jock librarian

Hands down, The Rivals: Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova: Their Epic Duels and Extraordinary Friendship (2005) is one of my favorite sports biographies. Howard's book piqued my interest in both athletes' personal migrations including Navratilova's defection from Czechoslovakia at the age of eighteen. I am currently reading Navratilova's memoir, Martina (1986), and have come to truly appreciate the tennis player's candor and spunk:

I didn't feel I belonged anywhere, until I came to America for the first time when I was sixteen...This country was waiting for me. It would give me the friends and the space and the freedom and the courts and the sneakers and the weight machines and the right food to let me become a tennis champion, to play the best tennis any woman ever played, which I think I have done in the past few years.

Excuse me if that sounds like bragging, but being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home of Dallas--Fort Worth, as as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach.

And forgive me if this sounds like bragging, but a water country was waiting for me at Flushing Meadows this weekend. And it would give me the friends and the space and the freedom to swim the best 1600 yard workout in the Q-Boro:
400 free
2 x 200 IM
400 free
2 x 200 IM