The Rookies

I still have no idea why this image exists.

It’s all well and good to do the macabre yeoman’s work of putting together a list of athletes whose deaths would shake us to the core, Will. But, please, do it right. Leitch’s list is, stripped of his descriptions, as follows:

• Muhammad Ali
• Charles Barkley
• Steve Bartman
• Larry Bird
• Magic Johnson
• Michael Jordan
• Pete Rose
• O.J. Simpson
• Mike Tyson
• Vince Young

(His honorable mentions: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Wayne Gretzky, Pele, LeBron James, Mark McGwire, Terrell Owens, Cal Ripken, Derrick Rose, Bud Selig, Bill Simmons, David Stern, Michael Vick, Tiger Woods. Woods’ name was mentioned in the comments and added to the list after its initial publication.)

Leitch’s rubric for inclusion:

1. Age Matters. If, say, Willie Mays died tomorrow, it would be tragic and awful, and it would cause countless reminisces from Baby Boomers — I’m pretty sure there’d be a Bob Costas-Billy Crystal special within the hour — but I’m not sure it would be shocking. That is to say: Willie Mays is 78 years old. The same goes for Vin Scully, or Bob Pettit. Epic figures. Great men. But old. Their death loses points because of their own longevity. Sorry.

2. Culture Importance. Stan Musial was a better baseball player than Pete Rose, but he hasn’t contributed nearly as much to the national conversation as Charlie Hustle. We account for that.

3. Historical Recalculation. When Michael Jackson died, we really did dismiss the weirdness — and, perhaps, evil — and remembered what truly made him great. We even felt a little bad for forgetting about that in the first place. That’s a factor too: Roger Maris’ death grew in significance because we had pegged so wrong in the first place. Our own guilt, revisited upon death, adds to the equation. It’s the Man, now that we look at it, we were harsh to that guy principle.

4. Shock Value. Obviously, we remember Len Bias’ death more because he was 22 when he died. In the same way you are inherently sadder when a relative dies suddenly than you are when they’ve spent 15 years slowly wasting away in a funeral home. It’s not fair — after all, dead is dead, and it sucks to die no matter how old you are — but them’s the breaks.

5. Specific Vivid Memories. The true joy from the Tyson movie — the only real joy, if you ask me — is watching the montage of knockouts, those massive bursts of violence that made him Mike Freaking Tyson. Anyone who watched sports back then remembers just how amazing it was to watch Tyson, and can share those memories, in the same way you could share memories of the Michael Jackson Trapper Keeper you had in the third grade.

The problems are apparently on many levels, but it’s easier to start with baffling inclusions than head-scratching omissions.

1. Steve Bartman

Bartman is neither athlete nor coach, and has but one moment of fame, a blip on the Google radar. His death would not shock; he is of marginal historical importance; he has less cultural value than Audrina Partridge; he is not young. The only criterion he fits is being associated with a specific vivid memory, and that one is only particularly painful for Cubs fans. The biggest problem with including Bartman? Every omission gets judged against this inclusion.

It is little surprise that a Cardinal diehard would, at every opportunity, rankle the Cubbie faithful, but this sort of gauche thinking seems to be a poor place to inflate Bartman’s importance and then rip on Cubs fans for ripping him.

2. Pete Rose

This may be news to Leitch, but most people under the age of 25 do not care about Pete Rose. His gambling woes broke in 1989; the Sports Illustrated cover story on Rose came out exactly one year before I was born. He’s been a sideshow, an occasional totem for the moralizing sportswriter, and a cultural non-entity since, a relic of a time when baseball really was America’s pastime. And he’s 68, the oldest member of the list, though, in all likelihood, in better health than Ali. He does not belong.

3. Larry Bird

In no part of America that is not New England or Indiana would Bird’s death trigger even a fifth of the sympathy and interest Magic Johnson would get. Bird’s retirement from playing has been spent coaching, and in the front office; Magic coached, had a talk show, began an entrepreneurial career, and contracted a disease that was ballyhooed as the greatest plague to visit mankind.

Sportswriters would care, as Leitch points out. But sportswriters, as we increasingly are seeing, are not representative of the general public, and people of my generation barely remember Bird.

4. Vince Young

Young’s a special case, because he’s off in his own orbit, dealing with depression and marginalized on his small-market team by Kerry Collins. He is, on this list, the only active athlete, and yet seems bizarrely inactive. Certainly, he’s beloved by his alma mater’s fans, but even though that school is Texas, it’s not on par with the followings any of the athletes on this list have.

And his death would be more somber and tragic than anything else: He’s a troubled soul with enormous talents who would die very young. He’s the James Dean of this list, or maybe its Heath Ledger, and though the outpouring of grief would be immense, the shadow cast by his legacy would be short.

And comparing him to Len Bias? Bias was the first, was picked by a team in a major media market, and died of a drug overdose, more exotic then than suicide (which is, of course, the unstated hypothetical cause of death for Young) is now. It’s not a comparison.

Now, for the omissions.

Hint: He’s the tall one.

5. No Yao Ming

It’s a particularly heartland-ish list Leitch has constructed, heavy on icons of the ’80s and ’90s, but, in a week when his feet threaten to sabotage his career for the final time, it’s hard to understand why Leitch skipped over possibly the most visible basketball player on Earth.

We forget as Americans that there are places outside of this country far, far bigger than this country. Yao is from one of those places, a nation thrice as populous as the U.S. and as focused on one titanic figure as America ever was on, say, Joe DiMaggio. His career is stellar, and his legacy, as a bridge between China and the U.S. on the basketball court and the figurehead for the globalization of American sports, is massive. He should be on this list.

6. No soccer

Certainly, Pelé, hero of a large nation and legend of the world’s best sport, would seem to be the best candidate for this list, in the Simpson/Rose vein; he’s on the honorable mentions. But David Beckham is now both an international and an American figure, living in Los Angeles and buddying up to Tom Cruise: Surely he matters?

The American public consciousness’ wordliness is consistently underrated, and, as we continue to support American Idol, perhaps rightly so. But to ignore the idea that a nation full of young soccer players who know names and own cleats wouldn’t cry out for the death of a star beset by the perils of fame (Cristiano Ronaldo comes to mind; Beckham would fit, too) is myopic, and to suggest that Pelé’s passing would somehow be less important than Steve Bartman’s is reprehensible.

7. No women

If Yao Ming is a member of the single largest nation on Earth, women would be part of the possibly the single largest group. It would be easy, as a man, to throw Serena Williams or Candace Parker or Annika Sorenstam or Mia Hamm on this list, and pay the lip service so many do to women in athletics.

But there are two names that tower above all: Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. Each fought not only on the court, but, in their own ways, for equal rights for women, and not just the ones who play games with sticks and balls and racquets. Navratilova, in particular, would be a crushing loss, as she adds to her cultural import the credential of “greatest female tennis player to live.”

Again, with Bartman on the list and larks like Bill Simmons and Derrick Rose in the also-rans, the oversight of any female representation is magnified; it’s a shame that none of them rate as important to Leitch.

8. No Tiger

Tiger Woods is bigger than his sport, an American emblem of father-son relations, and a media darling. No other active athlete combines those traits. His initial omission was absurd; his place on the also-rans list is laughable.

This is a colossal error.

9. No Lance

Perhaps Will hasn’t seen the new Nike ad? Perhaps he forgets that Lance Armstrong is huge on Twitter? Perhaps he’s unaware that Armstrong may be the most potent athlete to stand up to the scrutiny of PED testing, and is thus twisted into an Atlas figure, carrying the banner of American nobility in sport?

Perhaps he’s ignored the symbolic power of a cancer survivor triumphing over the odds for years and fails to see how immensely heart-rending an untimely death would be?

Armstrong should mean something to any American with a bicycle, and something to every American touched by cancer. Even the intersection of those sets would be a mammoth share of the sporting public; their union is a number that is hard to grasp.

10. No Kobe/’Bron/Shaq

Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are the two highest-level active athletes in a sport that bares its’ players faces; Shaq has been and will be the sport’s most outsize star. And only James merits a mention in the also-ran tier. Strange.

Handsome devil.

11. No hockey

My apologies to our northern neighbors, but hockey is in line behind football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and possibly cricket and rugby internationally. Even in its prime, only Gretzky, lodged on the lower tier here, would have deserved a spot on the list, and comparing him to basketball players is laughable, at least until Americans start buying Sean Avery (or pick an NHL player on par with Al Harrington/Stephon Marbury/journeyman NBAer with a shoe deal) skates.

But on that also-rans’ list, no Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin? They’re stars and household names. They should get at least a little notice.

12. No Brady/Manning/Favre/Roethlisberger

Take the most visible position from the most powerful sport in America, and pick the most prominent characters to currently play it. Those four would fit it, and yet have nothing to do with this list.

But Mark McGwire is there!

13. No Jeter/A-Rod

Same reasoning as the immediately above, but with the gravitas of Yankee pinstripes.

But perhaps Leitch’s largest error is a misunderstanding of the circumstances.

Leitch couches his “thought experiment” in wonderment over the death of Michael Jackson last week. Jackson was an incandescent, unparalleled talent, a magnet for personal controversy, and a perfect test case for lurid racial and sexual issues that Americans lap up. He’s also an international superstar who converted to Islam and toured in multiple continents. He is the most important cultural figure to pass away since John Lennon, and, in many ways, the most important one besides a sitting head of state that could.

There aren’t ten humans alive from the sports realm who can compare.

No single figure today, save perhaps Tiger, a golfer, stands astride the sporting world like Jackson did entertainment in the late ’70s and early-to-mid ’80s; the only living sports figures who I think could feasibly be compared, maybe ever, are Jordan, Ali, and Tyson at their primes. Jordan fails the politics test, while the latter two’s health and idiosyncrasies, by Leitch’s metric, would make their deaths less stunning and not score as many points. (And yes, the phrase “lose points” is in Leitch’s article; my argument here counts the number of Chinese and women that would make the demographic more important. This “thought experiment” is rooted in a queasy sort of not-quite-tastelessness, no?)

Yes, those three are good names, and this is an intriguing discussion that deserves to be had. But it can’t be done in the short space Will Leitch is afforded on Tuesdays to write about it, and can’t be done as glibly or pettily (the Bartman selection fits both adverbs) as it’s done here. When we mythologize athletes as heroes and turn them into icons, as was done with Jackson, we’re making statements about our cultural values, and those sorts of things are a little too weighty for one post on a blog, especially one as short as Leitch’s, and certainly one as short as this; perhaps they don’t even belong on a blog, though, given how people have commented on some of my lengthier, windier screeds, I’ll believe anything has an audience on the Web. (I couldn’t even touch on Charles Barkley until now. He doesn’t fit in this piece, but certainly is worth discussion.)

A more detailed examination is in order, but it can’t be done today.

So, to recap: In trying to pick ten athletes on par with Michael freakin’ Jackson to fit the “Ten Humans” column, Leitch shoehorns in Bartman to piss off Cubs fans; relegates the NFL to a spot behind baseball; glosses over the globalization of sports; includes Bill Simmons in an also-ran category, which will, because Simmons’ impact can’t be discussed in that small piece, just fuel the Sports Guy’s ego; reminds us that Cal Ripken exists; and generally whiffs on everything that isn’t related to Jordan, Ali, and Tyson.

Good job, Emeritus. See you next week.

Update: Will reached out via Twitter and email and said the following:

Fair enough, sir. Impossible to pull off without some galling omissions. (This piece) is exactly the type of post I was hoping the column would inspire. I just want credit for not including Ankiel. It was hard.

Thanks for doing so, Will.