Philadelphia Weekly

illustration by Hawk Krall

According to an article I hurriedly glanced at in The New York Times, reality TV celebrities are now more famous than sports personalities.

I think we're meant to feel bad about this. Like it's one second to midnight and the barbarians are at the gate and the rough beast of dumbed-downyness is slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.

As if. Yeah, sure, anybody who gives a damn about reality TV is an idiot. In fact I'd go further: Anybody who can name more than three reality TV contestants should be removed from the electoral roll and sterilized. But sportsmen? When did these 'roid-gobbling, wife-beating, homophobic millionaire pinheads become benchmarks of cultural erudition?

Have I slipped into some nightmare alternate dimension where the fact that most folks know American Idol uberfreak Sanjaya's face better than their own, while they wouldn't recognize strangely swollen baseball batter Barry Bonds if he danced naked on their lawn, drinking goats' blood and sacrificing virgins to the god of irrelevant monocultural sports stats, is even remotely interesting?

You want sporting heroes? Let's start with Jesse Owens, the African-American sprinter who made Hitler choke on his white-supremacist bile at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Or Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave black power salutes from the winners' podium at the 1968 Olympics. Or Muhammad Ali--a real American hero who constantly attacked racism and warmongering.

You want modern examples? Turns out that even as sports hacks stare aghast at the corruption, drugs, homophobia and misogyny in modern sports and bemoan the lack of--what's that word again?--oh yeah, integrity, the stuff's out there by the dumpster load.

There's college basketball player Toni Smith who suffered a hurricane of abuse when she turned her back on the flag to protest the war and social injustice.

There's Steve Nash of the Dallas Mavericks, vilified for wearing a "No war. Shoot for peace." T-shirt.

And Carlos Delgado of the Toronto Blue Jays who refused to leave the dugout during the playing of "God Bless America" in protest against "the stupidest war ever."

Hey, guys, here's your integrity. There's also coaches like Steve Bandura and Walter Stewart who coach inner-city Philly kids in soccer and baseball (See "Bend It Like Janiah," p. 26). Or Jordanian- American soccer coach Luma Mufleh who runs a kickass soccer club for impoverished refugee kids in Clarkston, Ga.

Then there are America's gay and lesbian teams--like Philadelphia's Falcons (soccer), Gryphons (rugby) and Spartans (wrestling)--who by their very existence move us closer to the day when gay professionals and fans won't feel they have to lie about their sexuality.

Integrity, guts, pride and real heroes--they're everywhere once you start looking.