Compassion Takes a Dive at These Trials

My mentor had the greatest possible contempt for professional golfers. He believed they had no concept of, or interest in, the real world. He hypothesized that if hydrogen bombs were dropped on American soil, not one pro golfer would know or care about it, unless of course it wiped out that day’s play.

I never shared his generalizations about golfers, just as he never shared mine about divers.

Divers are all alike, I would joke. They are fish. They can function only in water. Out of water, their primary motivation is to get back into water. They sink, drink and never think. Their address is H2O. They go in headfirst so often they have water on the brain. If ever one mated, it could only be to another diver. If ever they spawned a daughter, they would name her Chlorine.

I was just kidding.

It gave me pleasure to poke fun at divers. Fish, I repeated. Every diver’s a fish. There is not an ounce of fat on one of them, nor a hair nor whisker below the head. Fish. Fry them up and serve them on Friday. Cut ‘em and gut ‘em. Wrap them in Sunday’s paper. Throw the small ones back.

Secretly, of course, I envied divers, admired divers. Each one had nearly perfect form, physically and recreationally. Such a pleasant existence it seemed. To walk around in minimum clothing, without fear of offending, and to refresh oneself in cool, clear water, day after day--well, to me it seemed nice work if you could get it.

I forever pictured them vacationing in Hawaii and diving with natives off high cliffs, in pursuit of pearls. When I go to Maui, my most taxing activity is shopping for No. 15 sunscreen.

Truth was, divers were nothing more to me than athletes, same as any other athletes, and human beings, same as any other human beings. Some were flawless, some had foibles. Some were sharp, some dull. Some were hunks in trunks, some were Esther Williams with sparklers in her teeth and some were Thornton Melon on a diving pony leaping from an ocean pier. No two were truly alike.

I honestly believed this.

Yet I have growing doubts.

Four days at the U.S. Olympic diving trials have left me with little else but disgust. Because of this Bruce Kimball business, involving the Olympic diver whose recent highway calamity left two teen-agers dead and six others injured, I am beginning to feel toward divers some of what my old acquaintance once felt toward golfers.

They show me nothing, out of the pool. No courage, no compassion, scarcely an interest in anything other than somersaults and tucks. They are Stepford divers, doing their business and moving robotically along. They reveal no thought of their own, unless it pertains to how snug their knees remain together when they enter the water.

Not one of these chickens of the sea expresses an opinion on the Kimball case, maintaining that to do so would be an unnecessary distraction harmful to their attention spans. Not a one suggests that perhaps Kimball should have steered clear of this very public assemblage instead of subjecting the bereaved he left behind in Florida to his uninterrupted pursuit of excellence and success.

Anyone asked about the Kimball matter replies that he or she has absolutely no time to think about it, because it would disrupt concentration. No one mentions anyone’s concentration that Bruce Kimball’s car might have disrupted Aug. 1 in Brandon, Fla.

Greg Louganis and Matt Scoggin are Kimball’s principal rivals today for two places on the men’s Olympic 10-meter platform diving team. They are asked how they feel about Kimball’s presence in this competition, if they care about what is going on in the onshore world, if they consider anything more important than just this damned diving.

Louganis says: “I think there might be a sense of what’s going on, but I can only concentrate on things I have control over.” And Scoggin says: “I know he’s in the contest, and I know he’s one of the best divers in the world. Beyond that, I try not to think about it.”

These are not children, these divers. They are adults, 28 and 25 years old. Presumably, they do think. Maybe if one of their friends or loved ones had been run down and killed by a runaway car, they could come up with something to say.

Bruce Kimball is being treated here as though he is bravely carrying forth after a tragedy of someone else’s making. The audience at Saturday’s platform preliminary round cheered his dives lustily, hollered “C’mon, Bruce!” and appreciated his second-place status through 8 of 10 dives as though a conquering hero was in the process of overcoming all of life’s little annoyances.

Bruce’s father and coach, Dick Kimball, continually leaps and claps and yahoos like a cheerleader at poolside after each of his son’s dives. He makes no attempt to maintain a low profile, no attempt to at least give a visible impression that Ma and Pa Kimball have another care in the world. It is repugnant.

There is far more to this than parental guidance. Dick Kimball hears the crowd’s applause for Bruce and then says, “I think the diving world is behind him.” He says, “They all want him to go on.”

Yes, he says, Bruce did agonize over the decision to compete, and yes, he is surprised at the absence of malice from the audience, but he adds that even if anybody did boo his boy, the way at least somebody surely would boo a ballplayer accused of drunkenly smashing his cars into innocent bystanders, “I would say it would not be received well. Diving is a sport where you just don’t do things like that.”

Oh, say good night, Dick. Try peddling that stuff to the people seated to my right in the upper balcony, the people in the pink T-shirts who wear emblems that read “Remember the Victims” and “We Can’t Escape Reality” and “We Can’t Quit, Either,” the people who circulate petitions outside the natatorium day after day, asking that Bruce Kimball not be excused as though he had slammed his car into a couple of telephone poles.

These mourners take no other action, except to cheer wildly for Louganis and Scoggin while remaining silent after dives by Kimball. They do not even know Louganis or Scoggin. They simply do not want Kimball qualifying for the Olympics, gaining greater acclaim and fame. It is a compelling scene, and I find myself on their side as well as at it.

Dick Kimball says, “I think they’re perfectly welcome to be here, and I’d like to say that I am very much in support of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), no matter what anybody thinks.”

Lip service. Strictly lip service. This is like that Washington political columnist who crusaded against handgun ownership until somebody trespassed onto his lawn, at which point he grabbed his pistol and plugged the guy. If you support MADD, buster, support it. Don’t patronize it, or matronize it, with words that are supposed to speak as loudly as actions.

I suppose I should not be surprised by the self-serving attitude of the athletes and coaches here, or the fact that no U.S. Olympic Committee or national diving official has said one word to the Kimballs, or particularly by the crowd behavior here in Indianapolis, where, no matter what, I guess, the show must go on.

To me, it is reminiscent of those New York baseball customers who welcomed players back from cocaine abuse with standing ovations. It sickens.

Bruce Kimball might be within his legal rights to be here, but his presence is in bad taste. Cheering for him is in worse taste. Above all, total disinterest whether he is here or not here, so long as someone’s concentration is undisturbed, tells me everything I need to know about some of these divers. They are empty suits.