Who's To Blame?

When names like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Bobby Orr and Jim Brown are brought up, what comes to mind? I'd venture a guess that topics such as shooting your self in the leg, dog fighting, womanizing, and other random sexual transgressions aren't first. For me, these great athletes that our fathers grew up reading about in the newspaper and seeing on TV were iconic figures, demigods almost, two-dimensional stars that they looked up to as kids on the walls of their bedrooms.

Almost all my thoughts about these sports deities are positive, whether it be The Splendid Splinter giving up five years in the prime of his career to fly planes for the U.S. Armed Forces, or Russell and Wilt's epic battles between each other on the court – and their subsequent friendship off it; And Hammerin' Hank, an African-American who endured the wrath of breaking the all-time longball record the immortal Babe Ruth held for so long in one of America's most tumultuous eras. Bobby Orr and Jim Brown seem to me men that worked damn hard to get where they got and deserved every last bit of praise for what they did on their fields of battle.

Kids, and probably adults too, looked up to these athletes because they all appeared to us mere humans clean as whistles, a more impressive breed of men that stood above all others, succeeding the most in the darkest hour to come out victorious.


But today's athletes . . . They now appear mere humans like us, except they make tens of millions of dollars and get their photos taken by TMZ, their personal lives strewn across the internet like Kool-Aid splattered across a kitchen counter. The media saturation is unbelievable. The closest thing to squeaky clean and cool-as-a-cucumber athlete todsay is Tiger Woods. The man is in some way realted to Teflon, I'm not sure how.

Other than the flesh-and-bones melting pot himself, no one comes to mind as seemingly other-worldly, a dominant figure. Tiger pulled what is commonly refer to as a "Willis Reed" in the recent past, playing in, and winning, the 2008 U.S. Open with a torn ACL and stress fractures in his tibia, and I think it was legitimate. He rose above, called upon extra will and determination, and Got. It. Done.
Somehow, Tiger seems to have stayed above the constant barrage of media pokings and proddings, while most of our other "super star" athletes' lives are hung out like a load of laundry on a clothesline across Mass Ave.
I can only assume that the idols our fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles looked up to tended to have stranger-than-normal personal lives off the courts, fields and rinks than you and I. They had skeletons to hide, I'm sure, but they stayed out of the light of day because those were different times. The Media's agenda has changed enormously since those Glory Days. Stand-up, blue collar, family-oriented stars are not featured on ESPN; trouble-makers and show-boaters are.
I don't think anyone will ever hold a candle to Orr, Muhammed Ali, Williams, Aaron or Russell, et al. They are elevated for all eternity in my eyes. The question is, do we – or will we ever – know all there is to know about these athletes? More importantly, would you really want to know if Ted Williams killed someone while driving drunk, or that Wilt had a gambling problem and had a penchant for young girls from Colorado?
If there are stories that have been permanantly swept under the rug, I'm glad. Because when it comes to the athlete-fan relationship, ignorance is bliss.