#darcy frey

[90smovies]

Pushing Tin

[90smovies]

Pushing Tin

[brummie-man-interests]

"Pushing Tin" is an American comedy-drama film loosely based around the real world New York TRACON Radar Facility inspired by the magazine article "Something's Got to Give" by the writer and educator Darcy Frey.

[firmus-blog]

I just wrote an email to Darcy Frey, he's a professor at Harvard who wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine about my brother in 1995. It was beautifully written and as grim as the content was, it is what inspired me to love the English language so much. Every year on the day of my brother's birth my mother (as rotten of a women as she may have become) would pull out a box of things that had to do with him including the magazine and would read it to me. For many years I had no idea what I was hearing except I knew it was important. Finally one year, when I was about 8 I finally began to listen to the words, and connected the facts and realized just why this man had won an award for this article. He beautifully articulated himself and made even a terrible tale have so much more significance to me. He's what inspired me to love journalism so much- and tonight was the first time in my entire life I have ever tried to contact him.

I asked my mother once when I was younger why she lost touch with him and she just said, "Darcy is a good man who does not need the past to pull him down. I leave him be because I cannot let the story become too real to him. It wouldn't be professional." but I don't think she understood that it already was. Darcy poured a month of his life into this story, examining the NICU of the hospital my brother was born in and studying every aspect of a story unlike any he had ever written. Darcy didn't sway from being professional, he became professional in the best way possible, he tried his best to empathize with an experience he couldn't understand, he was kind, but observant.

For so long after my brother passed away, my mother was harassed by newspapers nation wide to get the scoop on what had happened to him. How it felt to be the mother of a border line baby and then lose it? My mother had kept to herself as much as she could, but with Darcy she didn't feel the need. He was a kind man. 

[togetherasalways]

Farther Than Marathon, TX

"May 1, 2000 Tracy, Coney Island couldn't farther [sic] than Marathon, TX...but kids face challenges everywhere and you help them so very much. Thanks...still looking forward to learning more about you. Sure there's more amazing stuff to know. Those kids are so lucky. This will be exciting [sic] month, with your sister's graduation and then the summer. Enjoy it, as you deserve it. Steven P.S. I graduated 5/1/99 1 whole year wahoo!!!!"

The Last Shot Darcy Frey 1994, Houghton Mifflin Company 

[agretchko]

A wise man has his wisdom to protect him. A fool has his God.

Darcy Frey's The Last Shot, a book about Coney Island, basketball, the NCAA, and life.

[bookloop]

Scorecasting

There was time, not terribly long ago, when I read nothing but sports books. John R. Tunis and Matt Christopher novels, to start; then biographies of baseball luminaries—Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and the man who would become my idol, Roberto Clemente; then biographies of lesser lights like Glenn 'Doc' Rivers and Mickey Mantle. For a five or six year stretch when basketball was far and away my favorite sport, Mitch Albom's The Fab Five and Darcy Frey's The Last Shot became my all-time favorite books. I now recognize Albom's book for the abomination that it is. Frey's work, however, stands the test of time and is highly recommended.

I read because I loved sports, not because I loved to read. Today I follow sports, partly because I'm paid to do it and partly because I'm addicted to the teams that I love. But I, like most adults, do not love Sport in the way that I once did.

I bought Scorecasting because there has been much hype. People I trust suggested that it contains groundbreaking stuff. I read it because I am genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of some of sports most interesting question—What’s the deal with home-field advantage? Is there such a thing as a 'hot hand' in basketball? Why are so many coaches fools? But mostly I read it because smart people are reading it and I aspire to be a smart person myself.

As I read the book, I had recurring flashbacks to my early days, splayed out on the couch reading of Young Razzle or The Kid Who Only Hit Homers or Satch. I had trouble time figuring out why. This book bears no resemblance to the sports books of my past in either content or in tone. I have read other sports books recently (the Free Darko books and Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball are but two examples) and have not felt this connection with my past. It was a mystery, this powerful association I was having with my younger, dumber days.

But I think I figured it out. For the first time perhaps ever, I was thunked over the head hard enough by numbers that I was and thrown into a fugue state wherein I resented sabermetrics and yearned deeply for the warmth of a well-turned phrase, an unadulterated sports cliche, a saccharine finale, a something that was not pulped of its beauty and wonder and reduced to shriveled up numbers sitting lifelessly on the page. I guess you could say that while I was trapped in a explication of sports my mind was wandering to the essence of sports.

Is the book worth reading? Sure. Does the authors draw interesting conclusions that you had not heretofore considered? A couple. Will it make you think differently about sports? Probably not. Has most of it already left me in a way that Young Razzle or The Kid Who Only Hit Homers or tales of Satch will never leave me? Yes.