He sat in the corner of a half-lit New York hotel room last month, his silhouette dimly bathed in the yellow of an antique lamp. It was not Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or some other sports deity. It was just an avid baseball fan and outdoorsman, conveying a larger message about the games before the New Year.
"I'm concerned," Jimmy Carter said.
Over nearly 30 minutes, the former president runs the gamut: Baseball. Steroids. Peace in the Middle East. He even answers sophomoric fly-fishing questions.
"Are you haunted by waters, the way Norman Mclean was in 'A River Runs Through It?' "
"I was and I still am," President Carter said, vividly describing the woven nymph that once landed a 12-pound rainbow in a seam of Alaska's Copper River, or that trophy, 24-pound brown caught in Patagonia.
You decide then and there:
In 2005, you will fish more.
You will be less cynical about where home runs come from.
You won't let the money and the violence and the cable-television noise corrupt your belief in the competition.
You will view the sports world as Jimmy Carter views humanity: fixable.
Since much of his post-presidency has been devoted to reconciliation, you wonder about his thoughts on a value-challenged sports landscape. Indeed, the Athletic God business is coming off a down year.
Lockouts. Basketbrawls. Performance-enhancing drugs. On it goes. Athens's glory boy Michael Phelps was sentenced to 18 months' probation this week for pleading guilty to drunken driving. The games used to provide a diversion from our own unremarkable existences; now, they're a sanctuary for our flickering supernovas.
You don't want to sound too old school, but . . . "That's all right," Carter said, interrupting. "I am."
He is asked whether the steroid scandal has shaken his faith in the grand old game.
"I'm not necessarily condemning Barry Bonds or others -- I'm not making a judgment," Carter said. "But it does disturb me. And I hope that pressures from John McCain or from baseball owners or from other players will be sufficiently great to bring about some genuine reforms. But I think one of the absences now is pressure from the fans.
"I haven't detected any deep commitment among baseball fans like me to demand publicly -- or in a spirit of uniformity -- that something be done about it."
You don't have the temerity to suggest that many fans just don't care, that they see what they want to see. So you talk more about fishing.
Or about the moment in his book "Sharing Good Times" when his grandson Jeremy confronted him during an Aspen ski vacation at the lodge of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
"Papa, are you going to die?" the small child asked.
"Yes, sweet boy. Everyone will die someday, but I hope it won't be anytime soon."
After a long silence, Carter asked his grandson why he had asked such a question.
"When you die," Jeremy began, "can we still come to Bandar's place to ski?"
He laughed, said "it was kind of a blow to my ego" and went on about his latest plans and adventures. The Carter Center may monitor the Palestinian elections scheduled for Jan. 9, he's not sure yet. When you suggest how remote peace seems in so many regions of the world and why he has any belief at all, he cuts you off politely.
"I think it's counterproductive and almost immoral to give up hope," Carter said. When he was not altering the world for the better, he spent his time in duck blinds, on the world's blue-ribbon trout streams, on the summits of some of the world's tallest mountains or at Turner Field in Atlanta to watch his beloved Braves.
"Sharing Good Times" is about a man who finds balance later in life, a man who just happens to be the 39th president. He writes evocatively of Henry Aaron, of taking in a Braves game and flyfishing with Rosalynn, the former first lady. He writes of climbing Kilimanjaro and nearly Everest. He skewers himself at times, portraying young Jimmy as too driven and self-absorbed to connect with those around him.
"This is the most revealing book I've ever written about myself," he said. "Because I analyze my own human fallibilities. When I was young, I lived for myself. I was driven to be a successful naval officer. And I paid very little attention to my family. Rosalynn and I were madly in love and we had incredible emotional experiences. But I was the boss. And I had my own thoughts and my own ambitions, my own career to pursue.
"And it was later in life that I began to realize that was part of a life -- but not all of a life."
Rosalynn took up running and tennis, flyfishing and mountain-climbing, and soon he fully let her into his world. He stopped being a product of his selfish-husband times.
Of course, he thinks we've gotten away from what's important in sports and life.
"One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was for that purpose, to show people that the singular and personal involvement of almost every human being in the outdoor world -- as a source of personal pleasure -- is very important as an aspect of life," he said.
There is almost a tinge of regret throughout, a feeling that Carter wished he had found a balance and a way to include Rosalynn and the family a bit earlier. Between the lines, he's telling us to find a balance now.
And, really, in a year of steroids and televised brawls at basketball games -- of fans and players balling their fists, of pros and preps injecting themselves and choosing fame over their own health -- it might be a good time to reassess how we view and participate in the games.
Maybe that's too sappy, too idealistic. But coming from an ever hopeful Jimmy Carter, a Depression-era kid whose post-presidency has only been about helping others, it seems worth aspiring to on this first day of the New Year.
