WINNING PLENTY BY PLACING 11TH: HOW SWANSEA CITY FOOTBALL CLUB TRIUMPHED IN 2011-12 (IF NOT BY AMERICAN STANDARDS.)

Danny Graham, after scoring his momentous goal versus Arsenal.

Many football players (outside the U.S.) contest their sport on the pitch, clad in either home or away kits, with the hopes that a good result in their weekly fixtures will propel their sides upward in the table. That sentence may dizzy the average American sportsman, who probably wouldn’t comprehend why the most powerful football league in the world—The English Premier League, or The Prem, for short—not only permits draws, but crowns a champion at the conclusion of its rugged 38-game season, without carving itself into subdivisions and orchestrating multiple layers of playoffs. Incentives do await for victorious soccer that may not capture a title, as the top few finishers in The Prem gain admission to a couple lucrative, continental club tournaments: Champions League and Europa League. In addition, and most notably, the bottom three teams in The Prem must endure relegation, or demotion to an under-tier, to the Football League Championship division, or ‘Championship’, the teams of which can suffer relegation, themselves, to a lower division, or vault into the big show of The Prem. (Multi-tiered football associations in other countries operate in similar fashion.) On the concept of survival, the punk band Wire conveniently shouted: “Avoiding a death is to win the game / To avoid relegation . . .” and “that’s the lowdown,” baby. That’s the climate.

Enter our side, Swansea City FC, a.k.a. The Swans, who became the first Welsh team to compete in the current version of The Prem, and just the 45th club overall to reach this uppermost tier in English football, formed in 1992. The lads climbed into the rarefied atmosphere of The Prem fresh from an elimination contest among four hopefuls from Championship, amidst forecasts of great calamity. In short, the soothsayers predicted a swift return to Championship for The Swans, averring they would finish 20th out of 20, a one-hit wonder. The Swans, therefore, approached the season without donning any ridiculous airs. Their coach, at the time, Brendan Rodgers, frequently reminded spectators and sports writers that the mission revolved around survival, i.e., placing 17th or higher. They would strive to persevere, with Rodgers’ guidance, by attempting to control possession of the ball in the Spanish style, within a system of triangular passing schemes. Synonyms for this variety of ball movement might include “The Beautiful Game” or “Total Football”—the latter championed by Dutch legend Johann Cruyff. After their first few matches, it also became clear that The Swans, in Michel Vorm, were fielding a world-class goalkeeper, an acrobatic athlete with top-shelf reflexes and superior instincts, who led Swansea to four blank sheets (shut-outs) in their first seven Prem League matches. Two of these, unfortunately, involved scoreless draws at home, where a side would hope to prevail, instead, but The Swans knocked off West Brom and Stoke City at home, before drifting into the middle portion of their schedule.

Would they survive, they would likely require at least one signature win versus a Goliath, and the first of three such milestones materialized on January 15th, at Liberty Stadium, where The Swans hosted a traditional powerhouse, London-based Arsenal. Swans Forward Danny Graham struck in the 70th minute, just seconds after Theo Wolcott had knotted the score at 2-all for Arsenal, a goal that might have otherwise doomed The Swans to pursue a draw. Vorm preserved the 3-2 lead with notable point-blank stops, and in defeating the Gunners, The Swans had toppled a former champion and perennial title contender. The Swans would have needs to prevail on the road, and did so, for the first time, versus Aston Villa a day beyond New Year’s, and later versus West Brom, Wigan, and Fulham. In addition to Vorm and Graham, other Swans distinguished themselves throughout the 2011-12 campaign: defender Ashley Williams; midfielders Joe Allen, Nathan Dyer, and slippery Scott Sinclair; and striker Gylfi Sigurdsson, the Icelandic international on loan. Luke Moore subbed versus Manchester City and defeated the eventual champions with a header, and in the season’s final fixture, Graham tallied against perennial powerhouse, Liverpool; both games at Liberty Stadium ended 1-nil to Swansea. The Swans did engage in some maddening giveaways, among them yielding an agonizing equalizer to Chelsea in added time, a match that concluded 1-1 in late January, yet any student of The Prem would reason that such giveaways, in moderation, don’t represent outliers, but organic moments that bedevil all sides in all seasons. The Chelsea result would deprive Vorm, ultimately, from collecting his 15th clean sheet, but by winding up with 14, the Swans tied Tottenham for fourth overall, a badge of remarkable defense.

As the campaign wore on, The Swans tired a bit, and suffered a four-game losing streak to Everton, Spurs, Newcastle, and arch-rival, QPR. They clawed out eight points, however, over their final five fixtures, with a respectable loss to second-place finishers, Manchester United, two shaky draws but important notches, nevertheless, in the table, and two wins, punctuated by Graham’s goal in the 86th minute versus The Reds, with four minutes to play in the season. After the whistle blew versus Liverpool, Swansea City FC had engineered a good bit more than merely weathering the league. The club placed 11th in The Premier League table, the best of its graduating class from Championship. We could label the 2011-12 Swansea campaign as one that culminated in “wild success” or “success beyond imagination” but The Swans produced, simply put, a winning season, despite dropping more contests (15) than they won (12). They drew 11 times. I would guess that most American sports fans would react by sniffing at such a sequence, reasoning that “winning is everything” and if a team doesn’t capture a Super Bowl title, for example, or World Series rings, their exploits matter about as much as a shuffleboard competition in South Beach. Perhaps Americans have grown accustomed to various professional sports teams mired in chronic tableaux of miserable decrepitude, with little incentive to do more than concern themselves with solvency. Many U.S. sports, true, have become dominated by an elite oligopoly of powerful teams, but nowhere in the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB do lousy clubs have to stomach relegation to lower leagues, or do hungry clubs receive promotion to the top leagues. Given the big corporate shoulders of the New York Yankees, on the other hand, we might conclude that the underfunded Kansas City Royals, for example, finished pretty darned well, under the circumstances, in winning 71, 67, and 65 baseball games out of 162 games over the past three completed seasons, 2011, 2010, and 2009, respectively, but American culture doesn’t really reward that kind of spendthrift endurance, spiritually or otherwise.

If we consider that half the current Premier League football clubs have enjoyed lengthy, uninterrupted stretches in The Prem, then the odds of Swansea out-scrabbling the other nine sides—each with more experience than The Swans—still seemed a bit meager, but cohesive play and clutch performances trumped the doubters. Out-scrabbling, of course, can exact its own price, and extraordinary manager Brendan Rodgers has left the club for the vacant managerial post at Liverpool. The Swans responded by hiring former Danish footballing star, Michael Laudrup, a chap who’s managed in Spain’s La Liga, who endorses a style of play similar to that of 2011-12 Swansea. He and his roster of likable Prem League upstarts will tour the United States for three exhibitions in the month of July, and after that, face an away date at QPR on August 18th, for the kickoff to the 2012-13 Prem. Allegedly, if Swansea survive a second year in the Premier League, then its ownership may expand Liberty Stadium by thousands of seats. Beyond a second Prem League campaign, who knows? The team could compete for “a place in Europe”—entry into Champs League or Europa. To support Swansea City FC, simply say “Up The Swans!” as often as you’d like. That phrase goes better with Single Malt Welsh Whisky distilled by Penderyn, a going Welsh concern that should certainly belong to a Premier League of World Whisky Distilleries, and a brand that could, indeed, survive—and take it all! Up The Swans!

(This post dedicated to Doug Lang.) 

METACARPALISM.

A system of devotion

Differentiate between “I thought it” and “I said it to myself.” Did you think “torrid” or did you say “torrid” to yourself? The value of “torrid” is irrelevant except to note that Žižek cannot aid you any longer, if he aided you, ever, at all. Clays, as verb, would be more assistive: he clays, she clays (together) the theory of devotion, for example, amidst the various “systems of devotion.” Theories, that is, versus actual deference, which brings me to Metacarpalism. There are five metacarpals in each hand, offering us ten ways to translate our persistent concavity—if only you’ll shiver off the euphoria. Please, please, please shiver off the euphoria, now. If you were post-structural ever, at all, you might consider puncturing the glass and plunging the big red button that proclaims: Deconstruct. Derrida cannot aid you any longer. Did you think “differentiate” or did you say “differentiate” to yourself? One curvilinear form maps itself to another curvilinear form. That’s called correlation; it’s renewable. Facts about the metacarpals will not open your hand. Metacarpal Diem: Open your hand. 

THE MOST IMPORTANT HEAVYWEIGHT OF ALL TIME: A MEDITATION ON THE BOXERS JOE LOUIS AND MUHAMMAD ALI.

The tops, together: Louis (L) and Ali (R) in 1965

I am party to several abiding conversations about the categories “most important” and “greatest” as applied, for example, to writing, music, and sports, and have unveiled my findings at intervals in this sphere. Faithful readers might recall my reverence for the “breath-turning” poet Paul Celan, or my declaration of the top 25 (+5) (+1) most essential American musicians, crowned by Louis Armstrong. In this post, I will crane part of the debate —as it is portable—toward the top two heavyweight boxers of all time, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. Nobody, in my estimation, can declare a “greatest ever” among the two, thus I will stick to the scaffolding of “most important,” and in the process, perhaps create a definition-by-example of the category, “most important,” itself. There were many heavyweights, indeed, to choose from, and three others—Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, and Larry Holmes—rate a mention, but scholars and experts operating in a variety of media roundly establish Louis and Ali, in that order, or vice versa, as the most significant pugilists. The popularity of heavyweight boxing has evaporated, following the less notable careers of Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, and Evander Holyfield, and with the rise in popularity of Mixed Martial Arts; therefore, we can perhaps conclude that Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali will always be tops. 

NICKNAME:  “THE GREATEST.” A former Olympic gold medalist, Muhammad Ali dominated the so-called Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing, decking several champions, including Liston and Foreman. He avenged losses in title bouts to Frazier, Norton, and Spinks, and triumphed over a set of lesser-known tough customers, such as Earnie Shavers and Ron Lyle, who might’ve been champions in other eras. Shavers fought Ali and Larry Holmes for the title, losing both matches; Lyle, who died recently, was ahead on two of three scorecards versus Ali, when Ali stopped him in the 11^th round of their championship fight. Despite losing many early years in prison, Lyle competed with a number of greats, including a wild win versus Shavers, and a brawling loss to George Foreman, who needed to rise off the canvas in order to prevail in five rounds. This is all to say that the second tier characters in the Golden Age were dangerous, and that, in many other eras, there was no second tier, to speak of, at all. Ali’s most important victory may have come versus then-champion Foreman, when the two clashed at the high-voltage Rumble in the Jungle of Zaire, an improbable win that cemented Ali’s return to the pinnacle of his sport, having lost three years, 1967-1970, in legal limbo. He didn’t fight during that stretch, and was stripped of his belts, of course, after he refused induction into the U.S. military, having articulated the sentiment of other blacks, at the time: “No Vietnamese ever called me nigger.” His defiance of Selective Service, and his brash, groundbreaking personality contributed to his international celebrity. To be sure, Ali was not the first black heavyweight champion to roil the white establishment—Jack Johnson married three white women and was prosecuted under the Mann Act, a law that prohibited the transport of a woman across state lines “for immoral purposes”—but Ali climbed to prominence in another era, and could project power with fewer (or alternative) consequences. His name change, from what he termed a “slave name”, Cassius Clay, to one of Muslim origins, would enable a new mythology, the script of slavery discontinued, demolished. Still, Ali found it necessary to taunt his black opponents, including Joe Frazier, with racially-tinged insults, and even slandered Joe Louis, himself, as an “Uncle Tom.” In 1980, Ali’s decisive loss to former sparring partner, Larry Holmes, would carry notoriety, for the protégé, Holmes, would assume control over the heavyweight division, arguably, for the third most dominant reign in the history of the class. Many of Ali’s exploits—matches, interviews—were broadcast via such television shows as ABC’s Wide World of Sports; nothing, for instance, was more worldly than Don King’s name for Ali-Frazier III: The Thrilla in Manilla. Ali’s gift for a photogenic code of oratory, rap, improv, and braggadocio would complement if not propel the turbulent age of jazz-rock, protest, and rocket travel. 

NICKNAME: “THE BROWN BOMBER.” A former Gold Gloves champ, Joe Louis began boxing professionally in the 1930s, and as his winning streak bulged, it became clear to Louis and his handlers that he would have to project anything but the likes of Jack Johnson (or other figures controversial to the establishment) in his public demeanor, should he ever hope for a bout with a white title holder. He would never gloat; never participate in a thrown fight; and never be photographed alone with a white woman. Thus began one of the most triumphant campaigns in U.S. history. Despite losing a disheartening non-title bout to the German boxer, Max Schmeling, the honest, soft-spoken Louis was maneuvered into a shot at the “Cinderella Man,” champion Jim Braddock. Whereas Ali would wrest the heavyweight title from another African American, Joe Louis had to carry himself just so, just to climb into the ring with Braddock. After he stopped the Cinderella Man, Louis engaged in the longest uninterrupted reign in the heavyweight class, nearly 12 years, with the most title defenses ever recorded in the division, 25 victories. Far from being an “Uncle Tom,” Louis humbled white adversaries in the ring, rather than taunt anybody, especially fellow blacks. He clobbered five former or future champions, including the huge, hulking Primo Carnera, Max Baer, and Jersey Joe Walcott, as well as a number of seasoned contenders such as Billy Conn. In all likelihood, he participated in the most important championship fight in the history of the sport, when Max Schmeling returned to New York in 1938, for a rematch, and for a chance to win the crown. Even though Schmeling, a symbol of Nazi Germany, was not, officially, a Nazi, the specter of the murderous, totalitarian regime accompanied him, amply, across the Atlantic. When Louis hurt Schmeling with a thundering blow to the ribcage, then finished the German in the first round, he became the first national African American hero celebrated by all Americans, as the United States had begun to mobilize, politically, against the Axis powers. Louis would enlist in the army during the war, bolstering morale for black and white soldiers alike. As with Ali, he would see nearly three years vanish from his fighting career, from 1942-1944, but return to the ring a winner. While in Europe, he joined the famous Liverpool Football Club as a stunt, but years later, after his boxing career had ended, he played golf at a PGA event in San Diego, the first black man to do so. He may have lacked Ali’s rhythmic verbiage, but Louis did mint the phrase, “He can run, but he can’t hide,” when Billy Conn, the light heavyweight champion, suggested that he could dodge and outbox Louis. Indeed, Conn was ahead on points, late, in the first of two fights between the men, when Louis, a fairly light heavyweight, toppled Conn with two rocketing blows to the jaw. He also said, on a separate occasion, “Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit.”

Both men suffered after their careers ended, Ali falling victim to Parkinson’s syndrome, and Louis tragically enduring a smothering and unforgivable crusade by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Louis’ post-boxing life would carry him through demeaning stretches as a professional wrestler, a “greeter” role at a casino in Las Vegas, drug addiction, bouts of paranoia, and hospitalization; he passed away in 1981. His final record, 66-3-0, included 52 knockouts, with 23 coming, stunningly, in title fights alone. Ali, for his part, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, and is currently 70 years old and prosperous. Oftentimes, when I think of Ali, I think of a split-decision loss, actually, in his first matchup with Ken Norton, who cracked Ali’s jaw at some point during the bout. Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, claimed that Norton fractured it in the second round, suggesting that Ali fought at least 10 rounds with a broken jaw, nearly winning. That kind of storied grit circulates but in rare instances. Ali would finish his career at 56-5-0, with 37 wins by K.O. Still, for my money, the most important of the two fighters is Joe Louis. Long before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, Joe Louis dropped Schmeling, the ‘infallible specimen’ of the Aryan race, a result that would break the color barrier in national pride. 

DIAL S FOR STOUT.

This Be Averse!

You can't just dial "S" recklessly. If you do, you might wind up connected to the laissez faire rapper K Sirrah Sirrah & his album Straight Outta Compost. Drop the Que and you've got Sera Sera, an assassin a-sassin' your serum, or some other form of congenial defect. It's all equally worse. So much so, we're now, hereby, a Mistopia, replete with a Miss Utopia contest. When asked about how she would rescue the High Fructose Corn Syrup lobby, one contestant replied: "THNICKITH!" The reply drew Snickers from the audience, all card-carrying Mistopians. If your cousin, Tony Lemons, will sell me a used car, then will your other cousin, Two-Tony Lemons, do the paint job? Ray Milland dialed "M" for Murder but Grace Kelly ended up giving his hired strangler the Scissors, the "S", instead, murdering him, do you see? As if Ray Milland dialed S & M! Some men out there prefer to rob the cradle while some men out there prefer to rob the grave. All these men have attended UKFC, the University of Kentucky-Fried Chicken, where PBR was their go-to brew, Brah. There is a jellybean in the air // There is a jellybean in the brassiere. Too many simulations, these days, involve slapping sounds.  

MIDNIGHT IN THE OLIVE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVEL KNIEVEL.

At the famous "Jump Across 100 Starter Salads"

Yes, you can take my hoarder if I can hoarder some fries with that entrée nous. I usually prefer In-N-Out-Of-Africa-Burger -- where you hoarder a Colonial or Post-Colonial w/ a Lite Boer -- but either way, I'll be finishing up with A Clockwork Orange Julius, the refreshing beverage that, just, meters your mindfulness. It's at The Mall, I'm always at the kiosk, I'm all about the flicks, Slick, and I'm going to see that new movie, BEER HORSE, about a roan thoroughbred who runs, like, really fast, to and from the brewery. It's a double feature, though, and the second film is about an Irish-American leg-breaker boxer bum who gets a shot at the champ; it's called SHAMROCKY. Or, I dunno, it's about a guy, Rocky, who's not who he says. That kind of reminds me of the famous explorer, Ponce de Chameleon -- always changing his clothes, changing his mind, changing his vote from "Pro Romney" to "Leaning Romney." Swing voters, man; too promiscuous. The premise being that they Promise The Couscous, i.e., the whole antsy lotta. Let us now recite: Whose weed this is I think I know // His stash is in the village though // He will not see me copping here // To watch his weed fill up with snow. That's either from Frost's poem, "Stopping to Buy Weed on a Snowy Evening" or Dickens' novel, Little Dorritos, about the imprisonment of those who owe a snackchips debt to society. We can drink tequila; we can say, Goodnight, tequila; and we can dream what the agave dreams, a spiny, parched topography that offers a sappy denouement. The sun-rise brings Industry, it always brings Industry, we must complete a round of Industry, whether it be solemn or not. Come along, say your morning pleasantries with me: Good morning, Industry; Nice power-tie, Industry; You've lost a little paunch, Industry; I don't mind compromising my core values, Industry, just as long as I can provide some trans fat for my people; That's all right, Industry, I guess I don't need a level wage, after all. The Story of the Mendicant and the Fancy Woman always goes like this: The Beggar was a persistent bugger, for each time he saw the Lady, he would beg her and bug her.

BARBER & SMITH @ MICA WRITING STUDIO, THURS., MARCH 29TH, 5:00 P.M. IN BALTIMORE

Join us Thursday, March 29th, at 5:00 p.m., for LitLive at Maryland Institute College of Art, featuring poetry readings by Rod Smith and Stephanie Barber.

Rod Smith is the author of Deed (poetry, Univ. of Iowa Press) and other collections, publisher of Edge Books, and recent visiting faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshops. Click here for more information about his writing.  

Stephanie Barber is a writer and artist living in Baltimore. Her book These Here Separated to See How They Standing Alone was published by Publishing Genius Press. Click here for more information about her work.

LitLive is a new literary reading series at MICA, with events held in the Writing Studio, Bunting Center, 1401 Mt. Royal Avenue, 4th Floor, Room 452. The series spotlights Baltimore & Washington, D.C. writers and is hosted by Dan Gutstein. All readings are free and open to the public.

Basic Directions / Parking: The Bunting Center can be found at the corner of West Lafayette Avenue and West Mt. Royal Avenue in Baltimore, and is one of three buildings at the center of MICA's campus. Exits 5, 6, or 7A from I-83. Light Rail to University of Baltimore/Mt. Royal (walk north on Mt. Royal). MARC Rail to Penn Station (Take W. Oliver St. to Mt. Royal, turn right). Garage parking at The Fitzgerald on Oliver Street between Maryland and Mt. Royal. Street parking on or around Mt. Royal.

We hope to see you at the Writing Studio!

THE TOP 25 MOST IMPORTANT AMERICAN MUSICIANS (+5) (+1 SPECIAL MENTION) TO WHOM YOU MUST LISTEN BEFORE YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH ME ABOUT MUSIC (played ca. 1870 to ca. 1970).

The only one for whom an instrument

—the Sousaphone (a tuba)—is named.

Consider the number of unrecorded musicians—like Buddy Petit—and the number of recorded musicians—such as Bunk Johnson—and the number of bandleaders—King Oliver, for example—who were important to Louis Armstrong, a Crescent City native who would become the most exceptional figure, indisputably, in the history of American music. Through cornet and trumpet playing that established his reputation as a soloist (and established the standing of the jazz soloist in general) and his swinging, gravel-sweet voice, Satchmo would eventually influence just about every musician on this list, but calling these men and women important doesn’t mean that they were first to play their instruments or first to hold a microphone close to their mouths. It doesn’t even mean that they were greatest in their genres, or sub-genres, although many of them, posthumously and otherwise, continue to be giants. (Only a few on the list live to play.) No, these musicians excelled at absorbing rich cultural threads and transforming them into performances, recordings, and inventions that attracted the attention of other musicians, or intensive critical acclaim, or the interest of a new and durable audience; or, of course, all three. Many of the artists on this list composed groundbreaking works of their own, but the list, alas, does not contain a host of seminal American composers—Arlen, Barber, Berlin, Bernstein, Brubeck, Cage, Carmichael, Cohan, Copland, Feldman, Gershwin Bros., Glass, Hammerstein, Ives, Q. Jones, S. Joplin, Kern, Porter, Reich, Rodgers, and Strayhorn, among others—who shaped a variety of American idioms, as well as the playing, at times, of these very 25 (+5) (+1) performers. Nor does this list necessarily contain the blogger’s personal favorites, such as the soprano saxophone jazz-man, Steve Lacy, for instance, who may have been a great musician, but whose greatness may have derived from the importance (and greatness) before him, of Thelonious Monk. This gathering of artists ends circa 1970, a point by which every musician contained herein had demonstrated his or her indispensable value to American music, but leaves off, more or less, before other acts—Captain Beefheart, Sonic Youth, Michael Jackson, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, et al.—would push into, stagger, and re-ramify the vessels of music and musical commerce. The writer Michael Ondaatje fantasized about the psychological undoing of legendary (and unrecorded, hardly celebrated) New Orleans trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, in his novel, Coming Through Slaughter, but Bolden’s contribution may have been to inspire a very young Louis Armstrong, ‘round about nineteen ought seven, who may have been, himself, offering brassy announcements on his cornet, in the same streets, as part of a job riding atop a junk cart. Undoubtedly, there have been numerous other isolations and obscurities in the development of American music—Appalachian banjo pickers, coal mine protest songs, funeral marches, marches, fife and drum corps, and migrant jug bands are just a few that come to mind—but we should offer thanks for the collective energy that has led us toward these 25 (+5) (+1) important musicians, in A, B, C order:

(Top 25)

Louis Armstrong

James Brown

Johnny Cash

Ray Charles

Ornette Coleman

John Coltrane

Bing Crosby

Miles Davis

Fats Domino

Bob Dylan

Duke Ellington

Dizzy Gillespie

Woody Guthrie

Jimi Hendrix

Billie Holiday

Robert Johnson

Thelonious Monk

Muddy Waters

Charlie Parker

Elvis Presley

Frank Sinatra

Bessie Smith

John Philip Sousa

Velvet Underground

Hank Williams

(+5)

Count Basie

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

Coleman Hawkins

Sonny Rollins

Lester Young

(+ 1 Special Mention)

Roy Brown, for “Rockin’ at Midnight.” [For more on Roy Brown, and other musicians like him, please see the Jump Blues post.]