O P I N I O N
THE SOAPBOX
Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.
Just when you think nothing can be more ridiculous than what you’ve already seen and heard, Congress comes back in session. But never mind the lunacy of impeaching the same president twice in one term and trying him in the senate after he has left office. There will always be something even more ridiculous just around the bend.
Trust me, I know.
I used to root for the original New York Mets, who in their maiden season in 1962 won 40, lost 120 and inspired Manager Casey Stengel to say, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” and “I been in baseball 100 years and this team has shown me ways to lose that I’ve never seen before.” And, oh, yes, one more of many: “The wind must’ve got a hold of it; otherwise my mind tells me my fielders would be running toward the ball instead of away from it.” The only thing that could have been more ridiculously comical than the Mets that year would have been a prediction that by the end of the decade the Mets would win the World Series and Americans would walk on the moon in the same year.
But I have seen and heard things still more ridiculous. Remember when Archie Bunker’s son-in-law argued that since blacks were about 12 percent of the population they should hold 12 percent of the jobs in any industry? It took the black neighbor Lionel to show even Archie how ridiculous that was.
“By that logic, the Harlem Globetrotters ought to be 88 percent white,” Lionel reckoned.
“Jeez, I never thought of that,” Archie acknowledged.
Well, okay, that was a situation comedy. But as Archie might have said, “Truth is stranger than friction.” (sic) I once read a letter to the editor in the New Hampshire Union Leader in which a high school student argued that Title 9, I believe it is, requires the newspaper to devote as much ink and space to women’s as to men’s sports. If the rules were followed, that student had already passed through courses on the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions and should have known better.
Former California Gov. Ronald Reagan was called crass and insensitive for holding a political event in the same Los Angeles hotel in which Robert Kennedy had been assassinated years before. I hope he didn’t go to Dallas, where he might have travelled for crass political purposes on the same stretch of road that President Kennedy was on when he was shot and killed.
A writer for the Los Angeles Times complained that Trump supporters in her neighborhood plowed the snow off her driveway in what might normally be regarded as an act of kindness. But these are not normal times and the lady was not about to attribute a virtue like kindness to Trump supporters. Those denizens of the “basket of deplorables” must have had an evil motive. But even that is not the most ridiculous thing I have yet seen or heard.
On the morning after Super Bowl LV (that’s 55 for you youngsters) there were several comments posted on social media lamenting the fact that white quarterback Tom Brady won his seventh Super Bowl by defeating dark-skinned quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the month of February, which has been designated Black History Month. I mean how insensitive can the 43-year-old Brady be?
Let me hasten to add that Mahomes is not absurd, though some of his sympathizers are. The young man did not have a good game. Yet when it was over he congratulated Tom Brady and I doubt that he reminded his victorious rival that it is Black History Month. In the game of football, Tom Brady is not God, but he’s close. Yet there are some who still want to throw verbal rocks at him. Why?
Is it because he is too perfect? A football legend in his own time, he is also movie-star handsome and married to a supermodel. Until this year, he played for the winningest team in football history. Then in his first year with the Tampa team, he has made them the Super Bowl champs. The guy defines what it means to be a winner.
He’s like the kid in high school who got straight A’s, was the class president, captained the football team and lettered in every sport but golf and tennis. (He might have set records in swimming, too, but he was too busy making hoops in basketball.) But remember he was chosen not in the first, but in the sixth round of the NFL draft. At the University of Michigan he was a part-time quarterback. His teammates testify that in addition to having All-World talent, he leads the league in work ethic. He watches his diet and takes extraordinary care of his 43-year-old body. In other words, it is extraordinary talent plus a lot of hard work that has brought him to the zenith of athletic fame and glory.
Yet even I found myself criticizing him and calling him “greedy” for wanting to play even longer. What more can he gain? How many more awards can he win? Why not bow out now while he is indisputably the best and the brightest? On the other hand, since he loves playing the game, why take a chance on retiring too soon and regretting it? Sure, he will have a marvelous career as an ex-player, perhaps as a network broadcaster. But why quit the game now when he can still play it better than anyone else?
Granted the professional sports seasons all run too long and perhaps someday when Tom Brady is the NFL commissioner he will see to it that the Super Bowl is not played during Black History Month. Or that all quarterbacks must be black, at least during the month of February. In the meantime, let this old die-hard fan of the late great Johnny Unitas plead for a cease-fire on Tom Terrific, the greatest quarterback ever to put on a pair of cleats for the roughest game on earth. Let us not even attempt to diminish his well-earned and much-deserved glory.
At least not until he runs for President or is elected Pope.
Beg to differ? Agree to disagree? Thoughtful prose on topics of general interest are welcome here. Send submissions to carolrobidoux@manchesterinklink.com, subject line: The Soapbox.
Jack Kenny is a freelance writer from Manchester. He can be reached at pitchforkjack@gmail.com
