The Masters crowd had left town the evening before and Broad Street in downtown Augusta was quiet in the mid-afternoon heat. A few old guys sat around the statue of singer James Brown, chatting and laughing in its shade.
It was a short walk from there to the intersection with 13th Street and the bridge over the Savannah River that spans the state line between Georgia and South Carolina and leads to SRP Park.
The cars clicked and clacked over the tiny gaps in the roadway but on the way to the ballpark, it was hard to stop the mind straying back to Sunday afternoon and the view from the back of the 18th green at Augusta National.
As we had watched Rory McIlroy striding up the fairway at the end of one of the greatest closing rounds in Masters history, the man next to me said he had heard McIlroy was a good guy and I’d nodded.
A few minutes later, we were staring at each other in amazement, united by the joy of having witnessed sport at its most beautiful and most captivating.
It wasn’t just that McIlroy pulled off the most astonishing bunker shot, lifting the ball out on to the green and allowing it to hit a point where it rolled down the slope and curled into the hole. That was just the start of it.
Rory McIlroy (left) and Collin Morikawa (right) shared a fantastic moment at the Masters tournament at Augusta earlier this month that really encapsulates the touching beauty of sport
The pair celebrated each other’s shot honestly and joyfully on the 18th hole before embracing
McIlroy went mad with the joy of it, pumping his fists, flinging his club into the sand, hugging his caddy, chucking his ball into the crowd, knowing that only seven other men had shot 64 in their final round at the most hallowed venue in golf.
I noticed something else, too. A few yards away, Collin Morikawa, who was waiting to play his own shot from the bunker, raised his arms in the air when McIlroy’s ball dropped into the hole, celebrating his playing partner’s brilliance.
When the bedlam had subsided, Morikawa played his bunker shot. The trajectory to the hole was flatter than McIlroy’s. His ball raced across the putting surface and went straight into the hole. It felt like a miracle. Or maybe two miracles.
Thank the gods of sport for the glory and escapism, beauty and brotherhood of that moment
McIlroy celebrated Morikawa’s shot almost as much as Morikawa. The two men hugged each other. They strode off the green side by side, still bursting with the joy of what they had done.
Thank the gods of sport for that. Thank them for the escapism of that. Thank them for giving us that kind of beauty and brotherhood and generosity of spirit and relief at a time when there is so much darkness and pain outside sport’s walls.
They will always be linked by that moment, McIlroy and Morikawa. For all the Majors they have won, those moments on the 18th at Augusta will be part of their immortality.
The cars clicked and clacked over the gaps in the roadway and the ballpark, on the far bank of the river, came into view. By the time the stroll across the bridge was over, a few of the kids from two of the local high schools, North Augusta and Midland Valley, were starting to arrive for that day’s double header.
They unloaded a few pitches in the bullpen. They were calling these two games that were about to unfold a ‘showcase’. It was a big day in young lives.
The Junior Varsity game between the Midland Valley Mustangs and the North Augusta Yellow Jackets was up first, a game for less experienced players not quite ready for the Varsity match that was scheduled later.
We’d probably call them the reserves. They swung for the fences but they didn’t have the strength to clear them. It never stopped them trying.
Before the Varsity game began, the mayor of North Augusta strode out on to the diamond with a microphone. There were some special guests he wanted to introduce, he said.
Then he began to tell the story of the Boys of 1997, the Yellow Jackets team that had won the South Carolina State Championship at the end of the last century for the first time in 48 years.
The baseball field I visited, lit by the floodlights, was an oasis of light in the darkness around it
He told the crowd, which had swelled to a thousand or so now, that the Yellow Jackets had sneaked into the play-offs 25 years ago at the last gasp and, after more wins at home and on their travels, had gone on to defeat West Florence 6-2 in Game 2 of the final series.
That was their moment of immortality, their McIlroy-Morikawa moment, something that would stay with them forever. And then the mayor gestured to a group of men in their early 40s, who were standing proudly and perhaps a little self-consciously near third base. And he began to call their names, one by one.
And they walked forward towards the diamond, some balding, a few with a paunch, a few as upright and straight and lean as when they were teenagers, one or two waving to the crowd, local men transported back to their childhoods and a sporting brotherhood that had sustained them through all their adult lives.
This was South Carolina’s version of Friday Night Lights, the book about ‘a town, a team and a dream’ that captured high school sport’s hold on American communities three decades ago.
As the Boys of 97 took their place in the line, the last of them was Kevin Lynn, now the coach of the Yellow Jackets. How sweetly sport sings across the years. We left before the end and walked across the bridge into Georgia. It was night by now and the river ran silently below us.
When we turned to look, the baseball field, echoing to the shouts and the hopes and the dreams of young lives, lit by the floodlight glare, was an oasis of light in the darkness all around it.
How sweetly sport sings across the years in providing moments of immortality to live for ever
Why we need a clash of styles
The light is most beautiful set against the shade. In recent years, football has become more and more accustomed to the orthodoxy of elegant expression in the sport and the aesthetic hegemony of the great Barcelona sides that had Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta at their core.
And, more recently, the Manchester City team fashioned by Pep Guardiola, the Liverpool side moulded by Jurgen Klopp and the intoxicating blur of movement instilled by Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United.
In the context of their ideological dominance, there was something refreshing about the unashamedly iconoclastic approach adopted by Atletico Madrid in their Champions League quarter-final second leg against City on Wednesday.
Marshalled by Diego Simeone, there was something wonderfully ugly about their old-school mix of intimidation, muscularity, petulance and hysteria.
Atletico have supremely skilful players, too, of course, most notably Antoine Griezmann, but who would have thought we would have felt nostalgia for the days when a kind of thuggery was more widely accepted as part of the game?
Maybe it was partly because we wanted to see how City would hold up under a barrage like that but it was also partly because there is a swathe of supporters who have mourned the passing of some of the more traditional elements of the game.
A tie between the sides of Diego Simeone (left) and Pep Guardiola (right) was a fine spectacle
There was something refreshing about the unashamedly iconoclastic approach adopted by Simeone’s Atletico Madrid outfit (right) against Guardiola’s Manchester City (left) in Europe
How often do we hear old professionals protest that ‘the game’s gone’ when a player is punished for what would once have been deemed a fine tackle?
For all the applause we reserve for City’s intricate passing moves, anyone who watches football live will know that the biggest cheers at a match are reserved for a thundering, and fair, challenge.
There is, increasingly, a fear that that physical side of the game is being outlawed, or at least phased out and that football is becoming more one-dimensional because of it. Atletico’s tactics — and the way City responded — were a reminder of how exciting a clash of styles can be.
The fact that City just about withstood the mental and physical onslaught and infuriated their opponents with their ability to meet fire with fire, brought Guardiola’s side more credit than a comfortable win over a team that might have tried to match their creativity.
Guardiola is about control as well as creativity and the fact his side withstood Simeone’s attempt to disrupt that control bodes well for their chances of winning the Champions League for the first time in their history this season.
If they can survive Atletico, it is tempting to think they can survive anything.
