Last Friday night, I sat on a plane to the West Coast and watched what turned out to be Andy Roddick’s penultimate career victory. Had the weather cleared a bit faster Wednesday, I could have seen the end of his final match on the return flight, but the remains of Isaac lingered in New York just long enough to make sure the match restarted and ended in the time it took us to get home from the airport. So my last true memory of Andy Roddick as a tennis player (because he is surely as destined for a commentating career as McEnroe) will be of him firing on all cylinders, reducing (with the partisan crowd’s help) his 19 year old opponent to near paralysis with his shot selection and wicked serve. It’s a nice companion to my other key memory of Roddick, the legendary Wimbledon final he lost to Federer.
Grantland’s Louisa Thomas has a thoughtful essay on Roddick and his place in tennis history today, which I urge you to read if you haven’t already. Au revoir, Andy. We’ll meet again — just not on the tennis court.
Other links of note:
- Tyrann Mathieu has made an unusual choice for a star player booted from a D-1 football team — he’s staying at LSU as a regular student. [Sports on Earth]
- A lovely little anecdote about Mickey Mantle’s encounter with the Korean War Draft Board — which made me realize that, had it gone a different way, my paternal grandfather’s Korean War stories (he was actually called up out of Oklahoma the year the story takes place) might have included a meeting with the Yankee great. Or that’s what I’m going to claim from now on. [This Land Press]
- Please enjoy (’cause what else do you do when Parks & Recreation is involved) this collection of the 20 greatest sports moments on P&R. [With Leather]
- If you haven’t seen the Carlos Gomez falling down GIF, now you can. [Baseball Nation]
- Yahoo’s Shine channel (? I guess) has a new Sports section, which is normally a “whatever,” but 1)they’ve very smartly hired Sarah Bunting to run it and 2)she’s continuing her fabulous Out With the Crowd series (where she interviews baseball fans about rooting for their favorite teams) over there, so it’s worth a browse. Even if Yahoo does insist on hiding it under “Healthy Living.”
Ladies... 