Ask Him If He's Real

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a tennis ball bouncing, twice, then caught)
"Are you named after the shoe?"
He's been asked this for fifty years.

[Verse 1]
He won the US Open. Nineteen seventy-one.
Took Wimbledon the year after that, and the Davis Cup, and then some.
Number one in the world, a serve like a closing door —
and none of that is what he's known for anymore.
'Cause somebody put his name on a plain white leather shoe,
and it sold twenty million and then it sold a few million more.

[Chorus]
Ask him if he's real! Go on, somebody will!
"Is Stan Smith a person or is Stan Smith just a shoe?"
And he'll laugh, 'cause he's gracious, and he'll say "I'm the guy" —
and they'll blink and they'll nod and they won't quite believe it's true.
Ask him if he's real. He's realer than the shoe.
The shoe just got there first, and the shoe stayed newer too.

[Verse 2]
There's a green man on the tongue that isn't even him,
it's a line drawing of a face with a haircut and a grin,
and it's closer to a logo than a portrait of a man
who is out there in the world with a real and aging hand.
He signs them. That's the thing that gets me every time.
He signs the shoes. He signs his own name on his own design.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And he's fine! That's the part I want to say out loud —
he's not bitter, he's not haunted, he seems genuinely proud.
He says the shoe outlived the tennis, and the tennis was the joy,
and the rest is a curiosity he's happy to enjoy.
Not everybody loses when the name gets away.
Sometimes you just get famous in an accidental way.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(ball bounce, then a laugh)
"I'm the guy."
He really is the guy.