Month: May 2003

MONEY PLAYERS

When you get right down to it, value is an easy standard to measure. How much are you willing to pay? Simple as that. How much would you spend to see Shaq throw it down? How much for Shawn Bradley to do the same? Following are the eight athletes for whom I’d be happy to fork over some cash. And keep in mind: on a sportswriter’s salary, I don’t part with a buck easily. (One qualifier: if your face is on SportsCenter five times a day — that means you, LeBron — I’ve had my fix.)

8) Alex Rodriguez — What a shame this legend-in the-making is a Texas Ranger. (Imagine Michelangelo being commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Roman Rotary Club.) He’s vastly overpaid in a sport where one slugger just can’t make the difference between winning and losing. But he’ll also be the first baseball player to hit 756 home runs.

7) Tony Hawk — Scoff if you must, but this Gen-X poster boy is doing for skateboarding what Richard Petty did for stock car racing. His talents on the halfpipe have spawned Tony Hawk video games and a Tony Hawk TV series. He’s even appeared on “The Simpsons.” The patron saint of skinned knees, Hawk is an icon to millions of American teen-agers. I’d still pay to see him ride the wind.

6) David Beckham — Among icons in soccer-crazed London, Manchester United’s thunder-legged goal machine is almost as Big as Ben. With the athletic aura of Kobe Bryant, the sex appeal of Brad Pitt, and tabloid flare that would make Michael Jackson blush, this guy is a cleat-wearing modern-day Jimmy Dean. Beckham’s name is in the title of a movie in which he doesn’t even appear, for crying out loud. And hey, he married a Spice Girl.

5) Serena Williams — Star power can be measured by the number of names you need to describe someone. The one-name wonders — Michael, Magic, Emmitt — are the athletes who make up their own elite constellation. Serena belongs in this company. With a body you’d expect to see on one of those pro wrestling vixens, Serena has slammed women’s tennis into the 21st century. Everyone else on the tour — including older sister Venus — is playing for second.

4) Michael Vick — You just had to wonder what we’d see if the football gods managed to morph Barry Sanders and Dan Marino. Well, he’s wearing a number-7 Atlanta Falcons jersey (the third ttest NFL item nationwide). Pro football is a tough landscape for individual stardom (too many 300-pound bodies obstructing our view). Vick is the rare talent who can win a game by himself.

3) Michael Schumacher — If you want to read a great sports profile (yes, they do exist), check out Jeff MacGregor’s story on this Formula One legend in the April 28th issue of Sports Illustrated. Somehow, a driver with more earnings than Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, or Dale Earnhardt Jr. would dare dream about hasn’t made so much as a ripple on the U.S. sports scene (see Bekham, David). Schumacher’s a rock star — and then some — in street clothes across The Pond. Behind the wheel of a Ferrari at 180 mph? He’s a deity.

2) Tiger Woods — Count me among the army. The Golden Age of Sport had Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Bill Tilden. My generation has been lucky enough to see Gretzky, Jordan, and now Mr. Major. I value sports history too much to call Tiger the greatest golfer of all time . . . let him win his 19th major and we’ll hand him Jack Nicklaus’ crown. But as for aura? Clout? Presence? Charisma? Look for the guy in red and black on Sunday.

1)Lance Armstrong — Forget his athletic achievements for a moment. This cycling demigod is a modern-day hero for having beaten cancer. But to follow such an epic victory with four consecutive yellow jackets at the Tour de France (the single most grueling sporting event in the world) is nothing short of superhuman. With a name and sponsor (the U.S. Postal Service) as American as apple pie, Armstrong will be mistaken as fictional a few generations from now. As if we needed another reason to love him, he’s called a liar and a cheat . . . by the French.

HOMAGE TO THE DON

In 1995, millions of us paid seven bucks for a ticket and several more for popcorn when a media acquaintance of ours called Richard Dreyfus played a simple high school music teacher whose career and caring deeply affected the lives of his students. At the end, hundreds of them met in a grateful homage to Mr. Holland and played his symbolic ‘Opus’ for the first time before an audience. Reviewers called this scenario ‘Capra-esque’. One even used the word ‘sappy’ to indicate how unrealistic he found the idea of lasting, unbidden gratitude for something as simple as guidance to the young.

Yet I attended exactly such a gathering on a cool and damp Friday evening in April. Four hundred of us paid good money for banquet food and more for an indifferent wine at the cash bar to honor Doctor Don Carson’s years at the University of Memphis. Such events can have an air of the routine – a perfunctory act of obeisance for high-ranking university officials that is nothing more than the discharge of an obligation. But no one in attendance this night came for that purpose or left with that impression.

The ballroom was packed with well-wishers, many of whom, like me, had known him as their teacher. Some of his success stories took the dais for a good-natured roast of their mentor and friend. It was a roast, but not a char-grilling where there were many laughs, and even some tears as prominent alums and staff came to pay him oblique and occasionally embarrassing tribute.

There were the good-natured ribs about his penchant for hugging countless pretty co-eds, his somewhat checkered success at dieting, his mannerism of making a triangle of his hands across the desk from a chastened underclassman, and his habit of removing his shoes when he was deep in conversation with a student. The photographic montage created by his staff in the Office of Student Affairs showed the journey of a man whose hair was once fuller, his waistline thinner and the path not yet taken waiting to be trod. The superficially disrespectful presentation could only have been produced with genuine affection and a few of the speakers expressed dread – with tongue firmly in cheek – that the good Doctor would have the final word, the marquee opportunity to return the playful barbs with studied and deadly accuracy. They needn’t have worried, however. When the time came, only the fondness was expressed – the fondness of a wise innkeeper for the travelers who had shared his hearth on many a long, cold journey.

The evening was itself long, as such things are measured. Attendees had given up a perfectly good Friday night. They overpaid for the food and questionable service delivered in a noisy, brightly lit hotel hall that was anything but elegant. There was the one treasured friend, but for the most part they mingled with strangers and sat through the reading of some of these strangers’ résumés by way of introduction. Yet they stayed, the ballroom as full at the conclusion of the program as it was at the beginning.

It is my belief that one’s life is best measured by those in attendance at our funeral. The only problem is we don’t get to be there to gauge the importance of our life. When one retires, as Don Carson did, our contributions are made manifest and it must be an experience both rich and humbling. Dr. Carson’s halting and emotional speech left no doubt that he felt both those things.

In the movie Mr. Holland was surprised by the outpouring of love. It gave a more dramatic punctuation to the film’s denouement. Don Carson cannot have been surprised at all. Overwhelmed most certainly, but he is far too intelligent and perceptive not to have some sense of the contributions he made over those years and the gratitude engendered. He knows that he was a very lucky man to have had that opportunity. And we, the witnesses and beneficiaries, are supremely lucky to have shared in it.