Consider the following hypothetical situation. Let's say you are playing for your high school basketball team and have persuaded one of the team's benchwarmers to stay afterward to play one-on-one. Let's also stipulate that you are much, much better than this benchwarmer, who, for our purposes, we shall call Rob.

Now let's say the two of you are playing a game to 100 points, with each basket worth one point, winner's outs after a made shot, and you are having your way with poor Rob, backing him down and driving by him and pulling up for jumpers. Pretty soon you've built an almost embarrassing lead — say, 40 baskets to none. Now, in this situation, do you:

a) begin to feel bad for Rob, who is, after all, doing you a favor by staying late, and perhaps ease up a bit so he can at least score a few baskets?

b) continue playing hard but maybe start taking only outside jumpers, so that Rob might have a fighting chance, thus making it more competitive?

c) never let up for a second, hounding Rob on defense and punishing him on offense, because the only way to win is to do so absolutely and completely, and only the weak relent, even for a moment?

If you answered "c," congratulations. You share a mind-set with Kobe Bryant, the most competitive life-form on the planet.

Bryant, in fact, lived the above scenario while at Lower Merion High in Pennsylvania — and did so more than once. Only Bryant didn't just get up 40–0. Sometimes he would take an 80–0 lead on Rob Schwartz, a good-natured, if undersized, junior guard. Think about that: 80 baskets to none. Can you imagine the focus, the ruthlessness, required to score 80 times on someone before they score once? Kobe can. To Kobe, this is just what you do. It is how you play.

"You'd think he'd have a tendency to ease back, but he doesn't have that in him," remembers Schwartz, who now works as a strength-and-conditioning coach near Philadelphia. "I think the best I ever did was to lose 100–12." Naturally, Bryant doesn't want to concede that Schwartz had even that much success. "I think he's lying about that," Bryant says when I tell him of Schwartz's recollection. "I told Rob that too. We were talking about it, and I said, ‘You never got 12. I never let you get double digits. Most you got was five.'" Bryant is smiling when he says this, but it's a forced grin. He really does want to set the record straight. Because God forbid any of us think for a moment that this Schwartz kid got double digits on Kobe Bryant.

Call it what you will: killer instinct, competitive fire, hatred of losing or, as Sam Cassell once said, "that Jordan thing." No one in the NBA embodies it like Bryant. It is at once one of the most valuable skills and the hardest to teach. Sports psychologist Jim McGee, quoted in Michael Clarkson's book Competitive Fire, describes elite athletes such as Bryant as "neurological freaks," positing that they have a different hormonal and neurological makeup than the rest of us.

It manifests itself in various ways. Some, like Magic Johnson, competed with an ever-present grin. Others, like Larry Bird, would rather cut off a finger than be congenial to an opponent. When Bird first met Michael Jordan, the two men were warming up for an exhibition game — NBA stars versus collegiate Olympians — on opposite ends of the court. When Jordan's ball rolled to where Bird was shooting, Bird picked it up, looked at Jordan and proceeded to punt the ball over Jordan's head. Welcome to the show, kid.

Jordan, of course, was himself famous for berating teammates in practice and for befriending opponents only to crush them later (once prompting coach Jeff Van Gundy to call him a "con man," whereupon, the next night, Jordan scored 51 points against Van Gundy's Knicks). Jordan so loathed losing that when he once dropped three consecutive games of pool to then-assistant Roy Williams while at North Carolina, Jordan refused to talk to him the next day. Asked to provide a one-word summation of Jordan, former Bulls center Luc Longley chose "predator." Yet, during his pro career, Jordan somehow managed to come off as lovable — just your friendly neighborhood athletic superhero who stars in underwear commercials and cartoons.

Because Kobe is Kobe, however, he cannot conceal his mentality the way Jordan did, behind a who-would-have-thunk-it smirk or an endorsariffic smile. With Bryant, his competitive fire manifests itself during practice, during games, during summer workouts, during conversation. When he dreams, Bryant is probably kicking someone's ass at something, perhaps swatting Bill Russell's hook into the third row. "He can't turn it off, even if he tried," says veteran swingman Devean George, one of a handful of NBA players who are relatively close to Bryant. And for that Kobe has often been pilloried — by fans, by the media, even by fellow players. But is that really fair? "Kobe wants it so badly that he rubs an awful lot of people the wrong way," says Lakers basketball consultant Tex Winter, guru of the triangle offense, who has known Bryant since 1999. "But they're not willing to understand what's inside the guy."

O.K. then, let's try, starting at the beginning, moment by basketball moment.

It's 1985, and Bryant is 7 years old, living in Italy, where his father, Joe Bryant, is playing professional basketball. He keeps bugging Brian Shaw, then a star player in Europe, to play him one-on-one. Eventually Shaw relents, and the two play H-O-R-S-E. "To this day, Kobe claims he beat me," says Shaw. "I'm like, right, an 11-year-old kid, but he's serious." Even back then, Shaw saw something different. "His dad was a good player, but he was the opposite of Kobe, real laid-back," says Shaw. "Kobe was out there challenging grown men to play one-on-one, and he really thought he could win."

Now it's 1995. Kobe is the senior leader on the Lower Merion team, and he is obsessed with winning a state championship. He comes to the gym at 5 a.m. to work out before school, stays until 7 p.m. afterward. It's all part of the plan; when Lower Merion lost in the playoffs the previous spring, Kobe stood up in the locker room, interrupting the seniors as they hugged each other in an attempt at closure, and guaranteed a state title, adding, "The work starts now." (To this day, Bryant remains so amped about his old high school league that when he taped a video message for the Lower Merion team a few years ago, it contained none of the usual platitudes; instead it was Bryant reeling off a string of expletives and exhorting the boys to "take care of fucking business!")

During the Kobe era at Lower Merion no moment was inconsequential, no drill unworthy of ultimate concentration. During one practice, "just a random Tuesday," as Coach Gregg Downer recalls, Bryant was engaged in a three-on-three drill in a game to 10. One of his teammates was Schwartz, then a 5' 7" junior bench warmer. With the game tied 9–9, Schwartz had an opening and drove to the basket but missed, allowing the other team to grab the rebound, after which they scored to win the game. "Now, most kids go to the water fountain and move on," says Downer. Not Kobe. "What do you think you're doing taking the last shot?" he demanded of Schwartz. The younger player looked at Bryant, amazed. "Dude," Schwartz said, "It's a three-on-three drill. It doesn't matter that much."

It was, Schwartz should have known, the wrong thing to say. He headed into the hallway to get a drink of water, but Kobe raced after him and berated him, and they nearly came to blows. It didn't stop with a reprimand either. "Ever get the feeling someone is staring at you — you don't have to look at them, but you know it?" says Schwartz. "I felt his eyes on me for the next 20 minutes. It was like by losing that drill, I'd lost us the state championship."

Now it's 1996 and the Lakers call in Bryant, fresh off his senior prom — he took the singer Brandy as you may recall — for a predraft workout. He flies in to Los Angeles and heads to the Inglewood High gym. In attendance are Lakers G.M. Jerry West and two members of the L.A. media-relations team, John Black and Raymond Ridder. Bryant, now 17, is to play one-on-one against Michael Cooper, the former Lakers guard and one of the premier defenders in NBA history. Cooper is 40 years old but still in great shape, wiry and long and much stronger than the teenage Bryant. The game is not even close. "It was like Cooper was mesmerized by him," says Ridder, now the Warriors' director of media relations. After 10 minutes, West stands up. "That's it, I've seen enough," he says. "He's better than anyone we've got on the team right now. Let's go."

Now it's early in his career. Just as he once did with Schwartz, Bryant keeps NBA teammates after practice as guinea pigs. "He was notorious for asking me to stay late to work on a move," says George, who played for L.A. from 1999 to 2006. "He'd say, ‘Stand there for a minute. I want to try something.' " And then Bryant would unveil a spin move, or a cross-over, or something else he'd picked up watching tape, and do it over and over and over. "The crazy thing about it is, he has the ability to put new elements in his game overnight," says George. "Like, for example, he might say, ‘Stay after and guard this move. Let me try it on you,' and he'll do it the next day in the game." George pauses to let this sink in. "Most of us, we'll try it alone, then we'll try it in practice, then in a scrimmage, and only then will we bring it out for a seven o'clock game. He'd do it the next day — and it would work."

This is how Bryant sees it — the game as laboratory. I first witnessed it in 2002, while I was interviewing him for a Sports Illustrated story. We were in an empty room at the Lakers practice facility and, when the conversation turned to dribble-drive moves, Bryant started getting worked up. He described to me a variation on a traditional move: a jab step-and-pause, where you sink deep, hesitate to let the defender relax and, instead of bringing the jab foot back, push off it. Soon enough, Bryant was out of his chair and positioning me as a "defender" on the carpeted floor.

"O.K., when I go here," he said, lunging forward, "now I just hesitate for a second and then" — and here Bryant pretended to exhale deeply — "Bam! I'm by you."

He stepped aside and, not content with the lesson, motioned for me to catch the imaginary ball he was holding. "You try it."

I jabbed, hesitantly.

Kobe shook his head. "Sell it man, really sell it!"

And so I did. And as we jabbed and relaxed and jabbed, it occurred to me that, deep down, Kobe Bryant is a total nerd. It's just that, while some people are Star Wars nerds, Bryant is a basketball nerd. "I think Kobe's actually a little bit embarrassed by his love of basketball," says Downer, his high school coach. "People called him a loner, but it's just that basketball is all he wants to focus on. I think he's part of a dying breed that loves the game that way."

It is this affection for the game that gets Bryant so excited about meeting kindred souls. Asked about Spurs coach Gregg Popovich during the 2008 playoffs, Kobe's face lit up as he recalled his chance to play for him in an All-Star Game. "I was really hoping he'd run us through one of those rigorous practices he does," said Bryant. When he got his wish, he deemed it "fun."

Now it's the summer of 2008, and Bryant is an Olympian on a team that will go on to win the gold medal. When around U.S. teammates, he refers to himself as "the old dog," as in, when Magic center Dwight Howard is being called to the bus as the team departs from a practice, "Don't worry, those motherfuckers aren't going anywhere without me. Stick with the old dog, and you'll be fine." (Howard does, and he is). It's a role Kobe's been waiting to play his whole career. Now, finally, he can be the alpha dog — all the time.

It is not easy to coach an alpha dog, of course. Especially one like Bryant, who not only knows the game chapter and verse but also understands both his own limitations and those of his teammates. As such, he is at times given to making, shall we say, executive decisions. "He's sure got a grasp of the game," says Tex Winter, the Lakers' coach. "He understands the game. But — and don't misinterpret this — he understands it a lot better than he plays it."

O.K., Tex, so as not to misinterpret: Are you saying that he knows the right thing to do but sometimes chooses not to do it?

"Yup, that's it," says Tex.

Buzz will be lurking down below once he figures out how to comment. You'll know when he's in there.

Suggested discussion topics:

* LeBron as a co-author
* LeBron's mom
* Why didn't you just write the book yourself?
* Do you think LeBron will stay in Cleveland?
* Have you trademarked "pisses the shit out of me"?

Read the excerpt below and buy the book here.

Chapter 1: Mapmakers

I rode my bike all over Akron when I was small, going here, going there, just trying to stay out of trouble, just trying to keep busy, just really hoping the chain wouldn't break like it sometimes did. If you went high up on North Hill in the 1980s, you could tell that life was not like it once was: the obsolete smokestacks in the distance, the downtown that felt so tired and weary. I won't deny it-there was something painful about all of that. It got to me, this place in northeastern Ohio that had once been so mighty (at one point it was the fastest-growing city in the country) but was mighty no more. This place that was struggling to be something again.

It was still my hometown. The more I rode my bike around, and you could ride just about everywhere because it was midwestern small and compact, the more familiar I became with it. I rode along Copley Road, the main thoroughfare of West Akron, past the dark of redbrick apartment buildings with red-trimmed windows. A little bit farther up, I went past the Laundry King and Queen Beauty Supply. Riding along East Avenue, which took you from the western part of the city into the south, I went past modest two-story homes with porches and the brown concrete of the Ed Davis Community Center.

I descended into the valley of South Akron along Thornton Street, past the blond brick of Roush's Market and the Stewart & Calhoun Funeral Home. South Akron was a tough neighborhood, but still I rode, past Akron Automatic Screw Products and the aluminum siding of the Thornton Terrace apartments. Along Johnston Street I went into the east side, past simple homes of red and green and blue that looked like a rainbow. I turned south on Arlington, past the Arlington Church of God and Bethel Baptist and Allied Auto. I came to the Goodyear clock tower, towering high like the Washington Monument and the great symbol of what Akron had once been, the "Rubber Capital of the World," producing tires by the millions until all the great factories closed.

I biked up the north side into a section of the city known as the Bottom and went past the Elizabeth Park projects-my own home for a time-two-story apartment buildings in unsmiling rows, some of which had been condemned, some of which had been boarded up, some that had screen doors with the hinges torn off or the wire mesh stripped away. I headed back west and biked along Portage Path, a wealthy section of town with sprawling houses of brick and stone and shiny black shutters all perfectly aligned.

I knew I would never live there unless some miracle happened, something fell from the sky, a shooting star that landed on top of me and my mom and made our lives better and carried us up from the projects. But that wasn't the Akron I thought of anyway. Much of it was taken up by the neighborhoods that I went past on my bike, humble homes with tiny tufts of lawn that people tended and took care of. Because even in my darkest days growing up, and there were some dark ones, ones that left me up half the night scared and lonely and worried, that's what Akron always meant to me-people taking care of things, people taking care of each other, people who found you and protected you and treated you like their own son even when you weren't. With a population of about 225,000 when I was growing up, it was still small enough to feel intimate, a place you could put your arms around, a place that would put its arms around you.

There was something wholesome about it, the best of the Midwest, Cleveland without the 'hoods where you could go in and never come back out. One of my favorite spots in town was Swensons, which, straight out of Happy Days, still served up a burger and fries and Cherry Coke on a tray that was attached to the window of your car by a goofy-looking teenager still dealing with acne. I loved those burgers at Swensons, loved the scene and the smell and best of all the taste (order it with everything to get the full effect). But it wasn't until much later, when I was blessed with a skill I was able to develop, that I ever got much of a chance to eat one. A burger at Swensons? There was no way I could afford something like that.

Because Akron, for all its goodness of heart, wasn't soft. There were gangs and there were drugs and there were grim housing projects where sirens and gunfire went off in the night. There was an inner city, maybe not as bad as Cleveland or Chicago or Philadelphia. But it was there, and I know it was there because I spent a lot of my childhood living within it, hearing those sounds and just trying to keep going, just keep my head low and keep on moving. And maybe if there was anything that was really different about me from other kids growing up in similar circumstances, it was that idea:

Just keep on moving.

Growing up in the inner city is not the hardest thing in the world to do. What my mom Gloria went through-having me by herself when she was sixteen years old and trying to raise me and give me everything I wanted-was so much harder. But certainly it's also not the easiest place in the world to begin your life, particularly when you see so many people who never even get to the middle.

You definitely have no choice but to see and hear things you never want to experience and you never ever want your kids to experience-violence and drug abuse and the mournful music of those police sirens wailing. You lie in bed, and you just know something bad is happening, something heavy, and you just thank the Lord that it isn't you out there in it, and you lie in bed some more and just wait for those sounds to go away. Eventually they do. But it's hard to fall back asleep after that. Sometimes it's impossible. Was there just a terrible fight? Are the police busting for drugs again? What was that noise? No matter how much I tried to shut everything out, and I have always been good at shutting everything out, they have an impact. But maybe not the way you might be thinking.

Because it helps you grow up when you are an only child. It helps you to learn to take care of yourself. It also helps to motivate you-if you ever are lucky enough to find a way out of where you are, even if it's for a few hours, you are going to run with it as fast as you can.

Whatever I went through, I always loved Akron. Even back then, growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, there was one thing that always bothered me. In school, whenever I looked at a map of the United States-because you know how schools are, there is always a map of the United States in every classroom-the first thing I did was look at Ohio. There was Cleveland, of course, because everybody knew Cleveland, former home of the legendary Browns and Jimmy Brown, home of the Indians. On some maps there might be the state capital of Columbus. Or even Cincinnati. But where was Akron? How come there was never Akron?

Akron who? Akron where?

Akron nobody, as far as the mapmakers were concerned. That always got to me. Why wasn't my hometown there? I don't remember how old I was exactly, maybe eight or nine. But I promised myself, in the funny way that little kids make promises over things that nobody else in the world cares about, that one day I was going to put Akron on the map. Maybe not literally, because you could tell those mapmakers were a prickly bunch, but I was going to let the world know where Akron was. I didn't know how. I just knew in my heart I was going to do it.

Was I a dreamer?

Of course I was.

But if you wish hard enough, try hard enough, find the right group of guys to dream along with you, then maybe, because there is always a maybe with dreams, they can come true.

Now...engage. Talk to Buzz in the comments.

Suggested topics for discussion:

• "Titsburgh" (read on)
• Best sociocultural product of 1975: The Reds, "Chuckles Bites The Dust," The Jeffersons, Ali-Frazier, Operation Frequent Wind or "Only Women Bleed"?
• Which team would he rather have covered in person: 1986 Mets, 1975 Reds, 1927 Yankees or the year 30 Apostles?
• Davey Concepción and the Reds' millionth run that wasn't
• Ken Griffey's discontent
• Why no one tried to steal bases with Joe Morgan at the plate
• Does Joe Morgan think Bob Howsam wrote this book?
• No, seriously, what's Joe Morgan's deal?
• Why do so many great baseball writers watch the damn Royals?
• The Kansas City Star: America's last great sports section?

Something black and primal black drove Pete Rose. Take the All-Star thing. In 1970, they played the All-Star Game in Cincinnati, and the game stretched into extra innings. In the twelfth, Pete led off second, and his teammate Jim Hickman cracked a single to center. Pete never hesitated – that was something he always told his teammates, never pause, never doubt, never hesitate, never slow down – and he rounded third and raced home. Sportswriters in the morning editions around the country were split in their descriptions between "snorting bull" and "rolling train." Amos Otis, the American league center fielder, scooped up the ball and he made a strong throw home. The ball and Pete reached home plate about the same time. But Pete was bigger. He crashed into catcher Ray Fosse, busted the poor kid's shoulder, sent the baseball flying, and defiantly scored the game-winning run. The slide would take on more meaning because Ray Fosse was only twenty three and the most promising young catcher in the game; he was never quite the same after the slide. More than thirty years later, he would still wake up with the echoing pain of that collision ringing in his shoulder. To add a little irony to it all, Pete had Fosse to his house the night before for dinner, though Pete never saw any irony at all in it. Pete was the kind of guy who would invite you to dinner at night and crash through you by day to win a ballgame. It was all part of the deal.

People often asked Pete if he regretted smashing into Fosse – hell, it was just an All-Star Game. It didn't count in the standings. Pete's response was telling. He did not even understand the question. They were playing baseball. He was the winning run. Fosse was blocking the plate. Pete had no choice.

* * *

Pete Rose hated taking walks. Everyone knew that. He would sometimes swing the bat at bad pitches on purpose to avoid taking a walk. This cut to the heart of Pete Rose the ballplayer. Harry Rose did not raise his son to walk. The Roses did not accept charity. Pete would by God take first base, conquer it. There was a game in 1974, the Reds trailed the St. Louis Cardinals by seven runs in the late innings. Bob Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals, Bullet Bob, the scariest pitcher in the game. Batters hit a measly .228 against Gibson over his seventeen-year career, and he took every hit personally. Gibson threw a pitch inside, Pete tried to pull out the way, and the pitch ticked Pete's uniform.

"Ball hit him," the umpire, Bill Williams, shouted, and he pointed toward first. "Take your base."

"The ball didn't hit me, Bill," Rose shouted back, and he stepped back into the batter's box.

"Yes it did, Pete, I heard it hit you, take your base."

"No. You heard wrong. I'm telling you the ball didn't hit me."

"You're taking the base, Pete. The ball hit you, quit being silly …"

"I'm not taking the base, Bill. Didn't hit me. Let me back in the box,"

Pete kept arguing during a lost game that the baseball did not hit him, he did not want the free base, he wanted to get one more swing at the most intimidating pitcher of the time. In the end, the umpire made him take first base, but Pete did not take it well. For the rest of the inning, he yelled, "The ball didn't hit me!" That's how much Pete hated walks. He wanted to swing away. Always.

* * *

Pete Rose sits in the Field of Dreams, a sports store in the Caesar's Palace Shops in Las Vegas. It's 2009. He sits behind a card table and a velvet rope and two young circus barkers who scream, "Come see Pete Rose! Come see the Hit King!" Pete Rose calls himself the Hit King, signs his baseballs that way too, because he cracked four thousand, two hundred and fifty six hits in his career. And no one ever got more.

Pete is guarded by a young woman, Sarah, who, he rarely fails to point out, has a great ass. She does not seem to mind being reminded about her ass or, anyway, she has grown used to it. There are various job-related quirks when it comes to working with Pete Rose. Appreciating ass compliments seems to be one of them.

"So this woman, she sits down right here, right next to me," Pete is saying, and he points at the spot next to him as if it is a historical landmark. "And she has really big breasts, you know? I mean, really, she has big breasts. And she's like leaning over the table, like, um, you know …"

Pete realizes at this point in his presentation that he needs a stand-in to give the story a visual. He calls over to Sarah and asks her to play the woman with the big breasts. She nods. You get the sense this is a recurring role for her. She sits next to Pete, leans far over the table.

"So," Pete says, "she's really showing off her breasts, you know, like I didn't notice them. And then I say to her, where are you from?" At this point, he pauses, and begins the little demonstration.

"So, where you from?" Pete asks Sarah, who is playing the large-breasted woman. She smiles deeply.

"Titsburgh!" she says triumphantly.

"Titsburgh?" Pete asks. "Is that in Tennsylvania?"

And then, Pete Rose laughs. He does not laugh casually, no, he laughs hard, hard enough that he can hardly breathe, hard enough that if he was drinking, liquid would spew out of his nose. He laughs like this is the single funniest thing he has ever heard, and he is hearing it now for the first time.

Topics for discussion:

• How long have you worked on this story?
• Do you still keep in touch with the family?
• How did CB West become such a football factory?
• Why does La Salle University continue to play in the Big 5?
• Are you surprised by the success of illegal immigrant John Gonzalez at the Inquirer?

For real — it's a great story. It'll make you weepy. Buy 14 copies here.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Already he had written his own eulogy, typing it on his laptop in the sure and steady strokes of a Marine who knew, but did not fear, that he might soon die. The speech was a reckoning, an explanation of why he had decided to stop playing football and pursue a cause for which he was willing to sacrifice himself, and after he had finished it, Bryan Buckley kept writing. Five letters followed, each addressed to one of his five closest friends: Corey, Spratty, Ed, Matt, Dave. He wrote more. He provided instructions for his funeral. He did not want to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He did not want sadness or despair to mar the day. Go have some beers, he wrote. Laugh about the dumb stuff I've done. He had printed out the letters and the eulogy, stuffed them into an envelope, sealed it, and given it to his brother-in-law Chris DiSciullo during his last visit to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to the place where he had grown up. Bryan then had asked Chris and his wife, Kim-Bryan's eldest sister-to honor a single request: no one was to open the envelope unless something happened to him during his deployment in Fallujah, during the seven months he was scheduled to spend in the deadliest city in Iraq. These were his most private and personal thoughts and memories. These were his words to the people he loved . . . should he never see them again. He even told Kim that he had marked the envelope with a pen, creating, in effect, a bar code on it. If someone opened the envelope, read its contents, and resealed it before Bryan returned home, he would know.

His father, Bill, did not know that he had done all this, or whom Bryan wanted to deliver the eulogy. His mother, Connie, did. She knew what he had written and whom he had selected as his eulogist. Some things are just easier to tell mothers, and some things are easier to ask of fathers-things such as assembling weaponry, which is what Bill Buckley had been doing during the days before his son's deployment with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. With much of Bryan's gear strewn about his living room floor, Bill had sat on the couch amid the mess, looping survival cord through the magazines of 5.56-mm ammunition that Bryan would load into his M4 rifle. Having the magazines knotted to his weapon would allow Bryan to keep the bullets closer to his fingertips, reload more quickly, and lessen the chances that he'd be left defenseless in the chaos of a desert firefight.

Bryan's decision to become a Marine had surprised Bill. Sure, as a boy, Bryan was at his dad's knee often, asking questions about Bill's three years with the U.S. Army Security Agency, the electronic intelligence branch that was the antecedent to the National Security Agency. Bill told Bryan what stories he could-so much of his work was still classified-and he taught Bryan to shoot a rifle when the kid was thirteen, taking him up to the hunting and fishing club that Bill belonged to in Pike County, Pennsylvania, near the Pocono Mountains. The kid bagged a deer his first time out. But football had been so integral to Bryan's daily life, particularly when he was playing in high school, for Central Bucks West, that until Bryan announced to his parents that he was giving up football and joining the military, Bill had never stopped to consider his son's future without the sport. Through Bryan's middle school, high school, and college years, there always had been another game to play. Now, here was Bryan, the youngest of Bill and Connie's four children, at twenty-six years old. Soft pink freckles still dotted his face. Splayed along the inside of his left forearm was a striking tattoo: a blue-black trident. At six feet one and 190 pounds, he was leaner and lighter than he had been as a high school or collegiate football player. Most of his light brown hair had been shorn away, and his physical training for the military had shaved away even the slightest bit of excess body fat, like stone from a sculpture, as if the Marines had stripped away all that had been unnecessary about him. Here was Bill Buckley's son, shoving clothes and gear into a duffel bag and a backpack, a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, 4th Platoon Commander in 2–8's Fox Company. Bill was proud of him. He didn't say so just then. He just kept looping that cord through those magazines.

These last few days-the whole month, actually-had been a swirl for Bill and Connie. On Saturday, the two of them had flown down on one-way tickets from Philadelphia International Airport to Jacksonville, a small city of tattoo parlors, dry-cleaning shops, and Southern fast-food restaurants hard on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. Bryan had bought a house near Jacksonville in December, a tidy two-story single on an isolated cul-de-sac a mile east of Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps base that had become his office and was the practice field on which he was preparing himself and the forty-five Marines in his platoon for what they would face in Fallujah. Fallujah. Connie still couldn't say for certain how she'd react once it sank in that the youngest of her four children was leaving and might never come home. She and Bill had thrown a going-away party for him on July 1 at their home, with two hundred family members and friends filling the house and spilling over into the backyard to say good-bye to Bryan, no one dwelling on the dark unknown of Bryan's departure. Still, at different times during the day, a few partygoers asked Connie the same question: "How are you going to deal with this?" How the hell did she know? "You have faith in him," she'd tell them, and she'd force a smile and plop a spoonful of potato salad on a guest's plate and return to the party and try not to think about the question then and there. She still had three and a half weeks before he left. She still had time to figure it out.

Now, that time had all but expired. Fox Company's 230 Marines were scheduled to depart Camp Lejeune at midnight, a series of buses shuttling the men forty-five miles to Cherry Point, North Carolina, the largest air station in the corps, and this is how Bill and Connie Buckley were spending their final hours with their son before he boarded one of those buses: they were running an annoying, time-consuming errand on a stinking hot summer day. The temperature was climbing to 90 degrees, the air heavy, and the three of them were driving to a Staples so that Bryan could photocopy a batch of articles and memoranda, a scouting report of the Iraqi insurgency, that he planned to pass out to his platoon. Typical Bryan-he had waited until the last minute to take care of this task. But more than the inefficiency, more than the uncomfortable humidity, what exasperated Bill and Connie was that Bryan paid for the copies-$144 worth-out of his own pocket. "For God's sake, Bryan," Connie said, "can't you do this at the base?" He said no. He wasn't allowed. Worse, he already had dropped close to $700 on various accessories that the government didn't issue to Marines-batteries and cold-weather clothing, for instance. His father, unlike Connie, did not say a word. This was how they always had been, throughout their thirty-three years of marriage. Connie was the firecracker: a redheaded, outgoing woman who spoke in bursts of italics. Bill's dark gray hair was a bit longer than a buzz cut; he wore glasses, loved Elvis Presley's music, and had a more measured temperament. His words and gestures were precise, purposeful. He stood in the store, watching Bryan shell out more of his own money, and though he did not say so at the time, Bill Buckley thought it appalling that the richest country in the world-a country fighting, and laboring to win, a war it had chosen to initiate three years earlier-couldn't afford to make its own photocopies. …

The buses arrived on time, and the Marines filed out of the gym. Those who had family and friends on hand hugged them before climbing into the buses, and Bryan did, too, though on his terms. All of Bryan's life, Connie had called him her "one-armed hugger" because of the way he showed affection-or, more accurately, because of his reluctance to show too much affection. It was just something he always did, that lean-in half hug, as if he were the host of a Hollywood cocktail party, and he did it once more in the Camp Lejeune parking lot by the buses, wrapping one of his arms around Connie, then Bill: just one.

As Bryan fell back in line with the men of Fox Company, his back to his parents, Bill stood nearby, holding a camera.

"Yo, B," he said, and he pressed the flash button.

The photo caught Bryan as he was still turning around to acknowledge his father. In the photo, he is glancing over his right shoulder, his military cap square on his head, a sly smile on his face. He looks confident, ready. It was the last glimpse Bill and Connie got of him before he boarded his bus.

They watched the buses pull away from the inside the Blazer, and Connie pressed her hand to the glass as Bryan's bus passed across the passenger's-side window. It was 2:02 a.m. on Thursday, July 27. She noticed that, too. They started back to Bryan's house, winding their way out of the more than 153,000 acres of sand and swamp that comprised the base, out to Route 24 again, saying nothing to each other. Talking about an emotional night would only make it more emotional. Words would only lead to tears. When they got back to Bryan's house, they went to bed. They didn't sleep much.

Bryan had planned to rent out his house while he was in Iraq. Early that morning, Bill and Connie woke and began packing up whatever personal valuables Bryan had left behind-his computer, clothes, DVDs, CDs, and the like-fitting what they could into his car, padlocking the rest in his most spacious bedroom closet. At eight p.m., they closed the house's front door, locked it, and left. Driving through the dead of night from Jacksonville to Doylestown, Bill and Connie Buckley didn't stop at a motel, and they didn't speak to each other. For eight and a half hours, the only sound in the Chevy was low music coming from the stereo, 475 miles of Elvis.

Talk to Sielski below. Buy his book here.

Suggested discussion topics:

• How important was her performance at the Solheim Cup for her career?
• Does Wie suffer from anxiety attacks?
• Is she as good as advertised?
• Will she ever find true love?
• Can she ride a unicycle?
• Christina Kim's large breasts and bubbly personality.

Michelle advanced rapidly in everything she did. Walked at nine
months. Ran and chased tennis balls around B.J.'s office soon after.
Ate almost as much at 2 and 3 as adults. Tried out for her elementary
school baseball team when she was 6 and quickly became the squad's
best hitter. The minute she picked up a tennis racquet, Michelle
appeared ready to conquer that game, too, but she quit soon after she
started because she didn't like to run. (B.J. once threw a can of
tennis balls into a garbage can because he was so upset by his
daughter's unwillingness to hurry after volleys.)

But one sport grabbed Michelle and didn't let go. She was 4 the day
B.J. took her to Haha'Ione Park in suburban Honolulu and walked her to
a baseball field encircled by a low stone wall and a chain-link fence.
He handed her one of her grandmother's clubs that he'd shortened so a
four-year-old could swing it. She grabbed it with both hands, as if it
were an axe, settled without prompting into a plausible golf stance
with her pudgy legs shoulder-width apart, and stared at the little
white ball at her feet.

Michelle poured everything her little body had into that first swipe.
She felt the clubface meet its target, let the club head carry her
arms around her body, and looked up to see the ball high in the
Honolulu sky. B.J. watched as his daughter's drive soared, bounced,
and rolled to rest deep in the outfield.
B.J. looked down at his little girl.
She gazed up at her father.
Michelle wanted to do it again.

From the first, Michelle just flat-out loved crushing a golf ball.
Soon she was launching them into neighbors' yards until she was
instructed to take her drives elsewhere. She threw her entire body
into the game, sliding her coiled legs through the downswing as if she
were moving a couch. In no time, the heroes in the Wie household were
the golf pros with the best swings. Michelle had a poster of Tiger
Woods in her room, and B.J. carried a photo of him in mid-swing around
so he could refer to it any time his daughter needed help.
Michelle watched both the PGA Tour and the LPGA Tour on television,
but she loved the big hitters on the men's side more than the finesse
players on the women's. As she sat in front of her parents' TV at age
six, nothing about her dreams seemed the least bit strange. After all,
her mother had once shot a 69 in Maui and won an amateur tournament
back in Seoul.

Why shouldn't she aim higher?

Neither mother nor father put any limits whatsoever on their
daughter's dreams and ambitions. They encouraged her every swing, her
desire to hit longer, longer, longer. And that's just what she did.
But Michelle's determination to measure her talent against others
sparked a backlash the moment she started playing on municipal links.
When she was 7, her parents walked her to the first tee at a local
course and the starter asked Michelle for her age. She gave it.
"Sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Too young." Michelle was stunned.
"What I really wanted to tell him," she said later, "was, ‘I can beat
you!'"
The starter finally relented. He paired Michelle with a
single-handicapper; the older woman wasn't pleased. Michelle, full of
fire, airmailed her drives past her reluctant playing partner. She
birdied a 200-yard par 3. The woman left the course after nine holes.
By age 9, Michelle was beating her parents, who gave up their own
games to mentor her. With no course within walking distance of their
home, they drove east about 15 minutes along the Kalanianaole Highway,
which curls along seaside cliffs and then up and around a mountain
range, to the Olomana Golf Links, a public course in Waimanalo. There
they went to the top shelf of a bi-level driving range, where Michelle
pounded away until, one day, B.J went downstairs looking for the head
pro.

Casey Nakama was born in Honolulu in 1958. Athletic as a kid, he
played shooting guard in high school but soon realized he was too
short for basketball. He picked up golf in 1976, won an Oahu amateur
tournament three straight years, and turned pro in 1985.
Nakama went on to play on the Asian Tour, made the Hogan Tour back in
the States, but struggled and returned to Hawaii to teach. He started
at Olomana with adults, then a parent asked him to teach juniors in
1996. Tiger Woods turned pro the next year and suddenly dozens of kids
showed up at Nakama's door.

Two years later, he spotted a tall girl wailing away, spraying her
shots everywhere and not seeming to care. He saw the potential right
away-the 10-year-old Wie was more than 5' tall already-but there were
problems. "She could carry the ball 200 yards," Nakama said. "But the
only thing she had going for her was her size. Her swing plane was
flat and laid-off. Her short game was really bad. She didn't know what
she was doing."
Yet Michelle had inherited another important family trait: her
intelligence. She could recite the alphabet at one and started reading
at two, even though her parents spoke to her in Korean and sometimes
struggled to find the right word in English. She was accepted at the
top academy in Hawaii, the elite Punahou School, founded in 1841 by
missionaries and now the largest independent school on one campus in
the United States. Wie applied as a rising sixth grader, enrolled, and
earned mostly A's throughout her stay there.

But her greatest gift was her ability to learn visually-almost
photographically. She could burn through her homework during the
forty-minute drive to Olomana. She could receive a swing lesson and
incorporate what she learned almost immediately. Then, somehow, she
could lock in the motion and not stray from it.
Nakama went to work, telling Michelle to point the club toward the
target at the top of her backswing, hinge her wrists, and make sure
her top two knuckles pointed upward when she gripped the club.
Michelle would watch herself in the huge wall mirror outside his
office and practice until dark. Once she got home, she practiced some
more. "After a couple days," Nakama said, "she would come back and
say, ‘Casey! I think I got it!'"
And she had: gradually Michelle's spray became a sweet draw, and she
started chaining perfect shot after perfect shot.

In 2000, when Michelle was 9, she won the girls' division of the Oahu
Junior Championship. Newspapers love young achievers -Honolulu feels
more like an extended family than a big city-so few reporters dampened
the achievement by harping on the fact that Oahu had very few girl
golfers. All that mattered was that the local girl had won despite
plunking three shots in the water.
She never tired of practicing. "It didn't bother her to work on her
swing five or six days a week," Nakama said. "I remember one Halloween
night, my wife and I had just gotten a puppy. I asked Michelle, ‘Are
you going to go trick-or-treating?' She said no. Instead she went to
ask her dad to ask, ‘If I stay and practice, can I play with the
puppy?' It was borderline sad."
The Wie family tolerated no laziness. From the moment B.J. realized
his daughter had talent, there would be no letting up. Michelle had
the engine, ignited by her mother's love for the game, but B.J. did
the steering and stepped on the gas. His daughter reported to Olomana
after school every day to follow the same drill: practice at the
range, play nine holes, then chip. "Her dad was in control of
everything," Nakama said. "He was always pressing, pressing, pressing
for more. Never rude, but always pressing."
Nakama noticed early on that B.J. didn't know the game as much as he
let on. "It was kind of hilarious to see him on the greens," Nakama
says. "He didn't know what he was looking at. It was comical." B.J.
allegedly played to a two-handicap, yet Michelle chipped with her
hands straight out instead of flexed. When Nakama showed her the right
way, Michelle turned to her dad and said, "See, I told you I was doing
it wrong!"
"He doesn't know how to play golf," Nakama said to himself.
Yet B.J. kept pressing for improvement, for more work, for smarter
application of the lessons. His expectations were sky-high not only
for himself and for Michelle, but for everyone around him.
"Everything hinged on Mr. Wie," Nakama said later. "He was brutal."

Talk to Mr. Adelson below. Buy the book here.

Suggested discussion topics:

• Tennessee women
• John "Thunder" Thornton
• Lane Kiffin
• Layla Kiffin
• Death panels

Soon the team is gathered in metal folding chairs in front of a dry-erase board. Kickoff for the South Carolina Gamecocks, the eighth game of the season, is approaching, and the mood is somber. The Tennessee Volunteers are 3-5, 1-3 in the SEC, coming off a twenty-point home loss to bitter rival Alabama. Suddenly Vols senior linebacker Ellix Wilson breaks the pre-game silence by standing and screaming, "It's my fucking senior year and I'm tired of this shit! Tired of it, man."

Wilson is a 5'10 fifth-year senior from Memphis who is starting at middle linebacker for the Vols. He's also the younger brother of a member of the 1998 national championship team, wide receiver Cedrick Wilson.

Beside me, UT defensive end Robert Ayers sits alone in his locker, clad in full uniform, reading passages aloud from his white-covered Bible. Ellix Wilson's voice fades and silence holds for a few minutes. Then Vols sophomore Eric Berry stands.

"When I say Killas, y'all say Killas and then when I say Trained Assassins, y'all say Trained Assassins and then when I say, Want Some, y'all say, Gone Get Some."

Then Berry starts, "Killas!"

"Killas!" the team replies in unison.

"Trained assassins!" Berry chants.

"Trained assassins!"

"Want some," Berry leads.

"Gone get some!"

"Let's go bang a mother-fucker, man!" Berry screams in conclusion.

The cheer seems to get the team fired up. I'm kind of fired up. Of course I have no idea what it means. In fact, I've never felt whiter in my life. Later student manager Andrew Haag will confess, "I don't know what he was saying either but he's Eric Berry. He's so cool, he can do anything and it's cool."

Ellix Wilson stands up in the center of his teammates, and wearing his number 35 jersey in the road white uniform, he begins an emotional tirade that makes Bobby Knight seem monotone.

"Coach Clawson, get our mother fucking playmakers the ball," he begins, the whites of eyes large as he slaps himself in the chest with his hands. "I'm fuckin' sick of this shit. We got too many fuckin' good players at wide receiver and too many good running backs to do this shit! We all been talking about it. If they playing 10 yards off G. Jones why we running one yard passes? Let's get our playmakers the ball, coach, and fucking score!"

He picks up his chair and slams it down.

"This shit is worse than 5-6," he screams, spinning around and looking at all of his teammates. "This shit ain't Tennessee! We ain't lost but two damn players off last year's team!" He begins to cry. "I cry every night about losing. You may not see me cry, but I'm tired of fucking losing. This shit ain't Tennessee." He begins to cry harder now, tears streaming down his checks, slams his metal chair down again on the floor, and the echo carries across the silent locker room. Now he speaks once more, slower, choking on his tears. Each word declines in volume until the last, which is barely audible. "Man, I'm just tired of losing, this shit ain't cool."

No one touches Wilson. No one speaks to him. Coach Fulmer finally breaks the silence. "Everybody feels the same thing," he says, "Hell, it ain't Tennessee. Hell, it ain't us. I don't give a crap about what happens to me and my coaches. Well, I care, but I want y'all to have a good time, win. You've worked too hard not to. You're good, damn kids. We're going to win and we're going to play Tennessee football!"

Now Fulmer pivots and scans his team. He angrily defends himself against his critics. "These bastards get mad at me when I don't go for it on 4th and 1 from the 40. We've won a lot of games playing field position and I'm not gonna stop."

The players are nodding their heads.

"Everyone out but the players and coaches while we read the Maxims," Fulmer says.

The student managers, medical staff and I filter out of the locker room and stand in the South Carolina night. The buzz is all about Ellix's speech. "That's the best player speech, I've ever seen," says one manager. Another pipes up with a sarcastic aside, "Rico (McCoy) gave a pretty bad-ass speech at Florida…that turned out well." One of the women on the training staff says, "Ellix scared me."

With the fire coming out of the locker room I see no way this team can lose. I contemplate turning on my cell phone and telling everyone I know to bet their house on Tennessee's football team. Phil Fulmer may be able to lead this team to a bowl game yet.

The team bursts through the doors and the front line of the team stands just outside the locker room on a small concrete platform. From here they are visible to some of the fans in the South Carolina stadium and the Gamecock faithful begin to rain down abuse on the players. But the team doesn't notice. Arian Foster in the front ranks of the team bobs his head and begins to dance. The rest of the team is bouncing now too, on the toes of their cleats, a roiling mass of yelping and pad-slamming, a fiery beast of a team, angrier than they have been all season.

The team files across a concrete walkway to a covered access area. The covering tarp only extends about 10 yards. Several of the players bang on the ceiling and the covering billows in response to their punches. The players and nearby fans are yelling as the team waits to enter the field. Then, suddenly, the team shoots onto the grass into the building roar, a crescendo of hate descends upon them.

"Bring it motherfuckers, bring it!" screams Arian Foster, waving his arms above his head in the direction of the crowd.

At kickoff the entire sideline is jumping and shouting with more enthusiasm and adrenaline than I've seen this year. It seems impossible that Tennessee could lose this ballgame.

By halftime, it is 21-0 South Carolina.

Remember: Buy the book right here. Buy two, if you'd like.

Suggested discussion topics:

• The systematic art of running onto the field naked
• Books to the face
• Unwritten rules of fandom
• Books to the face
• Roger Goodell's upper body strength
• Books to the face
• Laura Ling

But seriously, Ape's one of the most talented and funniest writers to bubble-up from the blog sludge. He's infinitely worthy of your time and money. Show your support.

And now...an excerpt. Enjoy.

V.2 Personal Seat Licenses Are a Bigger Rip-off than Buying a Home

Now that the housing market is dicked and the nation's economy is in the crapper, at what other moment could fans be more receptive to forking over more cash for the right to purchase tickets? I write in reference to the ever-infuriating phenomenon of the personal seat license, a one-time cost, usually in the thousands, which entitles the owner to the right to continue paying for season tickets each year until another stadium is opened and the cost is charged again.

PSLs aren't a new phenomenon, as they're believed to have been around for about twenty years, but they've been brought to the fore with their ever escalating costs. The reason cited by sports organizations as to why they impose these outrageous fees on consumers is that PSLs supposedly offset the expense of constructing stadia, many of which are already paid for in large part by taxpayer dollars. Are fans demanding venues that cost squillions of dollars? Not really, but that doesn't stop owners from launching into a space race against each other for bigger and higher capacity venues. The owners opt for these leviathans then pass the cost on to the fans. The gall is as astounding as it is predictable.

When the Giants and the Jets move into their new $1.3 billion shared stadium in the Meadowlands in 2010, every seat will require a PSL for the Giants and nearly every one for the Jets, with the PSL fee for a few thousand spots in the lower bowl of the stadium reaching as much as $25,000 per seat. The Jets auctioned off 620 PSLs of choice seats in the new stadium and drew more than $16 million for the winning bids. Of course, a fair percentage of those bidding for seats are companies in the business of reselling tickets, which only extends the daily chain of corporate fleecing of the average fan.

About half the teams in the league have policies that require PSLs. That's half a league ready to dry-hump their fans for the sweet release of the green. Why anyone would allow themselves to be fleeced by these organizations, no matter how much you may love their product on the field, is beyond the bounds of reason. Fandom knows no quit, but it does know a shit deal when it sees one.

Imagine the hubris that gives rise to these policies. In what other business can companies force a membership fee on customers only for the right to purchase their product? Demand for the NFL product being what it is, the owners think they're insulated from the cost of alienating a wide swath of their fans, but there's only so long, especially with the looming threat of uncapped player salaries, that these practices can continue without it starting to chip into the all-important bottom line.

The fan experience in the live event is increasingly becoming the providence of the superwealthy and the super-profligate. The new generation of stadia that's been built in the past decade crams more seats in and, with prohibitive prices, marshals loud die-hard fans further from the field. Watching the game on TV is not without its flaws (e.g., Phil Simms, Chris Berman, Tony Kornheiser), but it is certainly a much better value than paying through the nose for attending a game where fans are fleeced on concessions, limited by infantilizing fan conduct policies, and generally treated like unwelcome houseguests in overbuilt plutocrat strongholds.

The practice is an insidious money grab devised by billionaires looking for bailouts on their own risky business endeavors. If some fans are economically secure enough that it isn't a bother for them, great for them. But the owners may find that, in tougher economic straits, there will not be as many people comfortable doling out tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of being bilked on an annual basis. We may love our teams, but that doesn't mean we need to love their scams.

Now, talk to Mr. Tunison down below. He's here to illuminate.

Swinging his arms wildly and taking practice strokes in the locker room just a few feet from Roger Federer's head, Rafael Nadal cut the classic figure of a warrior preparing for battle. He had just taken a cold shower and now, with his sympathetic nervous system kicking into high gear, Nadal was in fight-or-flight mode. His heart-rate jackhammering, stress hormones coursing through his body, his pupils enlarged, he stretched and paced and pissed, making sure his urine was clear and odorless, an indication that his body was properly hydrated. Even when he tried to conserve some energy, he fiddled with the tight bands of tape below his knees, worn to prevent the patellar tendonitis that has bothered him in the past. As if afflicted with low-grade OCD, he riffled through his swollen racket bag again and again. Another "ritual," he lowered and elevated his socks until they were precisely the same height. Sitting nearby, Nadal's Uncle and coach, Toni Nadal, offered motivation in intense staccato bursts. "There is no such word as ‘cannot.'"… "Do what you have to do."…. "Obligations are obligations."

At around 2:15 p.m., half an hour after their initial estimated departure time, Federer and Nadal were advised that the sky, though still inky, had stopped spitting raindrops and the "tarp tent" protecting Centre Court from the moisture, was being deflated and disassembled. Federer and Nadal walked out of the locker room, wended down a long, carpeted hallway and slowly descended a set of stairs leading to the court. With Nadal walking ten feet ahead, they both passed a photograph of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe's Wimbledon final in 1980, the match against which all other tennis clashes are judged.

Here again, the Federer-Nadal differences were italicized and in boldfaced. Having outgrown the cream, gild-trimmed Great Gatsby blazer he'd worn without irony (and, miraculously, pulled off without mockery) in past years, Federer was now clad in a cream, gold-trimmed cardigan straight out of Brideshead Revisited-conservative attire that represented a sense of respect and history. The sweater, made by Nike, retailed at the Wimbledon gift shop for the larcenous price of £260, and only 230 had been produced, an inventory made to correspond with the 230 consecutive weeks Federer had spent ranked No.1.

Nadal, who would sooner wear a grass skirt than a $500 cardigan sweater, donned a white warm-up. Federer wore classic tennis shorts cinched with a belt; Nadal wore his customary clamdiggers that sagged below his knees, no belt required. Federer's ration of hair was carefully styled, while Nadal's simply draped down his olive-skinned neck. They both wore Nike headbands and white Nike socks that poked out of white Nike shoes.

Just before walking on the court, they endured a pre-match interview, an excruciating drill that requires players to offer a sound-bite or two on a match yet to be played. The "host networks" have negotiated this access as a condition of their hefty t.v. rights fee, and the players, lacking as they are in a real union, are forced to abide it. Still in their mental spaces, the players clearly resent this intrusion and usually offer a banquet of clichés. It should be a good match. Winning the first set will be key. I need to serve well. I'm going to try my best and we'll see what happens.

Yet even these hollow phrases can be pregnant with meaning. When Federer stood before the interviewer, he remarked, "I feel good [but] it might be a tough day with the rain and everything and a tough opponent so it should be interesting," betraying what sports shrinks call "negative mental hygiene." When Nadal was asked a similar question about the rain delay and the inauspicious forecast, he rocked his head from side to side and shrugged, his default gesture. In his thick accent, he said softly, "The rain is for both [of us] so no problems. I just accept the weather conditions and I just play."
A veteran of the finals choreography, Federer went directly to the net for the ceremonial coin flip, where a local child, often one with a chronic illness, is summoned to play a small role in the match, helping to determine which player serves first. In this case, Blair Manns, a thirteen-year-old Macaulay Culkin look-alike from Gloucester, who suffers from pulmonary disease had the honors. He represented the British Lung Foundation. In addition to scoring an autographed poster of the finalists he and his folks also received choice tickets for the match. Now Blair and Federer stood at the net. "Are you going to enjoy the match today?" Federer asked amiably. The kid nodded, too nervous to keep the conversation going.

The two were joined by Pascal Maria, the chair umpire for the match, and by the tournament referee, Andrew Jarrett. The quartet waited…and waited…and waited. Nadal sat at his chair, sipping Evian, chewing on an energy bar, folding his sweats and then indulging his longtime ritual of sipping from each of two bottles of water, one colder than the other, and then fastidiously arranging the bottles just so with the labels pointed outward toward the side of the court he'll next assume. (And to think: Federer is usually cast as the anal one.) Impatience transparent on his face, Federer rocked back and forth and took a few practice swings near the net. Surely this affronted his sense of Swiss punctuality. The match had already been postponed by rain and the forecast was grim; why was Nadal taking his sweet time? Nadal seemed not to share the same sense of occasion; and clearly this was part of Federer's annoyance. According to a member of the Nadal entourage, in the players' box Federer's girlfriend, Mirka Vavrinec, watched the Spaniard's dallying and muttered, "Oh, come on."

After a full minute of self-indulgence, Nadal trotted to the net. Having shed his warm-ups, he wore a sleeveless white tank top. It was made of "wicking" microfibers that served the dual function of displacing his copious sweat and accentuating his propane tanks for biceps. Perhaps flustered by the delay, young Blair Manns tossed the coin without asking either player to call it in midair. Jarrett intercepted the coin. Nervous smiles all around, Blair flipped it again. This time Federer correctly predicted "heads," entitling him to serve first. But really it was beside the point. They had yet to strike the first ball and already, intentionally or not, Nadal had struck a psychological blow.

Federer and Nadal then stood together for a ceremonial photo and, like fighters touching gloves before a bout, tapped rackets. As Federer demurely walked away to begin the five-minute warm-up, Nadal turned and bolted from the net to the baseline in the manner of a giddy young bull. Running low to the ground, he performed a quick split step and then jogged along the baseline. Though Nadal dismisses this as still another ritual, it functions as still one more psychological salvo. Message: pack a lunch hombre, because I'm going to be coming for you all day.

Even in his warm-up, Federer is the picture of seamless efficiency. There's virtually no wasted movement. Like all great athletes, he has a natural mind-body connection. Whatever his brain imagines, his body executes. Clearly eager to start the match, Federer glanced several times at the courtside clock. He hit a few of his practice serves while standing inside the baseline. On the other end of the court, Nadal was all exertion. He thrust and pounded and unfurled his left-handed sidewinding strokes, punctuating his shots-his practice shots-with a fwwwwuuumph. Already his white tank top was irrigated with sweat.

It was 14:35 GMT when the warm-up ended and Pascal Maria, the high priest in the umpire's chair, intoned, "Ready. Play."

And did they ever.

Strokes Of Genius [Amazon]

TOP Photo: Ian Walton/Getty Images

The intro says it all:

"Grown men have cried over the derby. The have ignored their wives for week after week, sleepwalked through work day after day, stayed up all night long, skipped out on their jobs altogether, drawn unemployment, burned through every last day of their vacation time, down NoDoz and Red Bull and God knows what else. They have spied on their rivals and lied to their friends. They have told off strangers and cheated like lowlife bums. If you believe the conspiracy theorists, they have prosecuted bogus charges of rules breaking to get their adversaries tossed from the competition. People have died fishing this thing."

Excerpted:

On Martha's Vineyard, you'll hear lots of stories about the brash surfcaster Dick Hathaway. How he caught more fish than anybody. How he got into fistfights in the local bars. And how he was banished for cheating in the island's Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby—a scandal that, to the thousands of saltwater anglers who consider the contest a sacred tradition, was as momentous as if Lance Armstrong had been tossed out of the Tour de France.

Dick has a different story he likes to tell first: How he caught an 8-pound bluefish while hovering in a helicopter off Chappaquiddick. I know, I know: It sounds like the kind of total whopper only a fisherman could make up. On the other hand, Dick does have a newspaper clipping about the feat, and that gives it more credence than most fish stories. One year a friend bought a two-seater, and the angler ended up in the passenger seat 35 feet over the rip off Wasque Point. He dropped a "popper" into a school, got the bluefish on tight, fought it for a bit and then tried to reel it up. He couldn't quite do it, so the pilot put the bird on the beach and Dick jumped out and dragged the fish out of the waves. If Hunter S. Thompson had been one of the famously obsessive-compulsive surfcasters on Martha's Vineyard, it's hard to imagine him pulling off a stunt more Gonzo than that.

It was in the derby that Dick made his name—for good and for bad. The annual competition, the most celebrated striper fishing tournament on the East Coast, runs for five weeks every fall. For its devotees, who pass up work and wives in a manic pursuit of stripers, bluefish, false albacore and bonito, winning it really does feel like riding down Champs-Élysées in the yellow jersey. So it's saying something that Dick has won it six times in four different decades. One of those championship fish was a striper weighing in at sixty pounds, two ounces, which is still the biggest ever caught in the contest.

But with Dick, storm clouds always seem to hover on the horizon—more than once, The Martha's Vineyard Times labeled him "a scoundrel"—and with the victories came controversy. Dick may have been a great fisherman, rival anglers would tell you, but he won those derbies by bending the rules. He never got called out because nobody ever had the goods on him. Or if they did, they didn't have the guts to do anything about it.

That finally changed in 1999, when two men on the derby committee filed an official complaint. On the first night of the tournament, the men testified, they saw Dick and his fishing partner keep more than one striper apiece—a violation of state law and derby rules. When Dick got hauled before the two dozen men and women who run the competition, he denied everything.

There was one problem for the old surfcaster: They weren't buying his story. They'd known him far too long.

Over the years, Dick made the newspapers as much for his fast fists, it seems, as for his fishing prowess. A 1962 case was typical. Dick and some other men were shucking scallops at a fish market. They got into an argument over the volume of the radio, and one guy pointed his scallop knife at Dick. Later, on the witness stand, Dick explained what happened next.

"I hit him in the jaw once," he said.

"That's all?" the prosecutor asked.

"I might have swung again," Dick replied.

The other man ended up with a broken jaw. Dick ended up with a $50 fine.

He will tell you he got into his share of barroom fights. Somebody would say something and he'd put up his fists without a second thought. Eventually, the cops would arrive and drag the combatants to jail for a couple hours until they sobered up.

Dick is hardly the only island fisherman to get in a few fistfights—not by a long shot. But his reputation as a renegade made people willing to believe the rumors about that 60-pound record-breaker of his. He brought it in one October morning in 1978 as soon as the weigh station opened, stood for a picture and quickly left. People found it odd that he didn't stick around to bask in the glory. Dick told me he sold the bass on the spot to some anglers from New Jersey.

What was with that fish, people asked, that a guy as ambitious as Dick Hathaway would steal away without taking his bows?

When I asked around, many longtime fishermen said they were told that something unusual happened in the weighmaster's station that morning. The scale was misread and somehow, a 50-pounder was recorded as a 60. Once Dick walked out, it was too late to double-check the weight. The fish was gone. Three decades later, I spoke to the woman from the weigh station, Helen Scarborough, who insisted that the scale was read correctly. But she acknowledged the controversy over the bass. People didn't get a look at it, she said, and that gave it a stigma. Some people suggested it had been stuffed. What's the truth? "Only he and God knows," she told me.

As far as Dick is concerned, the speculation is garbage. So what if he got out of there before anybody could take a look at it? He had to go to work, he says. "This is all a big joke."

But even if they can't prove that his record-breaker was actually, as one fisherman put it, a "Phantom Sixty," there are those who say that if some misfortune befell Dick, well, he had it coming, didn't he? Who would be surprised to see Dick's karma circle back and kick him in the pants?

And if somebody pointed a finger at Dick, what would the derby do? Toss him out—the legend, the myth, the six-time champ?

The answer came shortly after Dick finished defending himself against the cheating charges: The derby decided to ban him for a decade. Dick tried to fight back, but he got nowhere. Before he went into his derby exile, he made a vow in the paper: "After 10 years, I will be 82 years old, and I shall return."

His bitterness about the whole affair has never abated, and now that he's eligible to return, he says he might just decide to boycott the derby. But then again, he wonders, wouldn't it be a show to make a grand return? To win it at age 82? To really rub their noses in it? Wouldn't that just about make the derby brass insane?

Read more about the author at DavidKinney.net