Gisele Bundchen Stands Up for Her Man — And Other Inspiring Moments in Sport

It is with trepidation that I offer any views about the Super Bowl, a fading subject where my comments are afflicted by my ignorance of football. I dimly followed the sport 50 years ago as a teenager and can still cope with the trivia question about the front defensive four of the New York Giants of that era: Messrs. Katcavage, Modzelewski, Robustelli and Grier.As a sports fan generally, I’m a bit of a disappointment, even to myself. I lost interest in the National Hockey League when it expanded to places which never have freezing weather, and the Montreal Canadiens ceased to be the national team of French Canada. I never really recovered from the retirement of the Rocket (Richard) in 1960, and when Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion and Jean Béliveau went too, my ardour as a fan fell like a soufflé.I hung in pretty well as a baseball fan, and had some fun writing in the daily Financial Post, forerunner to the National Post, about, as I referred to them, “Stand Pat Gillick” and “Peter N.(o) T.(rades) Widdrington,” the Blue Jays’ general manager and chairman. One of the most memorable social occasions I have had was dinner at the 21 in New York with the 80-year-old Ted Williams and half a dozen other men in 1999. The former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent asked him the greatest and lowest moments of his career. He referred to hitting .406 in 1941, a winning home run in an all-star game and a home run in his last at bat, and to disappointments in his World Series record.Then he added: “But in my life, as opposed just to my baseball career, my proudest moment was receiving the Navy Cross as a U.S. Marine combat pilot, and my worst what we as a country did to Dick Nixon. Because of my position, it has been my privilege to know, or at least meet, every president starting with Herbert Hoover, and the only ones I respected more than Mr. Nixon were FDR and Ike. President Nixon was the only one I ever presumed to telephone, to urge him not to retire over Watergate.” This reassured me that not all political comment from great sports stars and entertainers is rubbish. But I lost interest in baseball after its strike and the decline of the Blue Jays.To return to the Super Bowl, my fellow residents in the U.S. government guest house, where my incumbency is drawing toward a happy end, tend not to be so laid back about football as I am. When they asked me whom I favoured, because I only knew with confidence the name of a single player, Tom Brady, I said the Patriots. When asked why, I replied that any team whose quarterback had such a beautiful wife deserved to win.Apart from a newspaper article about her native community in Brazil, which demonstrated that German-Portuguese families caused such remarkable-looking women to abound, and photos of her, I don’t know anything about the alluring Gisele Bundchen. But the tempest in a football helmet about her rejoinder to a mouthy fan at the end of the Super Bowl is nonsense. In the first place, the fact that a Brazilian woman and native Portuguese speaker (a challenging Latin language) has so well mastered English to reply syntactically correctly to such a boor is a feather in her own helmet – including her insertion at a colloquially logical point of an adverb not printable in a family newspaper that refers to a frequently invoked (and practiced) act.On the day, the din generated by my fellow residents was so overpowering, even with my ear plugs firmly installed, that I sortied from my cell and watched a good part of the last quarter. Mrs. Brady’s reflections on the Patriots’ receivers looked well-founded to me, and were confirmed without variance by my canvass of 12 knowledgeable prisoners and correctional officers.There is no informal bond of solidarity that obliges wives of football players to simulate Job in the presence of taunting fans or to take upon themselves the impersonal cloak of uniform association in defeat. I’m not qualified to say if Brady should have called different plays, or to assess responsibility for the failure of each incomplete pass. But he got the balls to the receivers on a number of key plays that weren’t successfully executed at the other end and he shouldn’t carry the can alone for the very narrow defeat.Beyond that, and without hammering a somewhat hack-neyed theme like a pinata, there is a higher and stronger bond between spouses than between spouses of teammates, and Gisele Bundchen did honour to that. Forty years ago, when I was a season ticket holder at the old Montreal Forum, I sat next to several of the Canadiens’ wives, including one very attractive young woman from Granby whose husband was frequently involved in fights. On each such occasion she would leap up, shout colourful encouragements and punch the air rather fiercely. I always admired her spirit and loyalty.It has been my privilege to have much recent experience of the unconditional loyalty of a spouse, in circumstances a good deal less forgiving and transitory than a football game. It is one of the noblest, most magnificent and most gratifying experiences anyone can have. The lout who provoked Gisele Bundchen bungled an opportunity for a civil exchange with a beautiful woman, and elicited an appropriate and altogether admirable response.One more reflection on the Super Bowl (and one more than I have had on any Super Bowl since Joe Namath led the New York Jets to victory in 1969). During this year’s game, a neighbour and friendly acquaintance of more than 60 years, Murray Pollitt, died, after a very long and stoical battle with prostate cancer.When at home in Toronto, I usually saw Murray when cycling past his house to or from the parks system, and would stop and visit with him. He always graciously offered a refreshment. He was an original character and a vindicated gold bug. He was an usher at my brother’s first wedding 48 years ago, and the nephew of my late esteemed associate John A. McDougald. He has been a steady, though not constant, fixture among people I know, all through these years. I expect to be back in Toronto in time for the magnolias and out on the bicycle trail. It is sad that I shall not be seeing him again, but I will remember him. This column is excerpted from the National Post. cbletters@gmail.com

Gisele Bundchen Stands Up for Her Man — And Other Inspiring Moments in Sport

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