The Best American Sports Writing 2013 (6 page)

Act I: Juan Jose and his banderilleros swing their pink capotes around wildly, each man caping the bull in turn. Out trot the picadors, looking like dapper Lego men on horseback in their wide-brimmed hats and squarish leg armor. Their horses are swaddled in
petos
, mattresslike cloaks to protect them from the bulls' horns. The picadors insert their lances into the hump of muscle tissue at the base of the neck, the
morillo
, to get the bull to lower its head; otherwise Padilla won't be able to get over its horns to make the final kill. There is something scarily perfunctory about the way the picadors jab the bull with their long lances—they're like a cavalry of gas jockeys, only instead of filling up the tank, they are draining the bull's life.

Act II: Padilla dismisses his assistants, signals to the crowd that he will put in his own banderillas. Goddamnit, Padilla,
qué fuerte
. Everyone is aware that this is exactly how he lost his eye. And now, one-eyed, Padilla is flying onto the wooden running boards behind the bull. How does he get so high? He takes a running leap as if the sand were a trampoline and sinks another wooden flag into the bull. He places the final pair of banderillas
al violín
, a one-handed maneuver that recalls the dramatic acrobatics that caused his fall in Zaragoza.

Act III:
Tercio de la muerte
. Now Padilla is stalking the bull, with an unexpected sultriness and mock haughtiness. Via a sort of feline strut across the sand toward the animal, he slinks up to the bull and goads it into charging. It lowers its horns, tosses its head in a dozen vain attempts to catch the cape. When it comes up on Padilla's blind left side, we recoil, but we don't have to worry; he seems to have no trouble gauging distance or responding to the unhinged shadows in the bullring.

Padilla's body language changes tone continually over the next seven minutes, as his
pasos
transmit contempt and urgency, comedy and reverence. Sometimes the bullfight looks a lot like a game of freeze tag, and his pranks get juvenile; he does everything short of blowing a raspberry at the bull. Sometimes it's more like an awkward cocktail party: the bull refusing to charge, Padilla doing the torero catcall that is like emphatic forced laughter: “Eh,
toro!
He-he-HEH!”

Soon everyone can tell from the bull's ragged breathing that the end is near. Padilla and the bull are staring into each other's faces with an opaque intimacy. Something visible to everyone in the stands, but as ultimately impenetrable as any couple's love-or-hate affair. It's almost sunset now; the planks of blood down the bull's back look violet. As if on the conductor's cue, two seagulls choose this moment to swoop through the invisible membrane between bull and man. Padilla's dark hair is sticking to his head. The matador, underweight, with his twisted face and his eye patch, appears unmistakably mortal. His face fossilizes his brush with death, the way that fire gets incarnated by cold, tender welts. His return to the ring, one could argue, gives the crowd a sense that death will come for all of us, sooner or later, that death is certainly imminent, but
it ain't here yet
.

Inside the plaza's walls, the concrete parentheses that enclose Padilla and the bull, everybody straightens;
erguirse
is the Spanish verb for this, electric shivers racing up spines. Juan Jose directs the creature's horns around his waist, as if he is carving his own hips out of black space. Drawing beautiful shapes with the cape and the bull. Drawing breaths.

Padilla squares his feet, positions himself for the kill. The bull is four feet away from him. Here it comes: the “hour of truth.” It's a crazy, horrible, ugly, enraging, senseless, sublime, endless moment to witness—a moment that swallows every adjective you want to hurl at it.

In the balcony, the orchestra has stopped playing. The conductor is craning over his shoulder, watching Padilla for his cue. His baton trembles in midair at the exact angle as Padilla's sword.

Padilla draws the sword back at eye level, as if the
estoque
is an arrow in an invisible quiver.

He runs. He flies, just as he did during his training with the wheelbarrow.
Volapié
. He leaps and leans his torso over the bull's lowered horns and plunges the sword into the vulnerable
morillo
.

The crowd lets out one single, tidal exhalation.

Did he “win”? Bullfighting is less straightforward than American spectacles like pro football; in this regard, it's a little more like
American Idol
. But thanks to the thunderous petition of the crowd, tonight the president awards him two ears from his first bull and two ears from his second. Before he exits the arena, Padilla drops onto his knees and kisses the sand of Jerez. Then he is carried through the great doors of his home plaza,
de hombros
, twinkling like a living torch on his brother Jaime's shoulders. Escorted by the longest ovation you have ever heard.

 

Forty minutes after his triumphant exit through the Puerta Grande, Padilla is back home in Sanlucar, changing out of his work clothes. Outside, a few guys are loading up the shuttle bus; at 4:30
A.M
. tomorrow, Padilla and his entourage will leave for their next fight in Talavera. Some freckly taurine roadie carries swords and a bleached skull to the trunk.

Where is the wild torero after-party? Lidia and the family friends are having a quiet dinner. Paloma is bouncing around, getting ready for bed. The Cyclone of Jerez emerges from his dressing room as Juan Jose, wearing a suit jacket and spiffy loafers.

“Four ears, Paloma!” he crows to his daughter, sinking into his armchair. (“The kids are always begging him, ‘Papi, bring me two ears!'—you know the typical things,” Lidia explains.) He smooches her to make her giggle.

How does he feel about tonight's corrida?

“This was one of the afternoons of maximum responsibility in my life,” he says. “To be able to dress in my suit of lights in this new phase of my life, in front of my countrymen, my doctors, my family—” He smiles. For the past week, he explains, he's been terrified that it would be “an empty afternoon, a sad afternoon, that the bulls wouldn't help me . . .” That he would fail to achieve his dream of leaving
de hombros
, piggybacking on his brother's shoulders through the great gates.

“Well, I think it was a triumphant afternoon. I dedicate it to
toda mi tierra
.”

Is it uncomfortable to get sedimented into legend while you are still alive? Is it like another sort of paralysis?

“I feel supremely content, proud, for all that the bull has given me, all that it's added to my life, personal as well as professional. I can't complain or feel victimized by my injury; this is the profession I chose. And this accident of mine, my recovery, I think it's touched the whole world . . .” He leans forward, his enormous hands cupping his bony knees, shaping his words carefully. “There was a time when I couldn't show my face, when my head was a little screwed up. But now I've entered a period of great pride, great happiness.”

His working eye follows his daughter, who is babbling some song under the taxidermied heads of six Miura bulls that Padilla killed in a single afternoon in Bilbao.

“And there is always a new goal tomorrow.” It's the “
amor por los toros
,” he says—his love of the bulls—that drives him.

If some of these phrases sound like Hallmark propaganda, you have to imagine them spoken by a man who is teaching himself to speak again. It's a legitimate medical miracle that Juan Jose Padilla can even vocalize his “love for the
toros
” today. Tomorrow he'll fight three horned beasts in Talavera; on Monday it's back to the ABCs in speech therapy. Somehow he's managed to surrender without bitterness to his new situation while simultaneously working without pause to reclaim his life. His feats in the bullring are as impressive as they've ever been, but for my money it's Padilla's daily diligence, his unglorious microsteps back from paralysis, that distinguish him as a true
figura
.

For all the talk of rewards and triumphs and miracles, the life of a bullfighter seems incredibly grueling, dangerous, uncertain.

Vale la pena?
Is it worth it?

No, says Padilla's mother without a second's hesitation.

No, says Pepe Padilla, who during the Franco years used to ride trains and sleep under the stars to stand before a fighting bull. For the parents of a torero, “there is more
pena
than
gloria
.”

Sí
, says Lidia,
because you see his happiness!

Sí
, says Juan Jose Padilla, smiling as wide as his new face permits him, because God is giving me my
recompensa
. Now I see better with one eye than two.

MICHAEL J. MOONEY

FROM D MAGAZINE

 

W
HEN BILL FONG
approaches the lane, 15-pound bowling ball in hand, he tries not to breathe. He tries not to think about not breathing. He wants his body to perform a series of complex movements that his muscles themselves have memorized. In short, he wants to become a robot.

Fong, 48 years old, six feet tall with broad shoulders, pulls the ball into his chest and does a quick shimmy with his hips. He swings the ball first backward, then forward, his arm a pendulum of kinetic energy, as he takes five measured steps toward the foul line. He releases the ball, and it glides across the oiled wooden planks like it's floating, hydroplaning, spinning counterclockwise along a trajectory that seems to be taking it straight for the right-hand gutter. But as the ball nears the edge of the lane, it veers back toward the center, as if guided by remote control. The hook carries the ball back just in time. In a heartbeat, what was a wide, sneering mouth of pins is now—nothing.

He comes back to the table where his teammates are seated—they always sit and bowl in the same order—and they congratulate him the same way they have thousands of times over the last decade. But Fong looks displeased. His strike wasn't good enough.

“I got pretty lucky that time,” he says in his distinctly Chicago accent. “The seven was hanging there before it fell. I've got to make adjustments.” With a pencil, he jots down notes on a folded piece of blue paper.

His teammates aren't interested in talking about what he can do to make his strikes more solid, though, or even tonight's mildly competitive league game. They're still discussing a night two years ago. They mention it every week, without fail. In fact, all you have to do is say the words “That Night” and everyone at the Plano Super Bowl knows what you're talking about. They also refer to it as “The Incident” or “That Incredible Series.” It's the only time anyone can remember a local recreational bowler making the sports section of the
Dallas Morning News
. One man, an opponent of Fong's that evening, calls it “the most amazing thing I've ever seen in a bowling alley.”

Bill Fong needs no reminders, of course. He thinks about that moment—those hours—every single day of his life.

 

Most people think perfection in bowling is a 300 game, but it isn't. Any reasonably good recreational bowler can get lucky one night and roll 12 consecutive strikes. If you count all the bowling alleys all over America, somebody somewhere bowls a 300 every night. But only a human robot can roll three 300s in a row—36 straight strikes—for what's called a “perfect series.” More than 95 million Americans go bowling, but, according to the United States Bowling Congress, there have been only 21 certified 900s since anyone started keeping track.

Bill Fong's run at perfection started as most of his nights do, with practice at around 5:30
P.M
. He bowls in four active leagues and he rolls at least 20 games a week, every week. That night, January 18, 2010, he wanted to focus on his timing.

Timing is everything. When your timing is right, when your arms, legs, and torso all move in rhythm toward the lane, you have better balance. When you're balanced, you're also more accurate. And when you're accurate, your decision-making also improves. By contrast, if your timing is off, your balance is off, and you don't hit your targets. There are too many variables to assess, too many elements to gauge, and you can't possibly make the best decisions. Fong knows a hot streak is all about timing. So in practice that night, he breathed, he tried to erase all thoughts, and he tried to make his approach with each body part functioning as programmed.

That night, he didn't roll many strikes in practice. There was nothing to make him think this night would be anything special.

Fong's team, the Crazy Eights (he picked the name because eights are lucky in Chinese culture), was assigned lanes 27 and 28, one of Fong's favorite pairs. The left lane, 27, hooks more, he says. The right lane, 28, tends to be more direct.

Frame one was on the left lane. As always, he was last in the bowling order, the anchor position. He watched his teammates roll and noticed each one throw a ball that hooked early and missed the pocket, the sweet spot between the head pin and the 3 pin on the right, the place that gives you the best chance of getting a strike. So when it was Fong's turn, he opted to roll a deeper hook, to stay outside and ride the edge of the gutter a little longer.

The result was a loud, powerful strike. His ball slammed into the pocket with a vengeance, obliterating all 10 pins. His next roll, on 28, was another violent strike. All four of the first frames were robust strikes, actually. But his teammates barely took notice.

“To tell you the truth, that wasn't that unusual,” says JoAnn Gibson, a sweet Southern woman who enjoys the company more than she does the actual bowling.

“Bowlers like Bill can roll off mini-streaks like that all the time,” says Tom Dunn, a more serious bowler who sometimes flirts innocently with JoAnn.