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Rant & Rave
THE Atlanta Braves' John Rocker made some very stupid comments in Sports Illustrated a few months ago. "Stupid" can be interpreted to encompass both what he said (disparaging minorities, homosexuals, people with purple hair and people with AIDS) and his indiscretion. Rocker deserves
fair assessmentI do not condone his views, but I have to cut him some slack. This is partially because I am a Braves fan but also because the facts do not condemn him as much as the public does, having launched venomous verbal and print attacks on him.
John Rocker is 25 years old. How many of us have not said or done stupid things at that age? He has remarkable physical gifts, which sometimes cloud our minds to the fact that he and other professional athletes are not always the most mature people.
Yes, his comments were filled with something less than love. However, Rocker was reacting to memories of rude treatment he received in New York City; he mentioned in a later ESPN interview that he was spit on, hit from behind by a tossed battery and was forced to endure insulting comments about his family. His comments were really more of a diatribe against the city of New York than one against minorities.
PETER Gammons, a journalist for ESPN, conducted that interview with Rocker and wrote a column for the network's web site in which he stated Rocker and his family are not "racist pigs" as portrayed by popular media.
Gammons is nationally respected and if he truly felt that Rocker was being hypocritical during the interview, he would have at least insinuated it. He instead noted that most of the teammates of Rocker who came up with him through the minors, nearly all minorities, were shocked when the story hit. They had been invited to stay at Rocker's house for extended periods of time and said they were made to feel at home.
Rocker's name and visage are still plastered over Internet sites with captions calling for his release (the sport equivalent of firing someone) from the Braves.
A couple of weeks after football player Rae Carruth was arrested for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend, the public is not clamoring for his release.
Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden are still in baseball and raking in millions a decade after they were known to have drug addictions. Strawberry recently entered rehab again. Yet the public continues to be eager to see these two play. The cheering was never louder than when Doc threw his no-hitter in '96.
IF anything, the public only felt sorry for them. In this politically correct environment, only Rocker drew the public's wrath. He obviously never watched the movie "Bull Durham," in which Kevin Costner's character gives his young protege advice on how to answer reporters in typical milk-and-cookie fashion.
Luckily, saner heads prevailed and arbitrator Shyam Das ruled Rocker would sit out the first 14 days of the regular season and pay a fine of $500.
Yes, our youth shouldn't be subjected to adults (used loosely) who function as role models expressing racist sentiments. But they should be even less subjected to people in the national limelight who are sexually promiscuous, habitual drug users or murderers.
Well, what can you expect from a society that is clamoring for reinstatement of Pete Rose, a proven gambler. Never mind that gambling is the cardinal sin of organized sports.
Leslie Ching is a 1999 graduate of Mid-Pacific Institute
and a a freshman at the University of Chicago.Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature
allowing those 12 to 22 to serve up fresh perspectives.
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