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For self and country

March 8, 2015

Well, thank goodness Davis Cup is back. Sports have been in a bit of a doldrums since the Super Duper Bowl and the Aussie Open. But the Cup – the men’s team competition, pitting nation against nation – has returned for another season, although as usual, the cast keeps changing.

Fed’s out this year, having added the Cup – the one trophy missing from his case – last year. On the other hand Nole’s back. And Andy, bless ’im, keeps rolling with it. Say what you want about Andy, but he’s one of the more consistent Cup players among the top 10.

The New York Times has written that the effect of this revolving door is that fans rarely get to see the marquee names in action against one another in Cup competition. That may be true, but I would argue that it doesn’t necessarily deprive the Cup of drama. Just when it looked like the Brits would walk along over us Yanks, the Bryans (Bob and Mike) took the doubles to keep American hopes alive for Sunday, March 8. And Novak Djokovic made a surprise doubles appearance for Serbia Saturday after winning his singles match a day earlier against Croatia. In the reverse-singles Sunday, he’s slated to face off against the player experts consider to be Baby Nole, “teen starlet” (that’s what CNN calls him) Borna Coric. Indeed, Nole teammate Viktor Troicki was supposed to be in the doubles match instead of Nole, but he was so drained from his five-set victory over Borna on Friday, that coach Bogdan Obradovic decided to go with Nole. ...

‘Shipping’ news

February 23, 2015

Still checking out the newly redesigned New York Times Magazine – so far, so good. But I was excited to see a page on “shipping” in the column Search Results by Jenna Wortham. And no, it wasn’t a column about Fed Ex.

Shipping is about relationshipping, or a romance between characters who are not otherwise romantically linked, such as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman’s Dr. John Watson on PBS’ “Sherlock.” (Drawings of them from the Tumblr website are featured on the Search Results page.)

Shipping, then, is the umbrella term for things like slash – gay pairings of characters who were not originally gay – and slash in turn includes male/male romance, which is where I come in. Though the characters in my series “The Games Men Play” – the swimmers and tennis players in “Water Music” and the football players in the forthcoming “The Penalty for Holding” – are entirely fictional, I won’t pretend that I wasn’t influenced by male/male romances I read on the Internet that either used real people (called RPF or real person fiction) or well-known fictional characters. ...

The Big Four’s ‘special relationship’

February 6, 2015

The big news out of the Aussie Open is that the Big Four is back.

Andy Murray’s magnificent run – until he collapsed against Novak Djokovic in the final – has returned him to the No. 4 spot behind Nole (No. 1), Roger Federer (No. 2) and Rafael Nadal (No. 3).

Andy’s return has got some fans comparing the Big Four to the Fab Four. (Andy, they say, would be Ringo.) I guess that would make Fed, John; Rafa, Paul; and Nole, George.

As with the Fab Four, there’s been some tension within the Big Four. Nole has said that he’s going to reach out to Andy, who was reportedly upset at possible Nole gamesmanship in the Australian Open final. Nole has denied faking an injury in their final, a taut affair early on.

“If there is a chance, if he’s willing to talk, I’ll talk, no problem,” Nole told Eurosport.com. “I have nothing to hide. I’m not the sort of guy who is pretending, who is trying to do something behind anyone’s back or is saying bad things about anybody, especially about someone I have known for a long time. I have respect for him.”

Perhaps the opportunity will come Feb. 15-28 at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. (Gee, how can we tell Dubai is the shopping capital of the world?) There Nole and Andy will be reunited with Fed, but no Rafa.

Though they’re all rivals now, Nole says, “I do look at (Andy), Rafa and Roger as my friends, honestly, because I see them so much, more than my parents and sometimes more than my wife. ...

The “I” of the (championship) storm

January 20, 2015

So it’s to be the Seahawks and the Patriots, two self-satisfied teams that I loathe.

Really, the only thing worse for me would be watching the Boston Red Sox play the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Or perhaps Roger Federer playing Roger Federer for the Wimbledon title.

It’s hard to say which was more painful – the Green Bay Packers’ collapse against Seattle, or the Patriots’ mauling of the Indianapolis Colts.

Both Aaron Rodgers and Andrew Luck, the Packers’ and Colts’ respective, put-upon QBs, talked about the importance of teamwork before their games. And the role of teamwork, or lack thereof, was especially key to yesterday’s losses. They reminded us that while stars can win games, teams win championships. While their paths to defeat were different, in the end neither Rodgers nor Luck had the guns.

That’s why there’s no “I” in team. Although that’s usually meant as an admonition – the “I” as ego.

But the “I” also stands for the individual. In my upcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding,” New York Templars’ head coach Pat Smalley – a gridiron Capt. Bligh if there ever was one – likes to remind his headstrong, long-suffering quarterback, Quinn Novak, that there’s no “I” in “team.” ...

Stand and deliver

January 8, 2015

The big news for us Colin Kaepernick fans is that he’s spending the off-season in Phoenix, Ariz. – working on his quarterbacking skills with Kurt Warner, two-time NFL MVP and Super Bowl champ for the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals.

So it’s all good, right? Someone who’s talented wants to improve on that. We should be cheering him on, no?

No: Let the hating begin.

“Warner should teach him how to bag groceries” is among the milder thoughts in the blogosphere. The rap is that Colin is a running quarterback who will never be a traditional pocket passer. And that may – or may not – be true.

For the uninitiated, and I must confess that Yours Truly counts herself among them, a pocket passer, like the Broncos’ Peyton Manning or the Patriots’ Tom Brady, stands and delivers, that is he stands in the “pocket” – presumably protected by his great offensive line, or O-line – to throw the ball to various teammates whose locations on the field he quickly “reads” under great pressure.

Then there is the new breed of running quarterback – led by Colin, the Redskins’ Robert Griffin III (known as RG III) and the Panthers’ Cam Newton – all of whom have struggled this season. The exception is their contemporary, the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson, who, though a running quarterback, can deliver from the pocket and read the field. He is considered more of a hybrid like the Colts’ Andrew Luck, another contemporary, and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, an established superstar. The thinking is that though it’s fine to be able to scramble, you have to be able first and foremost to stand and deliver in the NFL, unlike in college ball.

All this is fascinating and serves as a great subtext in my novel “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for acceptance in the NFL. My protagonist, Quinn Novak, is more of a hybrid like a Wilson, Rodgers or Luck – what former Niners’ star Steve Young, a great running quarterback who became a great pocket passer – would call a multi-threat.

Rafael Nadal – a man for all seasons?

January 4, 2015

Rafa’s back – at the Mubadala World Championship in Abu Dhabi, where he promptly lost to Andy Murray 6-2, 6-0 in the semifinals. It was the first time Andy – who also knows a thing or two about coming back from an injury – beat a top-four player since he defeated Novak Djokovic in the 2013 Wimbledon final. Andy won the exhibition tourney after Nole withdrew with a fever from the unofficial season opener. Nole had beaten Stan Wawrinka 6-1, 6-2 in the other semifnal.

Rafa – who’s on the comeback trail from an appendectomy after missing the U.S. Open with a wrist injury and suffering a back injury in last year’s Australian Open – is unfazed by the poor showing against Andy. And I don’t think at this point there’s any reason for concern. Entered in next week’s Qatar Open, Rafa is using these tournaments as tune-ups for the Australian Open, which begins Jan. 19.

Still, there is something troubling about the pattern that has emerged from Rafa’s intense style of play. He goes great guns through his favorite, clay-court season, then collapses at Wimbledon or US Open time. It’s a balancing act...

The winter of the Niners’ discontent

December 21, 2014

It’s with a heavy heart that I speculate about the future of my San Francisco 49ers.

How is it that a team that was so strong could become so lackluster with virtually the same personnel that went to the Super Bowl in 2013 and lost to the Seattle Seahawks in the playoffs this year – a game that many considered the real Super Bowl given how badly the Denver Broncos would play against the Seahawks in the actual Super Bowl?

But that was yesterday, and that is sport, as Novak Djokovic likes to say. In life, you’re only as good as your present success, and that’s never truer than in sport where teams mystifyingly rise and fall, sometimes within a season.

What role has Coach Jim Harbaugh played in all this – he of the dad corduroys and the heart-on-his-sleeve temperament? The seeds of his exit may have been sown in 2012 when he sought to get rid of quarterback Alex Smith – at first surreptitiously and then overtly after Smith suffered a concussion and was replaced by Colin Kaepernick, who took the team all the way to the Super Bowl.

Oh, the ironies: The Niners originally chose Smith over his high school rival Aaron Rodgers, who, miffed, went off to the Green Bay Packers – and legend. What if they had chosen Rodgers instead? Would I even be writing this post?

Colin is a mystery even to people like me who adore him. Brilliant, beautiful and hostile to a media that alternately fawns over and taunts him, he spent the off-season giving TMZ ammunition for a false date-rape charge by the company he kept. His curt responses to the local beat reporters, who try to ingratiate themselves as their job success depends in part on the team’s good will, do him no credit and will no doubt earn him no sympathy now that his season has headed south.