Crybabies
It’s become so pervasive in the world of professional sports that its now an epidemic. It’s gone past the point of being a concern, jumped over becoming an issue, scooted around the level of problem and turned into a full-blown, all out, five-alarm crisis.
I’m not talking about steroids. I don’t care who’s on the juice as long as our guys have stronger and less detectable ‘roids than the other guys. If ballplayers want to destroy their health in order to get a little more pop in their bats, I say more power to ‘em. And when their testicles shrink up into tic-tac-sticles, hey, it was their choice. Besides, it’s not like they’ve been keeping it a secret all these years. Most muscle heads say it right on their t-shirts: “BUM Equipment.”
The crisis I’m talking about is the rampant spread of crying in sports. The spectacle of athletes and coaches having public crying fits has gotten completely out of control. Guys we used to admire for their ballin’ spend half their time bawlin’. My lovely wife (or as I now call her, my “Royal Consort”) says that the one thing that upsets her is the sight of a man in tears. I agree. Watching a grown man cry always gets me right in the gut. That is to say, it makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
There are only five things a man can legitimately cry about without being ridiculed:
1) The death or illness of a loved one
2) A patriotic ceremony with the “missing man formation” flyover
3) ”Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes
4) The part in “The Natural” when Roy Hobbs is in the hospital and says, “I just wish my father was…God, I love baseball.”
5) Your team’s first championship
I’ll publicly admit for the first time that I shed a tear or two when the Patriots beat the Rams in the Super Bowl, and again when the Red Sox got the final World Series out against the Cardinals. But I promise you it was the proper, manly kind of cry. The stoic, macho, tear-in-the-eye kind like the Indian in the old anti-littering commercial. Not the blubbering, sobbing, wailing kind of sissy cry that every athlete seems to have now whenever there’s a camera nearby.
Consider Emmitt Smith. I love Emmitt. Mostly I love him for all the Fantasy Football money he made me back in the ‘90s. But I also love him because he’s a class act. Those Cowboy teams he was on were basically a criminal enterprise under the RICO statute. The players even owned a place called “The White House” that they used as a sort of central warehouse for drugs and debauchery. (Incidentally, the Patriots of the same era had a similar place, which they called “East Providence, RI”) But Emmitt stayed above it all. While the rest of the Cowboys were getting their swerve on, Smith was getting his college degree, even as he set NFL records for rushing yards and peer respect.
Then came Super Bowl week, 2005. What should have been a simple announcement that Smith was retiring became a maudlin, rambling, incoherent crying fit. One of the toughest players that ever lived embarrassed himself by thanking everyone he ever met and cried more than Oprah Winfrey making French onion soup.
This came right on the heels of the Hines Ward incident. After the Patriots knocked Pittsburgh out of the playoffs, Ward gave a statement to reporters. When he spoke of his disappointment, Ward, arguably hardest-hitting wideout in the NFL, started to cry like my three year old when I wouldn’t buy him Chocolate Lucky Charms (“they’re Magically Diabetic!”)
This past season Kansas City Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil successfully defended his trophy as the biggest crybaby in the NFL. He is the mayor of Niagara Falls, and his emotional breakdowns are legendary. He cries if the Chiefs are winning, if they’re losing, if a player gets injured or recovers from injury. Vermeil can’t answer a question without crying more than the entire front row at a boy band concert. I shudder to think what it would be like to watch the last scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life” with the man.
Among golfers who cry, Davis Love III is the leader in the clubhouse. The first time he cried was when he won the 1997 PGA Championship. We all gave him a pass on that because it was his first major and his late father was a PGA member. OK. But now the guy can’t have a top ten finish in the Claim Denier’s Insurance Company Invitational without the flood gates opening. And just a thought, III: your dad, respectfully, passed in 1988. It’s time to move on.
Wade Boggs was one of the early pioneers of the shameless public crying jag. One of the enduring images of the 1986 World Series was Boggs sitting in the dugout after the Red Sox lost Game 7 sobbing uncontrollably. This was a shock to Sox fans, who thought that all Boggs cared about was batting practice, and that he had less emotion than the pitching machine he practiced against.
But Boggs’ next sob story was even more infamous. After it was revealed that he had been hitting .400 with women in scoring position, the serial adulterer and his wife went on Barbara Walters’ show. There he confessed that yes, he had been buttering his toast on both sides and proceeded to cry like…well, like someone on a Barbara Walters show. That moment made Boggs a household name in the U.S., even with people who didn’t follow baseball. Women hated him because his tears were so phony, and men loved him because his tears were so phony we all looked good by comparison.
So I welcome the next athlete who isn’t afraid to show his emotions and have a good cry in public. But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.