A Writer's Life (7 page)

But the second kicker for China, the reputably unflappable number 15, was known within the team as being a rather narcissistic young woman who welcomed as much attention as she could get and was a very focused performer when all eyes were upon her; and so after she had taken her running start and had struck the ball cleanly to her left, she paused to watch with apparent satisfaction as it glided beyond the goalie's fingertips and went crashing into the cords, bringing smiles from her coach and her teammates, if not from the overwhelmingly pro-American assemblage in the stands. Then she turned around and trotted back to the sidelines in an unhurried stride that suggested to me both self-assurance and a lingering interest in being watched. And so China had regained the lead, 2-1.

The second kicker for the United States was also known for exhibiting poise under pressure, and, while not renowned for being self-absorbed, she acquitted herself well when in center-stage situations. She was a thirty-one-year-old Californian who wore number 14 and had been a U.S. team leader for nearly a decade, having taken leave from the sport only intermittently to bear two children and to recover from a broken right leg suffered while competing in 1995. Although her forte was defense—it was she who singularly stopped the Chinese from scoring during this game's first overtime by leaping into the net to deflect a shot that had sailed over the head of the U.S. goalkeeper—she was also formidable on the attack, having scored the third goal in her team's 3-2 triumph over Germany during the quarter-final round of this World Cup. Now, as a penalty kicker, she approached the ball slowly but with practiced deliberation and deception, freezing the Chinese goalkeeper in a fixed position near the middle of the box while the ball soared into the net yards beyond the goalie's upraised left hand. And so the score was again tied, 2-2.

The third kicker for China was a twenty-five-year-old native of Beijing who had close-cropped black hair and a straight-lined figure, and she wore the number 13. She had been a member of the national squad for six years, and a starting player for the past two, developing into a scoring threat as well as a steadfast defender. Her versatility and diligence meant that, except when she was injured, she was not replaced by a substitute if the score was close, and on this afternoon in the Rose Bowl, she had been
active during each and every minute of this long and debilitating test of wills and tenacity.

As she prepared for her penalty kick—the announcer introduced her as Liu Ying, it being one of the few Chinese names I could pronounce—she was being watched by the stout and sturdy American goalkeeper, Briana Scurry, who stood waiting twelve yards in front of her in a crouched and challenging stance. Briana Scurry had been a youth-league football player in her hometown of Minneapolis, and later a high school trackster and basketball player as well as an outstanding performer in this sport of soccer, for which she would win a scholarship to the University of Massachusetts. Beginning in 1994, she would achieve whatever distinction went with being the one black woman on the otherwise all-white starting lineup of the U.S. national team. She once described herself to a reporter as “the fly in the milk.” In a
New York Times
article that was published a few weeks
after
this game, she recalled that when the third Chinese kicker, the aforementioned Liu Ying, had positioned herself behind the ball, “Her body language didn't look very positive. It didn't look like she wanted to take it. I looked up at her and said, ‘This one is mine.' ”

The
Times
article also reported that during this crucial moment, Briana Scurry had decided to try to limit Liu Ying's effectiveness by defending against her improperly, moving forward a couple of steps in front of the net even
before
Liu Ying's foot had touched the ball, reducing the angle of the kick. This was a goalkeeper's ploy that Briana Scurry and other teams' goalies occasionally resorted to, hoping it would offset some of the disadvantage of being on the receiving end of what goalkeepers often compare to Russian roulette. Sometimes the referee's whistle signaled a goalkeeper's unauthorized movement, allowing the shooter a second chance if the ball had not gone into the net. At other times the referees failed to see, or were too uncertain to confidently call, an infraction; it was frequently very difficult to determine if a goalkeeper
had
stepped forward a split second before the kicker's toe had touched the ball. With regard to Briana Scurry in the Rose Bowl, it appeared to some reporters and other onlookers that she had moved forward ahead of time against the
first
Chinese penalty kicker, number 5, but there had been no whistle—and number 5 had made her shot anyway.

But China's third kicker, Liu Ying, was less fortunate. Her shot was not well hit. Her footwork seemed to be tentative during her approach. Perhaps she was distracted by Scurry's movement, if the latter
had
moved too early. There had not been a whistle. Still, Scurry instinctively sensed or rightly guessed that the ball would be coming to her left side, and as it sailed off Liu Ying's right foot, Scurry was already leaping toward it, her
outstretched body surging through the air parallel to the ground with both of her arms fully extended and the fingers of her gloved hands elongated and rigid until being bent back by the force of the ball, which was nevertheless deflected and sent bouncing inconsequentially toward the sidelines.

As Scurry fell heavily to the turf—she said later that as she lay in pain she feared she'd chipped a hipbone and mangled a stomach muscle—she was immediately revived by the applause that surrounded her and the sight of far-flung confetti and the enthusiasm of her teammates jumping and hugging one another near the bench. Scurry leaped to her feet and pumped her arms several times while the captain of the U.S. team raised her own index finger above her high-browed forehead, signaling perhaps that the Americans were now alone at the top.

If this was the captain's intention, it was a premature gesture. The game was not over. It was true, however, that if all the remaining shooters (the three Americans and the two Chinese) were successful, the final tally would favor the Americans, 5-4, and the World Cup trophy would become the property of the United States.

Ultimately, this is what happened. China's last two kickers—number 7 and number 9—both aimed accurately beyond Scurry's reach, the first player shooting to the right, the second to the left. But the trio of Americans—which included Mia Hamm, who shot fourth—were also flawless. The American who made the fifth and decisive kick was number 6, Brandi Chastain, a ponytailed blond Californian with a suntanned and gracefully delineated muscular figure that
Gear
magazine had photographed in the nude (“Hey, I ran my ass off for this body” was her response to the media; “I'm proud of it”). After she had blasted her winning shot to the left side of the lunging Chinese goalkeeper, Chastain pulled off her shirt and fell to her knees in front of the net, wearing a black sports bra as she clenched her fists in a triumphant pose that would make the cover of the next issue of
Newsweek
under the headline
GIRLS RULE!

I stood in front of my television set without elation as the victorious U.S. team continued to celebrate on the field, and I kept watching as the roving eye of the camera zoomed in on the stadium's multitudes of American revelers with their smiling and patriotically painted faces and their party hats and horns, embracing and kissing—it was a midsummer prelude to New Year's Eve, and overlooking the scene was a big balloon, the Goodyear blimp. But my own thoughts were now concentrated on an individual who had disappeared from the screen, the young woman from China, Liu Ying, who had missed her kick.

I imagined her at this moment sitting tearfully in the locker room. Nothing in the life of this young woman of twenty-five could have prepared her for what she must have been feeling, for never in the history of China had a single person so suddenly been embarrassed in front of
so many
people—including 100 million from her home country. Was she surrounded now in the locker room by sympathetic teammates? Was she sitting in isolation after being rebuked by her coach? Was the coach at fault for selecting her as a kicker when he might have known that she was too physically exhausted and mentally distracted to meet the test? Would the bureaucrats who ruled over the Party's sports apparatus soon replace the coach? If he retained his job, and if Liu Ying were not demoted from the national team, would the coach choose her in the future to take a penalty kick in an important game?

I was asking questions as if I were a born-again sportswriter with access to the locker room, and if I were,
she
would have been my story, she who would probably not sleep tonight and might forever be haunted by the remembrance of her woeful moment in the sun while much of the world was watching. Or was I overdramatizing, overstating the sensibilities of this young athlete? Among the supposed strengths of a successful athlete is the capacity to overcome one's shortcomings and mistakes by not dwelling upon them, by not obsessing over them, by
forgetting
them, and—quoting the tiresome term of the 1990s—moving on. And yet it seemed to me that Liu Ying's failed penalty kick was momentous and heartrending in ways well beyond the blown save by Mariano Rivera of the Yankees, and even the pounding humiliation that I can recall watching decades ago as it was being inflicted by Muhammad Ali upon Floyd Patterson.

Losing the 1999 World Cup soccer title to the Americans when China was simmering with political tension, rivalry, and resentment toward the United States lent significance to this World Cup match that it would not have otherwise warranted, and it brought forth wishful expectations and nationalistic passions within the Chinese population that would not be gratified by the conclusion of this game. I could not imagine a longer and more uncomfortable airplane ride than the one scheduled to transport this player and her teammates from Los Angeles back to Beijing. In China, where it is acknowledged that most parents lack enthusiasm for the birth of females, what amount of enthusiasm would greet this particular female when she returned to her homeland? What would her family say to her? What would I say were she my daughter? What would be the response from the people who lived in her neighborhood, and from the men who headed the regime's sports commission?

The television cameras focused on the Americans receiving their medals. It was now nearly 6:45 p.m. I had been watching television for about five and a half hours. I was restive. My wife was still upstairs reading. Her door was closed. She had called down earlier, requesting that I lower the sound coming from the television. She also suggested that we dine out in a restaurant that night, but not before 8:30. I was about to turn off the program, but hesitated. Usually after a major sporting event—a World Series game, a championship prizefight, tennis from Wimbledon, the Super Bowl—the losing competitors were invited to the microphones to offer their views and explanations concerning the outcome. I was hoping to hear something from the Chinese, especially from Liu Ying. But the network terminated its World Cup broadcast shortly after 6:45 without a word from her and without any information about how she was bearing up.

Why did I care? Why did I quietly think about her throughout dinner while I listened listlessly to my wife and a few of our friends who had joined our table at Elaine's? Why was I so disappointed and displeased the following morning after I had perused several newspaper articles about the game and learned nothing that I wanted to know about Liu Ying? Later in the week when the newsmagazine cover stories that featured the World Cup also failed to include even a brief interview with her, or any information that would satisfy my curiosity about her, I telephoned an important editor I knew named Norman Pearlstine, who oversaw the publication of Time Warner's many periodicals—among them
Sports Illustrated, Time
, and
People
—and I asked if he might consider ordering a story in one of his magazines that would describe how the Chinese people had responded to Liu Ying's return, and how she herself had reacted and was reacting to her Rose Bowl experience, and, finally, what if anything this had to say about contempory attitudes and expectations with regard to young women in a changing China.

If I was sounding a bit lofty on the phone as I impersonated being an editor to one of the most savvy and successful editors in New York, it did not greatly concern me. I was sixty-seven. He was maybe fifty. At my advanced age, I have become accustomed to being indulged by younger people, many of them no doubt encouraged by the fact that they will not have to indulge me much longer. And so I let Norman Pearlstine indulge me. I elaborated and digressed without any interruption on his part, and while at no point did he commit himself or even pass judgment on my idea, he also voiced no objection when I volunteered to send him a memo expressing my thoughts in writing.

I faxed him at once.