Sports

Oh, don't you love sports and the dazzling thrill of

contest!

as a result of which there are lovely cups and ribbons

like a silver statue of the Statue of Liberty holding

a tennis racket strung with silver chickenwire

which ought to be catgut (which is actually sheep's

innards)

which once long ago I beheld on a bridesmaid's bookcase,

and was I deeply bothered as a kid that they

cut up cats to make tennis rackets. A natural

material, catgut, like the horsehide spheroid of mounds

across the nation, a substance more august

than the vile pigskin of football which Francine

du Plessix Gray so rightly calls "that disgusting

spectacle." But they don't use horse but cowhide in these

latter days

in the majors, a sacred taboo that is straight out of

Tacitus

where horses are holy beings. The number of stitches

in the baseball is regulated by law and they're all

made in Haiti. The pigmonger now of the November

tube

is naugahyde. There's a lot of USDA boeuf bourguignon

stalking around out there,

some bearing a palpable resemblance to bubblegums.

Figure to yourself these observations of simple spectators.