Would it be different writing about race, sports, and celebrity in America as David Schildkraut?
One essay in Body Politic takes on sports films, and how many of them are basically Christian allegories, and yet you find yourself drawn to them, moved by them. The resurrection-sports movie is your chance to be a covert Christian in the same way I think being a Yankee fan functions that way for many Jewish New Yorkers. I get in serious debates with friends who live in New York who are Jewish and who are Yankee fans, which is, like, it’s so disgusting to me. I yield to no one in my hatred of the Yankees. And it’s just so weird to me how these otherwise rational Jewish men just want to be Mickey Mantle, they want to be Derek Jeter. I certainly have my own version of it, but the Yankees have always functioned that way for Jewish New Yorkers. I’m doing this thing with Jonathan Lethem at this bookstore in SoHo on why sports are a force that gives us meaning, and I feel like Jonathan and I became friends when he told me that he was a Mets fan. Not that I really care, I don’t really follow
