Monday, April 30, 2012

the last book I ever read (The Complete Game, excerpt one)



from Ron Darling's The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball and the Art of Pitching:

As a kid, I'd always hated reading those sports biographies where it said this or that athlete put a little extra something into his or her game to get the job done, because they left me thinking that a little extra something was always on the table, there for the taking. It's not. You might think it's there, and you might keep reaching for it and coming back empty. Or maybe you think you can get by without it, so you don't bother. However it happens, however it doesn't, the game doesn't always play out the way you imagine it. Rather, it moves along on its own momentum, and it falls to you to find ways to control that momentum to advantage. So that extra something all athletes reach for can't always make the difference. In fact, it rarely does, and here I'd loaded the bases in the first and put the leadoff man on second base to start the second, and it appeared that momentum was running away from me.

I thought, This is not good.

No comments:

Post a Comment