There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
—Nietzsche
So is it kind of a DFW-type thing—you were an ordinary schoolboy athlete and now pretend you were once a physical marvel?
What were you so good at, then?
Oh, I see. You were really fast?
How fast?
Really?
What were your main sports?
But you were very short and slight until age sixteen?
Then what happened?
Your broken leg—kind of a convenient excuse, don’t you think?
It’s not as if you were destined to be Seabiscuit and then, after the broken leg, you suddenly became Stephen Hawking, is it?
What did you learn from it all?
There’s that hoary cliché about how sports teach people focus and hard work and discipline; you’re not going there, are you?
What would you say to those of us who have never picked up a croquet mallet or hockey stick?
First, track; then baseball; then basketball; then tennis; and now what, Mr. Shields—spectator sports, I guess?
You played freshman basketball at Brown, right?
Or tried out for the team?
Scrimmaged with the JV?
Attended a few games?
Waved a few pompoms?
“Pompons”? Not sure I follow.
What sports do you play now?
Swimming—does that count?
A little table tennis?
Power-walking?
Leaping to conclusions?
Your father was a part-time sportswriter—seriously? That’s too perfect.
What influence did that have on you?
When that one review called you a “sportswriter,” what was your reaction? None too pleased, I’m guessing.
And yet the only movie you’ve made so far is about a sports personage, right?
If I were to watch a game with you, would you have “better eyes” than I have?
What do you see about, say, ice hockey that I don’t?
Are you one of those annoying people who call out the play five seconds before it happens and then gloat about it to the assembled multitude?
What was your reaction to Super Bowl XLVIII?
Super Bowl XLIX?
I would argue that all scopophilia is by definition meaningless. Watching other people play a game, though, strikes me as being at the extreme far end of meaninglessness. How do you justify it?
Or do you feel no such need?
A few of your books deal with the rapture of fandom. Why do you write so much about vicariousness?
I mean, why is that a topic worth writing about?
Is fandom not a form of self-humiliation?
Kind of your go-to topos, wouldn’t you say?
Do you still watch sports?
Are you grading papers and checking your email while you’re watching the game, or are you really “concentrating”?
What’s your favorite game now to play or watch?
Did you once really sink twenty-seven consecutive free throws?
Any witnesses?
Is it depressing to live in a city that has such bad sports teams?
Which teams do you follow?
Do you miss the Supes?
What is the likelihood they’ll return?
Do you have any “inside dope”?
Is that why you’re saying that?
What’s the point of publishing a book about a team’s nondescript season so many years after the season?
Your press credential was revoked, so you had to buy a front-row season ticket?
How much did that cost?
And you lied to your then-wife about how much the ticket cost? Fascinating.
Did that lay down a marker that got played finally and fully in your divorce many years later?
Do you feel excited about the upcoming season, despite all the precautions?
Can YouTube videos of gorgeous plays still give you the chills?
Which ones come to mind?
Exactly—that time he did a somersault into the end zone?
We Average Unbeautiful Watchers—great title, isn’t it?
Who wrote it?
Have you read it?
Do you plan to?
What other fan narratives do you like?
You a fan of fan fiction, by the way? Just curious.
You wouldn’t name-check Nick Hornby?
Why not?
How about Frederick Exley?
C. L. R. James?
Bill James?
Anyone else?
You sure we can’t shoehorn Hornby onto this list?
What did Lute Olson think?
George Raveling?
George Karl?
When Bret Ellis told you that his deepest wish was to be Tom Brady, how seriously did you take him?
Do you ever need to take a break from sports?
I suppose the last year or so has been that self-enforced hiatus, hasn’t it, due to the virus?
Someone told me you can do the breaststroke all the way across the pool underwater without coming up for air—true? Cool.
What is your fastest time in the 100-meter freestyle?
“Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, and money takes wings. The only thing that endures is character.” Why did David Halberstam use this as the epigraph to The Breaks of the Game?
Why did OJ love the quote so much?
A teensy bit ironic, in retrospect, isn’t it?
Why do you love the quote so much?
Are you yourself a person of sterling character?
We’re all hoping, right?
Is that a key relationship for you—between language and sports?
What was it John Hawkes said to you, just before you graduated—that everything you write is about “the agony of love without communication and in the context of violence”?
How did you/do you deal?
How large a part does insecurity play in our culture?
Don’t you think this undergirds such phenomena as the mass watching of others?
If I can feel like . . . whoever . . . or look like . . . whoever, I won’t have to feel so shitty about myself. Right?
And if that’s true, does this participation in memoir and “truth” culture not equate with a larger drive to discover if others are as “needy” as we are?
“We are all so afraid; we are all so alone; we all so need from the outside world the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.” It’s all very Ford Madox Ford, isn’t it?
Or, pivoting back to the departure point, you say, “Athletes are in touch with the gods; that’s why we love them.” Have you ever talked to an athlete and asked if he or she was willing or able to entertain the idea that he/she was indeed in touch with the gods?
“Pivoting” is a big sports word, right?
Did I finally get one sports term correct? Yay.
Any current player on whom you have a major crush?
Why do you put these feelings (of love, of idolization, of rapture, of perfection) on a pedestal?
Is there not another kind of love (more earthbound) you might privilege instead?
Is it that hard for you to accept your own human imperfection?
Why?
Dostoevsky: “I maintain that hell is the suffering of being unable to love.” Is fandom, therefore, maybe something you need to overcome?