The article does as good a job as I have ever seen of capturing the immediate aftermath of the defeat of a high profile individual competitor. Most importantly, it is unembellished by the author's own imaginings or projections; people who try to write pieces like this typically can't resist imposing their own interpretation of what their subject is or "must be" feeling. Instead, this is a raw report of a raw experience. The overriding image is one of a man sitting with a towel shielding his face from even those few who can approach him, keeping his reactions and feelings deeply private and speaking to no one, not his teammates, not his coaches, not his employer, and not his friends. He shares a moment with his spouse, but no one else.
I re-read it to be sure, but, beyond the podium platitudes, Brady never indicates what he is feeling. He talks about plays that weren't made, but never goes any further in relating his reaction to them or the entire experience. He is indeed a very circumspect young man.
We don't need to be shrinks to know that the emotions he is letting us see are those of profound disappointment and deep sadness.
But is he also angry? If so, was the Midas Queen giving voice to things he cannot say? Or was his anger reserved solely for himself and his own self-perceived errors and failings?
Is he feeling resigned or rebellious? Does he feel his playing future slipping into the past or is that future still looming as large as ever in his eyes?
Is he feeling the stirrings of an eagerness to get recharged to do it all again or does that seem like something he doesn't even want to consider for the moment or are golf courses and business ventures and raising his young children feeling to him more and more like they might become his primary focus?
So, a brilliantly written and appropriately brief article about a young man, who is in the prime of a long life but at a watershed moment in the waning years of one chapter of that life.
(If anyone wants to try to say that they know the answers to any of the questions I posed above, I ask that you first tell us how many long hours of private conversations you have had with Thomas Edward Patrick Brady, Jr., because that is the only way you could have that knowledge and I certainly don't have that experience of him or that knowledge.)
