Should Vick Get a Second Chance?

Tuesday night, Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden was my guest in the studio at 5pm, and I asked him hypothetically if, as a G.M., he would consider giving Michael Vick a second chance on a a team that he ran, assuming Vick paid his debt to society and showed some degree of contrition. Bowden said no. But then he turned the tables on me and asked if I would give Vick a second chance. With about half-a-second to consider my answer, I too said no, explaining hurriedly that as a G.M., I wouldn't want to offend my season ticket-holders who were dog lovers.

 

I regret that answer.

 

With more time to think about it, I would answer yes -- I would give Michael Vick a second chance.

 

People will misconstrue this position for something it is not. Like everyone else, I am disgusted by what Michael Vick did. The stories of the grotesque manner in which he disposed of underperforming dogs makes me sick to my stomach. He deserves to be punished -- and punished severely by both the legal system and the NFL. That said, we are a nation of second chances, and Michael Vick deserves one like anyone else. The nature of the criminal justice system is that every crime has a corresponding punishment, and once that punishment is served, the perpetrator gets to re-enter society. Distasteful as it may be, this is true of sex offenders, drug dealers and even violent offenders -- and should be true for Michael Vick as well.

 

Repulsed as I am by Michael Vick's actions, I cannot stand here and condemn him in perpetuity, telling him he has no right to live and work as a free man for the rest of his life. His crime is repugnant, but not worthy of a life sentence. It is possible that Michael Vick can rehabilitate both his soul and his image. Lesser men have done so. As a man who has been the beneficiary of second chances, I am in no position to refuse Michael Vick his.

Save a cow, throw a dirty baseball!

Since we're all trying to live "Greener" lives, I have a conservation suggestion for those who play and run our national pastime -- stop throwing away baseballs like they were empty beer cans. (I'm kidding -- I don't actually think conserving baseballs will stem global warming; I'm just irked that we discard so much perfectly good cowhide!)

If you watch a Major League Baseball game nowadays, you will see scores of perfectly useable baseballs discarded for no good reason. If a pitcher bounces a curveball in the dirt, the catcher, for example -- almost by reflex, reaches behind his back to exchange said ball for a new one for the next pitch. Why? Pitchers and catchers will argue that the bounce-in-the-dirt creates a scuff on the ball, making it harder for the pitcher to grip. I say "Phooey!" A ball pitched in the dirt isn't damaged nearly as much as one that's smacked into the right-centerfield gap, rolls around on the warning track and then gets thrown back into the infield... and yet we don't see pitchers demanding new balls in those situations. Baseballs are designed to endure punishment. For God's sake -- Randy Johnson once threw a 98 MPH fastball into a bird, killing it in mid-flight, and that ball was still good enough to pitch again.

Pitchers are spoiled. They only have to work every 5th day, they get to pick the music on the clubhouse stereo on the nights when they start, and they think that they should get a new ball every time a particle of dust floats onto the seems. Well, I say, "Get over it!" If the rest of us can re-use the dirty towels in our hotel rooms and drive hybrid cars, you pitchers can throw a slightly smudged ball.

McEnroe Still Melting Down

There are some sporting events that simply must be seen in-person in order to appreciate their full effect -- the majesty of a Barry Bonds home run, the power of a Tiger Woods drive, the acrobatic grace of a Kobe Bryant dunk... and yes... the train wreck that is a John McEnroe meltdown.

Of course, we used to see them on TV all the time when McEnroe was a regular on the ATP Tour. You remember -- some unsuspecting chair umpire or linesperson or photographer or fan would wind up on the business end of a profanity-laced tirade that would make a longshoreman blush. It would sometimes be embellished by a thrown racket or an up-turned water cooler, and we would always dutifully laugh and chalk the whole thing up to, "Mac being Mac".

This past weekend, I did the play-by-play for the telecast of the Outback Champions Series tennis event in Boston, in which McEnroe competed (along with Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, Todd Martin and others -- check out www.championsseriestennis.com), and I had the comic honor of watching McEnroe melt down just as he had in the past. Mind you, announcing tennis events frequently as I do, this was not a rare occurrence. McEnroe is good for a freak-out or two even today at the advanced age of 48, playing in senior-level events, which are surely competitive, but not exactly Wimbledon. But this meltdown was a goody. McEnroe was playing the Czech star Petr Korda, and in a series of about 60 minutes, he unloaded a variety fo F-Bombs, tossed his racket several times, berated the chair umpire at the top of his lungs, launched tennis balls out of the court, and even slammed a tennis ball across the net at his opponent, which, had it not been for Korda's reserve and tact, might have started World War III.

The scene was ridiculous. McEnroe acted like a four-year old. And if you're wondering how much of Johnny Mac's nightly unraveling is an act, I can assure you -- zero percent. Sure, he'll oblige the crowd with the occasional "You cannot be serious", reprising his infamous utterance from the early-80's, but when he starts launching profanity at fans and officials, it becomes obvious, that no right-thinking human being would act this way and believe he was being "entertaining" -- when McEnroe explodes, he is deadly serious.

So I got to thinking about the forces at work inside his brain, and what it must be like to compete at an elite level like he does, and what it must be like to be a famous athlete with all the accompanying stresses and obligations, and how those pressures must converge to create the conditions that cause McEnroe to lose it... and then I realized... that's all baloney. There is no reasoning, or psychological justification or excuse for the way McEnroe behaves... he's simply being a jerk.

Usually, when people act like jerks in the workplace, they lose their jobs, their friends desert them and they get told where they can stick their attitudes. But for nearly 30 years McEnroe has engendered the opposite response: His career has flourished, the fans embrace him, and nobody has ever had the gumption to stand up to him and tell him shut up and play... until this past Saturday night.

Saturday night, for the first time since 1992, McEnroe played a competitive match against Pete Sampras. The Boston event marked Sampras' return to tournament tennis for the first time since his retirement from the ATP in 2002. The two American legends faced off in the third stage of the Round Robin competition, and McEnroe was clearly overmatched. And as always (especially when he's losing), his temper started to flair. He started nitpicking with linespeople and berating the chair umpire and generally whining about the injustice that had befallen him in the match. Some of McEnroe's complaints on this night were legitimate, but as usual, many were not. In the second set, McEnroe hit a serve that was called out. The call was clearly correct (as confirmed by our TV replay and every fan who was sitting within an acre of the service line on the east side of the arena), but McEnroe belly-ached for what seemed like the 20th time this night that the linesperson was wrong and, just as he began to throw another of his typical full-blown tantrums, Sampras interrupted him and shouted across the net tersely, "John, the ball was like a foot out would you stop complaining about every call and just play?"

Finally.

It took perhaps the greatest player of all time to stand up to McEnroe and tell him what he should have been told 25 years ago, "Shut up and play."

And amazingly, McEnroe did. He was on his best behavior for the remainder of the match (which Sampras won), and even morphed at times into the "Charming and funny Mac", who is a joy to watch and to spend time with. He responded as any bully would -- he'll push you around right up until the moment you stand up to him. I just can't figure out why nobody ever stood up to him before now.

Of course, we are all enablers to Mac's historic bad behavior. If you had your ass kissed from the time you were a teenager by agents, coaches, colleges, shoe companies, tournament directors and various other hangers-on, you might act like an entitled brat too. Then again, Sampras doesn't... neither does Courier, or Roddick, or Derek Jeter, or LeBron James, or Sydney Crosby or any number of other star athletes who found fame at a young age. But Mac does... and always has. I love tennis, but it occurs to me I can never and will never take my sons to see McEnroe play, because I can't let them think that it's okay to act that way. I can't let them think that just because one can get away with a certain behavior as McEnroe does, that such behavior is acceptable. And it's a shame, because McEnroe is one of the most artful, skilled, thoughtful tennis players ever to raise a racket... he just never grew up.

It Takes One To Know One

Last week my family and I made the annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles to spend Passover with the west coast branch of our family. The argument that took place over my sister-in-law's overcooked brisket is a topic for a completely different blog entry.

Last Friday, my wife and I decided to take our 4-year old son to Universal Studios for the day. he's a "Shrek-a-holic", and they have this new "Shrek 4-D" Movie experience, so I figured we couldn't go wrong. I knew the ticket prices at theme parks had soared over the last several years, so I was reasonably prepared when I walked up to the ticket kiosk and saw that general admission was $61, but the thing that made me sick to my stomach was the other option that was available on the pricing menu -- for $109, you could buy a "Front of the Line Pass". As the name indicates, this pass enables the bearer to bypass the long, scoliosis-inducing waits at each and every attraction, and cut directly to the front of the queue.

I almost threw up in my baseball cap.

Let's consider the lot of the typical working class family of four, for whom a trip to Universal Studios is not a minor economic imposition. After four admission tickets, parking, lunch for everyone, plus a couple of souvenirs, etc, dad is out-of-pocket for about $400 without blinking. Are you going to tell me that after spending that much money, this family STILL has to feel like second-class citizens? How does mom explain why all the rich folk with the "A-Gate" passes dangling around their necks get to breeze by them to the front of the line, while they melt in the sweltering heat? If there is one place on earth where life should be more egalitarian than that, it's inside a kids-oriented theme park.

I'm not sure who's more culpable here – Universal for creating such a piggish system that happily collects the money of its working class patrons, only to relegate them to the steerage-class compartment...or the rich folks who indulge in the "A-Gate" option, considering themselves too important to wait in line alongside the "Common folk". What's the message the kids glean from this? -- "Everyone can see Shrek, but if you drive a Chevy, you can see him in about 90 minutes."?

Don't get me wrong -- I love free-market economics, and I'm all for innovative revenue streams in corporate America, but I think some things are a matter of class, and making one kid wait longer to ride a roller coaster because his dad doesn't make as much money as another kid's dad, is a reprehensible form of discrimination, and it makes me think that Universal did such a great job making a movie about an ogre, because it takes one to know one.