Baseball, Boxing, Handball - Sooner Or Later

In Manhasset You Were Either Yankees Or Mets, Rich Or Poor, Sober Or Drunk...you Were 'gaelic' Or 'garlic," As One Schoolmate Told Me, And I Couldn't Admit, To Him Or Myself, That I Had Both Irish And Italian Ancestors.

I Began Dividing Life In Absolutes... Things And People Were Either Perfectly Bad, Or Perfectly Good, And When Life Didn't Obey This Black-and-white Rule, When Things Or People Were Complex Or Contradictory, I Pretended Otherwise. I Turned Every Defeat Into A Disaster, Every Success Into An Epic Triumph, And Separated All People Into Heroes Or Villains. Unable To Bear Ambiguity, I Built A Barricade Of Delusions Against It.

Baseball, Boxing, Handball - Sooner Or Later Every Game Gets Compared To Narrative, But Only In Football Are The Plays Perfectly Linear, Drawn Up With Letters, And Only In Football Is The Field Itself Lined Like A Sheet Of Notebook Paper.

While I Was Busy Hating Vegas, And Hiding From Vegas, A Funny Thing Happened. I Grew To Love Vegas.

The Greatest Players Use Anger As Fuel. Michael Jordan Played Every Night With Something Like Road Rage.