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How does anybody get to be as mature and respectful as Tim Howard was after his freakish goal on Wednesday? Athletes and everybody else could take a cue from Howard after his long clearing kick became caught up in the jet stream and took a weird bounce into the Bolton goal – 102 yards from Howard’s point of impact. Howard never celebrated, never punched the air or ripped his jersey over his head or slid along the ground in a gesture of “Aren’t I wonderful?” Instead, he looked abashed, in solidarity with his lodge brother at the other end of the field. Later he said he felt “awful.” Kids, take a look at Tim Howard, playing for Everton in the English Premier League, not wanting to show up a colleague. Instinctively, he knew it would be bad form. Howard is among the classiest of athletes, but don’t take my word for it. During the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, I caught a lift from a young driver who had been escorting members of the U.S. team around Johannesburg. Who was the nicest person he had met? Tim Howard’s entire family, the young man said. Always polite. Always thoughtful. Howard surely would have celebrated if he had contributed to a goal in the closing desperate seconds of the loss to Ghana in the round of 16. As keepers will do when a goal is absolutely needed, he made a foray downfield, to give the Americans one more body in the melee in front of the goal. I described the sight of Howard and Ghana keeper Richard Kingson in close proximity – “two men in colorful costumes, performing an odd airborne pas de deux.” But Ghana prevailed, sending the Americans home. Howard was a good candidate for one hopeful lunge into space, having been a terrific high-school basketball player back home in New Jersey. In 2010, he got to meet Bill Russell, the great Celtics champion, who was giving a motivation talk to the American World Cup team. “Did you tell Russell you could dunk on him?” I asked Howard later. He gave me a look, half of horror, half of wry appreciation. No way, he said. One other thing to remember about Tim Howard. He has a mild case of Tourette’s syndrome, which does not bother him during games. In his first years in England, fans bombarded him with chants that were as vulgar as they were funny, as soccer diatribe can be. He never let it bother him, remaining as impassive toward the jeers as he was after scoring a goal on Wednesday. Next time you hear about exhibitionist American athletes, just think about Tim Howard, not wanting to celebrate sheer luck, not wanting to show up an opponent.
P.C.Chapman
1/6/2012 05:27:46 am
George,
Rob
1/14/2012 01:50:49 pm
Mr. Vecsey,
Andy Tansey
1/25/2012 12:15:28 am
Amen! The coverage and comments (in media and among my nearest and dearest footie fans) for Timmie's goal, focusing on his class and modesty, have been heartwarming. Go U.S.E.! 8/14/2012 04:18:06 pm
Just reading up on some of this lately, was interesting. 9/16/2013 11:16:18 pm
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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