It is commonly argued, and not exclusively by sports fans, that competitive sports provide a
refuge of clarity and simplicity in a bewilderingly complex and ambiguous world. If it is hard to keep
track of who did what to whom and why in Srebrenica in 1995 or Shrewsbury in 1402, it is a relief to
recall more straightforward matters like the Jets' 16-7 victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III, Tiger
Woods' 15-stroke victory in the 2000 U.S. Open, or Billie Jean King's straight-sets routing of Bobby
Riggs in 1973. In sports, the outcomes are indelible and indisputable, whereas in life we journey, in our
middling way, through a dark wood, never learning how the big story begins or ends. When Bobby
Thomson hits that one-strike pitch off Ralph Branca for a three-run home run on October 3, 1951, for
example, the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant–and the
outcome is not challenged in court, the Dodgers do not ask for a statewide recount, the Supreme Court
does not step in and award the game to Brooklyn by means of a creative reading of the equal protection
clause of the fourteenth amendment. Sure, occasionally you get your figure-skating controversies and
your inscrutable gymnastics scores, but the "objective" sports, the one involving goals, runs,
touchdowns, baskets, meters, and seconds, are thoroughly decisive: someone wins, someone loses,
Unfortunately for fans of clarity, though happily for fans of competitive sports, this argument– like
Underworld itself– is full of garbage. While it's tempting to compare DeLillo's Giants/Dodgers narrative
with his US/USSR narrative (indeed, the temptation can hardly be refused, since the novel is structurally
predicated on the intertwining of the two narratives), it is, I believe, a serious mistake to think of the
sports contest as a simpler, less mediated v...