The Best American Sports Writing 2014 by Glenn Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

Snyder down and began shifting side to side, looking for an opportunity to lever him onto his back. Seconds later, he found it. Securing Snyder’s hands and hips, Robles rolled across his own back, creating such torque that Snyder was forced to give up his position or risk serious injury. Snyder yielded, and Robles flipped him.
    The crowd erupted as Robles held his man inverted, watching the referee count off points. Robles let Snyder right himself, then turned him again. And again and again and again. In the second period, with the score 17–1, the ref waved off the match—a technical fall, like a TKO in boxing, saving the loser needless pain and humiliation.
    â€œHe just completely dominated me,” Snyder said later. “I was like, ‘This isn’t fair.’”
    Something amazing would unfold over the next few days: a one-legged man would climb to the pinnacle of a sport that selects for such anatomical homogeneity that competitors of different weight classes frequently look like Russian nesting dolls of one another. What Robles accomplished that weekend in Philadelphia was unprecedented in his sport, perhaps in any sport. But what he planned to do afterward left everyone just as dumbstruck. Why was he walking away?
    Â 
    The first time I met Anthony Robles—and nearly every time after—he was intercepted by a fan. We had arranged an interview at a Sheraton in St. Louis, where he was in town to provide color commentary for ESPN during the 2012 Division I championships. Robles loped into the hotel lobby on a pair of aluminum crutches—powerfully built with a handsome, gap-toothed grin that faintly recalled a young Mike Tyson.
    I turned to greet him, and as I did an enormous man stepped between us. Four-time Super Bowl champion linebacker Matt Millen wanted to introduce himself to Robles and, not surprisingly, I couldn’t get around him. Fifteen minutes passed. At last, Robles looked over to his agent, Gary Lewis, who maneuvered me between his client and Millen. Each man, the wrestler and the linebacker, extended a beefy hand in my direction.
    It was a daunting decision. Wrestlers are known for their prodigious hand strength. Oklahoma alumnus Danny Hodge can still crush an apple in one hand at the age of 80. But Robles’s grip is fearsome even by wrestling standards. Opponents have rarely been able to pry it off with one hand, and only sometimes with two. Many have ended up surrendering to his hold and have focused instead on limiting the damage he could do with it. “I couldn’t even think of breaking his lock,” one candid victim told me.
    I opted for the evil I didn’t know and tentatively placed my hand in Millen’s massive paw. He squeezed it, hard, and when he finally returned it to me intact, I felt as if I had gotten away with something splendid and improbable, like a deer bolting free of an anaconda’s coil. Then I turned to Robles, whose handshake turned out to be restrained, even gentle. I wondered at this as we ducked into the hotel’s sticky-floored lounge, which was not due to open for several hours, and where I imagined his fans wouldn’t find us.
    Twenty minutes later, a middle-aged man with a Negro League baseball jersey peered into the darkened banquette where I was interviewing Robles. He was missing a number of teeth, and he looked like he hadn’t been eating well. “Man! Man!” he cried out when he discovered the person he had come looking for, and fell sobbing into Robles’s arms. “You’re a good brother! You’re a good brother!” the man said, over and over again. Robles held him, and they talked for what seemed like a long time.
    After the man left, blubbering an apology for interrupting, I asked Robles if he knew who he was. Robles said no. I asked if that kind of thing had happened before. Robles looked at me evenly. “It happens a lot,” he said.
    Later that day, while Robles,