Pat Tillman Got a Statue and It's Magnificent
Another pic of the amazing new Pat Tillman statue at Sun Devil Stadium, this photo by @asunews photographer Charlie Leight. pic.twitter.com/yos1vTS3JO
— Mary Beth Faller (@MaryBethFaller) August 31, 2017
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Source – Arizona State University and its football program unveiled the long-awaited Pat Tillman statue outside of Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe on Wednesday.
On hand for the ceremony was Tillman’s family, including his mother and brother.
The statue itself included a quote from the late-great Tillman himself.
“Somewhere inside, We hear a voice. It leads us in the direction of who we wish to become. But it is up to us whether or not to follow.”
I’ve always believed that the model for the way we honor athletes is a kind of pyramid. And by the physics of any pyramid, the higher up you go, the fewer and fewer guys should be worthy of that honor. Taking them in reverse order, from bottom to top, they go like this:
9) All Star Game/Pro Bowl appearance
8) First team All League/All Pro
7) Individual awards based on your position, i.e. Vezina Trophy, Cy Young, Offensive Player of the Year, etc.
6) League MVP
5) All Decade Team
4) Team Hall of Fame/Ring of Honor
3) League Hall of Fame
2) Retired number
1) Statue Worthy
I go back and forth on 2) and 3). It’s different standards for different sports. Like for instance football, where the numbers are limited by rule. As opposed to MLB where the Red Sox retired David Ortiz in spite of the jury being out on his Cooperstown candidacy.
What is not in dispute is that there should be the strictest possible standards when it comes to Statue Worthiness. If we a nation learned anything this summer, it’s that you shouldn’t build permanent monuments to someone unless you know they deserved it. In the case of athletes, if you have to spend more than a nanosecond to decide if he’s Statue Worthy, then he isn’t. I have absolutely zero beef with Kent Hrbek. He was a nice player who never did me dirty. But to immortalize him in bronze forever in the same manner as Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Ted Williams and Jim Brown is ludicrous.
All that said, no one has ever been more Statue Worthy than Pat Tillman. Sometimes you build them for a man’s cumulative stats. Sometimes you build them for what he represented. (Which is why Steve Gleason and Larry Doby have, and deserve, them.) So that 20 generations from now, people will see the memorial and will learn about the man. And such is the case with Tillman.
Pat Tillman was everything that was right with everything. A man who, at the age of 27 and entering the prime of his football career, was so affected by 9/11 that he walked away from a life of sold out stadiums, national TV glory, groupies and millions of dollars to go hunt down the men responsible and kill them like animals. And who ended up in a horrifying friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan giving what Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion.” If that isn’t Statue Worthiness, no one deserves one.
Not to mention what this will do for the ASU program. Tillman’s statue is between the locker room and the field. And Sun Devils coach Todd Graham put it this way: “I want to challenge our players with this. If you come out and touch that statue, you need to pour everything you have onto the field and play with passion because that’s what his life was about.” The idea that for as long as their playing tackle football at ASU that kids will be honoring the sacrifice of one of their own is what statues are all about. Nice job by the school. And RIP always to a genuine hero.