Show Me The Money.
That is the game plan for sports in the ’90s, but wait. There is more of less. Turn the page in the playbook and you’ll find another staple of this corrupted workplace.
It Wasn’t My Fault.
Athletes might not know how to pass the ball, but, oh, have they mastered the knack of passing the blame. It has become an art form and it is not restricted to the jocks. Gray suits in front offices everywhere absolve themselves of responsibility, and, yes, the media are also culpable.
Rare are the instances now when players accept their fate without feeling an urge to spin and squirm. The stronger the bodies, the healthier the bankbooks, the weaker the spines.
Greg Maddux was the vanquished foe in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series against the Florida Marlins, whose Livan Hernandez fanned 15 Braves. Most of Maddux’s Atlanta teammates scorched plate umpire Eric Gregg for the embarrassment, but Maddux begged to differ. A strike is a strike, he said. The kid Hernandez just beat me today.
Mike Tyson, of all people, issued an apology after he humiliated himself in his June rematch against Evander Holyfield. I just snapped, Tyson confessed. His explanation was a bit tardy, and part of Holyfield’s anatomy was missing, but at least Tyson didn’t say he lost because Holyfield’s ear hadn’t been fastened on tightly enough.
So much for rarities. The ongoing Latrell Sprewell mess is just another example of what pollutes sport. After Sprewell twice accosted coach P.J. Carlesimo, the athlete’s greasy agent, Arn Tellem, immediately showed the race card. He was accompanied in impulsive stupidity by a political pinhead, Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco.
In time, this specious argument was withdrawn, which is a start. But the direction does not change. The Sprewell incident is about something even more insidious than black versus white. It is about absence of accountability, an equal-opportunity destroyer of the soul.
Michael Jordan, a legend on his farewell tour, nevertheless frets for the NBA, which he says is at a crossroads. Respect for the game has ebbed and all the demons that diminish baseball now infiltrate the league he loves. The 10 p.m. news programs that once broadcast scores and highlights opt for updates from the police blotter.
David Stern, the NBA commissioner, landed feet first on Sprewell’s chest. But before Sprewell and his dream team of lawyers pursue an appeal, they might consider that one reason why Sprewell stands to lose so much money is because the industry has been robust, largely because Stern resuscitated its once-sorry image. The golden goose Stern protects has visited Latrell Sprewell’s home.
It was giants who cared, like Jordan and Bird and Magic, who filled Sprewell’s pockets with money from corporations that liked what they saw. Besides, in the benign playpen, Sprewell will get another chance, as did Lawrence Phillips, who pulled his ex-girlfriend down the stairs by her hair gently enough so as not to kill her.
But the madness is everywhere. Tiger Woods spoke the other day of watching an old film clip about the Los Angeles Lakers stepping off a plane after securing an NBA title. Fans waited, politely, for autographs. Woods then pointed to his face, where he had been cut last year by pens.
Alas, spectators imitate performers, perhaps after reading screaming headlines or hearing broadcast bulletins that are unfounded and may or may not be recanted the next day, depending on who did what to whom in the delusional bubble of sports.
Athletes are more loyal to their unions than their uniforms now, and even the fat owners who make it all possible by paying to pad their egos run so fast from the truth.
So many accountants, yet so little accountability. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault.