[Read part 9 here]
The Last of the Metrozoids
by Adam Gopnik
Part X
By July, the doctors had passed him right out of even the compassionate trials and were into the world of guesses and radiation. “It’s a Hail Mary,” he said of a new radiation therapy that they were proposing. “But, who knows, maybe I’ll get the Doug Flutie of radiologists.” Then a slight ache in his back that he thought was a disk he’d hurt water-skiing turned out to be large tumor in his spine, and the end came quickly.
His wife, Elyn, had to be out of the city, and I spent the last Saturday afternoon of his life with him. In the old way, I went into his office to work on something I was writing. Kirk went to see what was on television. He had, I noticed, a team photograph of the Metrozoids at their last practice propped up on the coffee table. By then he could hardly walk, and his breath came hard.
But he called out, “Yo. You got to come here.”
“What?”
“You won’t believe this. Boston College-Miami.”
Damned if it wasn’t. ESPN Classics had a “Hail Mary” Saturday, all the great games decided on the last play, and now, twenty years late, they were showing the game from beginning to end: the whole game, with the old graphics and the announcer’s promos, exactly as it had first been shown.
So we finally got to watch the game. And it was 1984 again, and the game was thrilling, even though you knew what the outcome would be and how it would happen. Kirk’s brother, Sam, came around, and he watched, too, the three of us just enjoying a good game, until at last here we were at that famous, miraculous, final Hail Mary, Doug Flutie dropping back and rolling out to heave the ball desperately downfield.
“Look at that!” Kirk cried, and the ball was still in midair out of view, up above the television screen.
“What?” I asked, as the ball made its arc and fell into the hands of Gerard Phelan and the announcers went wild.
“That’s no Hail Mary. Watch it again and you’ll see. That’s a coverage breakdown.” The old defensive-backfield coach spoke evenly, as, twenty years before, the crowd jumped and screamed. “Safety steps up too soon because he doesn’t think Flutie can make that throw on the run. What he doesn’t see is that Flutie has time to square around and get his feet set on the rollout, which adds fifteen yards to his range. Safety steps up too soon, Phelan runs a standard post route, and that’s it. That safety sees Flutie get his feet set, makes the right read, and there’s no completion.” Turning to us, he said, “That is no Hail Mary, friends. That’s no miracle. That is just the play you make. That is one gentleman making the right read and running the right pattern and the other gentleman making the wrong read.” And for one moment he looked as happy as I had ever known him: one more piece of the world’s mysteries demystified without being debunked, a thing legendary and hallowed broken down into the real pattern of human initiative and human weakness and human action that had made it happen. We had been waiting twenty years to see a miracle, and what we saw – what he saw, once again, and showed us – was one more work of art, a pattern made by people out of the possibilities the moment offered to a ready mind. It was no Hail Mary, friends; it was a play you made.
He turned to me and Sam, and, still elated by the revelation of what had really happened all those years ago, we began to talk about Ralph Emerson and Richard Serra. And then Kirk said heavily, “There is nothing in the world I would rather be doing than taking part in this conversation. But I have to lie down.” He died four days afterward, late at night, having spent the day talking about Hitchcock films and eighteenth-century hospital architecture.
Luke and Elyn and I went up to the football field at Williams last fall and, with some other friends, spread his ashes in the end zone, under the goalposts. At his memorial, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renee Fleming sang and the violinist Arnold Steinhardt played and the art world of New York turned out and listened and recalled him. I think a lot of them must have been puzzled, in the slide show that Elyn had prepared to begin the evening, and which recapitulated his career, from Savannah to Princeton, to see toward the end a separate section gravely entitled “The Giant Metrozoids,” with the big figure surrounded by small boys. But I’m sure he would have been glad to see them there. The Metrozoids are getting back in business again, with an inadequate coach. I’ve thought about finally making the motivational speech, but I don’t think I need to. The Metrozoids don’t need to learn how to separate the men from the heroes. They know.
The Last of the Metrozoids (part 10)
[Read part 9 here]
The Last of the Metrozoids
by Adam Gopnik
Part X
By July, the doctors had passed him right out of even the compassionate trials and were into the world of guesses and radiation. “It’s a Hail Mary,” he said of a new radiation therapy that they were proposing. “But, who knows, maybe I’ll get the Doug Flutie of radiologists.” Then a slight ache in his back that he thought was a disk he’d hurt water-skiing turned out to be large tumor in his spine, and the end came quickly.
His wife, Elyn, had to be out of the city, and I spent the last Saturday afternoon of his life with him. In the old way, I went into his office to work on something I was writing. Kirk went to see what was on television. He had, I noticed, a team photograph of the Metrozoids at their last practice propped up on the coffee table. By then he could hardly walk, and his breath came hard.
But he called out, “Yo. You got to come here.”
“What?”
“You won’t believe this. Boston College-Miami.”
Damned if it wasn’t. ESPN Classics had a “Hail Mary” Saturday, all the great games decided on the last play, and now, twenty years late, they were showing the game from beginning to end: the whole game, with the old graphics and the announcer’s promos, exactly as it had first been shown.
So we finally got to watch the game. And it was 1984 again, and the game was thrilling, even though you knew what the outcome would be and how it would happen. Kirk’s brother, Sam, came around, and he watched, too, the three of us just enjoying a good game, until at last here we were at that famous, miraculous, final Hail Mary, Doug Flutie dropping back and rolling out to heave the ball desperately downfield.
“Look at that!” Kirk cried, and the ball was still in midair out of view, up above the television screen.
“What?” I asked, as the ball made its arc and fell into the hands of Gerard Phelan and the announcers went wild.
“That’s no Hail Mary. Watch it again and you’ll see. That’s a coverage breakdown.” The old defensive-backfield coach spoke evenly, as, twenty years before, the crowd jumped and screamed. “Safety steps up too soon because he doesn’t think Flutie can make that throw on the run. What he doesn’t see is that Flutie has time to square around and get his feet set on the rollout, which adds fifteen yards to his range. Safety steps up too soon, Phelan runs a standard post route, and that’s it. That safety sees Flutie get his feet set, makes the right read, and there’s no completion.” Turning to us, he said, “That is no Hail Mary, friends. That’s no miracle. That is just the play you make. That is one gentleman making the right read and running the right pattern and the other gentleman making the wrong read.” And for one moment he looked as happy as I had ever known him: one more piece of the world’s mysteries demystified without being debunked, a thing legendary and hallowed broken down into the real pattern of human initiative and human weakness and human action that had made it happen. We had been waiting twenty years to see a miracle, and what we saw – what he saw, once again, and showed us – was one more work of art, a pattern made by people out of the possibilities the moment offered to a ready mind. It was no Hail Mary, friends; it was a play you made.
He turned to me and Sam, and, still elated by the revelation of what had really happened all those years ago, we began to talk about Ralph Emerson and Richard Serra. And then Kirk said heavily, “There is nothing in the world I would rather be doing than taking part in this conversation. But I have to lie down.” He died four days afterward, late at night, having spent the day talking about Hitchcock films and eighteenth-century hospital architecture.
Luke and Elyn and I went up to the football field at Williams last fall and, with some other friends, spread his ashes in the end zone, under the goalposts. At his memorial, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renee Fleming sang and the violinist Arnold Steinhardt played and the art world of New York turned out and listened and recalled him. I think a lot of them must have been puzzled, in the slide show that Elyn had prepared to begin the evening, and which recapitulated his career, from Savannah to Princeton, to see toward the end a separate section gravely entitled “The Giant Metrozoids,” with the big figure surrounded by small boys. But I’m sure he would have been glad to see them there. The Metrozoids are getting back in business again, with an inadequate coach. I’ve thought about finally making the motivational speech, but I don’t think I need to. The Metrozoids don’t need to learn how to separate the men from the heroes. They know.