Let's cheer athletes under the bright stadium lights. They're no better people than anyone else, just because they play games so well. Elway won Super Bowls because he can throw a football through an ocean of taffy and has quick enough feet to elude the raging bulls of the NFL. McGwire hits homers because he's got quick wrists and forearms that could crush a tank.
We say they work harder, they want success more, they're somehow better people than the rest of us.īut the truth is, Jordan won titles because he could shoot straighter and jump higher and play smarter hoops. That's why we give Jordan and Mark McGwire and John Elway special qualities. We want to believe that our sporting heroes are good people, too.
We don't put their posters on our wall or throw them parades. Richard Lapchick, of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said athletes probably are no different from the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies or anyone else with a hefty wallet.ĭifference is, we don't cheer Fortune 500 execs. children in 1995 were born to unmarried mothers. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 32 percent of U.S. They are proving themselves to be illegitimate parents.Ībsentee fatherhood is not just a problem in sports. These athletes are not producing illegitimate children. Who's next? David Robinson? Cal Ripken? Emmitt Smith? Stand-up guys on the surface. Remember Steve Garvey? And Barry Sanders. The list is long.Īnd this isn't an epidemic limited to knuckleheads like Johnson and Sprewell. Jason Kidd, Larry Bird, Kenny Anderson, Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Hakeem Olajuwon, Juwan Howard, Patrick Ewing, Gary Peyton, Scottie Pippen. Latrell Sprewell, three kids by three mothers. Kevin Mitchell, four kids by four mothers. David Meggett, five kids by four mothers. Larry Johnson, five kids by four mothers. Sports Illustrated last year documented many of the deeds. Our fields and arenas are spawning grounds for absentee fatherhood. I'll bet she would return every check if the money would buy her a father who wasn't ashamed to admit it.įrankly, Alexandra is playing this life with two strikes - raised in the tennis culture, which hardly ever is a healthy environment, and ignored by a father who is revered by America.Įrving joins sports' fastest-growing club: athletes as sperm donors. I don't know Stevenson, but there's no reason a Wimbledon princess is any different from a kid on a street corner. He's been supporting her financially, he said, which doesn't make Erving a dad. His daughter indeed is the ace-serving 18-year-old whose mother, Samantha Stevenson, covered the Philadelphia 76ers 19 years ago as a free-lance writer for the New York Times.Įrving said he has seen his daughter once, when she was 3 years old. The day Stevenson made the Wimbledon semifinals, and a couple of days after Erving denied being her father, Dr. J was Jordan's equal in style and flash, if not points and rings.īut Erving's greatest contribution to American sport came Friday, when he gave us another timely reminder why we should just say no to athletes. And so was the revelation that emerging tennis star Alexandra Stevenson is the daughter of Julius Erving, who was the previous generation's Michael Jordan. He sounded like the Chicago street urchin who 79 years ago tugged at the pants of the shamed Shoeless Joe Jackson, and cried, "Say it ain't so, Joe." One of our editors heard the news and refused to believe it.
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