Michael Moynihan: If Jerry Seinfeld was a sports columnist

Jerry Seinfeld

Seinfeld is on Netflix now.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, or maybe you have and you’re sneering a little because you moved on to Curb Your Enthusiasm long ago. I understand that, because I think the episode of Curb in which Larry is forced to go to an eight-year-old’s birthday party and ends up saying... well, check it out for yourself.

Still, Seinfeld is hard to beat, even if it’s just for glimpses of the main character’s stand-up routines at the start and end of the episodes. Jerry Seinfeld’s onstage performances were so good you’d just love to be able to write sports columns in the same voice.

“So, Proposal B went nowhere at Congress. I can’t say I’m surprised, because nothing with B on it ever wins friends, if you think about it.

“B movies. The B Specials. If you went back in time would you watch a TV show called ‘The B Team’? Of course not. Because you know there’s got to be an A team somewhere, and they have to be better.

“It’s, ’You know, it’s okay, I’ll pass on these B guys, I know they’re doing their best, but it’s clear to me, okay, that there’s a better option.’ That’s why proposal B never had a chance of being adopted: at some level people think, ‘you know, there was a proposal A here at some point, and unless it involved cutting your own head off, I think I’d prefer that one.’

“Hey, what’s going on in Waterford lately? I pick up the paper and see the soccer team looking for a postponement of a game because of electrical issues.

“Electrical issues? This isn’t someone plugging three iPhones into the extension cord. If you’re giving three days’ notice of electrical issues it’s not a blown fuse, right?

“A few weeks ago a hurling relegation game had to be postponed because the lights failed in the stadium in Dungarvan. The lights failed?

“My question is this... are the fuseboxes really delicate down there? Are they temperamental? Or is it that there's one 50p coin that people are putting into the meter and it got lost between Waterford and Dungarvan? ‘Hey, sorry, I must have left the 50p back in Dungarvan’ - ‘Damn it, now I have to ring the FAI to tell them the game with Derry is off.’

“There are other people with bigger problems, though. It’s not all on them — look at Manchester United. Things aren’t going well, the team isn’t so hot so why do they have a guy hanging around who might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I’M NOT SAYING ANYTHING BUT YOU KNOW I WOULDN’T BE LETTING THIS HAPPEN: YOU KNOW IT AND I KNOW IT.’

“Granted, that’s not a pithy slogan for a t-shirt, but you know. A work in progress. Kinda like Manchester United itself.

“What I don’t understand is that nobody at the club says to Alex Ferguson — ‘Hey Alex, it’s Saturday afternoon. How about going to B&Q under protest for some curtain rails and then coming home to rant about the result like an ordinary person? Huh? Would that be so hard?

“Usually the guy trying to manage the team can say to himself, ‘those know-alls, I’d like to see how they’d get on with this team.’ He doesn’t need to look up and see the other guy and think, ‘well, how would he get on with this team?’”

Cue slap-bass theme music.

INT. ONE-BEDROOM APARTMENT, NEW YORK.

Fade in on JERRY sitting on couch, reading Examiner sports supplement.

David Beckham, tattooed replicant

Great to see the return of David Beckham. Absolutely great.

David Beckham: An ambassador for Qatar

If you are not following his career trajectory then you missed out on the news he is to sign a £150m deal to become an ambassador for Qatar: one report stated the “10-year deal will see the former England captain become the face of the 2022 Qatar World Cup,” adding: “David believes in Qatar’s commitment to progress and that the World Cup — the first to be held in the Arab world — can effect significant positive change. He strongly believes in the power of football to bridge differences but, crucially, has seen the progress on issues that matter.” (Not to get sidetracked, but I admire that reported speech — “strongly believes” — as it suggests the operation of a deity whose words cannot be reproduced directly for human consumption, but must be filtered through the minds of his courtiers.)

I’m sure readers don’t need reminding Qatar is the place where dozens of workers have died on World Cup construction projects, some of them working for 45p an hour. The football family, eh? You could waste thousands of words here on just how inappropriate it is (even for whatever it is David Beckham is — corporate strategy-flesh? Soulless bearded death’s-head? Tattooed replicant?) to be the face of this horror show, but consider this little juxtaposition.

In 2015, he went to Nepal with Unicef to considerable fanfare, with the BBC making a documentary about his trip. The previous year Nepalese migrant workers on World Cup construction projects died at a rate of one every two days.

Progress on issues that matter.

Walter Smith, the sportswriter’s friend

For reasons which need not detain us here I presume many people noted the recent passing of Walter Smith during the week with little more than a nod. Smith’s long association with Glasgow Rangers probably did little to endear him to Irish sports fans, who incline to shout for the team wearing white and green in the Scottish city.

Walter Smith died during the week. He was 73

But I did note a significant titbit from Ewan Murray of the Guardian when he wrote about Smith last week — significant to members of the fourth estate, anyway.

“Smith... enjoyed a particularly cordial relationship with newspaper journalists. ‘Good morning gentlemen’ was the standard greeting before lengthy discussion— much off the record — about events of the week.

“Smith was even known to call up and berate sports editors who he believed aggressive in their treatment of young reporters.”

Hidden Ireland found in Youghal

A flying visit to east Cork over the weekend, in the course of which I ended up in Alan Prim’s bookshop in Youghal. Among the many hidden gems there, a copy of Daniel Corkery’s The Hidden Ireland.

A steal at €6 (not much more than the 10s. 6d. original price in real terms), it had real competition for my wallet from a couple of books of Sean Ó Faolain short stories but the stark Gill Paperback design won me over.

Corkery is fairly hidden himself these days, and seems to be known, if at all, as an influence on the likes of Frank O’Connor, who went on to far greater renown. But in this book Corkery himself rescued a few reputations — great poets like Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill and Aodhagán Ó Rathaille were far better known because of Corkery’s book than they had been.

For that alone he deserves huge thanks, and I’m glad I made that stop over the weekend.

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