The words, printed in Sports Illustrated and written by essayist Tom Verducci, were matter-of-fact and not especially controversial:
“Given the current run of fallen sports idols, it is time to recognize, once and for all, the perversion in equating athletic skill with social value.”
That’s the conventional wisdom these days, even in Sports Illustrated-that great athletes are not necessarily people to look up to. In the same essay, Verducci quotes a major-league baseball executive: “Just because someone can hit or throw a baseball doesn’t necessarily mean he is a hero.”
We know that now; it has been drummed into our consciousnesses for years, and because of the O. J. Simpson case it is being brought up again, and frequently. Great athletes can be imperfect people, we are repeatedly told, so don’t model your children after them. Let your boys and girls idolize sports stars at their own risk.
Which is fine, and certainly the truth of it has been proven. But just for a second or two, let’s turn it around. Let’s assume that it’s unwise to hold sports stars up as heroes. By accepting that premise-sports stars should not automatically be looked up to-do we lose anything?
Probably we do. Much has been written about how, in long-gone times, sportswriters knew all kinds of bad stuff about famous athletes, but kept that information from the public. Babe Ruth is the oft-cited example; if Americans had been told the truth about Babe Ruth, they never would have been willing to accept him as a legend.
So now we get the unvarnished truth. Children are told that many athletic stars are deeply flawed. Don’t go making heroes out of ballplayers, the boys and girls are lectured; don’t turn your favorite ballplayer into your-here comes that awful phrase-role model.
The problem with this is: If a ballplayer should not be expected to be a hero, then who should be a hero? Teachers, we easily and glibly say; teachers should be heroes, doctors should be heroes, scientists should be heroes, judges should be heroes. Those are the kinds of people-not athletes-we should tell the youngsters of America to emulate.
But teachers, like ballplayers, can sometimes foul up in their personal lives; doctors can make terrible mistakes that have nothing to do with their medical skill, scientists can turn out to be frail and deficient, judges can show wretched judgment. They aren’t televised like professional athletes are, so the public glare isn’t as great. But they mess up. It’s a product of being human. Make a person a hero and wait to be disappointed.
By recognizing that our heroes often aren’t, we harden ourselves to the realities of life, but we also create a hero void. That was one of the nice things about the gullible age when the American press-including Sports Illustrated-made sports stars larger, and better, than life: It may have been a false and unrealistic picture, but it filled a need. A country needs heroes; the children of a country, especially, need heroes, and if the heroes aren’t there, they have to be invented.
Mickey Mantle, now that we know about his wrenching struggle with alcohol, and about the other pitfalls in his life that struggle brought on, is a human-scaled figure today; we look at him and we see us, or at least some version of us. Mantle, it can be argued, was poorly served by being turned into a hero.
But were the children who were fed the white lie poorly served? Maybe not. Mantle, whatever his own torments, provided something good for the boys and girls who never knew about his pain. He was a strong, happy, blond boy in the sunshine, a New York Yankee who could do anything and had everything. That’s what the hero-makers were selling, and if we bought it whole-well, that was all right. Those of us who grew up believing that Mantle represented the best life had to offer-do any of us feel cheated today, do any of us feel that we got a raw deal by being told that untruth?
We weren’t cheated. We just were permitted to have our innocence remain unsullied for a little longer than it might have been. Mantle may have suffered; we thrilled.
That doesn’t happen much these days. Perhaps it never will again. The rules change. Heroes are scarce. That’s life. Knowing that, we are wiser. Happier? Don’t change the subject.
