On April 18, 2013, the best amateur boxers in New York met at the Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn. For some, this will be the pinnacle, for others, just the start. And for some, the end of their short careers. On assignment for AGONICA, Damien Acevedo gives us a first-hand look at the human elements of boxing: the winners, losers, sweat, spit and blood. Presenting: “The Fight of Their Lives, Book I of III”

See Book II | See Book III | Read the companion story: “Fight Night” by S. Joshi

Click on the thumbnail photos to open full-size versions.

(All photos copyright D. Acevedo/AGONICA 2013. Permission required for use.)

On April 18, 2013, the best amateur boxers in New York met at the Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn. For some, this will be the pinnacle, for others, just the start. And for some, the end of their short careers. On assignment for AGONICA, Damien Acevedo gives us a first-hand look at the human elements of boxing: the winners, losers, sweat, spit and blood. Presenting: “The Fight of Their Lives, Book III of III”

See Book I | See Book II | Read the companion story: “Fight Night” by S. Joshi

Click on the thumbnail photos to open full-size versions.

(All photos copyright D. Acevedo/AGONICA 2013. Permission required for use.)

On April 18, 2013, the best amateur boxers in New York met at the Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn. For some, this will be the pinnacle, for others, just the start. And for some, the end of their short careers. On assignment for AGONICA, Damien Acevedo gives us a first-hand look at the human elements of boxing: the winners, losers, sweat, spit and blood. Presenting: “The Fight of Their Lives, Book II of III”

See Book I | See Book III | Read the companion story: “Fight Night” by S. Joshi

Click on the thumbnail photos to open full-size versions.

(All photos copyright D. Acevedo/AGONICA 2013. Permission required for use.)

When I became sentient, I didn’t understand the NBA. My instincts told me basketball was its most beautiful and efficient when the team was put before its parts. Seems reasonable enough.

And yet in my lifetime it was the stars that dominated the Association. The personalities (read: brands) of Bird, Magic, Jordan, Malone, Barkley and even Bryant and O’Neal were more important, and more prominent, than their respective teams ever were, maybe even the sport itself. However by design, it disgusted me, wrongly nostalgic me. OK, sure, there were the Spurs. But the Spurs were (and always will be) boring as shit. Can’t do boring. Still, I needed a starting five I could idolize — and subsequently watch annihilate those fallow star-driven squads whose sole offensive strategy was what could be termed “hero ball.”

Then, the 2004-05 Season.

Even as a toddler and insignificant child, I had a concept of the original “Bad Boys” Pistons team from the late 80’s and early 90’s. Ballers all, Isaiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Lambier, even Dennis Rodman, these were men Michael Jordan did battle with — and repeatedly lost to — before he was “Jordan.” The Bad Boys clearly weren’t the good guys (hence the moniker), but they were undeniably fearless, their willingness to out-scrap their opponents defensively, on the boards and, yes, even with their fists made them fascinating. And more importantly, the won. A lot.

Chauncey Billups’ leadership and savvy helped propel the PIstons back into the NBA’s elite. (Conroy/AP)

Pro basketball lost its suspense when Jordan took over. The image it cultivated during the Magic/Bird/Isaiah era was supplanted by the Bulls dynasty. However much MJ’s dominance was enchanting, it was, for anyone outside the Windy City and unabashed frontrunners, anti-climactic. Here was a man who would routinely order his coach to make substitutions from the floor, and whose megalomania reached critical mass as the world willingly turned a blind eye. He may have even gotten his father killed with his addiction to competition, but no one seemed to care. Or, in deference, even acknowledge the possibility. He was a god, frankly, and gods can do as they please.

But by the late 90’s, the NBA had reached an impasse. It desperately held on to the notion that it needed to find an iconic star that could assume Jordan’s mantle. Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were tapped for the job, and the league’s deceitful machinations in pursuit of their success were often cowardly and disgusting. Look no further than the 2002 Western Conference Finals if this isn’t something you find self-evident. The Lakers were what the league’s success, popularity and grotesque profits were predicated upon. So institutionalized cheating was nothing more than a necessary means to a lucrative end. Dominant big men disappeared, and fast-paced, guard heavy play that featured less than average defense became the norm. It was flashy, hollow and lazy basketball. But it made money, so fuck it.

Kobe Bryant epitomized much of what was wrong with this era, and the follies of the NBA in general. Built in a muddled model of MJ, Bryant was an athletic freak with a killer instinct that played not for the love of the game, but for the hate of his opponent. Bryant shot relentlessly and recklessly, never shooting 47% or more from the field, and despite playing with more efficient scorers (O’Neal, Malone, Odom, etc.), he never averaged seven assists a game, despite being double-teamed much of his career. He had enough natural ability to become an elite player, and although he was often unfairly hailed for his defensive skills, Bryant never developed a rebounding, passing or defensive talent to anything near superstar levels. In short, he was no Jordan. Hell, he wasn’t even Drexler.

The NBA’s hand-picked champions relied on Shaq and Kobe to do all the work. (Reuters)

This was roundly ignored, and despite his place on the Lakers as O’Neal’s sidekick, a reverence for Bryant grew disproportionately to his actual ability to make the Lakers a great team. Yes, they won championships, but never due to unselfishness or team play. They capitalized on two stars’ aptitude for taking over a game. Had their been a Bad Boys, the “Lakers” would have never existed.

Instead, the unholy alliance of Bryant and O’Neal were able to win three consecutive championships from 1999-2002, beating such legendary heavyweights as Reggie Miller (the entire Pacers), Allen Iverson (the entire 76ers), and the Jason Kidd/Kenyon Martin/Keith Van Horn Nets (enough said). Three victories over weak Eastern Conference teams were enough to propel Bryant and O’Neal into the pantheon of their legendary forefathers. This Lakers epoch was quickly considered in stupendously reverential tones as perhaps one of the greatest squads of all time.

I didn’t get it. Was this all there was to winning? Maybe this was some people’s idea of basketball. Probably a Los Angeleno agent’s idea of basketball. Not mine. But still, despite being roundly dismissed from the 2003 playoffs by the Spurs, the Lakers, with the help of their pal David Stern, seemed poised to rattle off even more championships.

But a bountiful and merciful God intervened. In the form of a stocky point guard from Denver, of all places.

Chauncey Billups was a sneaky point guard, a prodigal basketball IQ, limited athletic ability but limitless confidence in his own scoring, defense and passing prowess. He had toughness born from years of scouts and professionals doubting his talent, which was exacerbated by bouncing around the NBA for several years. He was your quintessential extraordinarily underrated player about to hit his peak, but not out of hatred or bitterness, but rather divine right. Fitting this happened in Detroit, realm of the underrated, the teammate, the scrapper and the fighter.

Billups joined a team of other wayward souls. A shooting guard too small to succeed in Rip Hamilton, an offensively-challenged center called Ben Wallace, a skinny quiet kid named Tayshaun Prince and a brash, renegade cast-off in Rasheed Wallace. The Pistons suddenly had what is scientifically known as the nastiest starting five in NBA history. Their interior defense was omnipotent, all absurd length, intensity and rotational intelligence. Thirsty ball hawks in the backcourt that summoned perimeter harassment beyond what most guards were capable of. No opponent would dribble freely and run sets out of laziness and malaise against them. And no one on the Pistons cared who scored the most in any game. This was key. Because they played team defense as well as any team, but with a rowdiness that set them apart completely. They were the anti-Lakers without being the Spurs.

The Wallace boys, Ben (left) and Rasheed defined the Pistons’ toughness.

Disgraced, cheating NBA referee Tim Donaghy would later say that Rasheed Wallace and Billups were specifically targeted for unfavorable officiating while the Lakers were routinely outshooting opponents at the free throw line by ridiculous margins. Pistons against the league. Pistons against the world.

The ’04 Finals was thus nothing less than a battle for the soul of basketball, and also one of the greatest series in the sport’s history. In the first game, the Pistons allowed a team with four future Hall of Famers (Bryant, O’Neal, Gary Payton and Karl Malone) only 75 points. The tone was set. After the Pistons lost Game 2 in overtime, on the team bus Billups told the organization “we’re not coming back to L.A.” And he was right. Not only did the Pistons win the title (with Billups as Finals MVP), they destroyed the overrated Lakers, pillorying the entire Lakers organization in the process. O’Neal, Payton and Malone were banished to Miami, Boston and retirement respectively. Kobe would hang around, the centerpiece of a flailing dream.

Though the next season the Pistons were defeated in a gut-wrenching Finals against a similarly minded (if charmless) Spurs team, grueling, team-oriented basketball was given new life. The best teams were once again ones that beast out as a unit, not just one or two prissy troglodyte diva chucks and a bunch of bodies surrounding them. Some people may think this is ugly. Some may even say it isn’t basketball.

Me? I say Amen.

Doran is a freelance journalist whose passion for pop culture is often detrimental to his life. He lives in Brooklyn and his work has appeared on USA Today, Lost Lettermen, Brooklyn Fans and Societe Perrier, among other outlets. He’s eager to expand his work by assignment or pitch with balance and dexterity. So holla at him.

Sensitive Father’s Perspective

There’s no pleasure in watching these boys play
Much seeming nastiness is merely stupidity
Laughter masks weakness and confusion
And is used to attack before hiding in tears
There are some boys, a high percentage perhaps,
Whose moral awareness will never kick-in right
They may feel it most when they are impinged
But as for the fear and suffering of others,
If they’re not indifferent, they take pleasure
And would you want your kid to play like that
And internalize and socialize that remorselessness?
Or let them see it and learn how not to behave
And just not watch, it’s hardly even play at all

Foucault’s Panopticon for Kids (in two sonnets)

Discipline means learning how to learn
Being willing to practice and improve
Accepting admonition and adversity
Recognizing failure and trying again
Having fun working hard and sharing
Without thought for the promise of reward
(The promise is too much, the reward too little)
Because internalizing the processes
And allowing discipline to become the frame
The skeleton with which action is taken
The rational enduring center of virtue
To be established, then future happiness
In whatever form it may consist for you
Will be prepared for hard times as well
~~
Hard times will begin with the one you love
And reverberate out to identity and faith
It will be difficult to know who to trust
Among the sharks of all corrupted society
Waiting to be validated among mediocrity
And eaten alive for the experience
But then finding there is no objective value
In the romantic perversity of youth
Still being desirous to believe, however vain,
You must find the will to return to calm
Which is performed over time
With patterned efficiency and sustainability
Is the purpose of discipline
And the reward for hard work is more hard work

Yao Ming’s Last NBA Game

I’m watching Yao Ming for the first time
He’s five inches taller than Shaquille O’Neil
The scale is altered
He’s slow to the post, he can’t commit
He’s got to go to the bench early with fouls
Phil Jackson is coaching against Yao’s team
Kobe Bryant has no awkwardness
Yao moves at his own pace
Still influences events with definitive rebounding
And once the half court offense has been established
His hook shot can be devastating
But if he’s on the bench, Pau Gasol takes over
Andrew Bynum, holy socks!
How is Yao Ming going to defeat the Lakers
Unrelenting youth and agility?
Answer: Not gonna
A body can only take so much

A Sword and a Bat

I just decided that fencing and baseball are nearly the same
At least in terms of offense – a momentary spasm
Of lunging balance, force and pirouette, swiveling hips
Stand in the fire and confidently hit

I don’t have any control over how others live their lives
I make value judgments about all kinds of things
Ignorant biases bolstered by irrational emotion
While others may actualize themselves by their own guidance

I’m interested in a disciplined body of work
Evidence of an intense engagement with rigid exertion
Focused on the game, a limited realm of dramatic
Success and traumatic failure, I sense life in this

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brother,
That you do unto me
Agonistes we strive
To prove ourselves worthy of the god in our heads

I’m not interested in excuses and bullshit and nothing to show
For time is the crusher and exercise prepares the body
Prepares the mind to swing and thrust at success
To attack and achieve by balancing strikeouts and hits
An encounter of physical artistry

Two Tae Kwon Do Poems: From a Session with Mister Shane

Get him, target engaged, target destroyed
Attack the master, I’m the only one allowed to kick the ball
Inchworm with a push-up across the mat
Don’t step sideways, step straight ahead, take a bigger step
Front toes off the ground and keep it straight
We reach with the back hand, we’re tucking the other one in
Think, make your body do it, then actually do it
Every time I see you cheat on the walking stance, five push-ups
The third fundamental movement requires a back hand strike
It’s ok to make a mistake, just switch your hands
Sneak attacks can come at any time, you never know
Stand up if you fall down, I know how good you are
That’s the pace you want but you’ve got to have balance and control
Flying turning flying back kick side back double
The spear finger goes to the mid-section, not shoulder level
Pick up your back foot, rising block, pick up your toes, punch
Don’t cheat on that walking stance, we’re doing chong mu
Keep working on it
Just because you saw it once before the holidays
Doesn’t mean you’ve kept it in mind, you need practice
Right foot comes to the left foot, both hands on the hip
Step into an ‘L’, u-shaped grab, block grab
Let’s have some fun tripping, who likes tripping?
See how easy that is? It’s gonna work

Y.S. Fing is an author and poet working out of Washington, DC. He roots for the Nationals when he isn’t composing beauty.

You never considered yourself a sports fan.

You were an aesthete. You lived for art and music and philosophical conversations about existential dilemmas. You ran with a pack of weirdoes and misfits and thought that by your late twenties you’d be sipping espresso at an outdoor café in Paris and working on your novel in the late afternoon hours, before dinner.

Only it didn’t happen.

The misfits and weirdoes began drinking too much. The conversations got slower and more repetitive. You memorized the wood paneling of certain bars and wondered when you’d make that glorious escape to the imagined future where these dying people couldn’t bring you down anymore. Some of them left the bars to get jobs and began talking about things like farmer’s markets. They began to know the intricacies of different wines and the locations of the best restaurants. They had children and began wearing comfortable footwear.

You didn’t like it, but you understood. These things happen. You didn’t want to waste away like the bar crowd. But you didn’t want to walk around in slow motion picking out organic carrots either. You needed an escape from all of it.

And so you turn, inexplicably, to sports radio.

Here it is, your own little slide into normalcy. Your sacrifice to the gods of aging. Your slice of the mundane. You won’t attend games or even watch them on television. You won’t join fantasy leagues or participate in internet chat forums. Too much. No, this is easy. It’s yours, your secret and you like it that way.

Stop at the bodega on your way home. Bag of pretzel chips, hummus, Epsom salts, a small bottle of San Pellegrino and Advil PM. You’re self-conscious about the order, as it reeks of sadness. The revelers on line behind you are stocking up for the party. They are loud and young and dumb. If they had any cognizance beyond their own immediate desires, they might notice you and your sad man’s grab bag. But don’t worry, they don’t. They don’t even see you. You’re invisible. But it’s fine, be in the kitchen soon where the radio reception is the best. Funny how you never used to spend much time in there. Back in the beginning the two of you only left the bed to get more cigarettes.

But you’ve made your peace with it. “Kitchen is the new bedroom” you think, and it sounds like a rejected ad campaign and that makes you smile. A grimace, you suppose.

Pass the bar. Don’t look in the windows. What do you think you’ll see? Or, rather, who?

Settle in. There’s Robin Lundberg on the overnight. 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., the slot for the up-and-comer hosts. They are the best hosts because they have more to prove, engaging with the callers, fearful of alienating the audience they’re carefully trying to build so they can one day move to daylight hours where they can yell at their audience wantonly. You won’t catch them as much when that time comes, but don’t worry, someone will take their place. You’ll make new friends.

Light a cigarette and stare out the kitchen window that looks out onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The squealing traffic and smeared lights.

Will ‘Melo actually hurt the Knicks in the playoffs? What does a scoring title really mean anyway? Let’s take some calls. Jeff from Staten Island brings up Bernard King and Dominique Wilkins and how, while they put up big numbers, you never really hear them in conversations about the All Time Greats. And you think, “It’s true, you never hear about Dominique anymore,” and you ignore the sink full of dishes and the overflowing ashtray and the fact that she said she’d be home three hours ago. All Time Greats.

What a great way to kill time while it all falls apart around you.

In the past, when this happened, you were still young and filled with the type of indomitable spirit that could survive a thousand break-ups, so you could just listen to depressing songs and be gloriously melancholy. It was like smoking, a good look for a young romantic but deadly past thirty-five. Back then, you were sad and you heard a sad song and it made you feel less alone.

But then it was an echo chamber. A refracted sadness. You started to think about the guy singing the song. How sad is he, really? You became friends with men who sang sad songs and they didn’t seem so sad, actually. Businesslike. Did Dylan even really care about that Girl from the North Country? Losing your love, you listened to songs of lost love. How low.

Enough. Let’s listen to voices other than those in your head. To angry voices like Eddie from Staten Island. Or meek ones like Tim from Cutchogue. Matt from Brooklyn in the car. Let them tell you about Tiger’s penalty at the Masters and without knowing it that you are not alone in your desire for diversion. It’s your escapist pre-occupation. Chain the Camel and get comfortable. This is home now.

Is it because Mike and the Mad Dog filled the kitchen of your Long Island home, morning, noon and night and on every car trip from the 7-11 to the Jersey Shore? Maybe. The two were timeless and constant, back then. Now they’re a vestige of a bygone era for New York sports — like John Starks’ “The Dunk” or LJ’s four point play or Bobby Bonilla and Vince Coleman’s fireworks episode. You’re missing your youth, that’s all. The youth you had before you knew what youth was, when Reggie killed the Knicks and MJ killed everyone and you knew without knowing that you would be great someday, like them, in your own way, radiant, unstoppable, eternal. That was then.

As time goes on, the new habit gets more pronounced. It’s not so new. It just is. You’re listening to the radio while watching highlights from ESPN, the Book of Basketball somewhere within your field of vision. Maybe a second bath. A third Advil PM. Maybe she’ll leave before the bar closes tonight. Maybe the Celtics will shock the Knicks in the first round. Maybe Jeff Green is finally justifying the ‘Perk’ trade. Maybe Kobe, if anyone, can come back from this Achilles injury. If not him, then who?

Then, maybe you’ll be like Kobe. You’ll come back too. You’ll shock the world with a return so glorious the experts are dumbfounded. In this midnight daydream, you never hated Kobe. He’s not a person here, he’s a vessel. You hope for his comeback, you crave it. Because you want to believe that if you work hard, you’ll will succeed too. You’re listening to your own resurrection.

A commercial break interrupts your thoughts. This Flo from Progressive Insurance person has become sort of charming in her own desperate way; a Stockholm syndrome of your proximity. Quicken Loans is telling you they receive “a lot of tweets from customers that sound like this,” and then recite questions well over the 140-character limit. Hey, there’s Walt “Clyde” Frazier talking about urinary dysfunction. Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, Clyde…

They’re back now. Kobe again. The injury D’Antoni’s fault. The coach has a responsibility to rest a player, even if it’s an alpha dog who begs to play, right? Bryant was apparently second in minutes played.

“In the league?” you think. “That can’t be right.”

Who knows? You don’t retain much when you listen. You miss a lot of the details. What’s the point? Because apparently there’s no correlation between Achilles injuries and exhaustion, though it seems like they should have rested him. So many games. Not so young anymore. The debate continues. Maybe this is the coach’s fault. It would be nice to find fault instead of “we’re both to blame” or “These things happen.” You want a smoking gun. Stats are real, like evidence. You try gathering your own evidence but when she gets home, bold with drink, your little stats turn to gossamer, discarded with a few eye rolls and a loud protestation. You don’t want to wake the neighbors again, so you head back to the kitchen to hear about Kobe, who’s suddenly old school, serious, competitive, dedicated to winning. The brash kid became the wily veteran.

You let your mind wander a little more and all of a sudden, you want Jordan to come back and beat LeBron. Fuck it. Why not? Jordan’s 50th birthday fueled rumors of him trying to get back to his playing weight. How glorious it would be to watch him win again. The greatness of your youth will impose its truth on a new, fearsome reality. Things to be the way they were once, when everything made sense. There was no truth because your dreams were the only truth. You’re pining for a future that never really was. And this probably means that you’re getting old.

Maybe that’s why you like the radio so much. It sounds old too. It never changes, though it changes every day. You go well together.

 
J.G. Sullivan is a writer living in Brooklyn.

The Barclays Center glows rusted gold as the afternoon sun hits it just so, visible from blocks away, rising from the low-density Park Slope skyline like a fiery tribute to the power of the modern urban government. It’s a beautiful, steadfast gleam in the right light, befitting the relentless effort it took to build the thing; look long enough, and it almost makes you want to forgive what they did to Freddy’s Bar. Almost.

It is raining on a Thursday in April as the best amateur fighters in New York take to the canvas in the $1 billion silver-star that somehow was built for cheaper than intended. This day, grey skies mean luminosity from the newest athletic trinket in the World’s Most Powerful Metropolis (TM) will have to come from within. The fighters are the undercard, the stadium, truthfully, the main event.

Quick: name another American city with two arenas built to compete simultaneously for the same events, in the same leagues and markets. You can’t. But that’s the stated goal of Barclay’s — to compete with, and serve as an affront to, MSG, that Shrine to Old Money on 34th Street. And that’s why the Golden Gloves are here, that and to serve as a dress rehearsal for the first big prize fight later this month, when the borough’s own Zab Judah will try to press his home-court advantage against Danny Garcia.

But first, the Arena.

The Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, home of the 2013 New York Golden Gloves Finals. (Damien Acevedo/AGONICA)

In front of a Starbucks kiosk on the spacious concourse, two security dogs greet each other from 100 paces, each forcefully pulling an amused handler to the other. I am reminded of once being accosted at a $300-for-eight-weeks training course elsewhere in the borough for letting my hound walk me; so I think about storming over and retraining the handlers wearing their guns and broad chests. I want to tell them I ain’t the least bit intimidated, but lets’ face it, I wouldn’t do well in confinement. Besides, I am distracted by the usual banalities of the modern sporting Mecca.

Such as the Honda Interactive Zone, where an Acura RLX forlornly waits for a forever home. Sleek and rounded at the ends, four doors, a toothy grill and utilitarian fin just above the back window. No faltering in my vigilance, because I, too, watch Shark Week. An adjacent digital readout gives the Monroney facts: 24 mpg on average, 20 in the city, 31 highway; you spend $250 more in fuel costs in five years than the average new vehicle, it boasts. It is 10 percent U.S. made.

Next door in the National Grid Zone, leather couches and chairs and charcoal tables beckon — the finest Ikea wares. On the wall closest to the concourse 21 phone chargers stand at attention in a 24-slot charging station, iPhone slots on each edge and straddling the center divider. How can you tweet from the seats without full juice?

As if the stadium weren’t a masterpiece on its own, there is art for sale at Victory Fine Art, where you can get the perfect portrait of Brook Lopez to hang above your mantel. Six color and two black-and-white portraits are hung, though some are no longer for sale. Of the ones that are, the black-and-white “Thoughtful Ali” — one of three depicting the G.O.A.T. — retails for $395. This is the same price as “Deron Williams,” a black-and-white giclee as underwhelming as the max-contract point guard it glories. “Joe Johnson” costs an extra hundred, a color giclee on canvas; pigments apparently run an extra C-Note.

Well before the event, Karen Rodriguez, who placed 12th in Season 10 of American Idol, takes two practice croons through the anthem. The second version clocks in at 2:16:01, although she pauses before “Oh, say does” to ask a handler to photograph her climactic finish. When I was a kid, we often listened to a tape-recorded version of Whitney Houston’s anthem before hockey games; needless to say, Karen Rodriguez’s take won’t get the same treatment anywhere.

The National Anthem, sung by former American Idol contestant Karen Rodriguez, set this fight night in motion. (Damien Acevedo/AGONICA)

Just before the event, three recently deceased members of the boxing community are honored with 10 soundings of the ringside bell: Carl “The Truth” Williams, Emmanuel Steward and Hector “Macho” Camacho.

American Idol’s own Karen Rodriguez returns in a one-third-thigh black skirt, large gold rope necklace with several loops and heels that are at least five inches. The anthem is fittingly self-indulgent.

D.J. Scratch, an acknowledged Jam Master since 2010, sets the mood. It’s time for the fights.

Devaughn Greenwood, a 22-year-old Judah Brothers trainee, who, we are told, works for UPS, outclasses a flailing Joe Paul, despite Paul’s seeming size advantage, in a 201-pound novice bout. Greenwood’s technique and combos are too strong for Paul’s raw aggression, and he easily defeats the stockier man, winning convincingly on points and taking home the prized “Winner’s necklace,” a pendant of two boxing gloves.

We are assured via the PA system that this is an historic event, the first officially sanctioned fight at Brooklyn’s newest athletic palace. In 1,000 years, when our descendants return to an earth too polluted to inhabit, they will no doubt continue to recognize it as such.

The most impressive bout may be the fifth of the night, a 152-lb. open match between Peter Dobson and Jose DelaRosa, both of Atlas Cops & Kids. Dobson, who is wearing a yellow kit except for ruby shoes with white Adidas stripes, has a thicker build and three tattoos on his left arm, none on his right. DelaRosa, wearing a blue kit, clearly is balding, though his head is completely shaved except for a shock of chestnut hair protruding from the back, as if blaring a middle finger to the advancing forces of alopecia, call it the apotheosis of the “Drew Gooden mullet.” DelaRosa enters to Jose Reyes’ infamous chant; the Met is gone, but the lyrical refrain he rang in reverberates on Long Island.

Dobson appears to be the more skilled fighter early on, and he exerts his will in the early rounds, taking a clear edge. But DelaRosa persists and lands enough shots that, despite bleeding from the mouth from an early blow, he takes the fight on points. Fans in the audience generally agree, seeing Dobson was too confident in his early success.

The most brutal fight of the night was a lopsided women’s bout. (Damien Acevedo/AGONICA)

The best fight of the night is immediately followed by the worst, a women’s 165-lb. bout that pits Alicia Napolen against Krystal Correa. Correa is a modern American success story; she told her hometown paper that she began fighting one year ago, when she weighed 206 lbs. Forty pounds later, in her second career fight, she is in the ring with a far more skilled opponent. Boxing is, at its core, a foolish pursuit, given that the stated goal of the sport is to inflict head injury on one’s opponent, but it’s even more foolish when a clearly overmatched fighter is allowed to take the ring to be smashed. Correa, for all her success in getting here, retires in the second round, calls of “Stop the fight” starting much sooner, the witnesses all understanding this should never have happened.

D.J. Scratch chases the Napoleon-Correa fight with the “Harlem Shake.” It takes until after the 11th fight for him to play “Eye of the Tiger.”

The night’s 12th, and penultimate, bout features the two largest fighters of the night in the 201-plus-pound open event. Timothy Dougherty, of Core Boxing Club, faces Elijah Thomas, of Juan Laporte Boxing Club. At 26 years old, Doherty is an engineer for the Merchant Marines competing in his second Golden Gloves final. At 28, Thomas is a Golden Gloves veteran, having won the division in 2010 and finishing runner-up the following two years.

Doherty has a boozy, profane cheering section, which exhorts him, “Come on, you Irish piece of shit!” Later, the same friend — one would assume — screams, “You owe me a hundred dollars if you lose this shit!” Doherty apparently ends in the red.

Thomas’ experience shows during the course of the fight, although the engineer lands his fair share. The fight is stopped 47 seconds into the third round, after Doherty is eight-counted for the third time. Later, Doherty says he wanted the bout to continue. They always do.

The judges of the 2013 New York Golden Gloves Finals on fight night. (Damien Acevedo/AGONICA)

Khalid Twati defeats Jordan Rodriguez on points and D.J. Scratch delivers the exeunt: Drake’s “Started from the Bottom.” The crowd files out, the 16-foot by 32-foot JumboTron menacingly hanging above my head, Drake calmly explaining how, despite starting from the bottom his whole team fucking is here. This gleaming cube is a paean to progress, sure, its glory all steel and radiation. Yet you pine for simplicity among all its beams and glass. As I stride away, I can’t help but miss “Psycho” on its endless loop and the open-mic night at the old Freddy’s.

I head to the reincarnated version of Freddy’s in South Park Slope, but it’s not the same. I sit alone at the bar and get blottoed. I’ve seen the future and I need another drink.

 
Sunil Joshi is a writer in Brooklyn.

A team that develops a green rookie into a bona fide star is rewarding the fans’ patience. But the acquisition of an established superstar delivers instant gratification, at least initially. The press conference is a party, beat reporters gush, fans get excited (and buy season tickets, of course), because a run of championships is just around the corner. It’s all upside, as they say.

That is, unless the player departs, willingly or not, for another team after a short time — a season or two, sometimes briefer than that — leaving fans of the “rebound” team gnashing their teeth with what-ifs and regretting the purchase of once-coveted memorabilia.

Imagine you’re a Texas Rangers fan at the end of the twentieth century. (No, really!) If being swept by the Yankees in the American League Division Series in consecutive years isn’t embarrassing enough, your team drops an additional 24 games during a first-to-worst drop in 2000.

But there’s hope. Owner Tom Hicks signs free-agent wunderkind shortstop Alex Rodriguez, who abandoned the Seattle Mariners after leading them to the American League Championship Series, to a 10-year deal worth an otherworldly $252 million.

A-Rod was all smiles when he inked a franchise-crushing contract with Texas.

But despite a contract so Texas large it seems comical in retrospect, Rodriguez was not to finish his career in the place that catered to his every whim. In fact, A-Rod’s short stint reminds us of the “drive-by” careers of several prominent players in the past few decades. We’re not talking journeymen here, but some of the best ever to play their respective sports. It seems odd that teams would opt to part (or players, of course) with relationships that seemed, at one time at least, a perfect fit. And yet.

In A-Rod’s case, the season following his arrival finds the Rangers unable to climb out of the AL West basement, 43 games behind A-Rod’s previous club, Seattle, who somehow grind out more wins than any team since Satchel Paige was in diapers. Manager Johnny Oates is fired in May, and general manager Doug Melvin follows him at season’s end, but you’re not worried: A-Rod leads the league in runs, homers, and total bases — a promising start to a new decade of Rangers baseball, right?

By the end of the 2003 season, however, A-Rod’s prolific output, including an MVP year, hasn’t been able to turn the team around. Tom Hicks admits buyer’s remorse, and Rodriguez is willing to move to third base and change his jersey number to facilitate a trade to the Yankees, the one team in the league who can afford his budget busting salary.

Sorry, Dallas-Fort Worth denizens, but your beloved Rangers won’t reach the playoffs again until 2010, which would have been the last year of A-Rod’s contract. By then you’d even stopped complaining about the more recent unloading of Mark Teixeira, another young power-hitting infielder. It’s been a lost decade. That Teixeira and Rodriguez won their first World Series rings the previous year — as mega-rich Yankee teammates, no less — is only a bad dream. In hindsight, leveraging an entire franchise on one star seems like maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Then again, it only took 10 years for it to pay off.

It’s not always a big-name signing that can create a meeting of odd bedfellows. Sometimes it’s a contract that’s ending and a team in sell mode. To wit, Reggie Jackson was an Oriole. No, seriously.

Neither a broken-down ballplayer clinging to a roster spot nor a tool of a team banking on past glories to sell tickets — this wasn’t Willie Mays on the Mets, Jackson was in his prime in the orange and black.

How short was Mr. October in Baltimore? His card has a case of schizophrenia.

Even diehard fans of Mr. October might be unaware that before he brought his star to New York — a star formed in Oakland, which included six All Star appearances, two World Series wins (Reggie was too injured to appear in the 1972 Fall Classic) and an unanimous MVP season in 1973 — Jackson spent a single season during the prime of his career in Baltimore.

With no desire to award raises to cantankerous star players, the A’s (who lost free agent Catfish Hunter to the Yankees in 1975) executed a six-player deal that sent Reggie, in the final year of his contract, to the O’s right before Opening Day 1976.

Jackson would turn 30 years old while batting .277 with 27 home runs and 91 runs batted in, a decent season for a mid-1970s slugger. The Orioles would finish in second place, 10½ games behind the Yankees, despite a roster with two 20-game winners. (When the player on your team with the second-highest batting average — .000465 behind Ken Singleton — is Reggie Jackson, you’re not exactly filling the bases.)

The Orioles were unable to sign Jackson to a new contract. Money was the obvious issue (Reggie had held out for a raise prior to donning the Baltimore uniform), though his teammates claimed that he never planned to stick around anyway. The following season Reggie was the $2.96 million straw that stirred the Yankees into back-to-back World Series championships, while his time spent at Memorial Stadium is now remembered — if at all — as a lost season.

Here are some other players, like Reggie, who turned what-could-be into what-could’ve-been, all in the blink of an eye.

Mike Piazza, Florida Marlins (five games, 1998) — How’d you like to fly from Los Angeles to New York, with a one-week layover in Miami? That’s sort of what happened to Mike Piazza in May 1998. Shortly after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought the Dodgers, the team gave up on hammering out a contract extension for their franchise catcher and traded him, apparently without any input from the actual general manager that the new ownership inherited. Piazza joined Todd Zeile in Miami as Manuel Barrios, Bobby Bonilla, Jim Eisenreich, Charles Johnson, and Gary Sheffield went west.

Unlike Baltimoreans in 1976, Floridians held little hope that the new acquisition would stick around for the rest of the month, let alone the season. The Marlins were in the midst of their first post–World Series fire sale, and it was an open secret that the Mets were targeting Piazza, so it was only a matter of time – seven days, in fact – before he was shipped to New York.

Just a week after Piazza and a journeyman (sorry, Todd) were worth a few recent all-stars, the catcher who would finish his sixth full season as a perennial All-Star with career marks of .333 and 200 home runs was suddenly considered equal in value to:

• An outfielder whose entire major-league career at that point consisted of three more games than Piazza spent as a Marlin (Preston Wilson)
• A minor-league pitcher whose major-league resume would contain 20 innings’ worth of work over two seasons (Ed Yarnall)
• Another minor-leaguer who wouldn’t pitch his way out of Double-A (Geoff Goetz)

Mike Piazza had a Hall of Fame-worthy career. Seven days of it in South Florida.

Piazza’s South Beach legacy includes five hits in 18 at-bats (no home runs but, curiously, one of his eight career triples), and left behind a limited and coveted trading card collection. With the Mets he bolstered his potential Hall of Fame qualifications, and led them to the Subway Series, where Roger Clemens chucked a bat at him.

Wayne Gretzky, St. Louis Blues (31 games, 1996) - The Los Angeles Kings were defeated in the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals and three years later were a team in decline. Wayne Gretzky wasn’t exactly in decline himself, but he wasn’t getting any younger. The Kings, obliging his request to trade him to a contender, sent him to the St. Louis Blues on February 27, 1996, for a handful of guys not worth mentioning.

With Brett Hull and Shayne Corson, Gretzky, who was named team captain, anchored a line that had the potential to find the back of the net a dozen times every night. In 18 regular-season games, Gretzky scored a slightly more modest 8 goals and 13 assists, and racked up 37 points in a postseason that lasted 31 games and ended on a Steve Yzerman slapshot in the second overtime of Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals.

Less than two months later, Gretzky signed a contract with the Rangers, leaving Blues fans with, well, the blues. The postmortem included theories ranging from the lack of on-ice chemistry between of Gretzky and Hull to the inevitable lure of the New York market. According to an interview with the Great One last year, he had initially planned to finish his career in St. Louis — rumors had him buying a house in the area, and his wife had grown up near the city.

A more tantalizing suggestion is that mercurial coach/GM Mike Keenan, who never met a bridge he didn’t burn, rubbed Gretzky the wrong way. “Rubbed the wrong way,” if Gretzky’s former Blues teammate Chris Pronger is to be believed, included confronting his team at the hotel while “shitfaced,” where he “tore Gretzky a new ass.”

Gretzky skated on Broadway for three years before retiring after the 1998–99 season. Though the Rangers didn’t qualify for the playoffs that final, their fans were able to witness the Great One’s victory lap. On the other side of the Mississippi, the Blues would lose again in the Western Conference semis, this time to a Dallas Stars team featuring Brett Hull, who would later score the Cup–winning goal in a Game 6 triple-overtime thriller.

The Blues have yet to reach the Stanley Cup Finals.

Rasheed Wallace, Atlanta Hawks (one game, 2004) - Rasheed Wallace was one of the more colorful folks in NBA history — the announcement of his latest retirement elicited tributes from BuzzFeed and Deadspin — and his one-game cameo with the Hawks was, for Sheed, a logical turn of events.

It took more than seven seasons for the Portland Trail Blazers to finally reach their fill of Wallace’s behavior, both on and off the court (take your pick), and on February 9, 2004, he and Wesley Person were shipped to the rebuilding and expiring-contract-seeking Hawks for Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Dan Dickau, and Theo Ratliff.

Rasheed Wallace yukked it up as a Hawk for a total of one game in February of 2004.

On February 19, as the trade deadline loomed, the Hawks pulled off a more complicated transaction with the Celtics and Pistons that moved nine players and sent Wallace to Detroit.

During those ten days, while he on the roster of three teams separated by almost 3,000 miles and had his fate connected to 13 other players, Rasheed Wallace played a game of basketball. He performed admirably in a loss to the Nets in New Jersey, scoring 20 points with six rebounds and five blocks — and, good for him, zero fouls or technical fouls.

On his third team of the season, Wallace would be one of the final pieces that propelled the defense-minded Pistons to the NBA title over the heavily favored Lakers, who had acquired Gary Payton and Karl Malone and were crowned champions before the season started.

Post-Wallace, the Trail Blazers continue to be … the Trail Blazers.

Ryan Smyth, New York Islanders (23 games, 2007) - It wasn’t Gretzky leaving Edmonton for sunny LA — or even Mark Messier heading to New York — but Ryan Smyth’s departure on February 27, 2007, surprised and devastated the Oiler fan base, and not just because it came on the same day the team retired Messier’s number.

The previous season ended with a Game 7 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Oilers’ first Stanley Cup Finals appearance since the team’s dynasty days. By the start of the 2006–07 season, however, two important members of that team, Chris Pronger (the same Chris Pronger who witnessed the Mike Keenan tirade) and Mike Peca, were with new teams.

The Oilers had faded from playoff contention before the trade deadline, and when they couldn’t come to terms on a contract extension for Smyth — sources later reported that the two sides were just $100,000 apart — the team traded one of the few superstars that remained.

The Islanders knew they were taking a big risk: Smyth would be a free agent after the season, meaning they gave up two prospects and a first-round draft pick for what could be at most a three-month rental. Islander fans weren’t exactly eager to buy Smyth merchandise after the winger held a teary press conference before his flight to New York where he said things like “This is not what my family and I had in store” and declared his intention to win the Cup with his new team “so I can bring it down here to Edmonton — because that’s where my heart is.”

The Smyth experiment lasted 18 regular-season games (five goals and 10 assists) and a five-game first-round playoff loss to the Sabres. Smyth barely entertained the idea of remaining on the Islanders for the start of the 2007–2008 season, but that was during an era when nobody wanted to play for the Islanders, who would endure last-place finishes and a playoff drought until this season.

The Oilers suffered their worst public relations disaster since Gretzky left town — fans and Oiler players alike were enraged — and haven’t been to the playoffs since, either. As for Smyth, he signed with the Colorado Avalanche, who traded him two seasons later to the Kings, who traded him two years after that to the Oilers, where he began — and will likely end — his career.

Randy Johnson and Carlos Beltran, Houston Astros (Johnson: 13 games, 1998; Beltran: 112 games, 2004) - Twice over a six-year period, the Astros rented a top player in an attempt to bolster their playoff chances.

During 1998, the final year of his Mariners contract, Randy Johnson was either leaving Seattle or staying in Seattle, depending on what month it was. A great deal of intrigue ended right before the July 31 trade deadline, when he was finally shipped to Houston for Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen, and John Halama, all minor leaguers at the time.

Johnson, who was 9-10 before the trade, mowed down National League hitters, going 10-1 with 116 strikeouts and a 1.28 ERA in 11 starts as the Astros increased their NL Central lead and finished the season with 102 wins. The first round of the playoffs pitted them against the San Diego Padres. Johnson pitched well in the two games he pitched, striking out 17 and giving up four runs (three earned) in 14 innings, but took the loss in each because Astros hitters went a combined 7-for-60 (.116), generating a single run in each contest.

A free agent, Johnson signed a deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he’d win the next four Cy Young Awards. Garcia, Guillen, and Halama would be key parts of the Mariners team that won 116 games in 2001, the season when Johnson won his only World Series ring. That was also the season that the Astros were knocked out of the Division Series for the fourth time in five years.

In 2004, Houston added Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte (who together won 38 Yankees games the prior year) to their Roy Oswalt–anchored rotation with the hopes of ending a two-year playoff drought. They held a share of NL Central lead as late as May 22 before dropping as low as fifth place for most of June. By the time Carlos Beltran and his expiring contract were acquired from the Royals in a trade that also involved the Athletics, the Astros were on their way to the All-Star break with a 44-44 record and a new manager.

Beltran batted only .258 during 90 regular-season games on his new team, but the hits — 23 homers, 17 doubles, seven triples, plus 28 stolen bases — were crucial. The Astros went 59-36 with Beltran on the roster, closing out the season on a seven-game winning streak to clinch the Wild Card after game 162.

In the postseason, the only thing more impressive than Beltran’s numbers was timing his production to the end of a walk year. In the Division Series he batted .455 with four home runs to help Houston win their first postseason series since 1986. In the Championship Series he hit .417 with another four homers as the Astros kept pace with the 105-game-winning Cardinals — until Clemens fell apart in the sixth inning of Game 7.

Beltran was the most coveted free agent of the offseason, and his agent was optimistic that the Astros, who were given exclusive negotiating rights until the middle of November, would work out a worthy 10-year-deal. Of course, when a player’s agent is Scott Boras, negotiations are never easy, and Houston fell short with a seven-year $105 million offer. The Mets won the bidding battle and signed the switch-hitting centerfielder to a seven-year, $112 million deal.

Houston would reach the World Series the following year, only to be swept by the White Sox in four close games, and (to date) haven’t sniff the playoffs since. Beltran would play a mostly productive seven years for the Mets and lead them to another Championship Series Game 7 against the Cardinals, but the 2006 postseason was one that Beltran would likely rather forget.

Others worth mentioning:
• In 2008, Brett Favre was on his way to being the greatest New York Jet since Joe Namath, until, uh, he wasn’t.
• During what amounted to an eight-month sabbatical from the Indiana Pacers, Mark Jackson played some of his best basketball on a dysfunctional Denver Nuggets team during part of the 1996–97 season.
• Between separate five-year stints with the Falcons and Cowboys, Deion Sanders had one of his best seasons during a single 1994 tour with the 49ers: six interceptions for more than 300 yards (three went for touchdowns), Defensive Player of the Year, and key coverage on the Cowboys’ Michael Irvin during the NFC Championship — plus an interception in the Super Bowl XXIX victory.
• In 2005 Larry Brown planned to cap his coaching career running the Knicks, but “future” and “building” — even “next year” — always meant something less long-term.

Anthony Zumpano lives on Long Island. He’ll still root for the Islanders when they move to Brooklyn.

Each week, author and poet Y.S. Fing looks at the state of baseball, the movements of the game, the ebb and flow and soul of America’s pastime in Roaming the Outfield. This week: “Baseball and the Anti-Christ”

When I say that we live in a godless universe, I don’t mean to upset anybody. I posit it as a scientific theory — equivalent to gravity, evolution, and the speed of light — as the best ideas we have until something better comes along. Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to see (or was at least the most ferociously prophetic) that human knowledge was superceding the powers of the gods that we humans had created, and utilized, to assuage ourselves of our ignorance regarding the actual functioning of the universe. Nietzsche saw that we knew enough to tell new stories about creation and salvation, enough to say that god was dead. And if that was the case, Nietzsche also knew, then we would need a new reason to be moral.

So he looked into how his current, mid-1850’s European morals had come to their dominance. And he identified the central core of those morals as the slave-mentality, Judeo-Christian notion of the golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – or in a word, pity. Again, I mean no offense. I’m summarizing Nietzsche, who scorned pity as useless self-sacrifice in a natural world where pity did not exist and certainly was not rewarded with an illusory hereafter.

So we are all floating existentially in this world without mooring for our morals. Nietzsche, metaphorical as he was, and limited in his foresight, suggested there would be a ‘superman’ who would come along and truly show the way, a Greco-Roman centurion of the 20th century, a man of decisive, pitiless action. The metaphor has been compelling people ever since to look for and redefine who the ‘superman’ is. The Nazis, with the help of Nietzsche’s sister, said it was Hitler, which was proven false. The Americans said it was the Superman of cartoons and Hollywood movies, and that still rakes in billions of dollars annually. Nietzsche didn’t help matters when he referred to the superman as Anti-Christ. Without the apocalyptic bombast of Nietzsche’s language, I can take his meaning to be a striving person who is not cultivating pity in the pursuit of his or her goals.

Nietzsche saw the concept of a ‘superman’ who would overcome the apathy and pity of humanity.

The vagueness of the metaphor is powerful, but Nietzsche was limited in his foresight regarding the development of technology and the best civic conditions for the creation of a ‘superman.’ And because he couldn’t predict the empowering and widely distributed use of technology, he failed to see that America was producing ‘superpeople’ by the millions. I fear that being taken as a political statement. Americans as a whole are not ‘superpeople,’ but I use that phrasing because Nietzsche couldn’t have foreseen how power would devolve down to the level of citizens being their own salvations. They could be their own supermen, superwomen, and superLGBTQ. You can be your own super-anything in America! But if you look closely, that statement also has a moral vacuum at its center.

So, when I’m seeking for something to occupy that empty center in my life, to show me that my pursuits are noble and worthy, I turn to baseball for that foundation. Firstly, any fan will tell you that baseball is  a godless game, afloat in an amoral world of surreal irony. Thus one who participates, player or fan, must accept the entire thing is out of any one person’s hands. It’s like a giant Ouija board.

In the way the game is organized and played today, the margins for error, the difference between success and failure is one game in seven. What is needed is endurance, a will to power, a will to succeed pitilessly. That doesn’t mean amoral slashing and bludgeoning. It means disciplined long-term, slow and steady exertion toward attainment of the goal.  Sure all kinds of people do that, but baseball players, such as Washington Nationals Ian Desmond, Adam LaRoche, Denard Span, Jayson Werth are cold-eyed, pitiless, anti-christ-like, supermen. Well, they can be.

It’s not difficult for me to harken back to Werth’s 13-pitch walk-off home run in Game 4 v. the St. Louis Cardinals last October. How do you know when a person is ready to be a superman? When, after great exertion, he/she simply takes greatness as his/hers for the taking. The event, known to  Nats fans as the ‘Werthquake,’ was a superman moment. Baseball can physically fill that hole in the center of the moral universe because a person can bestride the narrow world like a colossus. Because we can know what greatness is, we can define it, teach it, learn it, practice it and become it, with pitiless action. Like Zarathustra coming down the mountain, the greatness we see demonstrated on a baseball field inspires and reminds us of the reason to be moral, to be supermen.

Nietzsche might have thought of baseball as a bit too democratic for his taste, but I’m good with it.

 

<em><strong>Y.S. Fing</strong> is an author and poet working out of Washington, DC. He roots for the Nationals when he isn’t composing beauty.</em>