COMMENTARY : Athletes Don’t Merit a Pedestal

Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge why ballplayers are on the pedestal. They aren’t there because they are moral paragons or intellectually gifted; they are there because they perform a physical activity superbly well.

Consider that. If we make them models for ourselves or for our children, what have we done? If we hold them responsible for presenting a terrible and magnetic example -- “What do I tell my 12-year-old about his heroes now?” -- we are unindicted co-conspirators.

It’s not shame on them, it’s shame on us.

The mistake is not in ballplayers behaving as ballplayers do, but in thinking they would or should behave in any other way.

“My idol was Willie Mays,” Jeff Torborg, a manager whose perception is not limited by outfield fences, said. “My role model was my father.”

There are some good guys out there and some scoundrels, and I don’t know who of us is certain which is which.

When Dwight Gooden said, “I didn’t do anything wrong,” did that tell us something we didn’t know about him? Neither he nor Vince Coleman is a convicted rapist, but I never can refer to either as a devoted father and family man.

Would you assign a ballplayer to teach your son the facts of life? Would you consign your daughter to learn the facts of life at a school for gymnastics?

“I feel a whole spectrum of emotions,” David Cone said. “Embarrassment is not one of them. Some people are going to point a finger and be judgmental. I would suggest that they probably live in glass houses.”

His testimony to the police is public record: Four hours after meeting the woman they were in bed together; within four days he was in bed with her and her friend. If that makes her less than upstanding, what does that make him?

“I don’t have to justify my actions,” Cone said, not at all belligerent. “I’m not Bill Clinton versus Jerry Brown. I’m David Cone trying to pitch my team to the World Series.” And he’s right.

Isn’t the onus on the male as well as the female, or are we still fixed on the double standard we talk about outgrowing?

Why should we expect athletes to be any more moral or insightful -- as a group -- than other groups of society. “There’s a soap opera in every walk of life,” Jeff Innis said.

Sports is microcosm in some ways. Bobby Bonilla picks up on the headline that shouted of the bikinis and beer of swing training. “You mean,” he said, “the stuff that’s part of everyday life?”

Sports also is magnification of life. Indeed, boys continue to meet girls in the place where the Mets’ accuser met the accused Mets, and the Mets are gone. Wall Street brokers continue to stop for a drink after work and go off with a new woman. But not with the access and frequency of athletes.

We’ve seen the underside of baseball that we should have understood before, as well as parts that were nobody else’s business. What consenting adults do in privacy is their business -- providing nobody is hurt by it. That includes a trusting wife.

We’ve read about the groupies who wait for a rub of starshine at every corner, who ride beside the team bus and lift their skirts and unbutton each other’s blouses. That’s realization of a fantasy that aroused a lot of us from the earliest age of envy.

Athletes had acclaim and girls at the time the rest of us were struggling with both. The professionals also had money. I’ve been told there are sports writer groupies. To me, that’s rumor.

It’s not enough to say everybody does it. Some things are wrong. Baseball players and basketball players -- whoever -- do what other people do, and what other people let them do. If there’s cruelty, that’s wrong. If there’s no cruelty, I can’t judge them quickly.

My family was obligated to teach my son that the woman with whom he might have sex is a feeling person, not an object. My daughter learned self-worth in the family.

If I expected them to learn from an athlete or a rock star, shame on me.