Coaxed by Soledad O'Brien, Hispanic interviewer for CNN, Miami Heat basketball star LeBron James admitted in a Monday TV taping that he felt racism played some part in the overwhelmingly negative public reaction to his dramatic, ESPN-orchestrated free agent "decision" televised this summer.
Oh, really? I guess it's my fault, not LeBron's ego, and not "World-Leader" ESPN again acting as if it were bigger than sports. And what of Ms. O'Brien's responsibility for having framed her question in racial terms in the first place?
Do I as a 63-year-old white sports fan get off the hook as a racist if I feel boyishly-enthusiastic, southern white football quarterback Brett Favre is just as big an ego-maniacal boor as James? In fact, I'll say Brett has earned a far greater annoyance factor because he has pulled his insufferable "I might be retired, I might not" act for not one but three straight seasons.
Give LeBron some credit. He contributed all of his income from the hour-long ESPN show to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Good for him. What's Brett done?
While I don't pretend to speak for all white sports fans, I believe we white fans mostly have preferred our sports heroes to write a decent-sized check to charities and not make such a public spectacle of it.
We also prefer athletes who play team sports to act a bit more as if their purpose were to contribute to their team winning games, not act as though the sport was created as their personal stage. Thousands of teammates from all parts of the globe worked together to win. For example, Lou Gehrig (a German-American with a heavy New York accent) and Joe DiMaggio (a San Francisco Italian) acted this way, so did Jackie Robinson (a Southern California-bred black) and Pee Wee Reese (a Louisville white), Roberto Clemente (a Puerto Rican black) and Bob Moose (a small-town Pennsylvania white), Gale Sayers (an Omaha-born black) and Brian Piccolo (a Florida-born white), Juan Marichal (a Dominican black) and Bill Haller (an Illinois white), Cookie Gilchrist (a Pennsylvania black by way of Canada) and Pete Gogolak (a Hungarian-born white), Rod Carew (a Panamanian black) and Harmon Killebrew (an Idaho white), and Sandy Koufax (a Brooklyn Jew) and John Roseboro (an Ohio black).
I guess we're guilty of asking today's athlete to act like a teammate and not an over-inflated deity. Guilty as charged.
--Bob Boyles
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