The Athlete’s View - Winter 1998

Joel Kirsch, Ph.D.
American Sports Institute

• Latrell Sprewell, three-time All-Star guard for the Golden State Warriors, chokes his coach P.J. Carlesimo in a fit of anger during a practice session, leaving marks on the coach’s neck. Other than the markings, Carlesimo is not hurt. The story captures the attention of the entire nation for several weeks. Two days later in San Jose, two people are shot to death by the co-owner of their home, a longtime family friend. The killer then turns the gun on himself. Three dead; no further mention after one day’s news coverage.
  
  
• Before his death, we find out that Mickey Mantle has a drinking problem and was a heavy drinker during his heydays with the New York Yankees. Americans everywhere can’t believe it, don’t want to believe it. A brain surgeon gets drunk at night and is in the operating room the next morning. "Wow, I wouldn’t want him operating inside my head. By the way, how’d the stock market do today?"
  
  
• Tonya Harding hires a thug to bash in Nancy Kerrigan’s knee with a crowbar during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Around the world, the scheme and attack are viewed as cowardly, unconscionable. Michael Milken bilks hundreds of millions of dollars out of the system, does a short stint behind bars, and is now back lecturing at UCLA and handing out foundation grants to nonprofit organizations. What a nice guy.
  
  
• Isaiah Rider of the Portland Trailblazers is hit with a marijuana conviction and everyone is disgusted. In the United States Congress, House speaker Newt Gingrich playfully fesses up to smoking marijuana (inhaling fully) during his college days, calling it something akin to a right of passage. Everyone has a good laugh.

Why does this happen time and again? Why are professional and high-ranking amateur athletes held to a higher standard than longtime friends, brain surgeons, financial investment kingpins, or members of Congress? Shouldn’t we judge these athletes by the same standards we judge others?

Maybe we should, but this is certainly not the case. When these athletes do something wrong, we say they’re not fulfilling their roles as models for others, especially kids, but we don’t ask that of people from other disciplines.

Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz, last year’s NBA Player of the Year, may have unwittingly shed some light on the matter. In a national magazine, Malone responded to his friend Charles Barkley, then of the Phoenix Suns, when Barkley stated in an athletic shoe commercial, "I am not a role model." Barkley was saying he was just a basketball player, not the godfather of all idolizing kids, and implied that parents are the real role models and should see to the well-being of their kids.

Malone’s simple yet poignant response: "We (athletes) do not choose to be role models. We are chosen."

So why in America are professional and high-ranking amateur athletes viewed in a way unlike other professionals? Why are they, as Malone says, chosen and for what have they been chosen?

The answer may rest in the core of our humanity, in the very nature of our spiritual and physical being, in our many levels of consciousness, in every cell of every body. Athletes may be the messengers who, by their actions, call us to future and otherworldly places that transcend ordinary space and time which we mere mortals know of intuitively but cannot get to or have yet to get to.

It may be that athletes, at least some of them, are manifestations of humankind’s future presented in the here and now. The athletes may be currently performing at levels that a much higher percentage of people will be able to in a few hundred or few thousand years.

Every time a chosen athlete does something that detracts from this evolutionary journey, we are all let down, for the journey of the species has been temporarily derailed. Our natural, evolutionary process and never-ending quest for spiritual fulfillment are deterred. Conversely, when those who are chosen do live up to their bestowed choosing, we all benefit, we all grow, the species evolves.

Does not Michael Jordan show us that we can fly and transcend our earthly bounds? Isn’t Jerry Rice the god of uncompromising effort and artistry? Doesn’t Chris Evert symbolize the very essence of grace, honor, and dignity? And isn’t Cal Ripkin a conduit by which we are connected to that which is everlasting?

Possibly related to why athletes are chosen to be messengers of humankind’s evolutionary journey is our fascination with the making and keeping of athletic records and our desire to witness such feats, to be there when it happens.

Are records set by athletes like the Jordans, Rices, Everts, and Ripkins really made to be broken? This may be so, but not merely for the sake of breaking a record. It may be that every record itself is a milestone, a single evolutionary leap, and that every time anyone does better than ever before, another leap is made.

Cumulatively, it may be that all records—from great athletes setting world records to a six-year-old making her first shot ever on a 10-foot basket—are made and witnessed, kept and honored, to set standards by which all of humankind can gauge its physical and spiritual development, as evolutionary benchmarks by which we mark our long, long journey toward fulfilling our potential.

When Henry Aaron hit home run numbers 400, 500, even 600, each milestone got press. But when Aaron hit number 700, leaving him only 15 shy of breaking the immortal Babe Ruth’s 714 lifetime home runs, the media followed Aaron day and night. Yes, a new record was about to be set. More importantly, another major step was being taken in our evolutionary development. The media was telling us one thing and, at the same time, chronicling another.

Athletes are not perfect role models, as we all know. They, too, are subject to the same human shortcomings of violence, greed, and drug abuse as anyone else. However, despite the fact that a number of athletes fail as role models, there are those among the selected few who, in a unique way, show us what our future capabilities may be and where we may be headed. These athletes may be incarnated visions of our human potential manifested in the here and now.

Athletes enjoy power and good fortune in our culture. But there is also a reciprocal amount of responsibility that comes with this status. Because of who they are and what they do, these athletes are held accountable for showing us what the not-too-distant future of our species portends. It is hoped that these athletes will realize this, for they are meant to be more than role models. They have been chosen.