It is a rare but undeniable occurrence that the world will so arrange itself as to tempt us to bestow pity, that final car of emotion, onto those who in every way best us. To pity Tom Brady seems initially, and indeed almost finally, so a perversion of the natural currents of sympathy that one suspects our sensorial gravity has been supernally and unfairly altered. And yet, those occasional men of proven measure, medalled and honored, hoisted upon pedestals and statued in action, as if the world’s adoration were so excessive that it felt it needs must embalm its heroes so as not to lose them, those men who stand in reverence to most stand in challenge to a few who will never tire of rushing the pedestals and dividing the prize of worship for the loot of fame. To be, as Brady is, armored in the suit of perfection is surely to invite the constant lance-thrusts of those knights-errant who feel inviolability a challenge to the very inclusion of themselves in the high zones of existence. Eventually he will be cut, as indeed Brady has. And if the knights-errant do eventually return to their hamlets with but the pejorative jingle of small change rather than the trumpet blasts of monarchic respect, so too are the statues chipped away at, the failure of the challengers also, in the end, the fall of the challenged. Eventually, we must suspect that the scales of perfection are not the protection once assumed. Even if the statue stands a little longer, as indeed Brady has a few more playoff victories in him, how long until the final blow is landed, one that itself is of no great inspiration or execution, but is simply the final in a long line of protest of the singular on behalf of the teeming plural.
Henry James’ Pick: New England Patriots
