So what are these “athletic virtues”, speed, grace, and reckless courage?
Speed is your ticket to the dance. It’s the innate “talent” which begins to separate truly elite athletes from the rest of us, usually at an early stage. It’s what allows Micheal Jordan to leap small buildings in a single bound, Carl Lewis to jump across unfathomable chasms, or Joe Montana to unerringly pick out the open receiver from a chaotic mass of behemoths, then target him while in full flight with the ovoid football.
In its purest form, it is Usain Bolt sprinting 100 meters at 23+ mph. But it is also what allows Ted Williams to see each seam of a fastball spinning madly at him going 98 mph; why the ordinary sized Henry Aaron could snap his hands around fast enough to hit 40 home runs, year after year; it’s why Muhammad Ali could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”. When a star athlete says “the game just slowed down for me”, or “I just stayed within myself”, he is describing what speed feels like to him. His neuromuscular skill is just superior to the rest of us, and what seems to most of us a blur is to him a discrete series of controllable events.
So speed really can’t be taught or learned. But it can be harnessed and exploited. Athletes who rise to the top usually exploit one of two main routes to success: grace, or reckless courage. A very few use both traits to equal effect, and they become untouchable by the rest of us.
Grace is what happens when an athlete, through persistent repetition and supreme mindfulness, turns his athletic endeavor into a work of art. Think Mark Spitz, and the stunning, powerful beauty of his butterfly stroke, the same double arc of his arms coupled with a double dolphin kick. Or Greg Louganis, perfectly rotating from a ten meter high platform to enter the water with nary a splash.
But the purest example of athletic grace is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and his “Sky Hook”. While being lithe, coordinated, and 7’2″ tall pretty much assured him a career in basketball, it was not obvious coming out of college that he would: remain at the top of his profession until age 42; win six NBA championships (after 3 NCAA titles), and become the sports all-time leading scorer, unlikely to ever be surpassed.
What enabled him to achieve this was a shot which he taught himself early in his pro career, and which, through constant practice, and dedication to performing the same moves the same way over and over, became an unblockable shot. More than a simple hook shot, he added several nuances which not only made him a scoring machine, but also made him appear to be a moving Michaelangelo sculpture.
This poetic maneuver required a pinpoint passer, and he certainly had that early in his career with Oscar Robertson, and then again with Magic Johnson, arguably the two most talented point guards in NBA history. Once Kareem had received the ball in the perfect location, he simply slowed down his motions, sort of wound up like a spring, turned his back to his defender, and simultaneously lifted the ball around his body with his right hand, twisted to his left while rising on his left foot, using his right leg to thwart any double-teaming smaller player from interfering, and using his left arm in a graceful crook to protect his front side from the primary defender. Then he shot the ball up and over his head – by this time his right hand would be maybe ten feet in the air, and the ball could not be touched by anyone. All he had to do was aim correctly.
Everyone knew what was going to happen the moment he caught the ball, and all the opposing players were powerless to stop it. The audience felt his every motion, and a sigh of anticipation would arise in the arena as he feinted right, turned left, rose up gazelle like on his left foot, and arced the ball in a smooth parabola through the hoop. Pure grace, athletic perfection, a work of art with devastating consequences for his opponents. But without the years of repeating these simple steps, over and over, he never would have successfully taken advantage of his height and innate speed to become the ironman he was, playing at the highest level for over 24 years.
Pete Rose (could there be less graceful name – maybe Dick Butkus?) is my favorite exemplar of reckless courage.
… more to come