Be Like Mike?

On Sunday, June 13, Baltimore pitcher Mike Mussina hit Seattle Mariner reserve Bill Haselman on the shoulder with a fastball. Haselman charged the mound, sparking one of the ugliest, most violent baseball brawls in years, a 20-minute slugfest that left several players injured and seven ejected.

The following week, another melee erupted after a brush-back pitch. Once again, benches emptied and punches were thrown. This time, however, the setting was a youth-league game in Tacoma, Washington. According to their coach, the teen-age players said they were "just acting like the pros."

Are big-time sports celebs role models? The NBA's Charles Barkley, in the words of his Nike ad-writers, says no. "I am not a role model," Sir Charles intones in the now-infamous shoe commercial. "Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids."

Whether they accept the responsibility or not, sports celebrities are looked up to by millions of young (and formerly young) people. And when they agree to be paid for an endorsement or a commercial, they are explicitly asking consumers to follow their lead. Many modern got-rich-quick athletes want to reap the rewards of fame without accepting the costs.

But saying that athletes are emulated is not saying that they are heroes. Ted Tollefson, co-founder of a Minneapolis institute that studies mythology and culture, says a hero has four defining attributes. A hero does something worth talking about, serves principles larger than self, lives a life worthy of imitation, and is a catalyst for change. A "celebrity," on the other hand, is merely someone who has captured the public eye, if only for the allotted 15 minutes. Michael Jordan or Madonna may be worth talking about, but they arguably serve no principle beyond themselves.

Some athletes, of course, are more praiseworthy in their behavior. While playing in New York, Dave Winfield established a fund which, among other things, enabled low-income kids to come to Yankee Stadium. Baltimore second-baseman Harold Reynolds was rightly lauded during his years with the Mariners for his exemplary service to children in the Seattle area.

But charitable service, laudable as it may be, can't paper over the deeper message sent by the way the athletes live their lives. Someone who lives a high-on-the-hog consumptive lifestyle, with a sexually libertine permissiveness, is providing a destructive example--regardless of other "good works" he (or she) might engage in. If they succeed in making young people think that shoes and other such material accoutrements are what's worth chasing after--and the sales figures say they do--they are seriously undercutting deeper, non-material, "spiritual" values.

Big-time athletics, of course, are no longer merely about playing games. As is well noted, sports is big business, with franchises selling for hundreds of millions of dollars and even the medium-range stars joining the ranks of millionaires.

It's not just what they do with all that nouveau wealth that's the problem. For many inner-city and other kids, sports is seen as a ticket out. The problem with that kind of dream is that it's mostly fantasy. Out of the tens of thousands of high school basketball players in the country, for example, a few thousand will make it to big-time college ball. Of them, only 54 are drafted each year, and an even smaller number will make it in the NBA.

Many of those pursuing the pipe dream of stardom neglect the development of the rest of their talents, often including such essentials as a decent education. The NCAA graduation figures for alleged "student" athletes are pitiful; for instance, University of Houston athletes had a 14-percent graduation rate during the '80s. A good many of them will pay for that neglect (and that exploitation) the rest of their lives.

WITH ALL THE HYPE, hoopla, and money involved in sports these days, it can be difficult to keep it all in perspective. The purpose, after all, is just entertainment. That's not to say it's bad, but the lasting impact on society is minimal. Sports reflect the values of our society and culture, for good and ill, more than they shape those values.

The people that our culture holds up as role models, in sports as in other spheres, are predominantly males. Despite Title IX, women are still treated as second-class citizens in sports, with a few exceptions. While Steffi Graf and Monica Seles are world-famous celebrities, they'll never pull in the endorsement money of a Jordan or a Barkley (or even an image-is-everything Andre Agassi). As long as women are invisible or subordinate in history textbooks, TV and movie stardom, political leadership, and other cultural venues, they'll be slighted on the fields of play as well. Until that's changed, sports stars will light up--at best--only half the sky, for our sons as well as our daughters.

So where do we look for real heroes? No matter what we say, teachers will never be as glamorous as NFL quarterbacks. But there are indeed role models among us, and true heroes as well--even in the flawed world of big-time sports. Martina Navratilova and Arthur Ashe are two that belong near the top of the list.

Navratilova, the greatest woman tennis player ever, has made real sacrifices for her activism on human rights issues. "I just do what feels right from the gut," she told The Washington Post last winter. "If it means I won't get endorsements, that's tough...that's the price I have to pay."

Ashe, who died earlier this year, was a paragon of dignity and grace on and off the court. He stood against racism in this country and apartheid abroad, and went the extra mile on behalf of those with AIDS and the people of Haiti. His memoir published this summer, Days of Grace, paints the picture of a man whose life is truly a model we should be proud to follow.

The bottom line, in sports as in everything else, is that discernment is required. Some people live for themselves; some have loftier aspirations. It's the ones who keep their eyes on the higher prize that can show us the way to go.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.