Departures

Yesterday was a tough one on the sports front. Two eras ended on the same day.

In Paris, Rafael Nadal of Spain was eliminated in straight sets in the first round of the French Open tennis tournament known as Roland Garros. In a stroke of amazingly bad fortune, Nadal, who has been hampered by injuries to his now-middle-aged body, drew as his opponent Sasha Zverev of Germany, a young man who's currently back at the top of the game after dealing with injuries of his own. As an unseeded player because he hasn't really played much the last couple of years, Rafa had to accept the luck of the draw.

One of the all-time greats of the sport, Nadal had won the French 14 times. So successful was he on the red clay courts of Paris that a large bronze likeness of him is on display at the venue. But yesterday it was one frustration after another, as he just could not get to Zverev's bazooka shots in time to work the magic of old. The second set ended in a tiebreaker, but it did not go the Spaniard's way.

It was a historic moment, to be sure. The other tennis stars knew it; everyone did. Carlos Alcaraz, Nadal's countryman and possible heir to the throne, changed his practice schedule so that he could watch from the stands. Novak Djokovic was in the audience. Iga Swiatek, too.

Afterward, Rafa told the adoring crowd that it's unlikely that he'll play the French again, although there's still a small percentage chance that he might. Given all his recent ailments, it seems unlikely. He'll be 38 years old next Monday.

A few hours later, I looked down at my phone and saw that Bill Walton had died at age 71. An amazing center with an astronomical basketball IQ and a free-spirited hippy personality that stayed with him all his life, Walton was probably the greatest Portland Trail Blazer of all time. He led the team to its only league championship, was the league most valuable player the next year, and went on to become Sixth Man of the Year on a world champ Boston Celtics squad nearly a decade later. He achieved all this despite bad feet that hampered him most of his career.

When he retired from playing the game, Walton became a broadcaster, which was quite an achievement given his struggles early in life with a speech impediment. He spent many years as a color commentator for Pac-12 college basketball. His commentary was often as stoned as that of an average attendee at a Grateful Dead concert, of which he attended more than a thousand, but some of us found it entertaining, and even thought-provoking at times. I'm sure he was devastated when the conference fell apart, a victim of strange times indeed.

I didn't have a lot in common with Walton, but somehow I could relate to him. Shortly after his playing career ended, I heard that he wound up in the first-year class at Stanford Law School. I could picture pretty well what that would have been like. If indeed it happened, it didn't last. And toward the end of his life, old Walton was on the internet a fair amount complaining bitterly about the mismanagement of the street camping in his beloved hometown of San Diego. Sounds familiar.

Best wishes to the great Rafa, whatever he does next. And may wild Bill's larger-than-life spirit remain a force in the universe forever.

UPDATE, 12:40 p.m.: An alert reader reminds me of some of the details of Walton's time at Stanford Law. It was in the middle of his playing career, after his time with the Blazers but before he wound up on the Celtics. He was sidelined at the time by his foot problems. Apparently he made it through first year of law school, and halfway through his second year, before he was well enough to play again. He left the law for the hardcourt and never went back, An account of this period can be found here.