Searching for Heroes

I may be asking for too much. Really, why should athletes be any different than fans? Ignorance, like misery, loves company. I saw in the paper today that Vikings’ quarterback Kirk Cousins is an anti-vaxxer. Sorry, had COVID, know its real. Also, too much education. I understand individual liberties do not trump (you decide if there’s a pun there) the public good. In other words, the two dolts I saw at the grocery this morning didn’t have the right, God- or Constitution-given, to walk down the aisles maskless because there is no right, God- or Constitution-given, to infect others. I keep waiting, but no sport seems to have generated a COVID equivalent of Bob Feller, who enlisted in the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor. Unlike Joe DiMaggio, Feller saw combat, and plenty of it, aboard the battleship USS Alabama serving for over two years as a gunnery captain. Feller didn’t complain about missing out on virtually four seasons during the prime of his career and most likely another 100 wins to add onto the 266 he totaled. “I have no regrets,” he once told a HOF publication of his decision to enlist. “The only win I wanted was to win World War II.” I’m not suggesting Feller was a saint; if he had been, he would have voiced early support for baseball breaking the color line. But he still did something important that affected his career and could have cost him his life. And Kirk Cousins? Well, he is risking his life.