Scale Gives Perry Food for Thought, He Makes Big Move

Dear Refrigerator Perry:

Or should I call you William, since you’re locked up in one of those eating disorder clinics, where your nickname might not be so amusing? Anyway, get thin soon.

I guess a lot of us owe you an apology. Since you became famous a few years ago as a rookie with the Chicago Bears, we’ve all had a lot of fun with your size. We were fascinated that a guy so mammoth could not only play nimbly on the defensive line, but could also run with the ball and even catch passes.

It seemed like harmless good fun, so we all jumped on the Fridge Perry flabwagon. You were so good-natured about it that we assumed it was all a big fat joke to you, too.

And you certainly used the weight to your advantage, turning the Fridge image into millions of dollars worth of endorsements.

But when you passed up training camp last week and checked into that clinic, we realized you were dealing with a real problem there, William. It’s serious business when you put yourself in the hands of people who will try to convince you that dry Melba toast can be as satisfying to body and soul as a tall stack of steaming, buttery, syrup-soaked pancakes.

Sorry. I probably shouldn’t be so graphic

Anyway, you’re the first big-name athlete to admit to a food-abuse problem, and to seek professional in-patient help, and I salute your courage.

If nothing else, it will make fans and writers a tiny bit more sensitive to weight problems of athletes.

However, as you no doubt have noticed, everybody loves fat-guy stories. We want all the details. When the Bears were in the Super Bowl in New Orleans, all week long the press wanted to know exactly what you were eating. We had the headlines ready: “Fridge Eats French Quarter.”

We saw you as the next Babe Ruth, glutton extraordinaire. Between games of a doubleheader, Babe once gulped down a jar of pickled eels, a quart of ice cream, 11 hot dogs, a quart of soda and an apple.

During the second game, Ruth suffered stomach cramps and was rushed the the hospital, moaning, “I knew I never shoulda ate that apple.”

We love that kind of stuff. I don’t know why, I’m not a psychologist. We were amused for weeks on end when David Letterman started a semi-friendly feud with relief pitcher Terry Forster by referring to Forster as a “fat tub of goo.”

It was a ton of fun for everyone, except for Forster, who was truly chagrined but went along with the joke. He had no choice.

When you’re fat and famous, you are fair game. If you were a portly accountant or barber, strangers wouldn’t stop you on the street and ask how much you weigh or what you ate for breakfast.

But when it comes to athletes and their weight, we are all experts. Fernando Valenzuela decided a few years ago to drop some flab. When he went into a slump, a lot of sportswriters and fans accused him of vainly dieting away his pitching skills.

Having just signed a rich contract at the time, Fernando became the first man since Howard Hughes to be judged too thin and too rich.

What I’m starting to see is that nearly every athlete battles his or her weight. Your battle, Fridge, is just more high profile, so to speak.

Many jockeys have to “flip” (regurgitate) their meals to make weight. Boxers and gymnasts starve to keep their poundage down. Even two of the true sex symbols of sport have battled the bulge.

Florence Griffith-Joyner blew up after the 1984 Olympics and had to work like crazy to slim down. Greg Louganis, who has a body you’d swear you could throw darts at and not get them to stick, confessed recently that he is 10 pounds overweight and has a fatal attraction to ice cream.

So if you can come out of that clinic a svelte 300 pounder, Fridge, you can be an inspiration to a lot of people, athletes and fans.

If nothing else, you are raising our consciousness, helping us remember we weren’t all created equal. At the great assembly plant in the sky, some of us were sculpted like statues, some of us were scooped out like mashed potatoes. Some were issued washboard stomachs, others got the washtub.

Also, we should bear in mind that a lot of great athletes were raised in economic hardship, in families that did not have live-in dietitians, and therefore never learned the concept of selective eating.

Maybe we’ll all be a little more sensitive now. I admit I’ve written my share of fat-guy one-liners. In college, that was my minor. I can’t quit now, unless there’s a clinic for that sort of thing.

I can wish you luck. Fridge is still a great nickname, but if you survive that clinic, you deserve to be called William the Conqueror.