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Wednesday, October 2, 2002
It's been our privilege, Ernie

By Eric Neel
Page 2 columnist

Page 2's "Critical Mass" is a weekly survey of what's happening at the busy intersection of sports and pop culture.

On the air


	They dropped 106 games this season, but Ernie Harwell was the Tigers' biggest loss.

Ernie Harwell. For the last time. The Tigers' legendary announcer called it a career on Sunday afternoon. "The Tigers have just finished their 2002 season, and I have just finished my baseball broadcasting career," he said, as if the two things were equally significant. Understated grace and charm all the way.

He read a prepared statement at the end which was, like the man and his voice, genuine:

"Thank you for letting me be a part of your family. Thank you for taking me to the cottage up north, to the beach, the picnic, your workplace and your back yard. Thank you for sneaking your transistor under the pillow as you grew up loving the Tigers.

"I might have been a small part of your life, but you have been a large part of mine. It's a privilege and an honor to share with you the greatest game of all. Now God has a new adventure for me. I'm ready to move on, so I leave you with a deep sense of appreciation for your longtime loyalty and support."

Get that -- we've been a part of his life. The voice, the wordsmith, the heart of the community, the touchstone for a million friendships and conversations, has all the while been thinking of us. Of course he has. Though few of us would have thought to say so out loud, every one who ever heard him call a game felt it, knew it in our bones.

Harwell is one of the great improvisers, of course, but there was something appealing about hearing him read from his short script at the end. He has always spoken with an easy sort of ramble, but this was a bit clipped, not awkward but careful and concentrated. There were little, breathless gaps between words, just slightly longer than usual.

It was in these breaks that you could hear his choked-up heart, could glimpse what it was like for him to let go of this role and this sense of who and what he is. They reminded you, too, of how much you'll miss him. And if you listened closely you could hear echoes of history in them, 55 years worth of calls dramatic and mundane, and generations worth of memories.

It's a lovely speech on the page, but I sure hope you heard it. If you didn't, and you subscribe to Major League Baseball's audio package, you can find it in its archives.

P.S. For more on Ernie, please read Page 2 columnist Jim Caple's terrific piece from earlier this summer.

On the air, Part Two


	Derek Jeter turns his "Fierce" style into an ad campaign.

Gatorade "Fierce" commercial featuring Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter

Jeter takes on fireball-throwing gargoyles in a gothic game of sandlot ball. The spots debuted at the All-Star Game in July and, at the time, they seemed to tap into the edgy, butt-kickin' vibe of video games.

Pop culture texts don't stay put for long, though. Meaning slips and shifts over time. Now, in the early days of October, with the Yankees back in the playoffs, the ads take on a Sept. 11 feel. The dark, decrepit cityscape echoes Ground Zero, the fireballs recall the planes, and Jeter is the avatar of American anger, resiliency and power.

On the newsstand
GQ magazine, "The Sports Issue" (October 2002)

1. Mostly interesting, if a bit too curmudgeonly, roundtable discussion among New York sportswriters on the state of contemporary sportswriting. One guy suggests sports today aren't as compelling as they used to be, which is nostalgic nonsense. Somebody else suggests the disparity between athletes' and reporters' incomes has skewed what was once a relatively balanced exchange between two working people, which sounds about right. And they all talk about moving away from game stories, giving writers more time to write well, etc., which sounds like the kind of thing I'd like to read.

2. Very nice piece on Calgary's Jerome Iginla, the NHL's leading scorer last season, and Herb Carnegie, an 82-year-old black legend who may be one of the best hockey players to never play in the league. Iginla is humble and smart. Carnegie is still fierce and spry, and still angry about being shut out by racism, after all these years.


	Jarome Iginla was the first black player to lead the NHL in scoring, long after Herb Carnegie was denied a chance to.

Best moment: Carnegie's wife describing his style:

"It was like Herb was following his own pattern when he played. He had this special way of skating, with his knees bent but very strong. You could tell he was able to see the whole ice. He had a plan. He saw what the other players were going to do next, even before they knew it themselves. You could see him shifting around. You could see he was using his head.

"After all these years, I've never described him on the ice before. He was a beautiful hockey player."

Lovely stuff -- the kind of economic, empathetic and appreciative stuff that makes you want to be a writer, an athlete, a fan.

A second look
In August, I did a column on Sadaharu Oh's "A Zen Way of Baseball" as the first in a (more-or-less) monthly series of "second look" readings of great sports books.

At the time, I asked you to write in with your own suggestions about books I should include in the series, and dozens of you sent in ideas. Thanks a bunch for the input.

New titles on the list, in case you want to read ahead, include:

"Veeck as in Wreck," by Bill Veeck

"Foul: The Connie Hawkins Story," by David Wolf

"The Courting of Marcus Dupree," by Willie Morris

"Under the Frog," by Tibor Fischer

Keep 'em coming. Tell me about your favorite sports book -- enthusiastic descriptions of underappreciated beauties are especially welcome, but rhapsodic paeans to the classics are always good too. (And again, please do me a favor and put "second look" in the subject line of your e-mail.) If your love for the book inspires me I'll add it to the "second look" list in the months to come.

I'll do the Marcus Dupree book next, I think, but the second book to get a second look is ...

"North Dallas Forty," by Peter Gent (Total/Sports Illustrated Books, 2000; originally published in 1973).

What it is: A raucous, edgy novel based on Gent's experience as a wide receiver with the Dallas Cowboys in the Tom Landry-Don Meredith era. The book chronicles eight days worth of parties, practices, trysts and benders in the life of receiver Phil Elliott, and provides a bold, unvarnished look at a brutal game and the culture surrounding it.

Four good reasons to read it:

1. It's funny, in a sad, cruel sort of way. There is mayhem and debauchery everywhere, a wild, cartoonish sort of sort of excess -- men are hurting people, things, themselves and each other (mostly physically, but emotionally, too) at every turn. It could all be very ugly, because it all is very ugly, but Elliott strikes the perfect sort of cool, chronicler-observer pose. He's in it, but not entirely of it. He's capable of understatement and irony, and sardonic passages like this, from a description of a hunting trip with a couple of rabid, blotto teammates:

"Jo Bob quickly shouldered his gun and fired twice, hitting one of the birds. When they struck the ground Meadows emptied his shotgun into them, blowing the birds to shreds. Jo Bob and Meadows left them where they fell and clambered onto the fenders of the truck.

"The decision was made to road hunt. I was elected to drive. Maxwell sat next to me. The two assassins remained on the fenders."

The savage weirdness of the book hits all the harder because Elliott isn't raging or rending garments, he's sort of stumbling, bemused and just this side of broken-down.

2. Gent is honest and open. Detailed descriptions of pain and soul-searching, introspective passages abound. Athletes aren't indomitable high-flyers and fearsome warriors here; they're beat-up, wounded guys always on the edge of failure, always trying desperately to find a way to survive.

It's easy to watch athletes perform at a high level and imagine they are braver than the rest of us, that they have somehow put away their fears and insecurities. Gent's take is just the opposite: Players do what they do, reach the heights that they reach and somehow manage to dig down into their deepest reserves of will and courage precisely because they are terrified ... of failure, of embarrassment, of discovering that they cannot do something they want so very much to do.

The hopelessness of it all, man, having to win. It's just a flashy treadmill with no way off but failure. I know guys who are still trying to explain why they didn't make it in high school ... Ten thousand degrees of failure and only one champion.

3. The football writing is excellent. You read about broken bones and painkillers, about ruthless bastard owners and uptight, manipulative coaches, you read about guys barely hanging on and guys already thrown on the scrap heap, and you think: Why play this game? Then you read Gent's descriptions of running patterns and the feel of the ball in Elliott's hands, and you wonder, how could a person do anything else?

4. It's an anti-establishment thing. It's an indictment, a keen-eyed look at the bodies and minds getting chewed up by a game that became a system, and a system that became an industry.

In 1973, when "North Dallas" was first published, the book was a revelation. It can't work that same way now -- the idea of sports as entertainment and big business is too commonplace. Still, the book's straight-ahead, unflinching insistence that the guys on the field are real people, with bruised flesh, fractured bones and shattered egos, is a moving read and a simple, enduring call to take the side of the man, not the Man.

And, just for good measure, let me say this: This is just one of those books, one of those exhilarating, electric books you have to read. The prose pops. The story jabs and moves. It's smart and blatant and subtle and resonant. It's of its time. It transcends its time. It's a great American book, in the tradition of Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, alongside Tom Wolfe. It has the goods, start to finish. If you've read it, read it again. If you haven't read it, get busy.

One more thing: The 1979 movie version of "North Dallas Forty" has just been released on DVD. For the definitive read on the movie, keep an eye out for Jeff Merron's upcoming "Reel/Real" treatment on Page 2.

Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column, which will appear every Wednesday on Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net.