Happy New Year

1) I played against David Kufeld in high school. He went on to lead Division 3 in rebounding at Yeshiva and was drafted in the 10th round by Portland. He scored at will upon me. I was pursuing an unofficial major in independent psychopharmaceutical research at the time and so find recall of the details of many of my experiences of those years less than complete, however I’d like to believe he wore his yarmulkeh during the game. (That’s something I really should remember but don’t; a wasted mind is indeed a terrible thing, eh?) Mike Tilley of mid-60s Hofstra fame was the coach at my high school and remains in my opinion the single greatest player with whom I have ever stepped on the court.

2) Secretariat in the Belmont. Nothing comes remotely close. All these years later I still literally tear up— I do not exaggerate— whenever I see the film of this. And I am not a racing fan at all. This however is the single most transcendent moment I have ever seen in sport. Secretariat was God with a capital G. Also, the Ward-Gatti trilogy. And I am not a boxing fan either. The most memorable moment which I was on hand to personally see? Probably the brawl between the Yanks and Red Sox where Bill Lee tore out his arm. I was also at the game where Elliott Maddox tore both his knees on successive plays in rightfield. You could hear the pop in the cheap seats on the first one, the trainer did not even go out on the field, the next batter hit it over Maddox’s head and he turned the other way to go after it, caught his spikes and rrrippp!! They carried him off. He later sued everyone involved if I recall: the Yanks, Shea Stadium (while the new Yankee Stadium was being built they played there,) the league, MLB, the trainer, the team doctor… Also, I once saw a guy drink so much beer at the original Yankee Stadium that he began puking voluminously and continued at it for like four innings, finally dry-retching until a phosphorescent gleen globule hocked up from probably his spleen? He stepped into the aisle, slipped in his own vomit and rolled maybe 15 rows head-first until the front lip of the upper deck stopped his plunge. He then stands up, his neck apparently not broken, shakes off the wet chunks like a dog, trudges up the aisle through the pools of vomit, and exits into the concourse. A few minutes later he returns with a cardboard tray and six more beers. My hero.
  

Ok, the most “surprisingly athletic” feat I’ve seen? For real?

Faculty/staff intramurals at Univ. of Texas, Arlington, 1993, the furthest I have ever seen a softball hit. It was not a Matt Stairs who did it, but rather a Pakistani academic computing guy. Dude was about 6’3", maybe 230 lbs, all muscle. (I later recruited him onto my university championship hoops team as my starting power forward.) He turned on a pitch with every ounce of his strength and pulled it down the leftfield line so hard the ball stopped rolling and he had already rounded the bases at a casual trot before our outfielder ever even got to it. I don’t have the tape-measure on it but I’d be surprised if that wouldn’t have been a high-foul-pole job at most major league parks. He did something similar just about every at-bat I saw him take that season.

You just do not expect a foreigner to be the guy to do this, and certainly not someone from that part of the world. Turns out that before leaving Pakistan for the States, he had been on one of his country’s junior national cricket teams in international play. Now I don’t know much about cricket but I do know that much of it is about trying to uppercut the ball over the outfield fence for 6 points, and this is how he developed that swing. Except a cricket ball is much smaller and harder; that he could do this to a clincher softball was mind-boggling. Lord knows how far he could have hit a baseball?