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.

I Hate John Paxson

I was six years old, my shaggy hair was pushed to the right, dividing my large, round head. I had on a green, button up Killer Tomatoes shirt and was sitting on the floor of my living room. My face was two feet from the screen of the television. “Danny, scoot back, you’re going to hurt your eyes,” my mom repeated. I already needed glasses; she just didn’t know that yet. I inched closer and closer to the television as the clock ticked away on the basketball game I was watching. It was game 6 of the 1993 NBA finals and the Suns were playing the Bulls. I was obsessed with the Suns and Dan Majerle was my God and they were playing the hated Michael Jordan’s Bulls. I sat there watching as a little known Bulls role player named John Paxson lined up and took a three with little time remaining and the Suns up by two. I stared as the ball spun in the air, and was just happy that Michael Jordan wasn’t the one shooting it. But it ripped the chords and went in. I cried when the Suns lost and have hated John Paxson ever since.

I thought of this moment yesterday when my sister asked, “Why are all these people so angry with Lebron James? God, people take sports so seriously, it’s ridiculous.” I see this response from non-sports fans all the time. They think it is silly to get so attached to grown men playing games.

“It’s sports hate,” I explained to her, “which is it’s own category of hate. When I say, I hate someone who plays on the Lakers, I don’t hate them in the same sense I hate someone who is a racist and kicks puppies.”

“But some people take it way too seriously.”

“Some people do, but you have to understand that people are invested in their teams. You cried at the end of Lost and those are fictional characters. Sports have real human beings doing real things.”

“They’re playing a game, the people on Lost were doing important things.”

I can only laugh at that argument. She may be right, it is kind of ridiculous to get so wrapped up in men you don’t know playing games for millions of dollars. Part of me is embarrassed that I take it so seriously. But the emotions I have with sports are genuine, and at a time in my life when I have fewer and fewer genuine emotions, that is something I want to hold onto. I can’t recapture the joy of running out to see my gifts from Santa on Christmas morning, but sports make me feel just the way I did when I was six. They make me jump out of my seat and yell at the top of my lungs. That is a rare thing and I am not going to let my brain talk me out of it because sometimes I am embarrassed by it. For all I know, John Paxson is a very nice man, but that doesn’t change the fact that every time I hear his name, I wish he was standing in front of me so I could kick him in the shin and run away.

The Worst Commercial Of All Time

For those who don't know, this is why I hate John Paxson.