Sports
Readers of the New York Times‘ Web site could be forgiven if, yesterday afternoon, they happened by and thought that they’d stumbled on to something of a joke. There, on the digital front page, an article about “a generation of track and field athletes who are breaking records for speed, distance and endurance at ages once considered too old for competition” sat not too far above the paper’s take on the second second coming of (now-) Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback Brett Favre. At the very least, this is a perfectly topical coincidence. And, indeed, Favre’s first quote in the piece — the one used to answer the question about why a physically taxed, clearly over-the-hill, and injured performer who, in financial terms at least, is already set for life would risk his ever-diminishing legacy to return to take another football season’s worth of pummeling — included language that could just have easily been used by one of the octogenarian sprinters, looking to explain their ability to compete well past their respective primes: “[Y]our arm [legs, whatever] may not feel like it [or they] did at 21. But the pieces are in place that you don’t have to do that much….” (Read: Hey man, I may be over the hill, but I’ve still got it.)
It’s this sort of delusion that makes the general public hate the shit out of sports stars; their inability to go gentle into that good night burns any warrior comparison that we might like to make (to employ another tattered aphorism: Remember, even if old soldiers never die, they have the simple courtesy to just fade away) and, in its place, leaves a hollow idol seen only for the enormous ego that fuels its inability to retire. Or stay retired. And that’s just plain unfair.
Take Favre, for example. A country boy from a small town in Louisiana who spent the bulk of his career playing for the most working-class of professional sports teams, the quarterback had, until he reneged on retirement the first time, been widely regarded as something of a laborer (or as much of a laborer as a multi-multi-millionaire can be): As the AP put it, “[h]e has…[a] blue-collar mentality and heart, going to work regardless of whether he’s healthy or hurt” — and indeed, he now stands to break the NFL’s consecutive games streak in week three of this coming season. Subtract the easy distraction of those millions and maybe his inability to go home and open a car dealership is more about his wanting to prove that he — like so many members of the dwindling middle class that would, considering his image, like to mark him as one of their own — is still a contributing member of society. And in those terms, you’re only worth as much as you can work.
And what about Frank Levine? The 95-year-old man who, reports the Times, just set “the American record in the 400-meter dash for men ages 95 to 99, only to see it broken at the U.S.A. Masters Outdoor Track & Field Championships a few weeks later”? Are he, the man who broke his record, and the other great-grandfathers and -mothers of sport some sort of comparison for Favre and the other pros who just can’t hang it up? At first glance — which is to say, considering the dollars — there really isn’t much of a comparison. Levine and his peers compete, the purist argument goes, for the love of sport (a noble cause); Farve and his may say that they put on the uniform because they love the game but, even if we call them blue-collar, most of us look at the figures and put an asterisk next to that definition (and for Favre in particular, some of that luster has been worn away by his unretirements). But, minus the dough, the impulse here – as the Times notes, Levine and most of his cohorts didn’t start competing until they were well into middle age, an adjustment made, perhaps, to prove their vitality — is pretty much in line: Hey man, I may be over the hill, but I’ve still got it. And if you’re not prepared to tell Frank Levine to go spend his last days watching Matlock, you’d better be ready to let Favre play until he’s really done.
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