If you look at the array of photos accompanying this week’s essay, you might say “About time,” if you thrill at watching a flock of sailboats that make weekly appearances just off Canal Park, or you might wonder why such pictures are right there where you might expect to see football and soccer shots from regional high school or college games.
What they represent, actually, is a week off. I qould have much preferred to be out there watching the UMD football team crushing Wayne State in the Bulldog home opener, or a couple top high school or other college games. I had a meeting scheduled at 5:30 am last Thursday with Dr. Robin Hendricks or Orthopedic Associates at St. Luke’s Hospital.
Dr. Hendricks was about to fix the painful pulled muscle in my right thigh that had bothered me for most of two years, inhibiting my fading ability to still play 35-and-over baseball, and to walk the sidelines at various sports events. Of course, it took Dr Hendricks to convince me that my “pulled muscle” wasn’t a pulled muscle at all, but an arthritic restriction that caused the ball in my right hip to refuse to rotate in its socket any more. That transfered the pain that I kept attributing to a pulled muscle. Or three.
Meanwhile, out on Lake Superior, I’d keep seeing these beautiful sailboats out there racing in their weekly endeavor, and while I never figured out quite whether they’re running laps around pylons or what, it didn’t matter. All I knew was that I had never taken the time to shoot enough meaningful shots of them to use in The Reader.
So on the eve of my surgery for total hip replacement, my wife, Joan, and I went out for a light bit of pasta at Va Bene, one of our favorite restaurants and one that had outside tables with a view of Lake Superior and the Bridge. By luck, we got a spot with a view, because it was a gorgeous evening with a bright sun about to abandon the blue sky and disappear over the hill. As a further bit of good luck, it was Wednesday night, and the weekly regatta was going on in full force.
I could have shot a million photos, because there really isn’t any way to shoot a bad picture of sailboats gliding across water. I still don’t know how they plot their races, or if they have various classes running separately but together, or how many laps they run. But none of that matters. They’re having fun, we get to enjoy the spectacle, and The Reader can now offer an assortment of them as the sun set.
As for more traditional sports, I didn’t get to any area games. I was not even able to witness Dr. Hendricks offing my hip, and replacing the balked ball and socket with a new ceramic one. When I woke up, all was done, I was a little dopier than usual, and I felt no pain!
A couple days of being forced to mostly recline on my back made me pleased to have a good remote and a television wall set that had a couple ESPN channels. That’s a two-headed sword, however, as even I can get to the point of almost choking on too much sports repetition.
It also gives you an entirely different perspective on sports. After all the great and not-so-great football games in college and in the first week of the NFL, the most amazing and significant sports event of all last weekend was: the women’s semifinal at the U.S. Open tennis championship. Without a doubt.
The event I enjoyed the most, however, was that wonderful windblown sailboat regatta of last Wednesday night.

Twins Sail, Vikings Flop, Tennis Rules

College football is in full swing, the NFL finally quit playing meaningless games and started firing for real, but the Minnesota Twins remain the prime topic – sailing along in the American League Central, in hot pursuit of a wild card playoff spot. It’s baseball’s version of defying gravity.
It seems outrageous that a team can keep winning and remain in the race with nobody in sight of hitting .300, and its best four hitters – Joe Mauer, Brian Dozier, Trevor Plouffe and Torii Hunter – all at least 25 points below what we expect, and with pitching that has fluctuated up and down between sparkling and awful. And yet7-1, here they are, third in the wild card race where only two make it, but stalking the Texas Rangers resolutely.
The perfect transition to fall came Monday night, when the Twins blitzed once-powerful Detroit 7-1 as the dinnertime first course, then the Vikings kept us all up late to open the NFL season at San Francisco. This would be our chance to see the long-awaited 1-2 punch of Teddy Bridgewater and Adrian Peterson in the backfield together for the first time.
My greatest concern was that the Vikings, by holding Peterson out of every single exhibition game snap, might get back in the lineup after missing a year, but how could he have any rhythm? But if Teddy throws a couple and Peterson runs for 100 yards, all will be forgiven.
San Francisco stifles Peterson with 40 yards rushing, Bridgewater doesn’t function, nor does the offensive line, defensive line or anything else a team needs to win, and the lightly regarded 49ers hammer the Vikings 20-3.
So now, back to reality – and the race for the baseball playoffs.

   Tennis Saves Weekend
   
Restricted to my recovery bed at St. Luke’s last Friday, I was attracted to the semifinals of the U.S. Open Women’s tournament. Serena Williams had easily consumed the Australian Open, the French Open, and Wimbledon. If she could win the U.S., she would have a single-season grand slam, and every tennis fan in New York was primed and ready for her to take apart a nice-appearing but totally anonymous Italian contender named Roberta Vinci. At this stage of a tournament, Serena is pretty close to invincible, and since Vinci had never reached a major semifinal from her 43rd ranking, I was only watching it casually.
Serena struggled a little with what looked like indifference at the start, but then steamrolled Vinci 6-2.
Incredibly, Vinci came back from that to establish herself as a wiry, clever little shotmaker, and rallied to beat Serena 6-4 in the second set. I was glad. I thought it would be a great thing to take home to Italy that she had won a few games, and a set, even, from the most dominant female player in tennis history.
Now, however, I had to watch more intently. Amazingly, Vinci scattered an array of clever volleys and spinning drop shots to get Serena running all over the court.  She broke Serena’s unbreakable serve and she beat her every way possible, and stunned the now-silent New York crowd as well as Serena with a 6-4 third-set clincher.
It was among the most compelling female tennis matches ever played, anywhere, and the media types were groping for comparisons and parallels. They were still doing it on Saturday, when Flavia Pennetta, who grew up a few  miles away from Vinvi, beat Vinci 7-6 (7-4), 6-2, to win the championship. In case you needed one more surprise, Pennetta supplied it by announcing she was retiring from the game, immediately, at age 33.
The next day, while dozens of television broadcasters and writers waxed eloquently about how Roger Federer was playing at an unbeatable plateau right now, even though his foe was No. 1 ranked and No. 1 seed Novak Djokovic, Djokovic did what he does best. He played computer perfect, winning the first set, losing the second one, close, then breaking Federer’s tempo and undoubtedly his heart by winning sets three and four as well to claim his 10th championship.
The victory in the U.S. Open was worth a check for $3.3 million to Djokovic, who remains the best player in the game, announcers notwithstanding.
While we’re at it, watching the tennis proved conclusively that it is possible to have too many McEnroe’s in the announcer’s booth. John McEnroe is, without a doubt, the most articulate and incisive analyst the game has ever known. He says exactly what needs to be said almost before you, as a viewer, can formulate the question.
Patrick McEnroe is John’s younger brother. He also played tennis, but never at the level his brother attained. But John’s little brother latched onto a job with ESPN, so there he was. He talked more than John, but right off, I don’t recall him ever saying anything profound, interesting, or capable of filling in any gaps in what we were watching. Djokovic had just eliminated his semifinal foe in a record short time, but Patrick assured us that Federer was right now at his best.
When you’ve got a microphone and you feel you have to talk, then you find times when you might say silly, even stupid, things. Patrick did that. When they were between matches, and both brothers were on with the play-by-play guy, it was Patrick who always answered first, as if he might have some sort of bonus for the most words.
ESPN, of course, is beyond ludicrous in pretending to be objective when it comes to college football. I would estimate that about 100 times over last weekend I was watching some mediocre football game and breaking for commercial meant running up the logo. The logo is a giant round circle, with a short rectangle below it. The circle has giant letters saying “SEC” inside, for the Southeast Conference, and the smaller rectangle has the italic ESPN inscribed.
Isn’t that special? We’re supposed to believe that the herd of announces just about to come on to tell us how mighty the SEC is, and how superior it is to any other conference, is objective. We’re not supposed to know that a reputable news outlet has a monetary deal to promote the SEC. They work very hard to do their job, and they influence fans, coaches and media. The coaches and media, incidentally, can’t see all the games, so they depend on ESPN’s fine coverage.
In last week’s voting, 10 SEC teams made the national Top 25, including all seven in the East division. With that, the guy grinning into the camera gave, as evidence of SEC supremacy, the fact that this team and that team had such tough schedules they had to ply seven games against ranked teams.
Clever. It would be similar to CNN flashing a new logo that combined a stylish script of Donald Trump with CNN’s name, then come on to do the debate by proclaiming how objective they are.