Durability - that's what true fans want in a player. Salt-of-the-earth players who give their all, always give their all, always will - well, if not forever, at least for the duration of a lengthy career. What entrances us less is the splash-and-grab fling of the glitzy superstar who toys with our emotions and is prepared to drop us at the drop of a hat or at a little drop-off in form. Flights of fancy may grab the headlines but not our sporting souls, not our genuine adoration. It's why the real heroes are the third baseman whose career extends into his 40s or the medium-pace stock bowler who thinks nothing of toiling away over after over all day long. It's about length of commitment.
At last year's White House Press corps dinner - the evening when the incumbent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue gets the opportunity to turn the tables on his guests and also to show his funny side - Laura Bush turned the tables on husband George. She spoke of his early-to-bed routine: "Come 9 P.M. and Mr. Excitement is already in bed and I'm left watching Desperate Housewives with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a desperate housewife." Then, turning directly to the president, the first lady chided: "If you're really intent on ridding the world of tyranny, you're going to have to stay up later."
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Display more durability, that is.
Our Avram clearly did so and was prepared to do more - even if it was only his readiness to demonstrate absolute loyalty that had largely gotten him the job at Stamford Bridge in the first place in place of Jose Mourinho, the self-styled "Great One" and a nondurable type if ever there was. With great courage, Avram rode out the snide and the nasty, the populists and the snobs, the anti-Semites and the jealous, to take Chelsea to the kind of achievements which Sir Alex Ferguson said should've have earned any coach a 10-year contract. Instead, Roman Abramovich decided to prove how right is the chapter in the autobiography of Les Shackleton (a great player from the '50s) headed "The average director's knowledge of football" and which consists of a completely blank page.
Abramovich repaid Avram's loyalty by getting rid of him just because John Terry slipped on his bum for that crucial penalty. Now, if he'd just had the courage to have made plain before the Moscow final that he didn't think his coach was up to the job and that he'd have to leave even if Chelsea had captured Europe's greatest soccer prize, then he might have been excused. But this was just plain pettiness. Perhaps Chelsea will have a disastrous 2008-9 season and another moneybags will get his comeuppance. Hollow hope, I know, but we can always dream of it being proven that money can't in fact buy it all, whereas courage, dignity, commitment and durability will eventually be crowned with glory.
I was so angry about the shoddy Chelsea behavior that I don't much want to think about it any more. Another departure of the past fortnight, however, has left me so disappointed, so dejected, so sad that I just can't get it out of my head.
Oh Justine - why on earth did you have to do it!
"Tennis has been my life since the age of 5 and I feel like I'm entering adulthood at last," explained the young lady of her shock decision to quit the game at the tender age of 25. From the moment when, at the age of 18, Justine nearly beat, should have beaten, Venus Williams in the Wimbledon final, we were sold on this slip of a girl - her courage, her commitment, the unparalleled one-handed backhand that lifted her modest frame off her feet and lifted all tennis addicts with her. How we admired her, even more than her ever-so-nice compatriot, Kim Clijsters who, less unexpectedly, a year ago paved the way out of the limelight. In the words of the Wham pop song, "I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away".
I guess it's going to be nice to see someone else next week take Roland Garros for the first time in four years (actually Justine won four of the last five), and maybe Martina's instincts are right when she says, "I would be less shocked to see Justine come back than I am at her retiring now."
Maybe in the end, never having Wimbledon among her seven Grand Slam titles will gnaw away. Justine, come back, all will be forgiven: How we want our memories of your glory to endure.
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