The Best American Sports Writing 2019 Read online

  John Branch

  Children of the Cube

  from The New York Times

  There were three worthwhile vantage points for “Max Park vs. the World,” an exhibition featuring seven of the globe’s fastest speedcubers. That’s the moniker for the growing faction of people who solve Rubik’s Cube–style puzzles at mind-bending speeds. Six of them formed a relay against Park, an autistic 16-year-old from California who is breaking most of their records.

  One good spot was from the audience, joining hundreds of (mostly) young people gazing up at the celebrities of speedcubing the way NBA fans crowd sidelines to watch Stephen Curry warm up.

  Eyes and phones were up. Mouths were open. My son was in the crowd, somewhere.

  On stage was Feliks Zemdegs, a 22-year-old Australian who holds the world record in the 3 by 3, the six-sided, three-layer configuration of the original Rubik’s Cube, which bestows an illusion of brilliance on those who can solve it. Zemdegs has done it in 4.22 seconds. Earlier in the day, hundreds lined up for his autograph.

  Around him were other record-setters, all famous in this world, each smiling behind a mixed-up cube of a different size—a 2 by 2, a 3 by 3, all the way up to a 7 by 7.

  “The team assembled by Feliks to take down Max Park!” an MC said through microphone.

  Park sat at a nearby table alone, with cubes of all sizes in front of him. He owned world records in the 4 by 4 (18.42 second), 5 by 5 (37.28), 6 by 6 (1:14.86), and 7 by 7 (1:47.89).

  I wondered if a better vantage point was behind the stage, the same view that the competitors had, directly into the awed faces of their fans. Most of those in the audience had qualified to compete at CubingUSA’s nationals too, alongside their fast-fingered heroes, over three summer days inside a convention center.

  But I settled for the third spot to watch—off to the side, neither competitor nor fan, but merely a parent trying to make sense of it all. Among the spectators, expressions of wonder tilted like sunflowers atop the craned stalks of their necks, aimed toward the bright light of speedcubing’s stars, was that of my son, Joe, competing at his first nationals.

  He is 16, straddling the moat between childhood and adulthood. He has spent most of his years trying to fit in but usually being pushed out. We learned he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in kindergarten, and some symptoms often associated with autism continue to vex doctors and psychologists as he approaches his junior year of high school.

  His biggest issue remains socialization. Joe’s a smart and tenderhearted kid, but like the cubes he carries everywhere, he can be hard to decipher and solve. Most don’t give him the time.

  When not at the skate park, he’s usually home at the piano, practicing the Mozart pieces he learned on YouTube, or studiously putting together jigsaw puzzles, or practicing his cubes with a timer. I forget the last time he was invited somewhere.

  Yet there he was, fitting in as never before. Like everyone else, he held a plastic cube, both a security blanket and a badge. He had a lanyard around his neck, identifying him as one of about 600 competitors, a special collective.

  He had found acceptance by doing nothing more than being himself. Funny that it would come in a place where he could leave all the reinvention to the familiar 3 by 3 object in his hands, the one that has 43 quintillion possible configurations but that he and all the others could solve in seconds.

  The crowd hushed. The race began. In little more than five minutes, Max Park solved all six of the puzzles, leaving the world behind.

  “A valiant effort from the dream team,” the MC said.

  I walked away with no doubt about the best view—that of a parent, watching a child find his place.

  Max Park vs. the World

  Max Park’s parents, Schwan and Miki, knew something was different with their son when he was a baby. He seemed to live in his own world. For a time they wondered if he was deaf.

  Doctors told them it was autism, the developmental disorder that can show itself in a range of symptoms from a young age—among them, the delayed use of spoken language, a lack of eye contact or interest in engaging with others, repetitive sounds or mannerisms, a hyperfocus on certain activities.

  Another issue can be fine-motor skills. Max’s therapists and parents put the boy through all kinds of exercises to improve his dexterity—picking up coins and placing them in a slot of a bank, for example. When he was seven or eight, Max was handed a Rubik’s Cube.

  “He fell in love with it,” Schwan Park said at a competition in Berkeley, California, a couple of months ago. “And he practiced all the time.”

  The Parks were just glad to find therapy that did not feel like a chore. Soon, Max could solve a 3 by 3 cube in about the time it takes to read this sentence aloud.

  Just about everyone knows what a Rubik’s Cube is. Invented in 1974 by a Hungarian architect named Erno Rubik, it had its first big moment in 1980 and 1981, when it was named toy of the year by people who confer such awards.

  But fads fade, and by the end of 1982, even the New York Times declared it dead. The cube remained famous, in a nostalgic way, but as a fascination it lay mostly dormant for 20 years.

  These days, most people fall into two camps. One is filled with those who remember Rubik’s Cube as a pop-culture relic, as evocative of the 1980s as leg warmers and Duran Duran. They have no idea that cubing is having another moment.

  The second camp is filled with speedcubers.

  The World Cube Association, formed in 2004 to approve events, track times, and provide order to all the high-speed twisting, says more than 100,000 people have competed officially. Popularity has grown exponentially in recent years. The number of first-time competitors in 2017 was about 24,000, five times more than in 2012.

  Cubing’s resurrection began slowly about 15 years ago. The 2003 world championship was the first since 1982. Cubing clubs cropped up at college campuses, from Cal-Berkeley to Rutgers, spreading the gospel by holding open competitions.

  The internet, particularly YouTube, slingshotted the rebirth. A puzzle that once seemed impossible was demystified in how-to videos. Cubers long ago figured out that the clunky Rubik’s Cube was not built for speed, so other manufacturers jumped in, mostly Chinese companies like MoYu and Gan, engineering slick-moving variations of all conceivable shapes and sizes.

  They show up in packages on my porch with startling regularity, in exchange for my son’s allowance and savings account.

  Joe gets them for birthdays and Christmas too—polyhedrons of all sizes, including an 11 by 11 cube, tetrahedrons (pyramids), dodecahedrons (12 sides), and some with so many sides that I can’t figure out how to count them, never mind turn their parts. There are single-color cubes where the moving parts are not square; they shift into incomprehensible shapes when they are scrambled, and back to a cube when solved.

  Besides the puzzles in his backpack (usually a dozen) or scattered around the house (who knows), they are displayed on an Ikea bookcase in his room, bought specifically for that purpose. He tells people that he has 200 puzzles in his collection. I’m scared to count, lest my brain compute the dollars spent.

  Sometimes a new cube will arrive that looks just like a dozen others he already has, but Joe assures me that it’s way better. I long ago got past the horror of entering his room to find his latest puzzle shattered into a pile of hundreds of plastic parts. He puts them back together after lubing them and inspecting the inner workings—usually. He could create a cubing junkyard with spare parts in his desk.

  The persistent clicking of cubes being solved is a soundtrack of our family. I worry when I don’t hear it coming from behind his bedroom door.

  The puzzles are sold at online customization shops and retailers like the Cubicle, which has emerged as the sport’s cultural trendsetter. It sponsors most of the world’s top cubers, putting them in team jackets and paying travel expenses to competitions. It supplies contest purses, including the $23,200 at stake during last month’s nationals. Top cuber
s are on the verge of making full-time livings solving puzzles.

  That is the growing world that Park, speedcubing’s latest star, now inhabits and dominates.

  Like a lot of parents of modern-day cubers (including me), the Parks didn’t know that cubing competitions were a real thing until their child asked to go to one. Max was 11, without many friends at home. They went.

  “He knew everybody,” Schwan Park said. “He knew all the other cubers, their names, their times. We thought: Oh, this will be a great place for him to socialize.”

  The Parks used cubing to reinforce other lessons—how to sit down correctly, how to make eye contact with a judge and say, “I’m ready.” His cubing times weren’t the point.

  “To us, it felt like free therapy,” Schwan Park said.

  At his second contest, Max won the 6 by 6 event. These days, he holds the world records in 4 by 4, 5 by 5, 6 by 6, and 7 by 7. He won the 3 by 3 and the one-handed 3 by 3 events at last year’s world championships in Paris, but does not hold those records—not yet anyway.

  “He is breaking cubing,” said Phil Yu, 28, chief executive of the Cubicle and still a world-class competitor. “He is physically really strong. And his turning speed is out of control.”

  Part of what the Parks practice with their son now is how to handle the fame and attention—the autograph hounds and photo-seekers, the glad-handers and back-slappers, the people who may misread Park’s autism as aloofness and walk away disappointed in their hero.

  Yet Max Park fits in too. He’s adored by the cubers who want to be more like him, and liked and respected by the older cubers whose records he’s now breaking.

  “This group is really accepting,” Schwan Park said. “A lot come from the same situations, people looking to fit in. We meet a lot of parents, and we all want the same thing for our kids.”

  “800 People Just Like You”

  * * *

  At my son’s first cubing competition, in Berkeley nearly two years ago, he averaged 48.43 seconds per solve in his attempts at the 3 by 3, still cubing’s glamour event. Now at nationals, he averaged 19.91—a “sub-20,” considered an elusive breakthrough just a couple of years ago, speedcubing’s four-minute mile.

  His average would have put him in the top 10 in the world in 2004. Now it didn’t crack the top 500 at nationals.

  But his goal was personal bests, and he got them in 3 by 3, Pyraminx (a pyramid), and Skewb (a cube with pyramid-shaped corner pieces).

  The highlight, though, was just being there.

  “It’s the story I hear nonstop,” said Kit Clement, the executive director of CubingUSA. “Cubing initially can feel antisocial—you do it alone, no one understands you. Then you come to a competition and suddenly there are 800 other people just like you.”

  Cubing competitions are mostly a quiet parade of competitors unscrambling puzzles against an automated timer (40 of them at nationals) in front of a judge. They are more about data collection than spectacle.

  Most time is spent waiting. At nationals, competitors sat at large, round banquet tables. They practiced their own puzzles and borrowed others and spun them constantly in their fidgety fingers. Even if there was no conversation, there was the comfort of someone clicking and clacking alongside.

  It felt like a never-ending lunch in a school cafeteria, where every table was the cool kids’ table.

  “We’re all on the same wavelength here—we all speak the same language,” said Brandon Harnish, a longtime competitor who, now 22, oversees competitions as a World Cube Association delegate.

  He looked around. Round tables were filled with children.

  “All these people sitting together, hanging out, feeling comfortable?” Harnish said. “That’s not a goal. It’s a result.”

  My son has been to 11 competitions now, and I’ve talked to children and parents at most of them. Not all speedcubers come from the same mold, of course, but most seem to have interests in computers, science and math, often music. (A few even mentioned origami.)

  Not all are shy, but a lot of them are, at least at home, where their fascination with cubes is a quirky curiosity, not a binding trait. I am far from the only parent in awe of how much my son comes out of his shell when he enters a room about to hold a cubing competition.

  The trickiest puzzle is figuring out why only about 10 percent of speedcubers are female. (At nationals, where the median age was 16, 41 of 634 competitors were female.) Some suggest that the issue is a self-fulfilling one; girls see few other girls and stay away. The World Cube Association wants to add female delegates, who run sanctioned competitions, to provide role models to younger girls.

  At the airport gate in San Francisco, while waiting to board the plane to Salt Lake City, my son excused himself. Maybe he heard the clack of cubes the way a dog picks up a scent, but he sat down next to Sameer Aggarwal, a slight, bespectacled 13-year-old from Bellevue, Washington, playing with a cube. He was on his way to his first nationals too.

  The boys struck up a conversation and fidgeted with puzzles as strangers nearby watched in wonder. Sameer’s parents and I shared smiles and shrugs.

  Manish and Rakhi Aggarwal later described their son as a studious middle-schooler, excelling in math, science, Spanish, violin, and piano—and now cubing. He qualified for nine events at nationals, and did so well that he made the semifinals in three of them.

  “We’re on top of the world, actually,” Rakhi Aggarwal said on the last day.

  Adults tend to be most amazed by speedcubing—I can tell by the reaction of strangers watching my son twiddle away in public. It’s probably a generational perspective, one ingrained from the original era of Rubik’s Cube, when solving it felt virtually impossible.

  I never came close to solving a Rubik’s Cube as a child. But alone in the hotel one night during nationals, excited that my son was out to dinner with new friends, I followed an online tutorial narrated by Yu, the Cubicle chief executive, that has been viewed nearly 10 million times. In an hour, after some hiccups and playbacks, one of my son’s 3 by 3s went from chaos to order.

  “What makes you and me different,” Yu told me, “is thousands and thousands of practice hours.”

  I haven’t practiced since. But my son rarely puts the cubes down. On the plane ride home, he tried solving a 3 by 3 cube blindfolded, one of the many hard-to-fathom variations of speedcubing. He stared at a scrambled cube and examined the pattern of the colors. After a couple of minutes, he covered his face with his hat and took a deep breath.

  I watched as my son’s fingers rotated the layers at an incomprehensible speed. They paused sometimes as his brain tried to conjure the current position of the colors, to tell his fingers what to do next. I quietly recorded with my phone.

  In a minute, the six sides of the cube went from kaleidoscope to nearly solid. He opened his eyes. Only a couple of pieces were in the wrong spot.

  So close, I said, amazed and proud.

  He smiled. “We can go again next year, right?” he said.

  Bonnie D. Ford

  Holding Her Own

  from ESPN.com

  Consider her grip. It is the most unseen element of her skill set, yet the essence of her game flows from its control and precision. The shifting configuration of her palm and fingers on the rounded octagonal handle determined the angle of the racket face, which in turn dictates the pace, spin, and trajectory of a shot. The fan’s eye naturally tracks elsewhere: the ball, her feet, her outstretched arm, her expression. But Petra Kvitova’s dominant hand, armored with calluses and trained like a trellised vine around the same shape since childhood, is at the root of her strength.

  And now imagine that grip closing over the cutting edge of a knife with all the adrenaline of self-defense and the force of a two-time Wimbledon champion and yanking it away from her throat, where an intruder had held it. The blade bit deeply into the fingers of Kvitova’s left hand.

  She flexes the hand in late April, almost a year and a half later, to demonstrate th
at she can’t clench her fist in celebration quite as tightly as before. Her long fingers curl into her palm, leaving a small space at the center, as if she’s cupping something fragile. The scars are thin and faint, but residual clumsiness still causes her to fumble with objects sometimes.

  “I’m happy that I have all my fingers, at the end of the day,” Kvitova says.

  She’s feeling light and grateful on the day before her opening match at the WTA tournament in Prague, an event she watched from the stands last year, not yet ready to test her hand in a match. A jazz recording croons softly in the lounge of the downtown InterContinental Hotel, where Kvitova has permitted herself a slice of chocolate cake and a cappuccino with soy milk.

  “Being in the top 10, it’s a little bit weird for me,” says Kvitova, 28. “In a year? I couldn’t really expect that. But when the last season finished, I was already feeling more normal. To have the same start of the season as the other girls, same offseason preparation, everything. So, I feel normal.”

  At the behest of investigators, Kvitova has never divulged the details of what happened in her apartment on December 20, 2016. She would rather not return to that moment anyway. It’s what she did with it that matters and explains how she has created an extraordinary new normal.

  Kvitova wins her opening match in Prague the next morning before a full house as fans who were turned away peer through a hedge and a windscreen in hopes of catching a glimpse of her on the tidy center court. She wins the next four matches and the tournament. She moves on to Madrid and runs the table, then travels to Paris and wins her first two French Open matches before finally yielding after 13 straight victories on clay.

  Three weeks later, she defends her 2017 title on grass in Birmingham, England. It is Kvitova’s sixth tournament win since her comeback from the attack and her fifth this season. Now ranked seventh in the world, she has vaulted firmly into contention for a third Wimbledon championship.