By Ross Weingarten
At 10:00 this morning, while on a train from my hometown of Washington, D.C. back to my adopted hometown of New York, I got a text from my best friend. “Did you hear?” I responded negatively. Thirty seconds later, his response came: “Sean Taylor is dead.”
I knew that the night before, Taylor, the hard-hitting Redskins safety had been shot in the leg in an apparent robbery, but as I went to bed, the news was positive. He was showing signs of life, squeezing a nurse’s hand and making facial expressions. The Redskins star would make it. Another friend of mine even said hopefully that if the ‘Skins made the playoffs, he hoped Taylor would be back in time to play.
Before I continue, let me stop right here. If you’re not from Washington, D.C., like I am, there is something you must understand. The Redskins are much more than a football team. They are a passion. They are a way of life. Friends of mine that either don’t understand football or think it is the most barbaric game ever invented love the Redskins. No other local team comes close. People like the Wizards (formerly the Bullets), but they have been so bad for so long that people expect failure. Georgetown and the University of Maryland basketball teams have their fans, but only when the teams win. The Nationals? Please.
The Redskins, on the other hand, consume Washington. While people fondly remember the glory years of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, fans still go into each week with optimism, thinking the team can turn it around. Sadly, the second Gibbs administration has been much less successful than the first (much like another dynasty in Washington), but Redskins fans still care, still pay the highest prices in the NFL to root for a mediocre football team. I’m not saying that we love the Redskins more than other fans love their favorite teams; it’s just that, well, they’re all we’ve got. Perhaps it is because Washingtonians are so jaded with that other local business, politics, that we are so uncomplicated about our love for the ‘Skins.
So, back to this morning. Sean Taylor is dead. I cannot even begin to explain the multitude of thoughts that exploded in my head. You see, Taylor was my favorite NFL player. He played with emotion and reckless abandon. He hit anything that moved. I once saw him level his own teammate, a cornerback, who had a sure interception until he was hit by Taylor and dropped the ball. I loved it.
People point to his record as evidence of character flaws. Sure, he made mistakes, but Taylor came from a good home, was raised by a police chief father, and teammates and friends say that since he had his baby girl Jackie one year ago, he had turned his life around. This was not a man that deserved to die.
I’ve now had almost a day to reflect on Taylor’s death, and I think I know why I was so confused when I heard the news. To most of society, professional athletes are not real people. By that I mean that to us, the fans, our favorite athletes exist in the pseudo-fictional world of television. Even at a live sporting event, the players are carefully separated from the normal people, appearing larger than life, playing on beautiful fields or courts while the fans slump in crowded bleachers. Because of the high-profile nature of their jobs, most athletes have become skilled at shutting the “normals” out. They give bland interviews, rarely show emotion, and always retreat behind closed doors, whether they are to the locker room, their luxury cars, or their gated houses. Professional athletes are a world apart. And as much as athletes like this segregation, we do as well. This way, we can root for them as players and not as people, cheer their successes and curse their failures and not have to worry that we might actually be hurting feelings.
And then that separation, those walls, come crashing down. Every so often we realize that star athletes are human. They have families, girlfriends, boyfriends, and babies. They are stressed and anxious and worried like we are. Most poignantly, they are mortal like we are, too. Early this morning, it shocked me that such a fabulous athlete like Taylor could be killed. Why should it? In truth, he was just a young man, trying to turn his life around, be a good boyfriend and raise a child. Thousands of those are senselessly murdered everyday. Taylor was no different.
I am deeply saddened by Sean Taylor’s death. He was a great football player and, from what I can tell, a great person as well. Yet I am also saddened that it takes a tragedy like this for fans (myself included) to stop, take a deep breath, and say, “whoa, these guys are human too.” Professional athletes get to where they are because they have found the right combination of skill and luck. They are phenomenal physical specimens who are great at what they do. But they are also people, and people get happy, they get sad, and occasionally, with no hint of fairness or logic in sight, they get killed.
Rest in peace, Sean. It sounds like you were a good guy. I’m sorry it took me so long to care.
© LameSports.net
Loading ...