Letters to the Editor
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King
Just have to say: great column, nice angle, so true. Not surprisingly, once again you've elucidated the situation in the right context where others merely blather on because they feel they have to. Listening to Mike and the Mad Dog on the way home yesterday screaming about how they had to cancel the game(s) and yammering on and on...
Also, I might add, well said by a guy who I will only ever "know" through a silly caricature and his work "on the field."
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Excllent column
That's all.
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His wife
The thing that still gets me is that we all probably knew about it before his wife did. She was reportedly on a plane to California and could not be reached. I read that a priest had been arranged to meet the flight and inform her.
Somehow the thought of his wife flying along in oblivion, even as profiles of her husband were playing on TV screens across the country, makes it all seem worse. Did she fly back to NY? Will she ever fly again? How terrible.
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Real people
I read this column as a comment on celebrity in general, and how much room it seems to take up in our lives. Of course we don't really "know" professional athletes, movie actors or any other person who appears in the public eye, unless it's by accident (e.g., my nephew is a professional ball player), and then the issue is not "knowing" the celebrity but rather reconciling the person we know with the celebrity we see in public. What's more, the personality and specific biography of these people don't even matter -- not in the grand scheme of things, of course, but also not even in our "use" of them as entertainers. It's part of the story, I guess, that, say, Barry Bonds is a boor or Mariano Rivera is a humble guy who helps out his hometown in a lot of little ways. But it has no bearing at all on their athletic exploits, any more than Jane Fonda's politics have on her acting ability.
It's different from the "character" issue in politics -- a subterfuge, in my opinion -- in which we tell ourselves that we "know" what a certain politician is like, and that tells us whether she or he will govern effectively. What we see is an image, whether that image is crafted by handlers or created by enemies. The actual person is unknowable to us, at such a distance.
We probably do ourselves a disservice if we think we can see into a politician's heart and somehow "know" her. There are consequences for electing someone who is corrupt or vacuous, whose eventual policies don't comport with the image projected during the campaign. But with celebrities -- actors and athletes in particular -- it's harmless because it's irrelevant. It's hard to say, though, that we're not, as a cultural, thoroughly taken up with it. I just wonder why.
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What about the others?
I found myself thinking a lot more about the two people who were killed in the building, whose fate is completely obscured by the discussions of and the fame of Cory Lidle. I know we live in a world where the rich and famous get more attention than the rest of us; it just seems deeply unjust.
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Great column
King, excellent column. Related story: in college some friends and I went to a game at Wrigley and sat in the outfield bleachers. Darryl Kile was pitching that day for the opposing team and was warming up in the outfield when we sat down. One of my friends stood up, held up his glove, and shouted, "Hey, Kile, I'm gonna catch one of your pitches right here!" Kile looked up at us and gave a smile and a shake of his head. I was surprised he responded, and more surprised that he cheerfully acknowledged us, and I decided that he was a good guy. And fast forward a few years, that scene was the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard Kile died, because I knew him... sort of.
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RE: No Name Given
The two people killed from the incident were Lidle and the flight instructor, Tyler Stranger. No one in the building was injured or killed.
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The others
I found myself thinking a lot more about the two people who were killed in the building,
There were no such people. Early reports that four people had died, two on the plane and two in the building, were in error. Just the two in the plane, Lidle and a flight instructor named Tyler Stanger, were killed.
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Reflections
News of Lidle's sudden unexpected death was jarring. When tragedy befalls public figures, it gives the rest of us pause to reflect on our own lives and how it can all change on a dime. You just never know.... It also humanizes them--news reports are giving details of his life: he had a wife and son, a twin brother--details we otherwise would not know. And now they must bear the loss of a loved one.
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Terrific Article
King, your views on the idea of our relationships to athletes reflect my own almost exactly. I always thought I was in the minority in this regard, and am glad to hear another voice in the wilderness.
Incidentally, I also have one of those "I knew him" stories:
A few years ago, I was at a minor league game in Frederick (A). The pitcher threw an absolute gem, allowing 2 hits in a complete game, IIRC. A friend of mine and I kept score (I figured I ought to learn how to do it, and that was the night), and after the game, I thought it would be nice to get his autograph, both for me and as a compliment for his work. It was the first autograph I sought since my teenage years.
A couple years later, Steve Bechler made national headlines when he died after taking Ephedra during spring training. Damn, I thought to myself, I knew him. Sort of, anyway.
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Yes, yes, yes...
It is sad on so many different levels. Although probably not in the way most of you are thinking. Our media is sad. And sports media, being the idiot-black-sheep of media, are particularly sad. Sad that the only reason anyone has thought about Lidle is because of a sudden and horrific death. Sad that anyone would be the least bit surprised that a novice amateur pilot would crash his plane - it happens more often than you think. Saddest thing of all is that sports media people pretend to feel bad about this. Oh, I know that if Barry Bonds were killed tomorrow in some sudden and horrific way, every sportswriter who ever called him a son-of-a-bitch would become a devout Barry-ite. God knows why. You hated him before. Why does the way (rich man - I can't afford a plane, can you?) in which someone dies really make that much of a difference if you didn't (or sort of) know them. Some assholes fly planes into things. So do nice people. Some assholes die in their sleep. So do nice people.
As I sat at home last night watching what had to be at least a 30-45 minute section of SportsCenter being devoted to this mostly unknown journeyman pitcher I couldn't help but wonder: "Would anyone of cared if he was a Pirates pitcher that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania?"
Our national media is so NY-centric that they seem blissfully unaware that our lives do not revolve around them. Someone had mention this crash yesterday at work, maybe an hour after it happened. It didn't register on my radar until I get a email reminder from CNN: "The entire hour we talk to people who knew Lidle." Wow. Really? Can I be honest and say "I don't care." Cause I didn't. And that's more honesty than you're likely to get out of the entire country's worth of sports media this week (Lidle will be mostly forgotten by Friday). They don't really care either - they just saw an opportunity on a slow news day and ran with it...
What did I care about? Well, there were 2 playoff games coming up (one did get rained out - with the obligatory "The weather echoing the sentiment of much of New York" - yeah, you don't know NYers very well) and I was looking forward to seeing some playoff baseball. Didn't think about Lidle the whole time I was watching the game - more interested in how the A's can't seem to hold a lead and how the Tigers have that look in their eye that the 2005 White Sox or the 2004 Red Sox had.
My bold prediction (since King apparently was obliged to follow the rest of the pack-mentality sports media and write a Lidle article today instead of commenting on the As/Tigers game): The Tigers will not lose another game. They will sweep the Athletics and will easily sweep either the limping Mets or the live-and-die-by-Pujols-numbers Cardinals. My Michigan friends will be very happy campers...
So, sorry Cory about your untimely death. Sorry I don't care, but seriously, at this stage in my life, I've got more stuff to worry about than you. And I've had real friends in plane crashes before. Been there, done that. End of rant.