You watch Barry Sanders for the losses—when he stumbles backward to avoid an ankle tackle, switches direction, away from the design of the play, can't escape—as much for the moments when these accidents take him into the open field...
You watch him for what might happen.
The texture of the games are of him! Whether the Lions have the ball; whether they pass or run when they do; what happens when he touches it...
Barry Sanders' running is an example of the extreme sensitivity of form.
You can also call this limits.
Watching Barry Sanders is like reading a poem.
In his poem responding to the attacks of 9/11, Ben Lerner, a poet in the generation just ahead of mine, writes:
"Formalism is the belief that the eye does violence to the object it apprehends.
All formalisms are therefore sad.
A negative formalism acknowledges the violence intrinsic to its method.
...
Negative formalisms catalyze an experience of structure.
The experience of structure is sad,
but, by revealing the contingency of content,
it authorizes hope."
The strange thing about Barry Sanders was that, in a sport like football, he avoided violence. Players rarely were able to tackle him, head-on, because he moved to such an impossible logic. He was in absolutely perfect shape for a running back his age; at the height of his career. I was out of the room when news of his retirement hit ESPN. I didn't believe Will, my best friend at the time, and so we watched SportsCenter all the way through, until it started back over.
