Sports meltdown. (poem; excerpt from 'The Ultimate Sports Poem') - Harper's Magazine

From 'The Ultimate Sports Poem,' a poetic collage 'assembled' by Neal Pollack, a Chicago writer, 'out of sentences culled from nearly a year's worth' of columns by Chicago Sun-Times sportswriter Jay Mariotti. Pollack wrote that he compiled the poem to celebrate Mariotti's ability 'to turn the perfect phrase.' The poem appeared in the December 23, 1994, Chicago Reader.

I

Money. Wooing. Money. Creativity. Money. Do not tell me about sports and escapism. We've been so damn spoiled in Chicago. Flip flop. See saw. Teeter totter. Real people, real stories. You waited for tragic music, a curtain to fall.

II

Clouds of dust still hover over Comiskey Park. They've installed little huts with curled roofs where players can rest and dodge smoke bombs. As the Bulls fade into the afterworld of champions, Frank Edward Thomas rises majestically along the great skyline. The kid is confused, stubborn, spoiled. The fight for civil rights cuts through his soul. You wanted to throw your arms around the kid, free him from the media madness. As long as he hits home runs, he'll get the rousing cheers. In a batting cage somewhere, Michael Jordan is jealous. And a damned strike could louse it all up.

III

Fear. Horror. Helplessness. Justice. Along with Banks, that's your rotation, folks. The suds always flow, the vines always grow. The fans always come to Wrigley. Commitment to mediocrity, we'll call it. Cry uncle, gentlemen. Like Nixon in his final days, the embattled are usually found alone. The something-something has spoken.

IV

How sad that we no longer can view sport as a fantasy, for all innocence is lost now. This is probably the most bizarre, hideous, disturbing tale ever produced by life's sporting arena. In the most hardened sense of real life, pathos everywhere, a young woman has been forced to confront the forces of evil. Only in America could a beautiful sport degenerate into a sick sort of boxing sleaze. So what we have here, at long last, is the potential apocalypse. They have raped us of the sensation, the fun, the tradition, the aura. Now corpses are being stored in what remains of the figure-skating hall. The wounds are too deep and bloody, leaving unprecedented bitterness among fans. Did some god ordain 1994 as the year of the great sports meltdown? Day, night, sunrise, sunset - it all looks the same. Nancy Kerrigan, save us from ourselves.