Skeptics are taking the right approach

Gather `round the fire, kids, it’s time for a story.  About eight years ago I was studying abroad when a friend of mine, Ben Insel, told me rather nonchalantly that he was going to kick his nasty smoking habit.  Given how hard quitting is, especially with the inherent pressures in a culture that worships tobacco, I didn’t believe Ben for a second.  Later, when talking to some friends about some of the Americans in school who had taken up smoking during the year I listed Ben, to which my friends said “Ben quit.” For the next month I never saw a cigarette in Ben’s mouth and eventually began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I had underestimated the strength of my friend’s will.  Of course the second that happened I walked outside and saw Ben hanging out with the Marlboro Man.
The reason I’m letting you in on my exciting personal life is to make a point. In life, when you hear a nice story about someone in the process of overcoming his or her own failings and eventually rising to victory, you’re not being heartless if you’r skeptical. You’re being a realist.  Much as we love to root for the underdog, it’s rare and very unusual for good stories to end up like that.  Most of the time, much as we may hope for happy endings, those stories are few and far between.  

In regards to sports, we need constant reminders of this.  At the start of last season in the NBA, the comeback everybody was talking about referred to Vin Baker. Baker, suspended the year before for alcoholism, was said to have slimmed down significantly and finally licked his drinking problems. Sure enough, he showed up to training camp in peak condition and played as well as he had in six years. Celtics’ Executive Director of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge even saw fit to trade longtime Celtic power forward Antoine Walker as he already had a capable big man to play the position in Baker.  All was well. Baker was putting up consistent double-doubles and he had a complex support system designed to make sure he wouldn’t slip.  Still, within a couple months, Baker was back off the wagon and very shortly thereafter was suing the Celtics for wrongfully terminating his contract.  

Another not so happy example is Chris Herren. Herren, a product of Fresno State, was selected early in the second round of the 1999 NBA draft after having had numerous past drug problems. I heard him interviewed on the radio the day after the draft and was under the impression that this young man had it all figured out.  It was a foregone conclusion that substance abuse was a thing of the past for Herren as he played for two seasons in the NBA (one in Denver, one in Boston). Just a couple weeks back, Herren was in police custody after he passed out going through a Dunkin’ Donuts drive through, after which police found up to nice bags of Heroin in his car.  Cleary, his personal life had not been cleaned up as much as we may have hoped.  

The fact is that while we may worship these human beings for what they do in the sporting world, they are flawed individuals who deal with pressures with which the common person is completely unfamiliar.  However, no matter how many times Charles Barkley tells us that “he is not a role model,” we never seem to listen.  We look up to players and expect them to live up to expectations that we probably wouldn’t live up to ourselves.  We love to look for those stories to warm our hearts, but find ourselves disappointed time after time when it all goes bust.

Just take a look at Pedro Martinez’s exit from the Boston area a month and a half after leading the Red Sox to their first World Series championship in 86 years.  Fans and media alike believed that maybe Pedro would accept some hometown discount and stay with what was obviously a winning formula instead of going to a dysfunctional franchise like the Mets.  After seven years in a Sox uniform, even with the love and respect showered upon #45 by the fans and front office, we were given every indication that money was all Martinez cared about. Yet, at the same time, we dared to hope, even to anticipate his return to Beantown after his contract finally expired.  When it comes right down to it, Pedro accepted much more money to relocate to New York and few if any of us would ever have turned down such an opportunity.   No matter how much we might want it to, there’s very little loyalty that will outweigh upwards of $10 million.

Think about the stories that ended the way you’d want. You’d have Kirby Puckett and Brad Radke staying in Minnesota for less money. Jim Jackson went from being a coach’s nightmare to a dream. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll have Grant Hill actually coming back to be a great player again after numerous surgeries and countless setbacks.  That’s about all I can come up with off the top of my head.  

Now look at the heartwarming stories that weren’t in sports over the last few years. Our own Edgar Renteria left St. Louis for more money in Boston. Ron Artest supposedly calmed down enough for the Indiana Pacers to get the best record in the NBA last season but then self destructed in the playoffs. Latrell Sprewell was a good soldier in New York for years after his, you know, choking incident, only to show his true colors in an expletive filled rant against Scott Layden upon his return to the city that never sleeps as well as some ludicrous and, quite frankly, stupid comments about his family going hungry if the Timberwolves don’t pay up next year after getting $14.6 million this season.

We owe it to ourselves to, as the saying goes, hope for the best and expect the worst.  As much as we might want things to turn out the way we think they rightfully should, there are too many reasons why they won’t, especially when we’re talking about professional athletes. Given that they have money, women, alcohol and yes-men aplenty thrown at them, to say nothing of the constant media scrutiny revolving around their every move, these athletes are almost set up to fail.  So remember, you’re not being cynical if the glass really is half empty.