This story appears in ESPN The Magazines College Football Preview issue. Subscribe today!The link to the new Steve Gleason documentary sat in my email for three days before I opened it. People told me Id love it. The reviews of the film, which won acclaim at Sundance and is now in wider release, are uniformly positive and talk about the spirit of life and hope laced through his journey. That didnt matter much. I didnt want to watch someone die of ALS in front of my eyes. I know Steve and his wife, Michel, a little, spending time with them for a story, and even that brief interaction showed me enough of their struggles to know that there wouldnt be some Hollywood ending.The movie follows five years of Steves life as he goes from a vibrant football folk hero for the New Orleans Saints to a man trapped in a wheelchair, unable to speak or move. After seeing his struggle up close - not only the valiant bits that raise awareness, but the awkward fights with his stressed-out wife and his son gently pushing his limp head back into place - I thought I knew what the movie would be about and how it would make me feel.Then I watched Gleason. I was wrong.The film opens with Steve starting to record video journals for his still unborn son, Rivers, that would teach him about love and about taking chances, about being his own person and building a campfire: things a boy needs to learn from his father if he wants to grow into a good man. Soon the cameras are around Steve all the time, as he gets his diagnosis of ALS and then starts to lose things. We see Michel see him try to swim and struggle, crying at the sight of the strong man she married actually beginning his slide toward nothing. His dad takes him to a faith healer and Steve gets down in his football stance, like hes covering a kickoff, with his hand up in the air. He takes four steps and hits the ground hard and sliding, like a big bull thats been shot. In the crowd, Michel fumes at Steves dad for making him do this to himself. Later we see Steve speaking some of his last words before ALS traps him in a silent body, in one of the purest moments of desperation and despair ever recorded on film.The arc is sophisticated and layered, its central thesis revolving around the things passed down from father to son, moving through generations. We see Steve try to make peace with his own father while attempting to give as much of himself as he can to Rivers. We see Steve and Michel argue. We see Steve struggle with the same things as many healthy people, just in an extreme way: He wants to work on his foundation because it makes him feel good to be helping, gives him a purpose, while Michel thinks hes not spending enough time with her and with his video journals for Rivers. That conflict drives the second half of the movie.If reality television is the worst of the American impulse to film, and a window into the very worst of what the human animal is capable of being, then this movie and its hours of personal footage is a window into the best. It is one of the finest documentaries that Ive ever seen, period. Go see it for the first time and just cry and feel empty and like theres no point in even dreaming because life crushes all of us eventually, and then go see it again so that the hope and the victory emerge from all those ashes. Its the visual version of the Dylan Thomas poem.Everyone faces the challenges confronting Steve, only most of us deal with them slowly over seven or eight decades. All of the business of life hit him at once, and in his sped-up horror, there are powerful messages. Im writing this in my kitchen, and my wife is outside drinking coffee on our porch, and thats where I should be, not doing a job but living my life and making sure I understand what matters and what doesnt while I still can. Those are the things youll think in the hours after Gleason ends. Its a movie that seems, in its first scenes, to be about watching up close as a man dies, but it turns out to be the opposite. We watch as Steve Gleason rages against the dying of the light, and when its over, we realize that continuing to fight in the face of certain defeat is at the heart of what it means to live. Cheap Air Max Plus . -- Whether Jeremy Hill deserves a prominent role in LSUs offence this early in the season is a matter for debate. Wholesale Air Max Plus China . Brandon Morrow allowed five runs on six hits over three innings. He struck out two, walked one and hit a batter. 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Nari Contractor c bottom b Davidson, day three, India v Australia, Kanpur, 1959.The first recollection about this match is I dont how I got those 74 runs in the second innings. In that match, 40 wickets fell, of which 22 [23] batsmen never got into double figures -- it was that bad a wicket. That was a damp-ish pitch; every day in the morning something from the bottom would come up.The East stand had a partition -- on one side were the men, on the other side were the ladies. Somebody would throw something from one end and the other section would respond in the same way. That jhagda [quarrel] was going on all the time.Alan Davidson was fast-ish and was a left-arm bowler. When he would bowl over the wicket, he would come and spin the ball, and it would go over here [the head] and hit you here [points to the chest]. One strategy that I would adopt was I would stand outside the leg stick. Because the ball was coming in so sharply, once it pitched on middle and leg I knew it was going to go on this side [outside leg]. I got out before lunch [on the third day].I rank this innings as my best because it helped my team beat Australia for the first time since 1947. There was [danger of bodily harm] because of which we didnt know what to do. One ball would go over the head while the other one would stay low. That innings required a lot of concentration. Every ball you said [to yourself] you survived. Suppose I point a gun at you and say I am going to shoot at you any time, what will you do? It was like that. Richie [Benaud] and Alan Davidson bowled beautifully.The most tragic part or comic part of the innings was when I was on 74. Alan Davidson was bowling over the wicket from the far end, and he bowled a legbreak which was a little short. I hooked it with all my might -- it could not have been a more perfect shot -- and as soon as the ball hit my bat I said to myself four runs. But here, Neil Harvey, who was fielding [a little] far at short leg, turned to save himself and the ball got caught between his bottom.Richie Benaud, from the leg slip, said,, Neil, hold on, hold on and plucked the ball out of his bottom! The ball was slowly coming down, and Neil never even moved to try to catch it -- he knew he might touch it and the ball might fall; it was caught bottom, bowled Davidson! I could not move from the crease for 10-15 seconds out of disbelief.dddddddddddd[I didnt feel it was a match-winning knock] at that time as the Australian innings was to come next, and we hadnt done very well either. They had to get 225, which you dont expect this Australian team not to get. There were not many verbal incidents, but [for] a little abuse here and there. Everybody was very tense, but the only thing we were told was fielding had to be tight and every catch had to be taken.It was a tight series, but they were the better side. But to beat Australia for the first time was a great achievement. In the evening, three or four of us met in a room and had a drink, but there were no celebrations. We had to catch the train at 7.30 in the night, so we were packing and running about. Back then, we did not have our return reservations to come back to Mumbai. As a matter of fact, one or two of us spread the bedding on the floor and slept on the first-class. This win gave us that push, but slowly that slope downwards started till we beat England in India in a series for the first time in 1960-61.The best tribute I got was at the end of the series from Richie Benaud after the Kolkata Test, that at that stage I was one of the finest opening batsman in the world. I was friendly with Alan Davidson, Neil Harvey, Richie Benaud and Normal O Neil. We had a dinner together at my place during the Bombay Test.Innings toh reminisce hota hi nahin [I dont reminisce these knocks]. Only four of us from that team -- Abbas Ali Baig, Bapu Nadkarni, Chandu Borde -- are still alive. Who else will remember? What baffles me even after all these years is how Neil Harvey caught me!As told to Arun Venugopal China NFL Jerseys Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys NFL Jerseys Cheap Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap Basketball Jerseys Online Stitched Hockey Jerseys Wholesale Baseball Jerseys Football Jerseys Outlet College Jerseys For Sale Cheap MLB Jerseys Wholesale Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys For Sale Wholesale NFL Jerseys ' ' '