The Best American Sports Writing 2014 Read Free Page A

the hard edges of the city landscape the way monkeys tumble through the trees.
    â€œI got into it because I was so fat,” Neal Schaeffer told me. He’d begun partying after high school and by age 20 had bloated up from 175 pounds to 240. One afternoon he was in the park watching some strangers “Kong-vault” picnic tables—they’d charge a table, plant their hands, and shoot both feet through their arms like gorillas and fly off the other side—and Neal was talked into giving it a try. Neal was shocked to discover that even out of shape, once he got over his fear he could master skills that at first looked impossible.
    Well, maybe not
master.
“You’re on this endless trajectory where you’re always getting better, but it’s never good enough,” Neal explained. “That’s what’s so exciting. As soon as you land one jump, you can’t wait to try it again. You’re always looking for ways to make it cleaner, stronger, flow into your next move.” Neal became a member of a local parkour tribe that likes to train after midnight, when the city is all theirs. Whenever a police car prowls by, they drop to the ground and bang out push-ups. “No matter what time it is, no one bothers you when you’re exercising.” Within a year, Neal was so fit and trim he was able to scramble to the roof of a three-story building and hang off the flagpole like Spider-Man.
You
’
re back
, he told himself.
    Neal still doesn’t rank his skills on the level of Andy Keller, a recent college grad who returned to Lancaster to rejoin his local parkour homies. You can tell within about 90 seconds of meeting Andy that he’d probably be superb at any sport he tried. He’s strong and graceful, with a swimmer’s broad back and enough bad-assery, as I witnessed firsthand the day we met, to bust out a back flip in the middle of a crowded coffee shop because his buddy dared him. I’d come to see him because of a theory I was looking into that the sports that truly evolved from human survival were the ones with the smallest performance gap between men and women. Logically, anything our ancestors relied on to stay alive would be activities that both men and women, old and young alike, would be good at. Endurance sports fit the bill, as 64-year-old Diana Nyad demonstrated when she became the first person to ever swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. And what about parkour? With its emphasis on agility, control, and creativity, was it the tightest link we have in sports to our evolutionary past?
    Andy agreed to show me the ropes. Which is how, a few days later, I found myself facing a six-foot-high brick wall outside a bank during the lunch-hour rush on the busiest street in Lancaster. “You’ve got to learn to shut out distractions,” Andy said. “Forget who’s watching you. Forget where you are. Just focus, and go.” Then he broke into a sprint, hitting the wall full speed. He ran right up the bricks, grabbing for the top and vaulting over. As he trotted back, he was met with applause. An audience had formed, blocking the sidewalk.
    â€œImpressive, isn’t he?” I said to the guy beside me.
    â€œI knew he’d make it,” the man responded. “I’m waiting to see if
you
do.”
    Â 
    Nosy Guy just bugged me at the time, but later—much later, when I was sitting in the middle of dozens of great sports stories from the past year and trying to put my finger on what connected them—I thought back to the way he’d watched me bang the tar out of my knees that afternoon and realized I was kind of glad he’d been there. In his own way, Nosy Guy is what sports writing is all about. Our games are at their best when they’re shared, when electricity jumps from the player on the field to the fan in the stands and a connection is sparked between what you see and what you believe you can do