Amorous athletes

More than ever, sports stars are getting together as couples

Word arrived by stork last week that the world's fastest woman is expecting a child by the world's fastest man. I find this wonderfully extraordinary news, the epitome of reaching for human limits. When Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi had their first child last year, I thought that was the height of athletic parenthood, but the baby Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery are expecting surely will enter this world with the speediest genetic potential of any bundle of joy, ever.

Have we a trend here? There didn't used to be many pan-athletic romances. After all, traditionally, male athletes were supposed to lust after cheerleaders. But there have been recent reports of long-term relationships between baseball player Roberto Alomar and tennis' Mary Pierce, and golfer Sergio Garcia and another tennis star, Martina Hingis. And here are two current champions who've been seen in each other's company: Serena Williams and Keyshawn Johnson of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Soccer's Mia Hamm and Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra are engaged. Anna Kournikova has been linked with more fading NHL stars than the New York Rangers payroll department. Suddenly sports is more, uh, fertile paparazzi territory than is Hollywood.

But, really, could any matchmaker ever have linked Marion and Tim, the swiftest creatures God ever fashioned? And will their child be a veritable little Mercury? Well, in fact, probably not. Something known as "the regression to the mean" invariably kicks in as the human race approaches extremes. That means ultimates paired are more likely to produce a scale-back rather than a new leap forward. Li'l Jaden Agassi and Li'l Jones-Montgomery might very well end up as insurance adjusters or Web site designers rather than even run-of-the-mill tennis players or sprinters.

Indeed, seldom does one great star beget another... except in auto racing, where various Unsers, Allisons, Earnharts and Andrettis reign like so many Plantagenets and Windsors. Brett Hull, the hockey son of Bobby, and Peyton Manning, the football son of Archie, are rare examples of second-generation greatness approximating the first.

But then, and happily, nothing is more capricious in this world than the quality of offspring. Indeed, there is an expression in horse racing that perfectly sums this up: "You breed the best to the best ... and then hope for the best." There are unexpected problems, too. War Emblem, last year's Kentucky Derby winner, was syndicated at stud for many millions of dollars. Turns out War Emblem doesn't much care for the ladies.

Bloodlines are just never any assurance, whatever the species. A few years ago there was a handsome chestnut thoroughbred colt with championship breeding named ... Frank Deford. Frank Deford ran very fast, too -- only in morning workouts, though. He wouldn't attend to business during the races ... especially if Frank Deford was racing against some good-looking fillies.

One day my wife got a phone call. Here's what she was told: "Carol, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to geld Frank Deford."

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.

 

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