Sports Saturday
March Madness is upon us and, once again, people are tearing up their brackets after the first night. Few sports events, especially in the early rounds of play, seem to generate the same excitement as this tournament, and already we’ve been treated to thrilling upsets (Harvard! Dayton! Mercer!!).
Although some people are predicting comparable excitement for NCAA Division I football, which will be replacing the problematic BCS format with a tournament of its own, I’m not convinced. College basketball seems more innocent that college football, maybe because the players aren’t helmeted so that one can see their youth. A poem like Ray Fleming’s “One on One Basketball” captures the moments of transcendence that we watch for.
Fleming is describing an out-of-body or in-the-zone moment when a player feels controlled by something outside him/herself. “I seemed to watch myself go up effortlessly for the basket,” Fleming’s speaker says and then, as the ball drops through the net, “I had done it, though I could not explain it.”
The player discovers himself in a whole new relationship with his hands and his body, which “belonged to no one there while it hung in the air of the gym.” Nor is his opponent, the one who imitates his movements, entirely real. While his teeth or fingernails may have exacted some damage on the speaker’s knuckles, those body parts are “not really his.” In my favorite line of the poem we are told that “Possession/is a dubious affair without resonance/in this heavy air.”
What calls for this effort from the two players, the speaker tells us, is neither material (“physiological”) nor spiritual (“mystical”) but something “rooted in a steel hoop/beyond the innocence of our/accustomed matrix.” Only after the ball drops through the net and they both fall away does the speaker reclaim something. Is he reclaiming that movements that, during the shot, appeared to have belonged to no one? Or is he taking possession of this extraordinary moment. Maybe the latter since he says that, good as were his “mine but not mine” movements, he can only reclaim them “momentarily”—which is to say, for the duration of a momentary ellipsis (“…”).
After that, I suppose, everything returns to the god of the steel hoop. Which this weekend is attracting millions of worshippers, who are also seeking out-of-body experiences.
One on One in Basketball
By Ray Fleming
I seemed to watch myself go up
effortlessly for the basket,
and saw the ball drop through the net.
I had done it, though I could not explain it.
It was a jump-shot, and my hand flicked
at the basket. Swish! I saw hands
that were too small for the game, hands
that were unblistered, coffee-colored,
and wrinkled, and that belonged to me.
The skin around the knuckles had been broken
by a tooth or a fingernail…not my own,
but not really his either. Possession
is a dubious affair without resonance
in this heavy air. The body that raised
itself toward its ringed-empty goal
belonged to no one there
while it hung in the air of the gym.
The muscles, the movements of wrist,
finger, leg, and elbow were controlled,
but not by me, not by him, but by a desire
rooted in a steel hoop
beyond the innocence of our
accustomed matrix. It had nothing to do
with physiology or mysticism: only basketball.
I gave myself over to a winning and
a dropping away (he imitated me),
and reclaimed some of those movements
…momentarily. It was good