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Too soon to forget about Lewis' sins
Updated: Thursday December 21, 2000 7:23 AM
The rehabilitation of the image of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis officially seems to have begun. He did his first interview of the season with Lesley Visser of CBS last weekend and she also talked to his teammates and good friends, Shannon Sharpe and Rod Woodson, and he is playing great football and the Ravens are headed to the playoffs and ... turn the page, all seems to be well again. Excuse me if I don't turn the page just yet. Ten months, 11 months, seems a little soon to be putting this guy's picture back up on the rec-room wall next to the photo from Iwo Jima and the oil painting of Our Lady of Fatima. Even if Mr. Lewis is having an MVP kind of year -- and by all accounts he is -- that doesn't balance out his involvement in the violent scene that left two people dead on the night of the Super Bowl last January in Atlanta. He is still the man who pleaded guilty to an obstruction of justice charge, still the man whose stretch limo and alleged friends were in the middle of the nasty business. I don't say he's beyond redemption, because we live in the time of the second chance for anyone, everyone. I don't say that the view of his friends, that he is a good guy who became mixed up in a bad thing, is necessarily wrong. I just say it's all a little soon. Ray Lewis is going to have to do more than sack a few quarterbacks and win a few football games to get back in our bubble-gum card collection. He is going to have to live a lot more of life. Quietly. Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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