American Lessons for Gianni Brera

The champions, the real ones, even if the pitch is frozen or it is 40°, have touch of the ball and know how to draw rainbows in the sky. So is Gianni Brera, fresh from his farewell to the 'Gazzetta dello Sport' and travelling to America, where he seems not to be so well ('America does not exist. We exist as déracinés from our humus, and therefore suffering"), strangled by the language ("I have the impression of living in a lung of steel: that of my ignorance"), by the absence of squares, bicycles and trattorias with a healthy glass of red. It is 1954 and the editor of the Rosea slams the door and leaves. He is 35 years old and five years of management. His popularity is great but he needs open spaces to run towards life and free the light and sharp pace of his writing.

On 8 April 1955 he landed in New York and toured the States until July because he had a book in mind (which he would like to title In America for Sport) and, as he confessed in a letter to his wife Rina, 'writing a book on America after Piovene, Cecchi and Soldati is certainly presumptuous: but I think I could make it up to you by sticking to the sporting part, which is so important in American life'. In three months he took eleven internal flights, making stops in New York, Washington, New Haven, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Stockton, Los Angeles, Denver, Boulder, returning to the east coast and then to Italia. He studied sport, from boxing to horseracing, from athletics to motor racing, which is society, and wrote eight reports and an interview-scoop with the president of the IOC, Avery Brundage, ready to bet on the 1960 Rome Games. Those articles, which appeared in "Tempo", "L'Illustrazione italiana" and the "Équipe", are now collected in Viaggio in America, meticulously edited by Claudio Rinaldi, editor of the "Gazzetta di Parma" and for many years a careful Brera scholar. There is the America of 1955, the America of Burnt Youth, of the economic boom and of the rights demanded by Rosa Parks who does not leave her seat on the bus, and there is the fresh writing, like the air between her fingers, of Gioânnbrerafucarlo.

They are months as a true reporter, the one who gets his shoes dirty, amidst slums, gyms and hippodromes to arrive at a summation reminiscent of Calvino's American Lessons: 'Every life is an encyclopaedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a sampler of styles, where everything can be continually shuffled and rearranged in every possible way'. Brera recounts the sour life of Frank Andolino, a poor Italian who made his fortune on the back of a horse: 'Boston Doge bursts out of the thicket: a miraculous rubber band seems to violently snatch him at the finish line'. Then, he hangs out with immigrants from Little Italy, Brooklyn and the Bronx "magna pars of American boxing. The phenomenon has economic and ethnic explanations. Each one chooses, in order to emerge, the paths that seem most suitable to him" because "boxing is a very effective school of daring and is no less useful for life than Latin declinations and the golden section of the segment". Especially if you live in New York, which is very high, very vertical, very colourful: who knows what an impression it will make on Brera's 'Padanian' eyes.

The days of the Indianapolis 500 Mile race, which 'mounts in pride', offer him a whirlwind of engines and a scoop on the Dukes of Windsor, who are present at the race, because the well-informed rumour that the Duchess is not a model of marital fidelity. Brera knows how to be an attentive social observer in his investigation into the 'blackboard jungle', as the problem of juvenile delinquency is defined in the US, lost among whisky, marijuana, guns and fisticuffs. The lines are as stark as the environments, but 'here, as in Italia, sport is therefore a means of social evolution (it would be better to say economic evolution)'. Then come the four long reportages conceived as an analysis of sport in the USA, in which 'business and the ideal find felicitous agreement. Sometimes they support each other, almost always they accompany each other. But above all, results matter: and America is still the most authentic paradise of 'free' sport'. Brera remains fascinated by football: 'The games, as little as they offer, are vigorous tumbles, ruthless tackles, piles of men clinging together as if they were fighting, and then imperious darts, long strides, lightning-fast running dodges, pirouettes, acrobatic passes, spectacular kicks ... The ball is also played, which, being oval, always gives crazy bounces. And he couldn't miss a trip to the stars and stripes universities, where sport counts as much as study: 'talent scouts, i.e. the discoverers of talents, have come to look for possible students on behalf of colleges and universities. From which it is easy to deduce that sporting ability can also benefit... the culture of the country'.

Frenetic days, immensity and misery: the great journalist's flair made him write memorable pieces even though 'America doesn't bother me. I live there as if in exile" so much so that he never wanted to return, not even to Los Angeles 1984, justifying himself with the threat of a mafioso who had sworn to kill him if he ever saw him again. Who knows how true that was, fortunately there were the letters to his wife with which to blur the nostalgia: 'My eyes are bovine and sad. I am bored and I resist. I write to you almost every day to resist'. Even the great have some weaknesses.