Reading is detrimental

Sports pages often need a parental advisory warning

When I was a boy, my favorite form of literature was the sports section. The authors I quoted were the columnists and beat writers of the newspapers that came to my Long Island front door -- The New York Times and Daily News, Newsday and New York Post. That's where I read that Joe Namath had guaranteed victory in Super Bowl III. It was where I saw pictures of Walt Frazier's wide-brimmed hats and Rolls-Royce. It was where I learned that Willie Mays had been traded to my beloved Mets. I read the sections from front to back, from the headlines to the agate type, picking them cleaner than a wishbone on Thanksgiving.

For years, I've looked forward to the possibility that a child of mine would discover the joys of the sports section, that he or she would climb out of bed in the morning and head straight for the paper as I once did -- still do -- and we would talk over the sports news of the day. Now I have a son who's 10, and the sports section is beginning to exert its pull on him. He's discovering that the printed word has charms that can't be found on Baseball Tonight, and he's looking at more than just the standings and the TV listings. He discards the rest of the newspaper as if it's gift wrap and zeroes in on the sports section. I should be thrilled.

Instead, I want to rip it out of his hands.

I want take it away at least long enough to find out if there's something in the sports section that his pre-adolescent brain shouldn't have to process, and too often there is. Is this the day that I have to explain to him why Allen Iverson, one of his favorite athletes, is facing charges of forcing his way into an apartment and threatening people with a gun? Is my little boy going to begin his day by reading about Darrell Russell of the Oakland Raiders allegedly videotaping sex acts involving a woman who may have been drugged? (The vocabulary word for today, son, is "consensual.") Is he going to read today that University of Miami fullback Najeh Davenport allegedly defecated in a woman's closet? Or that Al Unser Jr. supposedly hit his girlfriend and left her by the side of the road on his way home from a strip joint? And don't even get me started on the Gold Club trial.

At the risk of sounding like a prude, there's more sex, violence and depravity in your average sports section these days than in an episode of The Sopranos. I long ago stopped being shocked or angry at athletes for illegal or illicit behavior. I don't expect them to be perfect role models or to sign autographs until every last fan is satisfied. All I want is for athletes to give me my sports section back, to let my kid open up the paper to read about the Giants-Rockies game without having to be exposed to some center fielder's X-rated indiscretions.

I resent feeling like I need to go through the sports pages with a black magic marker before I can let my son read them. The sports section was one of the last innocent places for a kid to go, one of the few areas of daily life in which parents could exhale for a moment and not worry about the effect our increasingly coarse culture is having on our children. But no more. There are days when the sports pages should come with a parental advisory warning, or maybe in a plain brown wrapper.

There are some who fault the media for this, and surely some outlets trumpet the sordid stuff a bit too gleefully. But for the most part, the blame lies not with the messengers but with the participants. I want to tell my son that it wasn't always this way, that parents didn't always have to cringe at the thought of what their kids might see on their way to the box scores. But there's no use telling him anything by way of this column.

Because, unfortunately, I can't let him read it.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

Phil Taylor's Insider archive

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video