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Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Holyfield should role-model at home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
It was the irony that struck me. I’d just been reading Jeff Schultz’s review of Evander Holyfield’s book, “Becoming Holyfield: A Fighter’s Journey,” and paused at this excerpt:
“Gruenfeld does a nice job of getting Holyfield to open up on several topics, including the influence of his late mother, Annie; being born out of wedlock; repeating the same mistake of having several children out of wedlock; encountering racism as a youth; meeting after several years with his estranged father, Isom Coley; missteps in his business life; and failed marriages to his first two wives, Paulette and Janice.” (Gruenfeld is Lee Gruenfeld, Holyfield’s authoring caddie.)
Later, Jeff quotes Holyfield as saying, “That’s it. That’s me.” Thus, the boxing champion’s stamp of approval.
Then the morning mail was delivered and there on top was a new book entitled, “The Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting.” Now you see the irony of it. “Sports Parenting” is a study in advice to parents who come to deal with athletic offspring, over 400 pages of it. It is commended by such people as Sen. George Mitchell, more in the news as a steroids bird dog lately than as a legislator. But in no way does it refer, or even hint, of such athletes as Holyfield and those who create children out of wedlock.
Athletes are headliners as such mainly because of their fame, not realizing nor caring about the influence their errant examples set for those coming behind them.
There is one section in “Sports Parenting” that takes a pass at the fallen star:
“Unprepared for the epilogue of sport, and with no market skills of any sort,
“He plummeted hard in sad free fall, seeking condolence from alcohol,
“He fathered a son, he did not marry, the weight of paternity too heavy to carry. …”
Only a mild reprimand, but to have any effect on an athlete so unprincipled as to cause nine illegitimate children to be delivered into this world? Hardly so. It isn’t a sin limited to the athletic world, but it draws headlines there because they are headliners. One professional basketball player has had six children by six different women. A running back the Falcons might have drafted, won’t be. He is alleged to be the father of one child born out of wedlock and said he is the father of two others. Then there is the widely publicized story of Tom Brady, the New England quarterback, who ditched his girlfriend, leaving her pregnant. Holyfield and his nine, though, surely must lead the world of sports.
Dan Doyle probably had no intent of having his book tied in with the unsavory lot in headline sports. The author is connected with the University of Rhode Island, and his work is supported by an all-star lineup of athletic people of ethics, including John Wooden, Richard Lapchick, Mike Cleary, head of college athletics directors, Mark Murphy, former Washington Redskins star, now AD at Northwestern, and, of course, Senator Mitchell. He does not blindly take the puritanical position that all sports are beautiful and clean. He does just the opposite and offers his recipe to avoid pitfalls, dealing with that ubiquitous object, the role model.
Role-modeling should be something that begins at home, not left to some glorified gladiator seen streaking across a 34-inch screen. Careful who you set forth as an example for your child, on the field and off. He may wind up the subject of a book that strips him down to his real self. One seeing himself in tell-all print, and saying, “That’s it. That’s me.”
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Mets, Braves pick Glavine’s brain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Tom Glavine verified Tuesday what we suspected. As soon as he joined the New York Mets five years ago, he became the most popular new resident in the history of Flushing.
Everybody rushed to pick Glavine’s considerable brain. The owner. The general manager. The players. The clubhouse personnel. Anybody who thought the future Hall of Famer could deliver secrets involving The Great Braves Empire that he just departed and helped create. So what is Bobby Cox really like, and how can our manager clone some of his splendid ways?
Does Andruw Jones have a red cape under his jersey in center field, or does that just apply to John Smoltz during the majority of times he takes the pitcher’s mound?
Surely the catalyst for the Braves along the way to their slew of division titles are those choppers and chanters.
If not that, then what?
“I probably told them a lot, but it wasn’t as much as me telling as much as it was them asking,” said Glavine before pitching in a spring game against the Washington Nationals at Champion Stadium, where he prepared for his 17th season with the Braves after five years in New York. “You come from an organization like this that had the success that it had, and me as a player having the success that I had, [the Mets] bring you in for a reason.
“A large part of it is what you do and what you can provide on the field, and the other part is what you bring outside of that. ‘Hey, what do the Braves know about this, or how do the Braves go about that, and what does Bobby [Cox] like to do in this situation?’ That kind of stuff.”
It’s the kind of stuff Glavine will provide sooner rather than later when he briefs the Braves about the Mets. “Oh, we’ll talk to him, and we haven’t talked to him about that yet, but we will, because you have to,” said Cox, while puffing on his cigar in the home dugout. “You’d be making a big mistake if you didn’t.”
In case you’re wondering, Steve Garvey was sort of in this situation after going from powerful Dodger Blue of yore to the upstart Padres. Then you had those rare traitors such as David Wells, Johnny Damon, David Cone and others. They had the audacity to switch from the Yankees to the Red Sox, or the other way around.
This Glavine thing is nearly unprecedented.
Well, it is unprecedented. “I know I can’t think of another situation quite like it,” said Pete Van Wieren, the Braves’ eternal broadcaster and noted baseball historian, who thought before he shook his head and thought some more. Added Cox, still puffing, “I mean, remember when Jackie Robinson was traded from the Dodgers to the [dreaded] Giants? He refused to go and just retired. Never thought about Glavine, but, yeah, this is unusual.”
This is highly unusual, not only in baseball, but in any sport: You’ve got two fierce rivals. More specifically, you’ve got the Mets and the Braves, both spending much of the 21st century ranking as the dominant teams in the National League East. Not only that, you’ve got Glavine as a prominent player going from one of those rivals to the other, then back again with considerable knowledge of both.
But here’s the deal: It’s one thing to share the knowledge. It’s another for those who hear it to find ways to use it.
“From the Mets’ perspective, for instance, you can dissect what the Braves do all you want, but it’s difficult when you try to put that puzzle together,” said Glavine, who wanted to make something clear: He isn’t snitching. “In New York, it wasn’t like I was giving inside secrets that happened in the clubhouse or things that Bobby did that only players knew. It was fairly common knowledge, but sometimes there are questions that can be answered in terms of the intricacies of how the plans were put into place. It’s not like you’re giving away top-secret information.”
Obviously not, because the Mets never reached the World Series during Glavine’s tenure. The Braves have done so five times with Glavine — and counting.
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