Loosen up

Two recent "controversies" were much ado about nothing

Not everything in sports is a Serious Issue. Granted, it can be hard to keep that in mind when we are inundated with stories of steroids, gambling, academic fraud, fan violence, domestic abuse and other weighty matters, but it really isn't necessary for sports fans to walk around with a permanently furrowed brow. Maybe we've become so programmed to react with shock and concern that we can't recognize when a wink and a smile would be more appropriate.

For evidence of that, look no further than two of the most discussed stories of the past week, the Italian Sausage Bashing in Milwaukee and Professor Dusty Baker's impromptu history and anthropology seminar in Chicago. Both incidents have been greeted in some quarters with such absurd overreaction and hand-wringing that someone needs to step in, tap the microphone and remind the audience that these are the jokes, folks.

By now, almost everyone has seen the Zapruder-like tape of Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Randall Simon decking a teenage girl who was wearing an 8-foot tall sausage costume with what was meant to be a playful half-swing of his bat during the sausage-racing contest at a Milwaukee Brewers game. (Why was a teenage girl running around in an 8-foot tall sausage costume? Same reason Green Bay Packers fans like to wear foam cheeseheads, I imagine. Something about living in Wisconsin apparently gives people the urge to dress up as processed food products.) Though the bat only made contact with the costume, not the girl, the blow knocked her off balance enough to send her sprawling, and another young woman, this one outfitted as a hot dog, tripped and fell over her.

The resulting two-sausage pileup prompted this classic bit of testimony from eyewitness Ned Yost, the Brewers' manager: "I looked over," said Yost, "and saw our wieners in a wad."

Once it was clear that neither woman was seriously hurt -- they suffered only scraped knees -- the entire incident should have been nothing more than fodder for the sports blooper reels. But instead, Simon was treated like a human sausage -- grilled by police, roasted by media and eaten alive by baseball executives. He was arrested on battery charges, handcuffed and taken to the county jail after the game, while a ridiculously serious editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said his actions "bordered on criminal conduct." Simon was eventually fined $432, in addition to the $2,000 fine and three-game suspension levied against him by baseball commissioner Bud Selig, making it one very expensive Italian sausage, even by ballpark standards. A Brewers executive went way overboard, calling the incident "... one of the most outrageous things I've ever seen inside a ballpark or outside a ballpark. It sickened me to see it."

What's next? A civil suit against Simon filed by Oscar Mayer? A protest by People for the Ethical Treatment of Meat? Please. Simon obviously meant no harm and caused very little. He apologized profusely for an attempt at humor gone wrong. Instead of vilifying him as if he had mugged someone on the street, the Brewers should have had a little publicity-generating fun with Simon. How about having him run through a gauntlet of sausage mascots armed with foam rubber bats the next day? What about flying in Kobayashi, the little guy who ate about a zillion hot dogs in the recent Fourth of July contest, for a comic confrontation with Simon? How about somebody, somewhere, seeing the humor in the whole thing?

Speaking of humor, Baker's discourse on minorities and the heat last week sounded like a Richard Pryor routine without the profanity. Asked about the effect of the summer heat on his players, Baker, the Chicago Cubs manager, said, "It's easier for most Latin guys and easier for most minority people because most of us come from heat. You don't find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right? We were brought over here for the heat. Isn't that history? Weren't we brought over here because we could take the heat? ... I don't see brothers running around burnt. That's a fact. I'm not making this up. I'm not seeing brothers walking around with some white stuff on their ears and noses."

Some people reacted to Baker's comments by calling him a racist, while others quickly pointed out military and scholarly studies that refuted his theories, all of which was the result of taking the matter far too seriously. (Although, having grown up in a black neighborhood where we didn't know sunscreen from salad dressing, I can understand where at least part of Baker's comments were coming from.)

But if blacks don't mind the heat, why were we all in church fanning ourselves with our programs every summer Sunday when I was a kid, asking the Lord for forgiveness and air conditioning? I don't know what black people Baker's been studying, but I know for a fact that we don't all stay fresh as a daisy in the heat. We may not burn, but we sweat like anybody else -- maybe more than anybody else. Remember when Patrick Ewing played for the Knicks? He used to drip like he'd just stepped out of the sauna -- and that was just in the pregame layup line.

I won't attempt to draw any larger conclusions from Baker's observations, and I certainly wouldn't expect to be taken seriously if I did. I would expect people to smile and dismiss my comments as harmless nonsense. But smiling doesn't seem to come naturally anymore. We're programmed these days to look for controversy, not humor.

Even when it comes dressed up like an Italian sausage.

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

 

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