People in Sports Revered in Death or Retirement Wo Were Jerks

Oh, I'm not arguing. I'm just saying they had a deep bench of multi-tool tools. A platoon system of assholes for all sorts of situations. Need a judge punched? A baseball thrown at Hannah Storm? Your lefty to wear a $100,000 set of diamond earrings out to the mound? A whiner for opening day? Ray Miller could match up.

 

Al was usually pretty good, but once in a while, he'd get a bug up his ass and decide to be a dick. He's like the opposite of Boomer Esiason, who likes to be a dick 95% of the time.

The McKeon stories from you and Moddy remind me of covering ex-Twins utilityman Al Newman as a minor league manager. I expected him to be this fun, cuddly guy from what I'd read of him being best buddies with Puckett. But he was a miserable, cantankerous old coot. Got some good rants about his bad Double-A team, though.

 

I have the story from a former sports editor, a man I respect greatly:

Earnhardt was driving home in North Carolina, and he passed a church that had a mud-gravel parking lot. He saw the churchgoers getting their Sunday go to meetin' clothes all covered in mud. The next day, a crew paved that parking lot with blacktop. My former sports editor relayed to Earnhardt that he'd heard the story, and Earnhardt told him in no uncertain terms that he didn't want that story told.

Anyway, it's another perspective on Earnhardt. And I'd dispute that he was disliked by fans while alive because I believe he routinely won the fans' choice as favorite or most popular or whatever they call it. At that time there were two numbers on NASCAR fans' cars: 3 and 24.

 

As someone who watched Nascar occasionally, thought Bill Elliott was always the choice of those who rooted for the baby face while Earnhardt was the pick of those who rooted for the heels.

 

My bad, my wires got crossed.

 

People liked his image, because he wasn't warm and cuddly.

 

I don't think Earnhardt was a jerk to anyone except his kids and competitors.

Friend of mine got No. 3's autograph during a weather delay at either Daytona or Charlotte. He did so, by knocking on his RV/Trailer. Earnhardt answered the door himself (he obviously, wasn't real thrilled by the intrusion), my buddy asked for autograph, which he begrudgingly did. My friend said Earnhardt's mood lightened a bit when he asked him about Dale Jr.'s budding career.

I don't think Earnhardt was jerk.


Lance Armstrong, on the other hand ...

 

Oooooof. Lance Armstrong. Covered the 2000 Tour. It was... not easy.

 

The mention of Michael Jordan at some point perked my ears up. What is the gap between Michael Jordan's public image and reality? It seems like it's pretty well-known that he's a competitor to a nearly unhealthy degree and that sometimes manifests itself in incidents where he treats people - Jerry Krause, teammates - poorly. Jordan seems like the sports Hillary Clinton - it's almost laughable to suggest we don't know everything about either of these two.

 

I'm thinking of Space Jam-era Michael Jordan. "Be Like Mike" and all that shit. If everyone was like Mike, society would be a smoking crater in the ground. People knew he was a competitor, sure. But he's also a womanizer, degenerate gambler, and off-court bully. That didn't come up when he was pitching Fruit of the Loom.

 

Also: "Fruit of the Loom." Look at that. What a weird fucking name for a brand.

 

I just assume professional athletes are womanizers. But I think we've had this conversation recently already, about Tiger Woods.

It seems that Michael Jordan's public image has two phases - before and after Sam Smith's book.

Maybe I'm just a '90s Bulls fanboi, or maybe I can barely remember a world in which we didn't know Michael Jordan was a complex human being, but none of that seems particularly disqualifying to me.