202 Aethlon XXIII:I Fall 2005 - LA84 Foundation

202 Aethlon XXIII:I / Fall 2005

Glenn W. Ferguson. Sports in America: Fascination and Blemishes. Santa
Fe: Sunstone Press, 2004. 134 pp. Cloth, $26.95.
John C. Turner. Life's Bounces: One Man's Generational Journey Linked by
Golf, the Game He Loved. New York: iUniverse, 2004. 196 pp. Paper, $14.95.

It might seem improbable to juxtapose these two works into an omnibus-review, one
a far-ranging critique of contemporary sports, the other a memory novel of a promising
golfer whose athletic career was forever shattered by a heroic sacrifice during World War
Two. But taken together, read within the same week, these books reveal an intriguing

Book Reviews 203

common ground, two amateur writers, two amateur jocks, who share an amateur's
love of sports, two men looking back on a half-century that has reshaped athletics in
America and who see sports as endangered, a vestige of courage and heroics all but lost
in a culture that has grown too fond of the simple arithmetic of winning and bank ac-
counts and has managed to forget the guts and heart of true competition.

Glenn Ferguson, a career diplomat and president of four different universities, explores
with the casual care and gentle energy of a lifelong sports enthusiast the peculiarities and
quirky oddities of a range of sports from baseball to hunting. He is particularly fond of
baseball but generously touches on virtually all sports, including the Olympics. His is
a lifetime spent indulging the joy of sports—he admits in his Introduction his George
Plimpton-like sampling of a wide variety of sports in his early life, an experience that
taught him the joy of competition, the mental work of strategy, and the fierce bond of
teammates.

Along the way, as he offers modest insights into these sports, Ferguson offers as well
an assortment of modest proposals for adjusting what he sees as the principle issues
gnawing at the very moral fiber of competitive sports in contemporary America: lingering
racial bias, persistent jingoism, the insidious incursion of drugs, and supremely the lure
of the uncountable billions that sports generates. Given the wide range of Ferguson's
interest and his chatty narrative posture, we don't expect—and do not get—revolutionary
reconstructions of sports. We listen to an Every Fan, concerned about sports, a career
amateur, as world traveler, an educated figure with an immense range of experience who
recognizes the essential element of sports to the functioning of American culture. His
warnings, however, never assume the apocalyptic—they are gentle, his wisdom unprepos-
sessing, his irony understated. Ferguson is pretty sure—but not churlishly whiny about
it—that American sports has lost its innocence and that, regretfully, next to go will be
the old-style joy of competing, the special camaraderie of those who take up the earnest
work of play. With a kind of Andy Rooney-ish nostalgic voiceover, Ferguson tackles with
Old School politesse such pressing concerns in an editorial voice that inevitably seems
nuanced with an unforced British accent—he explodes with a forceful "Baloney" at one
point, calls games "tussles," athletes "blokes," and recalls being a "lad." Sports, Ferguson
reasons, has always been about what is best in the American character: integrity, com-
mitment, teamwork, and heart.

That sensibility Ferguson shares with another of the Greatest Generation, Maine
lawyer and journalist (and former caddy) John Turner. Turner's narrative takes such a
premise and conforms it to a narrative, specifically the gradual recovery of a promising
golfer, Tom Jenson, who, in the Depression heyday of golf, captured the imagination
of his Maine neighbors by winning a thrilling state high school championship just
months before accepting service in the South Pacific theater where, by a grim irony, he
is wounded trying to save the same kid he beat in the golf championship. When the
friend dies and Jensen returns wounded and unable to compete any longer, he slips
away from the spotlight and lives the modest grandeur: a happy marriage and a loving
son, a promising golfer who himself, cruelly enough, dies in Vietnam. The gods clearly
have had fun with Tom Jensen.

The story of Jenson is revealed to us only gradually as Jenson, now in his mid-70s,
mysteriously shows up one spring day at a local community golf course. The owner is
sufficiently intrigued by the mysterious codger who shows glints of talent that he gets
a local journalist to investigate the man. As the golf course owner comes to befriend

204 Aethlon XXIII:I / Fall 2005

the old master, Jenson meets the owner's son, an uneven golfing talent, who comes to
distill from his friendship with Jenson the secret art of addressing and ultimately mas-
tering the golf course. True, Turner tends to give Jensen advice that smacks of dialogue
from The Karate Kid and, true, too much of Jensen's tragic backstory must be revealed
in interminable stretches of dialogue that come to stretch credibility—that said, here is
a glowing narrative that moves with steady believability to a heart-warming close that
affirms how sports triumphs most dramatically when it touches the hearts and souls
of those who play it. Sports finally gives us metaphors for handling the heartbreaking
difficulties each of us endures off the field of play. The insights into golf, the Zen-like
conversations about negotiating the earth itself, willing the ball to follow its path, and
the splendid rollicking architecture of a rolling ball negotiating a manicured green are
emphatic, on point, and readable.

The wisdom here—as with Ferguson—is Old School and modest; the prose—as with
Ferguson—accessible and reader friendly; and the impact—as with Ferguson—rewarding
and lingering. Here are two books that understand a kind of sport, a kind of competi-
tion, that is rapidly retreating from the American consciousness as sports now is driven
by the market, by self-interest, and by narrow biases. Here are two gentle, generous
narrators of American sport.

Matthew Walker
English Graduate Program
Slippery Rock University (PA)