Illustrations by Dalbert B. Vilarino
one
Have you listened closely to the sound a can of tennis balls makes when you pull the vacuum-sealed lid off it? Have you thought about the sound? I think it might be the best sound there is, indicating, as it does, the infinite possibilities for beauty in the world. You can, after all, behave like a couple sardine brains, you and your partner, smacking the balls all over God’s green hardcourts, wasting them. Or you can drive them with pointed grace to different parts of the court, moving each other deftly, patiently, in an attempt to gain an opening, to seize advantage, to win a point. The difference basically between what Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns did to one another and what two hotheaded kids do when they start slugging each other. The kids are wasting the violence; Leonard and Hearns applied it to art. Boxing is a lot like tennis. Marlon McGervin taught me that.
He taught me a lot about tennis. He taught me how to listen to cans of tennis balls when I open them. He taught me how to make sardine sandwiches on white bread with white onions and mayonnaise. He showed me videotapes of Floyd Patterson and Archie Moore and Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano and of course Muhammad Ali. When I went to visit him recently, he was watching old clips of Roy Jones Jr., a genius fighter whose lack of true competition made him seem something of a tragic figure.