Letter Twelve | 12/1 | Peter

| welcome to December. another guest today: our friend Peter. back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. |

Ryan, Russ!

I don’t mean to be flippant about this word, given how it’s used problematically in discussions about mental health, but if the shoe fits—athletes at the highest level are crazy.

To be among the best at a game as violent as American football, you have to be a certain kind of reckless and unrelenting. That one’s obvious.

Hockey players? Hockey is like football with knives on your feet and a rubber bullet flying around at 100 mph, broken up by a zamboni and literal fistfights. The caricature of a hockey player is always missing teeth.

Baseball has both speeding projectiles and an archaic adherence to unwritten rules, which sometimes demands a mere fistfight escalate into a bench-clearing brawl. It’s no mistake that we refer to a baseball locker room as a clubhouse: they’re like frat houses.

Basketball is not as physically dangerous, but elite basketball players are almost all crazy with irrational confidence. They believe they’re the best player on any court, and no matter how many times they miss, they’re sure the next shot is going in. In a team sport as well-populated as football, you can get away with humility. It’s a lot harder to succeed in basketball that way.

Soccer players are crazy, too, and I’ve been thinking about this while watching the World Cup and reading your letters.

There are physically dangerous aspects (the writhing player often is in pain!)—I will never understand how someone brings themselves to stand tall in the wall or head away a laser without concussing themselves. It’s the one sport whose commentators routinely refer to an act as “brave.” (As long as I’m here, I want to take a moment to laud Ian Darke and Derek Rae. In general, Fox’s commentators are far inferior to NBC’s Premier League crews, but Darke’s feel for drama and Rae’s linguistic mastery are a joy).

But the real crazy in soccer players is something very different than the other, big-four American sports. It goes well beyond their willingness to throw their head at a ball that someone else is about to swing their foot through.

Soccer players are crazy because they must dedicate themselves mentally and physically to the same small tasks over and over again for 90 minutes with the merest hope those tasks might produce something. I love what you both wrote about scoreless draws and highlight reels, because the highlights are simultaneously the most important and least important aspects of a game. Argentina doesn’t win without two moments of magic. But it took 90 minutes of shithousery and collective endeavor to make those moments happen. The highlights are not what make soccer players crazy—it’s everything else.

A center forward is crazy for making run after run when maybe only a handful of passes will ever arrive. A center back is crazy for remaining mentally switched-on, sensitive to where the forward is at all times. A midfielder is crazy for running and passing all game long, recycling possession and covering for someone else, playing a through ball or making a last-ditch tackle. A goalkeeper is crazy for maintaining focus when they might get seriously tested only once or twice. Attacking, every player must doggedly pursue chances; everything just might come together in one glorious moment. Defending, putting one foot wrong can lead to immediate disaster. That’s crazy—and yet the descriptor that probably best describes a great soccer player is “class.”

Now throw these crazy classy people into the crucible of the world’s biggest sporting event. Suddenly their countries’ hopes and dreams depend on those carefully-placed feet, that razor-sharp focus.

And then on top of that consider the geopolitical context that weighs so heavily. Not only must the players perform well between the lines, but they have to conduct themselves with, well, a type of “class” outside those lines, too.

Maybe by now you’re thinking of the same player I’m thinking of: it’s Tyler Fucking Adams. (I have to confirm with sources but I’m pretty sure that’s his legal name now). The US highlight reel from the group stage will feature passes and finishes from Pulisic, Weah, and Dest, but for me (and I’m hardly alone) the best play has come from the inglorious industry of the team captain running and tackling and covering. Given the admiration the two of you have for work rate, I’m sure you’ve been similarly taken.

He has also, in one of the strangest international incidents in recent memory, had to answer for the actions of his side’s social media team—forced, along with his manager, to answer for US foreign policy, the legacy of the “peculiar institution,” and the honest mispronunciation of “Iran.” It was an unfair task, but he did about as well as one could expect, kind of like Pippin enduring an hour of Denethor’s questions.

It’s a good reminder, amid all the game-winning goals and big-time saves, that the craziest thing a soccer player does is play, moment by moment, game after game. It’s the craziest thing any of us do.

“What’s the bravest thing you ever did?” asks the boy in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road. His father spits blood and answers, “Getting up this morning.” Sometimes we measure our lives in the big moments, but I think the real work is done in the everyday.

I think of you, Ryan, on the picket line. The odds are against you, surely. They’re not going to make a movie about you and your colleagues. Maybe you will get what you are fighting for, but in the grandest sense, the collective “you” won’t—can’t—beat “them.” But you’re fighting the long defeat, that noble defense of the circle of light against the outer darkness, just trying your best, which is the spirit that holds together epic tales and our own little lives. It’s inspiring.

I think of you, Russ, doing the unappreciated work of teaching. I’ve taught teenagers English. It’s damn hard. And while maybe once or twice you will have a moment that feels like it’s straight out of Dead Poets Society (which is a truly terrible depiction of the study and instruction of lit and lang), most days are a desperate struggle to get something to stick. But the world is better for your work, even if you don’t get the credit. (I’m not saying teaching is like serving in The Night’s Watch, but, well, okay, teaching is like serving in The Night’s Watch).

I think of Joe’s letter, too, and the way our pursuit of joy changes as we age. Maybe the blissful exuberance of childhood is gone, and the fever-dream of college, and even the bright-eyed optimism of beginning grad school or your first grown-up job. But we have the opportunity every day to fight for our joy, even if that just means being kind and choosing to love and holding onto the people who touch our lives.

“Just” that. “Just,” in the same way Tyler Adams running himself into the ground and holding together a team of baby eagles is “just” him doing his job.

Crazy.

All my best,

Peter