These famous words are by Teddy Roosevelt from 1910 but also are echoed in Nixon’s resignation, the actual events portrayed in the rugby movie “Invictus” and in the 1999 film “That Championship Season” in a speech by Paul Sorvino playing a deposed high school basketball coach — the play is actually more about the Nixon era than Clinton or Obama.
I caught the Gunn game Friday which triggered a series of ideas and reveries, and which framed my viewing of the film — I caught only the last half or so. I don’t think I had heard much about the play when it came out in the early Eighties. I saw reference to it after I organized a reunion of 10 of the 20 men who were part of Gunn’s 1980 and1981 seasons. (When Gunn finally won again, in 2009 –28 years later –their administrator thanked us for our small role in breaking the glass ceiling, like Darryl Dawkins).
For me of course, I was more of a sports reporter embedded on the end of the bench that an actual combatant; for me “That Championship Season” could be condensed down to “that championship season basket” — I scored only one field goal, plus two free throws — I was like George Plimpton in “Paper Lion” or Forrest Gump of Zelig or something. I was a practice player. I scored 5,000 baskets on my driveway of course, but only one for the Alma Mater. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that basket — and it’s not like it was a game-winner, like Marc Ford of Paly beating Gunn in 1980, Gunn’s only league loss that year. (Or Joseph Lin buzzer-beating the Titans in 2009). I only got into the blowouts, as a scrub.
Maybe I can map out the relationships, for constructive effect, between those 20 or more men, “we” that is. I see a tiny amount of overlap with the Broadway drama — and we have the tragedy years later of losing Danny McCallister at 45, just months after the reunion, which in itself provoked some unpredictable reactions.
I wrote a fable in my head about a high school basketball player putting his admission chances on the line in a wager with a college president, about sinking one shot, like in “H-O-R-S-E” based on a conversation I had with one of the Gunn moms.
Sports and sports lore can be the source of entertainment and the buidling of character but we should be cautioned about taking any of it too seriously; power corrupts. We all start and end by crawling.
The speech, about half of which is excerpted in the drama:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
edit to add, or this just in, speaking of “cold” or perhaps giving new meaning to “soul on ice”: congrats to Jarome “Iggy” Iginla of the Calgary Flames who became the 42nd NHL player all-time to amass 500 goals, the 15th to do it for one team. Iginla has roots in Nigeria, Yoruba tribe.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 