Read Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) for Free Online Page A

up as a football player, to own a football uniform, and my ever-indulgent mother granted my wish by buying me one. Helmet, shoulder pads and two-color jersey, the special pants that came down to the knee, along with a leather football—which allowed me to look at myself in the mirror and pretend that I was a football player. There are even photographs that document the imaginary exploits of that little boy in his pristine uniform which never once touched an actual football field, which was never once worn outside the domain of the small garden apartment he lived in with his parents.
    Eventually, of course, I did begin to play football—and baseball as well. With fanatical devotion, I might add, and the more interested I became in doing these things, the more interested I became in following the performances of the great ones, the professionals. In Portugal, I told you about the audacious, semi-insane letter I wrote to Otto Graham (the finest quarterback of the period, the star of the champion Cleveland Browns) inviting him to my eighth birthday party—and the gracious response I received from him, explaining why he could not attend. Ever since I mentioned this story to you, I have continued to ponder it, searching for more details, trying to come to a deeper understanding of my motives at the time. I remember now a distinct fantasy of Otto Graham coming to my house and the two of us going into the backyard and playing catch with a football. That was the birthday party. There were no other guests present—no other children, not even my parents—no one but my soon to be eight-year-old self and the immortal O.G.
    I see now, I know now with utmost conviction, that this fantasy represented a wish to create a substitute father. In the America of my young mind, fathers were supposed to play catch with their sons, but my father rarely did that with me, was seldom available in any of the ways I imagined fathers were supposed to be available to their sons, and so I invited a football hero to my house in the vain hope that he could give me whatever it was my own father had failed to give me. Are all heroes substitute fathers? Is that why boys seem to have a greater need for heroes than girls? Is all this youthful fixation on sports no more than another example of the Oedipal struggle gone underground? I’m not sure. But the maniacal intensity of sports fans—not all, but vast numbers nevertheless—has to come from somewhere very deep in the soul. There is more at stake here than momentary diversion or mere entertainment.
    I don’t mean to suggest that Freud is the only one with anything to say on the matter, but there is no doubt that he has something to add to the conversation.
    I realize that I often respond to your remarks with stories about myself. Understand: I am not interested in myself. I am giving you case studies, stories about anyone.
With warmest thoughts,
Paul

March 15, 2009
    Dear Paul,
    You write of the young male child’s fixation on sporting heroes, and go on to distinguish this from a mature attitude that seeks the aesthetic in the sporting spectacle.
    Like you, I think that watching sport on television is mostly a waste of time. But there are moments that are not a waste of time, as would for example crop up now and again in the glory days of Roger Federer. In the light of what you say, I scrutinize such moments, revisiting them in memory—Federer playing a cross-court backhand volley, for instance. Is it truly, or only, the aesthetic, I ask myself, that brings such moments alive for me?
    It seems to me that two thoughts go through my mind as I watch: (1) If only I had spent my adolescence practicing my backhand instead of . . . then I too could have played shots like that and made people all over the world gasp with wonder; followed by: (2) Even if I had spent the whole of my adolescence practicing my backhand, I would not be able to play that shot, not in the stress of competition, not at will. And