Authority Has Become a Real Choke in Sports

In 1925, Babe Ruth, who was only the best baseball player there ever was, threatened to “punch the spit” out of his manager, Miller Huggins, called him a few obscenities, stalked out of the (St. Louis) locker room and didn’t go back to New York with the team.

He was suspended from the team and fined (five grand was a lot in those days). He took the train to Chicago to protest to the commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Landis. And Landis told him to take a hike.

Then, in New York, at a banquet, the mayor of the city, Jimmy Walker, upbraided the Babe for his behavior and, in an emotional speech, begged him to stop letting down all the “dirty-faced” little kids who looked up to him. The Babe wept, history tells us.

In 1997, an all-star basketball player, Latrell Sprewell, also called his coach a few obscene names, then threatened to kill him and put his hands around his throat and tried to throttle him. Pulled off him, he later returned to throw a punch at him.

Then, in San Francisco, the mayor of the city, Willie Brown, cheered Sprewell to the echo and said the coach had it coming. It might be the first time in history a mayor of a city endorsed an aggravated assault, but it must have been a great comfort to city hall employees to know they could go in and choke their mayor whenever he did something that displeased them.

The lesson at work here is that constituted authority is in full, mindless retreat, not to say rout, these days. A wide receiver on the Oakland Raiders said the other day he is going to call his own plays on the line of scrimmage hereafter and ignore the coach’s.

The inmates taking over the asylum? The elephants running the circus?

No. But disrespect for authority is at an all-time high in this country. In a recent interview with Ira Berkow in the New York Times, the basketball coach at Boston University who had his own star-player trouble noted, “Respect for authority has eroded. It’s not just with coaches, it’s with authority figures across the board. You tell a guy you want him to improve his free-throw shooting, he takes it that you don’t like him. You know, ‘You’re dissing me!’ A line I never thought guys would cross is crossed more easily every year.”

Part of the problem, Coach Dennis Wolff told Berkow, is that players today have been “coddled” since they first demonstrated their jump shot or vertical leap. That’s why some of them are a case of arrested development.

Sometimes, Wolff told Berkow, it’s that the kid did not have a strong father figure in the home to lay down the law.

“Authority,” of course, depends on the author. Authority gone mad as we have seen in Europe this century is an obscene horror that calls into question the whole concept. There are times it should have its throat strangled. Authority should always be questioned. The crew of the Bounty had good reason to mutiny. So did George Washington, you should excuse the expression.

But authority for the group good is another matter. Presumably, there was no authority in prehistoric times. Each man did what he wanted, the group be damned.

It was probably the Romans who created the modern notion of authority. They created the table of organization and built aqueducts and formed military chains of command and built a great civilization and brought discipline where there had been chaos. A blueprint for the world, even the Green Bay Packers, so to speak. They harnessed the human energy to work for a common good. Where once 10 guys might want to get together to build a bridge but the project would collapse when half of them stayed home, the Romans conscripted a whole society.

Their legions regularly defeated numerically superior forces with their organizational genius, their leadership. It has been noted by history that wherever the Roman legions went in the world, the civilization advanced. The areas the Romans bypassed remained backward.

What has this to do with athletes strangling their coaches? Just this: All sports, like Caesar’s Gaul, are divided into three parts--players, coaches and owners. They have to work together. You render to Caesar (i.e., the coach) the things that are Caesar’s.

It’s the way things work. The legacy of western civilization, ever since we climbed out of the primordial ooze, is that man advances by teamwork and leadership. Otherwise you take on the world by your lonesome. Rugged individualism is overrated. No laws, no bosses, then, no progress. Let me ask you: You want to see Latrell Sprewell take on the Chicago Bulls by himself? Even Michael Jordan needs a coach. If not for himself, at least for what he has called “my supporting cast.”

We have all had our crosses to bear. I have had city editors I would like to introduce to Latrell Sprewell. Once I had a colleague, Will Fowler, who was so furious at our city editor, Jim Richardson, he ran screaming to his father, Gene Fowler, the great author. “Son,” Gene said, “if he knows his business, you stand there and let him throw sockfuls of manure at you. So long as you learn.”

Richardson’s tantrums turned out some pretty good newspapermen. I don’t doubt Carlesimo had some uncomplimentary things to say about his players. So did Vince Lombardi. Knute Rockne. Does that justify felonious assault?

Blaming the victim has become a national pastime anyway. If they ever caught Jack the Ripper, he would have been ready. The women asked for it, he would have contended. And called the mayor of San Francisco as a character witness.