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Bullish on the Warriors

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by William Meiners

The Golden State Warriors made news a couple weeks ago. Just by losing in Denver, and then again soon after in Detroit. That long haul, the forecasters said, the 82 game marathon would squash any attempt to match the mighty Chicago Bulls of two decades ago. But then they reel off seven straight victories, with dominant showings over the Cavaliers, Bulls, Pacers, and Knicks, as well as a surprising squeaker in Philadelphia. Back west they drubbed the Spurs and Mavericks by 30 and 20, respectively.

The Dorothy in me, the dreamer, ever optimistic about the future of history, hopes Warriors will trump Bulls by bettering their 72-10 regular season record. The Judy Garland in me, the cynic, usually pretty drugged up, doesn’t much care. Of course the shrieking heads care, arguing ad nauseam about who would win between the bygone Bulls and today’s Warriors. A conversation about as useful as who might kill Adolph Hitler given a gun and a time-travel ticket. For what it’s worth, I think the Bulls would have defeated the Nazis. Both in basketball and World War II. I witnessed their greatness.

I lived in Chicago 20 years ago. In fact, I was just about 20 years younger (if math serves me), then turning 30 as the Bulls began heating up in 1995-96 campaign. A grad student who never did write the great American novel, I took up less physical space and had more hair. Fer Pete’s sake (Chicago accent), I may have even fashioned my mullet into a ponytail. I wasn’t a Bulls fan, still cheering for my hometown Indiana Pacers, but I couldn’t help but watch and appreciate Michael Jordan and friends then starting their second three-peat. I’d often drop into Gunther Murphy’s on Belmont, have a replacement meal of Guinness (then six or seven more) and watch the Bulls take on and beat anyone unfortunate enough to have next. My dog, Jack Kerouac, somewhat less socially retarded than myself, was a good companion and conversation starter. Lots of real off-the-boat Irish folks (and maybe they took planes by then) would buy Jack a pint and howl delightedly as his snout strained to drain the glass. I really felt like his wingman.

It might take a hypnotist and whole team of psychologists to retrieve my thoughts from those days. Though I do recall an incredible Chicago comeback on a Sunday night in Denver. Okay, I Googled some of those details, but it looks like the Bulls, down 25 at halftime, came within two of the Nuggets going into the fourth. Alas, the frantic third quarter pace, the high altitude, or Jordan suddenly feeling more like John or Bob Denver resulted in a rare loss that still somehow characterized their unquenchable thirst for Gatorade (potential Google ad). I mean winning.

But this particular naval-gazing essay isn’t about me. Not entirely. I sought out two of the most Chicago guys I know to cull their memories on the Bulls. Not exactly Dembrowski types, but a lifelong city guy, Steve Mend, and our very own Sport Literate mouthpiece, Glenn Guth.

For Mend, the championship Bulls 2.0 may not have happened without a reconciliation with an old hated Piston. “All the bad blood that Detroit and Dennis Rodman represented was meaningless if this guy could get them back to the finals,” Mend said. “And it seemed like dozens of NBA players couldn’t stand to be on the same court with him. Alonzo Mourning was reduced to seven feet of whines and whimpers whenever Rodman grazed his flesh.”

Plus, Phil Jackson, maybe the world’s tallest Buddhist, preached a “live-and-let’s-win” philosophy to a potentially mismatched bunch of Bulls. “Chicago may be the most unfashionable of all American cities,” Mend said. “If this Dennis in a wedding dress wants to lace his body with surgical steel and turn his head into a leopard’s pelt, that’s fine. Winning, Billy boy! Getting back to the top was the only thing that mattered.”

Guth isn’t above Googling an aging memory. He noted that Jordan led the team in scoring 68 times in 82 games. Talk about not taking a night off. With wingman Scottie Pippen, another Bull on the NBA’s greatest 50 list, Jordan had a great supporting cast that included Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper and Steve Kerr, to name a few. Even if he had to muster up the hate of an evicted tenant just to beat them in practice.

A longtime season ticketholder, Guth saw six championships and two All Star games throughout the Jordan era. The times were changing even then, as the Bulls moved from the historic Chicago Stadium to the United Center, an airportish haven in both name and design. “The old Chicago Stadium got so loud you couldn’t hear the person sitting next to you,” Guth said.

“What’s that, Glenn?”

“I said the old Chicago Stadium… The ‘Madhouse on Madison’ offered more of a home court advantage than in the ‘bigger box’ venue, making that second three-peat tougher,” Guth said.

Plenty of games stood out for Guth. In one, Jordan dropped in 35 while Tim Hardaway, a Chicago son playing with the Miami Heat, scored 30. “It was also fun watching the development of Kukoc, one of the first really good Europeans in the league,” he says. “He could fill it in from the arc even though he was six feet 10.”

And even though the Bulls won three championships in the early 1990s, the ’95-’96 Bulls were all about vengeance. Air Jordan was off the AA baseball bus — out of spikes, into Nikes (potential Google ad) and reunited with jersey number 23 down from the rafters. “Unlicensed street vendors sold ‘Fuck NY’ shirts in the conference semifinals,” said a normally not-foul-mouthed Guth. “Of course I bought one.”

Fuckin’ A. Maybe that home team dominance can put some mustard on anyone’s dog, a kick in any pedestrian’s step. And we didn’t murder each other so much back then. Guth enjoyed the Bull sessions with his three kids, especially seeing games in person. Mend said those teams helped drain his bank account. Me, I was draining bank either way.

As for this year’s Warriors with a Golden Gate logo that’s near and dear to my heart (another story), I really hope they can run with those Bulls of record. I think their particular style of basketball of ball movement and swishes is absolutely beautiful. Why wouldn’t it border on perfection? Or at least within 10 games of it.  I suppose Kerr, at last trading hospital slippers for coaching shoes, wouldn’t mind making history twice.

William Meiners, the editor-in-chief of Sport Literate, teaches creative writing at the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

SL Interview

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Dinty W. Moore on literary truths and flash nonfiction

by Nicholas Reading 

Sport Literate: You write in your collection of essays Between Panic and Desire, “Human beings, truth be told, are inept narrators of their own lives.” If this is true, and I agree that it is, how then does writing and telling stories create, or recreate that truth?

Dinty W. Moore: Well, first off, there are fictional stories, which have their own truth certainly, and then there is nonfiction, which has become my passion over the last 20 years. And of course, there is a contradiction: if people are inept narrators of their own lives, how can they write memoir and call it truthful?

My thought is that the struggle between flawed memory and truth is part of the journey of any writing about the self — poetry or prose — and that journey, or struggle, is what gives energy to the stories being told. A memoir in which the author’s stance was “This is exactly what happened, I’m sure of it, and there is no room to question” would strike me as very flat, and unbelievable.

This doesn’t give the nonfiction writer license to just make stuff up, however. The reader expects and deserves the best the writer can do to capture events accurately, to interrogate memory, to be honest when not sure of something. The writer has to do her damndest to get it right, even though memory is a slippery devil and we are indeed inept narrators. The sophisticated reader knows that and accepts it. But lying is something else, and a writer needs to know the difference.

SL: You write in many different facets — as an essayist, a fiction writer, a poet, as an editor of anthologies, and you write about the craft. What aspects of these genres are different, and what aspects are germane to them all?

DWM: What is common to every one of those modes is the need to look at every sentence that you write, or every line, and ask, “So that sounds good, but do I mean it? Do I believe it?” I don’t do this in early drafts. My early drafts are a sloppy process of spilling language onto the page hoping to stumble upon something interesting and fresh. But as I get further down the revision process, in draft 10 or 20, I start asking myself the hard questions. A sentence or line that sounds lovely can be dangerous, because it can be camouflage for a half-truth or an outright inaccuracy. This applies to fiction too. Sure, we make it up, but do we actually believe it? Would that character actually leave that baby on the stoop?

SL: You also are a teacher at Ohio University and I am curious to know what advice do you offer to young and aspiring authors?

DWM: Well, at the beginning, the advice is simple. Write a lot, read a lot. If you don’t love sentences, the way they work, the inner machinery and engineering of language, you probably don’t belong here. That’s beginner advice. Knowing how to help writers very far along and quite talented is a different challenge, and one that keeps me on my teacher toes.

SL: You edited an anthology of flash nonfiction, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction. How are the challenges of writing flash nonfiction, or fiction, different from longer essays or pieces of fiction?

DWM: The challenge is to tell a full story, give a complete experience of some sliver of life, in so few words. It is not enough to summarize “a story I would tell fully if I had more space.” You need to compress so much in each sentence, and each sentence must do double- or triple-duty, so that the flash story has scene, characterization, point-of-view, and movement. The author must create that “burst of self-awareness” that the term “flash” implies. It doesn’t just go by in a flash: it illuminates, like a flash gun.

SL: You close the introduction to that book, by saying, “My hope is that you enjoy this book and learn from it, but most of all my hope is that you’ll be inspired to write, revise, and write some more. And then keep writing.” In short, what value does writing offer to an individual, either professional or personal? What value does it offer to the reader?

DWM: Some writing opens the mind, expands what we know, how we understand. Some writing opens the heart and soul, expands how we feel, how we empathize, how we grow. True for both writer and reader. That’s enough value for me.

SL: Given that you write in many different modes, I am curious to know where you started and what writing offered to you?

DWM: I grew up in a lower middle class family without many books around. My dad was a car mechanic. I knew no one who wrote seriously, or wrote as an artist. So like so many young writers, my passion for the way words work was funneled into journalism, the high school newspaper, then the college newspaper, then a brief career as a journalist. I was 30 years old before I realized I could do the kind of writing that I do now, which is what I actually wanted to do all along.

What did writing offer me? It was a challenge, one that I still enjoy.

SL: Besides essays, Sport Literate publishes poetry as well. You, in fact, were an early poetry contributor. What draws you to poetry and — this is a big one — what constitutes a successful poem?

DWM: I am not much of a poet. I would only embarrass myself if I tried to answer your question.

SL: You write honestly in your own work and seem to open yourself up to vulnerability. Your nonfiction, I would say, is particularly powerful because of this aspect. Was this approach always easy or did you have to work to get to that point?

DWM: I was not able to be honest, or vulnerable, as a young man, but when I started to become serious about my writing, and started writing short fiction, I immediately recognized that the writers who spoke to me most powerfully — Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Harry Crews — held nothing back, gave all of it on the page. I’m not comparing myself to any of those folks, but I learned from them, not just about mechanics and craft, but about heart, honesty, and risk.

SL: I offer many thanks for your kindness to judge Sport Literate’s essay contest. What are the qualities that you are looking for when selecting work?

DWM: Sentences, carefully shaped and crafted, full of color, sound, smell, taste, and texture. And urgency.

SL: In closing, could you share what role sports and leisurely activities have played in your life?

DWM: I am never happier than when playing tennis, or gardening. Riding a bike is in there too. And just last year, someone handed me a golf club, and much to my surprise, I loved the game. Oh yes, swimming. Which reminds me, I should turn off my computer now and go outside.

Nicholas Reading is the author of The Party in Question (Burnside Review Press 2007), and his poetry has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Nimrod, jubilat, and other literary journals. He’s also the managing editor of Sport Literate. Interested in more Reading? Visit www.nicholasreading.com.

Dinty W. Moore is author of Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals (Random House/Ten Speed 2015), as well as the memoir Between Panic & Desire and Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction. He recently edited The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teachers. He’s also the editor of Brevity, the essential online journal for brief creative nonfiction.

Winning Like a Girl

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SL Essay

By Katie Cortese

On a Friday in the heated middle of last year’s Fantasy Football season, my husband read me a text from his longtime best friend. The gist: “If Katie wins this week, I will throw an epic fit.” Because I’m a girl, see. And boys don’t lose to girls where football is concerned, in actual or virtual realms.

Listening to the message, I knew three things for sure: (1) Despite impending natural disasters (i.e. the fringe of Hurricane Sandy, currently dousing my parents’ house in Massachusetts), injured running backs (there’s nothing a little ankle tape can’t fix, right?) and all the obvious pitfalls of possessing an x chromosome (if only I could stop squealing over Lance Moore’s spandex-covered butt!) — I would win; (2) The texter would blame his loss on bad luck, Mars in retrograde, or anything besides the fact that I had compared injury reports on RotoWorld to Michael Fabiano’s Start ‘Em/Sit ‘Em recommendations and carefully considered the week’s matchups, and; (3) My win would do nothing to change his notion that my team was inherently inferior to his, despite his losing record.

Considering that all of the above came true, what I can’t figure out is why the texter’s assumptions — and his condescension — still bothers me now, after the season has been over for months. And it does bother me. Like, a lot. I know it probably shouldn’t. I won the game in question, after all, and while I missed the playoffs by a handful of points, I know it wasn’t because I pee sitting down. Shouldn’t winning have been its own revenge?

First the facts: I knew I would win because Drew Brees was my quarterback, and Percy Harvin my star wide receiver. I knew I’d win because I believed Wes Welker would remain a key component of the Pats’ offense, despite Belichik’s recent (over)reliance on his two burly tight ends, Gronk and Hernandez. I knew I would win because that week my team was stronger than the texter’s team — let’s call him Spot, for confidentiality. And because I — though the only female team owner in the history of the National Tecate League — am just as capable of researching players, drafting well and making last minute, gut-shot decisions as the men whose teams I battled last season, despite my lack of a penis.

But even I know that I won that week in part because Lady Luck abandoned the texter’s side to stand by me, seasoning a simmering pot I’d already stocked with tasty ingredients. No matter the science behind one’s roster selection, or how painstakingly one studies the week’s matchups, or how reliable a player has proven himself over the first half of the season, or how many foolproof wikis crop up to guide owners to a win, Fantasy Football is like a low-stakes stock market. There’s probably a Moneyball-type formula that would produce the perfect team — barring natural disasters, freak injuries, and every other bump in the road — but a payout of $250 hasn’t motivated anyone I know to figure it out. That money would be useful to a grad student/adjunct household such as ours, but with as much enjoyment as I get out of playing, I want FF to be less like work than my actual job.

So, if eight months later I can admit that win was due, in some part at least, to luck, then why should I care about Spot singling out that loss as more catastrophic than the four he’d previously suffered against male buddies? If Brees hadn’t thrown a garbage touchdown to Jimmy Graham in the dwindling minutes of an unwinnable game, after all, I’d have faced a long climb back to playoff contention. But then, I’m the only player Spot has ever bothered to text my husband about regarding his fear of a loss. The four games his team failed to win before me were hard-fought battles against lifelong scholars of the game, whereas his loss to me was just embarrassing. Not just because I’m a newcomer to the league; simply because his logical mind was supposed to trump my emotional sensitivity; his brute strength my general fragility; his aggressive yang my yielding yin.

And yet, if I asked him point-blank to explain the implications of that text, I’m sure he would hotly deny any sexism. Conscious or accidental. Spot is an educated guy, progressive, liberal. He was a vocal major before switching to writing in college, not your average meathead (if such a thing exists). And I even like Spot. He’s a funny guy. Held my husband’s bachelor party, abided by Robby’s insistence on no strippers and invited the bachelorettes over when we tired of clubbing. He’s no monster of the dark ages from which certain Republican politicians seem to have hailed.

And yet: that text. That attitude belying adherence to some “natural” order in which men fight and women submit. Men hunt and women gather. Men yell and women whisper.

On some level, what interests me more than my inevitable win over Spot, and the offense I took to a comment he probably thought would never reach my ears, is the ferocious drive that’s overtaken me — the drive to win, yes, but also the drive to demonstrate my competency in an arena to which I freely admit I’m a Jody-come-lately. I grew up a baseball fan and still burn with pride every time I remember pointing out a Red Sox triple play to my grandfather, whose eyes were going bad, and who had to wait for the replay before he could exclaim with joy that I called the game better than the announcers at only eight years old. Wasn’t I some kind of genius?

Nonno’s joy aside, I’m no kind of genius, but especially concerning football, a sport in which my education began during the courtship period during which my now-husband manfully overcame his aversion for the Patriots (he’s an Eagles fan, and anyone who knows their NFL history will remember that team’s brutal loss in Superbowl XXXIX when the Pats became a dynasty) in order to initiate me into what is essentially his religion.

It took a while to warm to it, but learning the intricacies of the game of football — both in its current, safety-conscious incarnation, and by soaking up its storied past — has become a true passion. I like thinking about its social implications (gladiators, catharsis) in the same way I like thinking about the subtle social messages embedded in zombie movies (fear of disease and what comes after death), which is not distinct from the dominant interest in my life, the reading, writing, interpreting and championing of literature. Every football game has a narrative that is all the more exciting for the choose-your-own-adventure quality of the coaches and players living it. It’s unscripted and packed with real danger; the ultimate reality television experience. The meticulous record-keeping of its high priests and priestesses (and yes, a few women have finally penetrated that inner sanctum) belies a respect for history bordering on obsession. In a world where legislators seek to diminish the role of sociology, history, English and other humanities subjects on college campuses, the NFL’s emphasis on comparing stars of the past to the present’s rising talent is nothing less than Homeric tribute, and — dare I say it — heroic.

Still, I know I should be cautious with my affections. It’s no secret the NFL is trying hard to woo the ladies. To them, “female fans” are synonymous with “untapped market” right along with the millions of consumers in foreign countries where soccer holds captive the popular imagination. It’s not for convenience or a scheduling conflict that the Rams held “home field advantage” against the Patriots in London last season, after all. That the NFL has committed to promote Breast Cancer awareness is a good thing, but not a fully altruistic one. The pink hats and wrist-warmers and cleats and towels are bright enough to catch the eye of both sexes in a crowded sports bar. And if we don’t want to bid on the once-worn pink duds (proceeds benefiting the American Cancer Society’s Community Health Advocates National Grants for Empowerment program, or CHANGE), another tab on the same website has slim-fitting, contoured, adjusted-for-boobs jerseys for sale at only $94.99, designer leather purses emblazoned with our team’s name and colors (a steal at $795.00), as well as an array of cheese plates and chip bowls to help us domestic cheerleaders throw the most team-spirited “homegate” party ever.

I should be insulted by that pandering (okay, the cheese plates get to me). But I’m in too deep to quit. And while I really am grateful to Spot for being a loyal friend to my husband — it hasn’t escaped my notice that his team slogan is: “F@#K you, pussy!” It’s probably a reference from a news story I missed in the off season, or a comment on Robert Kraft (the owner of the Patriots, a division rival of Spot’s favorite team, the Miami Dolphins) whose picture sits next to the slogan, or an inside joke with the other 10 guys in the league so ancient and codified that it’s not worth getting upset over. But it’s also a challenge, and I took it personally.

Maybe then, embracing Fantasy Football is just an extension of the same hunger that pushes me to learn, write and do things that force me from my comfort zone, no different from the yoga balance postures I attempt despite the likelihood that my body will not comply. I’m not a natural athlete and the only place I’ve been able to maintain a handstand is the hall in my house where I can walk up one wall to prop myself against its opposite. It’s cheating, I guess, but I think of it as training my shoulders to support my weight, and as a way of acclimating to the strange sensation of hovering upside-down above hard ground. One day, I will join the men and women in my classes who kick up easily against the wall or freestyle in space, biceps taut and quivering. I’ll have to get over my fear of success first, though. What happens if I get up and can’t keep myself from crashing back down? Worse, what happens when I achieve the posture and must set a new, terrifying goal before which I’ll feel incompetent all over again?

Next season, I’m no one’s favorite to win it all. I spent most of last season in dead center — sixth place (though second in points) — and the win against Spot that I thought of as pivotal didn’t even bump me up one spot in the rankings. I’m okay with all of that. Next season will bring a slate of new ball games to slug out, and in Fantasy, as in life, I’m an incurable optimist. When the season starts up again, I’m planning to keep my team in contention however I can — monitoring players’ health stats, working the waiver wire, proposing trades, lurking the blogs, watching games and learning all the while.

That Sunday in October, I wanted my win to show Spot that gender, at least as far as Fantasy Football prowess goes, is immaterial. Both his and mine. But wouldn’t it have been easy to dismiss his text as childish and silly if I didn’t fear on some level it was true? As an adult human being, I have to recognize that I’m responsible for my own emotions, and as Eleanor Roosevelt said many years ago, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” I’m setting my sights on next year’s championship, but more importantly, I’m trying to move past the need to prove myself to Spot, or to my more vocal, more familiar, more damning critic: myself.

Katie Cortese received her MFA from Arizona State University and recently finished her doctorate at Florida State. Her work has recently appeared in Gulf Coast, Third Coast, New Madrid, Crab Orchard Review,Cimarron Review, The Tusculum Review and elsewhere.