Colin Kaepernick’s on the trading block. Roger Federer’s on a pedestal. Colin photograph by Mike Morbeck. Fed photograph by Peter Myers.
An unsettling, if not upsetting, sports days with trade rumors swirling about the San Francisco 49ers sending quarterback Colin Kaepernick to the Philadelphia Eagles or the Chicago Bears or the Martians. General Manager Trent Baalke was quick to deny it, so you know it must have some validity.
More about this in a minute but first, What would The New York Times do without Roger Federer? Last year, The Times couldn’t bother writing about World Tennis Day at Madison Square Garden, which was too bad, because Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray put on quite a show. This year, however, Feddy Bear and Grigor “Baby Fed” Dimitrov are slated to square off March 10, and I predicted there would be a huge article in The Times to advance it. Christopher Clarey didn’t disappoint with the kind of piece that could’ve been written by Mirka, Feddy’s wife. The article was long on how the Feds travel the world with two sets of twins and – surprise, surprise – several nannies. But not even the cleverest of journalists can turn a subject into something he is not. One of the great pleasures of any Fed article is his blithe unawareness of his own self-centeredness. (Though it would seem counterintuitive, self-centered people never understand how others see them, or they wouldn’t be self-centered. It’s what makes pseudofedblog.com so funny.)
Anyway, here’s Fed on traveling the world en famille:
“The girls enjoy it, and I love being with my family, and so does Mirka. She loves being with me….”
I’m sure she does.
At the end of the article, Clarey and Fed get to the point: “The big goal, if I could choose, would be to win Wimbledon,” Feddy said. “And, I guess in a dream world, become world No. 1 again.”
This is the prayer Federinas world over utter every night before they go to bed. It’s as if they were the Cavaliers waiting for the Stuart Restoration, though I have a hard time thinking of Novak Djokovic as Oliver Cromwell. Nole: He’s what’s standing between Fed and Wimbledon and Fed and No. 1 now that Rafa’s concentrating on clay and playing people like Juan Monaco. Nole may be No. 1 but he gets very little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Neither does Colin. He was Jim Harbaugh’s guy. And now Harbaugh is gone.
Will Colin be, too?
We’ll just have to wait and see how out it all turns out on the gridiron of Santa Clara.
And the grass of Wimbledon.