Scandal-fed Stereotypes

It was bound to happen in the wake of the NFL scandal.  Yesterday, a letter writer to the Tribune complained “athletes are treated like royalty beginning when they are still children.”  Well, yes and no.

I went to a Catholic boys’ high school, St. Lord-of-the-Flies, where only the strong survived.  I wasn’t Piggy, but I knew some kids who were, and things didn’t go well for them.  Football players in particular tended to be a brutish lot, which helps explain my lukewarm fandom for the game in later years.

But I never had a problem with Jim Dwyer, two years ahead of me.  Maybe he didn’t act like royalty because he didn’t know yet that he’d have an eighteen-year career in the major leagues that took him all the way to the age of 40.  For that matter, I never had a problem with baseball players.

Neither did Clare.  There was one kid in particular a year ahead of her in high school.  He got drafted twice and signed with the Angels.  According to my daughter, he was ok without much or any of a big head.  I think baseball is different somehow.  Maybe it’s that old adage about .300 hitters failing 70 percent of the time.  There’s a built-in humility to the game—and no cheerleaders.

It also depends on gender.  In girls’ sports it’s hard to get too full of yourself because you’ll never end up in a situation like Jim Dwyer.  The “pros” for women don’t promise the same kind of payoff.  Instead, female athletes from early on know that a post-sport life awaits them upon graduation, and that has to keep them grounded.

What struck me about having an athlete for a child was all the work she put in it.  If anyone treated her like royalty, the princess knew she could be kicked down to commoner status for lack of production.  Clare always worked hard—as in hours of extra practice—to hit better and field better.  Then she came home to schoolwork.  Did I mention she graduated seventh out of a class of 800?

Not every athlete is Marie Antoinette or Henry VIII.