See Ya

The Major League Baseball trade deadline just came and went and The Diamondbacks made a lot of moves, the biggest of which was trading Dan Haren to The Angels. Every year, I am reminded that I can't get too attached to the players on my teams because they may be gone at any moment. In this world of fantasy team owning sports fans, no one seems to want to watch the same players day in and day out. Fans are as interested in trades nowadays as they are in the actual playing of the games. I feel like I may be the only person who wants to see the same players year in and year out and watch them grow from rookies to veterans on one team and retire with that team. I don't want to see Brett Favre in a Vikings jersey or Michael Jordan in a Wizards jersey. It just doesn't look right; I want to see the Cal Ripkens and the Larry Birds retire with the right colors on.

Even the players you think would never be traded are not safe. The Suns traded Dan Majerle, one of the most popular Suns of all time and my favorite player ever, for John " Hot Rod" Williams in 1995. And the fans were largely to blame. As Majerle was getting older, he started shooting more and more threes and we saw less of the thunderous dunks of his youth that gave him his nickname Thunder Dan. Fans became restlesss and wanted him gone. I was crushed by this trade, and worst of all so was Dan Majerle. He never wanted to wear another jersey in his lifetime. In this era of players who demand trades and want to play in big markets like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, finding a player loyal to your organization is almost impossible. Teams and fans should hold onto these players when they find them.

Last summer, I felt like this was happening all over again when fans started calling for Steve Nash to be traded. "He doesn't play defense." "He can't win a championship." I wanted to grab every fan I heard complaining about Steve Nash and physically shake some sense into them. Steve Nash may be the greatest Suns player of all time and people actually wanted to trade him. Be careful what you wish for is all I can say because while the grass is always greener on the other side, it was not very fun to watch John "Hot Rod" Williams hobble up and down the court like Andre the Giant while Dan Majerle continued to be a great player with the Cavs and Heat. We ask for loyalty from players and show them none back. Luckily, The Suns kept Steve Nash and he rewarded us with an unlikely run to the Western Conference Championship. The fact is, I would not have traded Nash for Kobe Bryant even if I knew that we would win a championship. I would rather lose with Steve Nash than win with Kobe Bryant and I would hope that most other Suns fans would too.

Role Models

I was over at my sister's a few weeks ago and there was golf on the television. My nephew Jack, who is six years old, looked up at me and said, "I love Tiger Woods." I didn't know what to say. I wanted to steer him away from looking up to someone like Tiger, but I couldn't explain to him why. I just told him, "I like Phil Mickelson."

Now I see all these pictures of kids crying about Lebron James leaving The Cleveland Cavaliers and they are crushed by it. As I get older, I think about when I will have kids and how I don't want them looking up to athletes. When I was younger, one of my idols was Suns guard Jason Kidd. I played point guard on my grade school basketball team and I only wanted to play like Jason Kidd. He was an unselfish point guard who played to make his teammates better. There was even this cheesy commercial with clips of Jason Kidd and that Vertical Horizon song "Everything You Want" playing in the background. It's a terrible song, but I loved that commercial because I thought it summed up how great a person Jason Kidd was. The only problem was that he wasn't a great person, he was a great athlete, but I couldn't distinguish between the two as a kid. My world came crashing down when he was arrested for hitting his wife. I was sitting on the coffee table in my living room just staring at the television and wanting to believe he couldn't have done such a thing. I lived with my mom and three older sisters and respect for women had been hammered into my mind, so hitting women was unfathomable to me. I sat there in shock, just hoping that he was innocent.

But he wasn't and sports took on a different meaning for me that day. I never idolized an athlete like that again in my life. I look at my nephew's love of Tiger Woods and realize that he is going to feel that same disappointment one day. I don't want my kids to be let down like that, but how can you let them watch sports, and keep them from idolizing the players they cheer for? I want them to experience the same joy that sports have brought me and leave out all the pain, but I don't think the two can be separated. I can only hope that future athletes start to take the idea of being a role model a little more seriously.