Blame it on the bull-pen
Simon Barnes
IT has been a summer of nearly, a summer of not-quite, a summer of in-the-end-not-goodenough. I blame the bull-pen. If the various British individuals and teams that have preoccupied sporting hearts and minds throughout the summer had been able to call on a good closer, it might have been different.
The closer is a relief pitcher in baseball. Say you have established a 6-5 lead over seven innings. You take your winning but tiring pitcher off, and send for the back-up — one of the grunting, hairy guys warming up in the bull-pen. And you select your closer, tell him to pitch two scoreless innings when it matters most.
Most likely he will dispense with trickery and throw a series of fast balls too hot to handle. And if he does his job, he will close the game for you, leave you with the 6-5 scoreline intact and the victory to your credit.
Now the Ashes have gone. The England cricket team failed after 12 months of teasing. They almost convinced us and very nearly convinced themselves that they were good enough to beat the Australians. The problem came earlier in the summer when they took a 1-0 lead into the second and final Test against Pakistan, and failed to close out the game and with it the series. It was an error that saw them start the Ashes series in a fatally disappointed mood.
The British and Irish Lions took a 1-0 lead in the three-match rugby union series — again against Australia — and again our boys failed to close the series. It was there to be taken at 1-1 and with a small lead in the match at their disposal, but they failed to close the game.
Tim Henman took the lead against Goran Ivanisevic in the semi-finals at Wimbledon, but Henman could not hold on. He could have done with a relief server, some one to come out and serve a few aces for him. But closing has never been his strong point.
Colin Montgomerie took the lead in the Open golf tournament, but this man of saucy doubts and fears was, like the rest, unable to do the job of closing. It has been a summer in which the Brits knocked 'em down, but failed to jump on 'em. Instead, they let the buggers get up again.
It is far more frustrating than being beaten by mere excellence. All top athletes know that the ability to close a game is a matter of mental rather than of physical strength. That's why closing pitchers tend to work so hard on fierce moustaches and unsmiling countenances. They want to be seen as the grim reapers of hope.
It is tempting to work on national stereotypes, to draw a line between the English. Welsh, Scottish and Irish mentalities and find the shared mental uncertainties that lie behind this inability to finish. But Steve Redgrave was British enough, and he was the arch-closer in his own sport of rowing. There was a moment when it was believed that he was past it and there for the taking. People dreamed of beating him. Redgrave muttered to his partner, Matthew Pinsent, at the start of the first crucial final of the season, 'Let's crush some dreams. eh?'
Closing is the art of dream-crushing, the ability to feed on doubt and fear, the ability to feast on mental disintegration. For British sport it was a summer of the crushing of dreams. Again. We need a new bull-pen.
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