In The Sweet Science, A.J. Liebling argues that “watching a fight on television has always seemed to me a poor substitute for being there” (17). Being there lets a fan participate in and become part of the fight.
The same is true for all sports. “Being there” is a form of communion. It also empowers fans so they can mediate sport through poetry (spoken or written)—the fan not only shows what happened, but what could have happened and should have happened. Being there gives writer/fans the ability to craft works as distinct and dramatic as the sporting moments themselves.
This paper will explore this mediation of the immediate in sports, by juxtaposing two prose works that read like poetry, John McPhee’s 1965 book, A Sense of Where You Are, and John Updike’s 1960 essay, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” McPhee’s book paces basketball phenom Bill Bradley through his senior year at Princeton University. Updike’s essay dramatizes the essential tension of Ted Williams playing his final ballgame, capping off an amazing nineteen-year major league career.
Each work shows a writer/fan discovering and recovering their sport—without having it mediated, framed, and maladapted through mass media. This old school approach is especially needed in the digital age where being there often means checking in on a smart phone—information replaces participation and immediacy resides within the fan’s whims rather than within the sport’s action.
Courtside writers mediate sports, which is all the more resonant when an event itself, with its quirks and possibilities, upends expectations or suspends disbelief, forcing us to recover the theatrical intimacy, immediacy and communality of sports. Overall, this paper will explore the lessons McPhee and Updike have for current fans, inspiring us to be there for sporting moments, which cry out for poetry.
About the presenterKenneth Sammond
Ken Sammond holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University and an MPA from Baruch College. Primarily a scholar in postcolonial literature and the conventions of “imagined communities,” he also has interests in exile literature from the Classical world and their influences on postmodern literature, as well as the representation of the Brooklyn Dodgers in fiction. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Language, Writing and Philosophy at Fairleigh Dickinson University where he teaches writing and literature. In addition, he is the Associate Director of the Honors Program there.