I first saw a pro football game

I first saw a pro football game live when I was thirteen or fourteen, and my strongest impression, aside from the cold, was the lack of instant replay. Football was so complicated; there were so many people on each side hitting one another, and so quickly; the experience of watching every play just once seemed bare, untextured, more of an anti-experience. I wonder if people who watched all their games live saw them differently. They must have, but it's too late to test the hypothesis, as even the college stadiums have jumbotrons now, with instant replay.

I bring this up because watching the US Open tennis final last night it occurred to me that the big loss in watching a tennis match live and in person would be less the lack of instant replay--hard to imagine a sport that needs instant replay less, as Federer, virulently and somewhat illogically opposed even to the in fact infallible system of electronic line-judging, is always pointing out--than that, at the stadium, you'd miss John McEnroe's color commentary. McEnroe is the best. He's not just one of the most observant color commentators, in any sport, he's also one of the most genuinely emotional. He gets involved in the matches and the stories being told about them. It's the sort of thing that hurt him sometimes as a player, but it's perfect for the booth. At one point last night, in the fourth set, when the young challenger Juan Del Potro seemed to lose steam, and began to be moved around the court by the more experienced Federer, who started coming up to net and controlling the game from there, McEnroe said, of the immaculate Swiss: "I wonder when somebody is going to just try to knock his head off." That is, when was someone going to hit the ball straight at him, and push him back from the net a bit--not literally try to knock his head off--but still it was a somewhat strange wish to express in the middle of the US Open final.

"Is that what you'd like to see?" teased Mary Carillo, McEnroe's color commenting partner.

No, of course not, McEnroe was supposed to say. Instead: "It happened to me often enough." Why shouldn't it happen to Federer, too?

And in fact, Del Potro, who is very tall, and may possibly be able to hear McEnroe talking in the TV booth, proceeded to hit the ball much harder than he'd been hitting it, chasing Federer this way and that, and taking the fourth set by a hair and the fifth set convincingly. So maybe you can hear McEnroe in the stadium, after all.

I was sad to see Federer lose. The idea of Federer is built on perfection, and when that perfection is out-perfected, as in his loss to Nadal at Wimbeldon two years ago, that's one thing; when it's just out-gunned and pushed around by someone who probably won't be able to play at that level with any consistency--it's less interesting, a fluke, and meanwhile Federer grows older, the remaining days of his perfection are fewer. Watching Federer lose is no fun. Watching McEnroe lose was also no fun, but that was only because one loved McEnroe, not because his losing undercut the balance of the universe. It was natural for McEnroe to lose. His style was improbable and awkward, impossibly awkward. The way he held his racket when he hit his forehand--a Continental grip--it was amazing that he ever even got it over the net.