LESSONS FROM GOTHAM

by Whispering Jack

Ten years ago last October I visited relatives and friends in the United States and was brought face to face with American culture. I'd travelled to the States before but that was to do the Disneyland thing when the kids were younger. This time I spent some of the trip in a private home where my hosts were sports mad and eager to show off their own native games with which I was relatively unfamiliar. I came to appreciate how much you can learn from these quirky Yanks and their sports even if most of their political leaders aren't such endearing characters.

The Baseball World Series is played at that time of the year and, in late October of 1997, the Florida Marlins were the underdogs. They sparred against the Cleveland Indians in an intriguing set of matches that took them from one weather extreme to another. It was fantastic television viewing to see the teams slugging it out one day in sunny Miami and then, on the next, they were freezing their you know whats in snowbound Cleveland. The "Fish" were financed and run by H. Wayne Huizenga, a wealthy entrepreneur type who spent heavily to put together a team that ultimately won the title but the franchise was losing money so he sold out very quickly after savouring the victory. Literally. Huizenga dismantled the team by trading off most of the club's best players. The next year, the Marlins struggled at the bottom of the table.

We took a night off to see a National Hockey League game. Our hosts took us across the New Jersey state line into Pennsylvania where we saw the local team, the Philadelphia Flyers, take to the ice against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Those were the days when the only meaning of ice was frozen water. It was a real eye opener but not so much for what was happening in play - more so it was about the eating habits of my fellow spectators which was a demonstration of consumerism at its most gross. The sight of obese parents putting away bucket loads of hot dogs, pretzels and ice creams in between swigs of full premium beer in gargantuan plastic cups was matched only by the copious amounts of fast foods fed at alarming rates into the mouths of their equally obese offspring. Some fights broke out on the arena but there was also lots of mayhem among the boofheads in the bleachers as well. Luckily, I was a safe distance away from all that and in the company of my host's business partner – a former pro boxer from Mexico.

When we were finally able to focus our attention on the game itself, one of the Flyers stood out head and shoulders above the rest. I didn't have to ask to find out that Eric Lindros was a star of the sport. In fact, it turned out that he was just about THE star of the sport, the premier power forward in the NHL. With his imposing physical strength and playmaking ability, he exuded presence with a capital P. "The Big E" was clearly in control on the arena, the difference between the teams and, at 6'4", he reminded me of … um … well … Wayne Carey in the way he dominated proceedings.

I was reminded of that visit this week when I watched in awe as another underdog, the New York Giants pulled off a last gasp victory in Glendale, Arizona over the previously undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. Throughout the season, the Pats had performed at a different level to all of the other teams in the NFL, their legendary quarterback Tom Brady had been breaking records and they stretched their record to 18-0 a fortnight before the Super Bowl. Most Americans believed they only had to show up to claim claimed the Vince Lombardi Trophy. There were some warning signs however, when Brady was seen limping in his hotel foyer only days before the big dance but the bookies, the fans and the pundits still had them as raging favourites.

When the day came, the Giants were ready. Their coaches were well prepared and had an innovative and flexible game plan for the offensive team and one for the defensive team. Their harassing tactics and strategies were applied relentlessly without let up; the players applied themselves with persistence, passion and hard work. Like all of the better teams in this competition, they had a blending of youth and experience but they also had a number of players in their line up who had improved beyond expectations. All of that seemed to be insufficient as the favourites took a 14-10 lead with less than three minutes to go but it was then that the reality set in - the Giants wanted the ball more than their cocky opponents. We saw a series of inspirational plays driven by their own quarterback Eli Manning who looks more like a mere mortal than a no neck American footballer. His perfectly executed long throw to David Tyree was caught perfectly under pressure and set up the ultimate winning touchdown. Dennis Cometti would have labeled the throw as "centimeter perfect" and perfect it had to be because the result virtually depended on the outcome of that play. Some of the pundits are calling it the "Immaculate Reception" but it was man made and certainly not divinely inspired.

On return from my Stateside visit those many years ago, my own football club was being presided over by an orthodox rabbi who had made a fortune on paper from mining exploration in outback Australia and it had a newly appointed coach who hailed from N.S.W, had once studied Divinity and came to be called the "Reverend". Our hopes were high but they all came to nothing in the end. I hope therefore, that I don't cause offence when I reveal my suspicions that the club might have wasted the ensuing years looking for some sort of divine inspiration rather than getting down to the basics and finding the right formula to put the Lessons from Gotham into practice. After all, we still are the Demons, aren't we?