season and basically needed to win one of the next two to clinch before they played Liverpool in the last game at Liverpool. If Arsenal won, it would be the first time in 18 years that they won the championship. Of course, they lost the next two games and, due to the league's bizarre rules (apparently, the standings are determined by points that are keyed not just to games won and lost, but also to goals scored or winning/losing margins or something -- there are no playoffs), they needed to beat Liverpool in Liverpool by at least two goals. Arsenal was up by one goal -- close, but not enough, as Papa used to say, "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades" --- with less than a minute to play when they got a breakaway and scored the goal that they needed. Hornby describes this as basically an out-of-body experience that he barely remembers and, when the game ended, he went running down the street to buy the first bottle of champagne he could find with his arms stretched out like "a little boy playing aeroplanes."

I have had this kind of experience, specifically on October 15, 1988, when Kirk Gibson, in his only World Series at-bat that year due to injuries in both legs, hit a hanging slider from Dennis Eckersley into Dodger Stadium's right-field pavillion on a 3-2 count with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th with Mike Davis on 2nd as the tying run with the Dodgers down 4-3 in Game 1 of the World Series. I was watching in my dorm room and, where Jose Canseco turned his back to watch the ball go into the stands among the absolutely delirious Dodgers fans, I went running into the dorm hallway, jumping, jumping high enough that I distinctly remember pushing one of the foamy ceiling panels out of place. This was one of the better moments of my life. There was no way the Dodgers should have beaten the Mets to get into the World Series (Game 4 of that NLCS -- Mike Scioscia hit a home run off Doc Gooden in the 9th to tie the game when, if the Mets had won they would have been up 3-1, Gibson hit a home run in the top of the 12th that I called before it happened, I remember distinctly sitting in my friend Jayson's dorm room, saying Gibson might hit a home run and then the whole room looking at me when Gibson hit it, Jesse Orosco walking guys in the bottom of the 12th and Tommy Lasorda coming out to yell at him, Al Michaels saying something like "I don't know if I believe this, but it looks like Orel Hershiser is warming up in the bullpen," then Hershiser coming into save the game with the bases loaded, the winning run on 2nd, in the bottom of the 11th, with my legs tapping involuntarily -- remains the greatest baseball game that I have ever seen), there was no way the Dodgers could beat the A's, there was no way Eckersley should have walked Davis with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th (Eckersley had walked, I think, 4 guys that year), there was no way that Gibson should be able to hit with his two bad legs, there was no way that Gibson was going to beat a throw to 1st if he hit it anywhere other than the stands, there was no way that Eckersley would throw Gibson anything other than a fastball when Gibson was barely able to get around on his fastball in the previous 8 pitches. Yet, it all happened, Gibson hit it out and the Dodgers won the World Series. I keep a little plastic figurine of Kirk Gibson in my office. I figure that the Dodgers' World Series dry spell since 1988 is mostly the karmic toll to be paid for Gibson's home run.

I know others have had this experience. Two of my law partners are fully-committed Red Sox fans. After Aaron Boone hit the home run for the Yankees that beat the Red Sox in the ALCS in 2003, I attended a meeting with one of my partners when an unfortunate junior associate from another firm asked him what he thought of the ALCS and my partner said, "It's enough to make you question your way of life." He wasn't kidding. As low as they were in 2003, my partners were about 100 times higher in 2004, when not only did the Red Sox win the World Series, but they came back from 3-0 down to the Yankees to get to the World Series, thus making the Yankees the biggest chokers in the history of professional sports. One of my partners has said that he categorizes years as "B.W.S." and "A.W.S.", as in "Before World Series" and "After World Series," with this year being 1 A.W.S.

Hornby gets all of this. He describes it. It is good to see in print, to know that others feel about sports like this, even if it is probably not very healthy.

Hornby also accrately describes the lows, how you can't believe that your team has come up with this particular way to injure you. He describes how he attended a game for the championship of some minor cup (apparently, English soccer works something like college basketball would work without the NCAA tournament: there are lots of teams in different divisions or leagues, they kind of get to pick their own schedule, they can play in different tournaments if they want) where Arsenal was playing a team from a lower division. Arsenal easily should have won, but lost. This marked Hornby forever.

Again, I have had similar experiences. I distinctly remember watching Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS. The Dodgers and the Cardinals were tied in games 2-2 and tied going into the bottom of the 9th. Ozzie Smith came up for the Cardinals. Smith was maybe the greatest defensive shortstop ever. (He once dove for a ball up the middle, had the ball take a funny hop in the air, adjusted while falling, caught the ball in his bare hand, got up on his knees and threw the runner out at first. I saw him go on the other side of 2nd, catch the ball in his mitt and, on the dead run, throw the ball around his back to the second baseman to start a double play.) He was, however, at best a banjo hitter. He was a switchhitter. The Dodgers' pitcher, Tom Niedenfuer, was right-handed, so Smith came up to hit left-handed. NBC runs the following graphic as Smith comes up: "Ozzie Smith has hit only one home run left-handed in his career." Needless to say, Smith hits a home run to put the Cardinals up 3-2. A couple of days later, Niedenfuer gives up a home run to Jack Clark in the 9th in LA and the Cardinals go to the World Series.

Of course, this was just a prelude to pain inflicted by the Kings' 2002 loss to the Lakers in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. At ARCO, the best home arena in the NBA. In overtime. When the Kings scored first and had a chance to go up five on a 3 that Doug Christie front-rimmed. After Peja air-balled a 3 with about 10 seconds left in regulation that would have won it. After the Kings gagged up a 20-point lead after the 1st quarter of Game 4 (the Lakers' crowd booed the Lakers off the court at the end of that quarter) and lost on Robert Horry's shot. After Mike Bibby beat the Lakers on a jumper with 8 seconds left in Game 5 (I was there -- it was pandemonium at ARCO). After the refs screwed the Kings in Game 6 (hey, it's not an offensive foul for Kobe throw an elbow into Bibby's face to free himself up on an in-bounds play) and they still only lost by 4. It was awful. It was the worst sports pain that I have ever suffered. I was at my parents' house that weekend with The Mermaid and had to get in the car immediately after the game to drive home. Thank God for The Mermaid. She jabbered at and with me on the way home and probably kept me from driving off the road. One of my friends tells his young children the story of Game 7 as a cautionary fable. (I don't quite know what the moral is -- make your free throws?) It wasn't as bad as Bill Buckner is for Red Sox fans or maybe Felix Rodriguez and Scott Spezio is for Giants fans, but it's close.

Hornby gets all of this. If you're a sports fan, take a look at the book. You will have moments of self-realization. Hornby, however, is just totally off his nut to say that soccer is the best game because goals are so rare that they're precious and you remember every one. Cliff Clavin once found a potato that looked like Richard Nixon and no one thought that was so great. Webbed toes are pretty rare, but no one seems to be clamoring to see my feet. Thankfully.