The truth was, I immediately saw myself cast in the role of the bespectacled, white, pseudo-intellectual trying to form a "heavy" thesis about a gift of grace and magical flair the black athlete possesses that can never be reduced to anything but poetry. I have always envied this gift and have often said that if I could live life over as someone else it would be wonderful to be Sugar Ray Robinson or Willie Mays. With my luck, however, I would undoubtedly wind up John Maynard Keynes.
— Woody Allen, "A Fan's Notes on Earl Monroe"
