We Need Another Hero

Some of you may read this and think, “Oh crap, he’s writing about sports.” But this is about more than sports; it’s about the intrusion of sports into modern culture and taking a look back at how professional athletes used to fit into our society.

Barry Bonds is chasing a milestone that up until 1974 was believed to be unreachable. That year Hank Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth’s career home run record of 714 dingers. Now Bonds is within six homers of tying Hank Aaron’s record of 755 and there simply isn’t any excitement out there. At least there isn’t the excitement Aaron generated – both good and bad – in his run at the record in 1973 and 1974.

During the end of the 1973 season, the news media hounded Aaron and television cameras were everywhere to record the record-breaking home run. An America still steeped in racial bigotry was also present as Aaron received thousands of letters of hate mail because a black man dared to break a white legend’s record – never mind the fact that the white legend was a legendary cad.

Now that Bonds is nearing the record, it seems there is a collective ho-hum from the media and fans. It could be because the old Roger Maris record of 61 home runs was shattered three times by supposed steroid-filled hitters Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and then Bonds with 73 home runs. Or it could be that Bonds is not liked by fellow players and is silent to the media. Perhaps it is the swirl of controversy emanating from the BALCO scandal that implicates steroid use by Bonds, though he has never admitted using steroids nor been found guilty of their use. For all his current 749 home runs, nobody knows how many were hit before his alleged use of steroids, how many during or how many after, so we’ll always wonder where his legitimate talent ended and was overtaken by performance enhancing substances.

It’s likely baseball fans are yawning at what should be a major achievement for all of these reasons. And that’s what’s wrong with athletes and sports these days. Putting aside all the arguments that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron hit in smaller ball parks, batted against pitchers whose arms were dead from overuse and never had to face a split-finger fastball or a slider that fell off the plate, Aaron was easy to celebrate because he endured the attention and handled it all like a gentleman. One gets the feeling Bonds has become driven to break the record simply because he can and gets no enjoyment out of it. He knows once he breaks the record it will forever come with an asterisk, which will say more about the man than the towering home runs and his remarkable baseball longevity.

In many ways, it’s too bad Bonds is the bad guy in this. However much he has been rumored to be pumped up on steroids, he is hitting against pitchers who are likely steroid users and that’s only when they actually pitch to him. He draws a walk nearly twice as often as the next hitter and nobody is saying it takes steroids to have a good eye. This means he gets half as many attempts to hit a home run and even fewer good pitches to take a swing. Basically, he gets a home run every time a pitcher makes a mistake by throwing near the plate. Still, all is not right in Mudville.

I was talking to The Boy the other day and was lamenting (yes, Lazlo does lament) that he never got the chance to see Magic and Bird, the old Knicks and Lakers from the 1970s, Jim Brown, Gayle Sayers and the Bears and the Lombardi Packers. I wish he could have seen the old baseball players like Bob Gibson, Carl Yastrzemski and Al Kaline, the first Major League player to be paid $100,000 per season. Perhaps it’s just faded memories, but it seemed like they all played for the joy of the game and not the fame that has suddenly become greater in importance off the field and off the court than on them.

Much of the problem lies in the money today’s athletes earn. Outside of Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, nowhere does someone get paid more for having so little talent. Third rate short stops are earning $10 million per year, aging point guards $18 million per year and pot-bellied golfers (sorry Ber) are getting millions in endorsements to stretch into their stretch pants. But what they are paid is not everything. It’s the whole illusion of fame and the fact they have it thrust upon them at such a young age. You can find a website today that will tell you who the best 5th graders are at basketball and a 14-year-old basketball player just verbally committed to USC before he decided which high school to play for (hat tip to Nicholas on these tidbits before he desecrated my cell phone).

Sports is also covered differently today than it was in the past. We now have ESPN 1-8 with 24-hours of news to fill and a magazine to fill what’s left. Flip on any sports show tomorrow and you’ll hear more about the NBA draft than you ever heard about the military draft. Sure, I enjoy watching ESPN more than I do CNN, but all the coverage seems to go to the athlete’s heads, making sports more about the “bling” and $4,000 suits than getting the privilege to play a sport that most of us would do for minimum wage.

There was a time (sadly, during my time), that sports writers were the stars. Everyone knew and worshiped Red Smith, Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice and Jim Murray. Their stars were bigger and brighter than the players they covered and they were beloved because they too could do things few mere mortals could: bring the color and texture to sports before it was on television. These writers were paid more than most, if not all, of the sports figures they covered and the players looked up to them and hoped to get a mention in their columns.

After Curt Flood’s legal test brought about free agency and players salaries began to rise to 10 and 20 times that of the average sports writer, a certain economic and social status began to separate the two. Players and writers were no longer invited to the same parties and what they did have in common – the love of the game – began to fade away as the disparity in economic conditions drove a wedge between them. Today sports writers are often overly cynical of athletes and athletes do much to confirm an image of a coddled and protected super class of the modern star. When a minor football player like Pac Man Jones gets nearly as much air time for his third arrest as Paris Hilton did for hers, it’s saddening to see where sports has crossed over to the worst of our modern culture. And while film stars would love to get Paris et al off the cover of the tabloids, so we sports fans look for a throwback to a time when we looked up to our athletes both on and off the field. I suppose in both cases Tina Turner was wrong – we do need another hero.