Athletes aren't role models

Athletes need role models. Why did Huggins incident surprise?

Smokin’ Keith Hernandez

It didn’t take much to burst the bubble of the Heroic Athlete. In 1984, I was a cub reporter working in Norfolk, Va., when my sports editor sent me to New York for a weekend series, to do Mets stories. The Mets’ Triple-A farm team, the Tidewater Tides, played in Norfolk and in those days, incredible talent passed through seemingly daily:

Darryl Strawberry was a Tide. So were Dwight Gooden, Kevin Mitchell and Ron Darling. Davey Johnson managed them. Marty Brennaman called Tides games before the Reds beckoned.

I was 26 in ‘84, a couple years removed from covering high school sports. The pros still wowed me. Until the moment in ‘84 when I walked into the Mets postgame clubhouse and spotted Keith Hernandez at his locker, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, or especially shocking. It just jarred my junior-reporter sensibilities.

Makes his day

In ‘85, I spent a weekend in Philly, doing essentially the same thing. The Pirates were at the Vet, go do some features. Bill Madlock was Pittsburgh’s 3B, an aging star I’d been told had a welcoming personality. That wasn’t quite accurate.

Before a game, I walked up to Madlock’s locker and said, “Hi, Bill, I’m Paul Daugherty of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.’’ I might as well have worn a beanie on my head, with a propeller on top.

“That just makes my (mucking) day,’’ Madlock said.

I tried keeping my composure, fake-chuckling and saying, “I’m sure it does. Do you have a few minutes?’’

Madlock never looked up. “I’d rather (have relations with) a two-headed goat.’’

Hello, pro sports.

Media heathens do not enter the profession jaded. Cynicism is a learned sport. Sports hacks learn it quickly.

Since Madlock, nothing that has happened involving a pro athlete has surprised me, good or bad. They’re just people. Which is a windy way of addressing our fixation with jocks as people worthy of emulation. Sports have an outsized place on our grand stage. That automatically imbues their professional participants with unrealistic expectations about how they should behave.

Athletic skill does not confer lofty moral standards.

Translation:

Athletes aren’t role models. Athletes need role models.

This comes up now, in the aftermath of the Huggins Thing. I read a lot of reactions to Bob’s reference to “f—-.’’ The only one that impacted me was the notion — apparently still widely held — that athletes (and those who coach/manage them) are held to a higher standard and should behave accordingly.

Yeah? When did that start? When Babe Ruth caroused around the country as Ty Cobb slurred black people and the Black Sox threw World Series games?

When Ray Rice punched a woman in an elevator? When Pete Rose did Pete Rose stuff, baseball activities excluded? What about Tiger Woods? Is he a role model? Or has he needed one since Earl passed? (And Pops wasn’t exactly up for sainthood.)

Bob Huggins is a pro athlete, in essence. He played basketball, he has coached basketball since his playing career ended. He is entirely of the jock culture. Locker rooms are no place for the timid or easily offended. To think Huggins is alone — or, daresay, even in the minority — in the thoughts he so casually expressed Friday — is also to think that athleticism confers good-ness.

I don’t mean to paint with too broad a brush. Far more pro athletes are decent people than are not. The key word is people. If you and I can slur people we deem different from us, why would we be shocked/saddened/disgusted when athletes do it?

One of the good ones

I’ve been fortunate to know a lot of pro athletes who are also exceptional humans: Anthony Munoz leaps to mind. Reggie Williams, Sean Casey, Skip Prosser. Men wholly worthy of our admiration.

When my son Kelly asked me about athletes (which wasn’t often, he was not a sports fan as a little kid) I’d say, “Admire them for what they do, not who they are.’’

I’ve looked at pro athletes that way since 1984. Thank you, Keith Hernandez and Bill Madlock.

Now, then. . .

HUGGINS GETS OFF LIGHT, EXCEPT IN HIS WALLET. . . ESPN.com reports that WVU will cut Huggins’ salary from $4.2 mil to $3.2 mil. He’ll incur a “significant’’ suspension, whatever that means, and will undergo sensitiviity training.

Sensitivity training? Huggs? That’s fly-on-the-wall stuff.

Oxymorons O’ The Day. . . “Working Journalist’’ and “Sensitive Bob Huggins’’

Kumbaya, kids.

I half-thought WVU Prez Gordon Gee would send Huggins off with some lovely parting gifts. That was pre-’84 me thinking. It came down to this or this:

This: Take a stand.

This: Protect a Hall of Fame coach who has made you lots of money and jock cachet.

Not many schools would have the guts to take a stand. This is if you believe West Virginia should have fired Huggins. I do not. I had hoped that something more profound than a big fine would occur, though. Huggins won’t miss a minute on the court, doing what he loves.

IF YOU WANT THE REAL SCOOP ON hardball players, trust the Fantasy experts. I’m joking. Maybe. Here’s what Yahoo’s fantasy savant says about Reds Phee-nom Andrew Abbott:

Reds prospect Andrew Abbott has struck out 60 batters in his 30 2/3 innings over six starts in the high minors, which is, of course, outrageous. Some of you might recall him doing this sort of thing at the collegiate level at Virginia, where he struck out 327 in 215 career innings.

He's not a flamethrower by the standards of this era, though we all would've been impressed enough by his velocity 20 years ago. Abbott has a four-pitch arsenal with disgusting breaking stuff, and he seems to have made gains in control.

NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT. . If I were the Reds marketing/PR folks, I’d spend every spare moment talking about coming attractions. Why, Doc?

It takes minds off the current attractions.

It’s genuine positivity, not the forced variety that makes me wince.

Some of these bus riders are legitimate future stars.

I’d show Elly de la Cruz video on the big board about a million times a game. From Baseball America:

On Tuesday, Cincinnati's top prospect put together one of the most absurd nights in recent memory. In his first three at-bats, he slammed a double and two home runs—one from each side of the plate.

In his second at-bat, he throttled a slider 456 feet just to the left of dead-center field. The home run was hit 116.6 mph. It was the softest of his three hits on the evening.

An inning later, De La Cruz did it again. This time he got a 93 mph fastball and crushed it a mere 428 feet, roughly to the same spot his first home run landed. The exit velocity on that one? 117.1 mph. And it still wasn't the hardest ball he hit in the game.

In the 2nd inning, De La Cruz (sent) a double into the left-field corner that left the bat at an absurd 118.8 mph.

As if the hard contact weren't enough, De La Cruz keeping the ball in the park meant he got to show off his elite speed. He reached 28.7 feet per second while motoring to second base, good for the fourth-fastest sprint speed of the game.

De La Cruz finished the evening 3-for-4 with a double, two home runs, four RBIs and two walks.

AND FINALLY. . . What 6 AM looked like today

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Had nothing bangin’ ‘round my head today, so I went to my Apple, called up Songs and hit Shuffle once. This came up. It’s an incredible example of the Beach Boys unsurpassed harmonies, and it doesn’t even flow from the 1960s Brian Wilson Dream Machine. More like late 90s, early 2000s.

Absolutely love this tune.