The Times on Sports

After reading today's The New York Times editorial on the epic Wimbledon final, I propose that sports never be allowed on the oped page again. An extended passage:

But this was also a match that could have been written by John Bunyan, a moral battle in which the sides — good versus evil — changed with every change of serve. Was that sheepishness on Nadal’s face when he double-faulted? How many times did Federer rescue himself from despondency? One minute Nadal was lost in the weeds. The next minute it was Federer’s turn. This wasn’t a tennis court. It was an ecosystem.

The mystery of a match like this is hard to fathom. Shot by shot it progresses, game by game. The level of play is high at first, but not higher than expected. Federer goes down two sets, and then, suddenly, we find ourselves entering new terrain.

You get to a point — the end of the fourth set, when Federer finds the will to carry us all into a final set with him — and you can’t quite make out how you got here. The light slips away, and though everyone feels the cumulative weight of what has come before, the players are still having to play in the present, still having to set aside the past in order to return another serve, while everyone in the crowd wonders how they do it — not just the imagination of the ball-striking, but the ability not to imagine, not to leap forward in their minds to winning or losing. Their desire is concealed in the play itself. But ours has gotten loose and is making it hard to breathe — hard even to watch.

The silliest sentences are in bold. Or maybe I'm just still angry that Nadal won.