When Sports 'Heroes' Aren’t

The Boston Herald

When my son phones from England, where he now lives, he always says, "What's up?" So I give him the latest family news. I tell him about one sister's impending wedding. "We ordered the tuxes. You need to send your measurements. I don't have my dress yet." I fill him in on the basics.

Then we talk about his other sister. "Tell her to break a leg this weekend," he says. "Tell her I'm sorry I'm not there to see her play."

Then when his father is home, they talk about sports. But when he's not, I wing it. But the truth is, what I know about sports is only what I read in the news sections. So it's been a monotonous litany of scandals and arrests that I've been passing along.

"You know who David Meggett is?"

"Of course I know, Mom."

I didn't. But I do now. I know that David Meggett, a New England Patriot, hired a prostitute for three-way sex and that his condom broke, and that according to the woman it was then that Meggett's pal - the trois in the menage - held her down while Meggett, over the woman's protestations, had sex with her anyway.

Then the football star, apparently dissatisfied with her performance, allegedly hit her in the face and took back the money he'd paid her for sex.

I also know that New England Patriot David Meggett has fathered five children by an assortment of women, none of whom he has married.

I give my son baseball news - that Red Sox superstar Mo Vaughn beat a drunk-driving charge even though he plowed into a parked car at 2 a.m. on his way home from the Foxy Lady. It didn't matter that he couldn't walk a straight line or stand without staggering, that he had alcohol on his breath, that his eyes were glassy and that he couldn't even recite the alphabet. The jury acquitted him. Good thing no one was in that parked car, we agree.

Then I tell him that Bernie Gilkey, a Mets star ("You know who he is?" "Yes, Mom. I know."), was arrested in Florida this week and it's Mo Vaughn minus the parked car all over again. Gilkey smelled of alcohol and failed three sobriety tests. We agree he'll walk, too.

I give my son basketball news - that Latrell Sprewell ("Are you familiar with that name?" "Yes, I am, Mom."), got his suspension reduced and his contract reinstated because some arbiter decided that Sprewell's behavior - he tried to choke his coach on two occasions - didn't warrant such stiff punishment.

After we hung up, I thought about how much I know about these people I don't know, and how much time and mental space and energy are spent talking about, extolling and condemning sports figures who are supposed to be heroes but don't come close.

My son used to collect baseball cards.  They're still upstairs in a bureau drawer. When he was in fourth grade, his teacher caught him looking at his Red Sox cards during reading. She took them from him and threw them in the trash. It was 1978. He'd been looking at his 1975 World Series collection. To this day it bothers him that his teacher threw those cards away. That's how important baseball was and is. Now, of course, he separates the players' lives from their performance. That's what adults do. But not kids. They buy into it all. Athletes may not want to be kids' heroes but they are. Kids revere them. Adoration comes with the territory.

So I wonder this morning, how do mothers and fathers explain away driving drunk, paying for sex, group sex, sex and violence, trying to kill your coach and fathers who don't father, who only procreate? All this information is right up there with batting averages and points scored.

And I thought trying to explain a balk was as tough at it gets.