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View From The Middle
On the other hand, there are those things some people do, just in the course of their everyday lives, that are positive - even though they might seem unimportant at the time. There is no best, so to speak. They are just plain good gestures. They all leave an impression on someone's mind, especially when they pertain to sports and that mind is young. A couple of incidents that recently came about will elaborate: Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots, has directed his team in winning the Super Bowl three times in the past four years. That's some record! He was lauded at the time and took that praise properly, if not immodestly. Two weeks ago, during a game with our Jets, that same "winner," Coach Belichick, had an assistant videotape some signals - supposedly secret - that were given by the Jets' coach on the sidelines, to their quarterback on the field. The assistant was caught and the tape was taken away. Taping plays and signals from the field is illegal in the National Football League (NFL). By taping the signals, Belichick and Co. would know ahead of time where the ball might be thrown on the next play and have a man there ready to intercept it. This is one way football games are won - if you cheat. It leads one to wonder if those Super Bowl wins by the Patriots in the past might have been bogus. They say trying to figure a way of deciphering another coach's signals at a football game has been going on since, well, since Knute Rockne told The Gipper to get out there and play his guts out. Some say it's done all the time by every team, although the Patriot's were pretty stupid to be so blatant about their clandestine venture. The fact that "everyone does it," of course, doesn't make it right. Belichick's hi-jinks were found out and last week the bigwigs in the NFL fined him a half-million dollars and his team was fined a quarter-million. The team also had to forfeit the first draft pick next year. Frankly, I don't think a half-million dollar fine for someone who makes $6 million a year will make such a big impression on the mind of a youngster who wants to play or coach football for a living when he grows up. During the past few years, major league baseball players - the big ones making millions and millions of bucks per year - had been accused of using steroids to build up their muscles. That includes some of the batters who have beaten the record in home runs, amount of hits, games played, etc. Keep in mind that, until recently, it was not considered a bad thing for them to do. Nobody really cared whether they did or not until, well, until hitting more than 60 home runs in a season, as Babe Ruth did without steroids, became not such a big deal. At this point it's considered cheating, and even Barry Bonds, who just broke the all-time hit record, has been denigrated over and over again. Remember, if he did take steroids, he did so before the policy became illegal. Back to Belichick and the football "scandal" - Believe it or not, he and the team received what has been considered a stiff sentence, but they should have taken this buffoon and suspended him for the next two years, if for no other reason than to let other coaches know what the NFL thinks of it. They all seem to forget that football is a sport and that there are millions of kids, probably from the age of ten or so, who might now feel that cheating is okay - if you get away with it. ***** Then there's the positive incident that happened during a baseball game last week; something that will, we can assume, make a good impression on those ten-year-olds: New York Yankee Johnny Damon usually plays left field now - he used to play center - because he's not quite as fast as he used to be. Although he didn't have a terrific first part of the baseball season this year, he's having a better second half and just about everyone is a fan of his. Okay, with that established, we now know that he's a star; real top echelon; a pro and a good guy. On September 12, the Yankees were playing out of town and Damon was at bat (the score and other details are inconsequential). There was a boy, a Yankee fan, about ten years old, sitting on the ground behind a metal barrier just off first base. The kid looked like someone right out of a Norman Rockwell painting: his "NYY" hat on - backwards (as kids wear 'em these days), blond hair sticking out, a swipe of dirt on his cheek, the Yankees dark blue tee shirt out of his trousers and, oh, yeah, both sneakers untied. When Damon swung at a pitch, the bat slipped out of his hand and scooted across the grass to his right, landing just in front of the ten-year-old, with the barrier between him and the bat. The kid wanted to retrieve the bat for Damon and tried pushing his hand through the fence. No good. He tried again, twisting his arm with the hope that, somehow, the fence would widen enough so he could get his hand around the bat and pull it through. Still no good. It just wouldn't fit. Meanwhile, Tony Pena, the first base coach, grabbed the bat, and started to bring it to Damon. But the star shook his head and gestured for Pena to give the bat to the youngster while he got a new one. You have never seen a happier boy in your life! This was it! Here was this larger than life baseball star who was so moved by the enthusiasm of the moment that he contributed to it and not only made the boy's day, but certainly now has a fan for life, if not a future baseball star. It was not confirmed, but after the game, Damon autographed the bat for the boy. That's called leaving a good impression. Oh, incidentally, Damon got a hit with his new bat.
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