8802260796
DETROIT FREE PRESS
881231
Saturday, December 31, 1988
METRO FINAL CHASER
1C
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1988, Detroit Free Press
MAY CLEAR HEADS PREVAIL THIS YEAR
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- I'm killing a tradition this year. I wish I
didn't have to.
Since I joined this newspaper, my New Year's Day column has always begun:
"GOOD MORNING. YOU CAN GET OFF THE POOL TABLE NOW. . . ."
It was written in capital letters -- the whole column -- in sympathy, I
joked, for those too bleary-eyed from drinking the night before. It was fun,
and a lot of people told me they looked forward to it each Jan. 1. Why not?
Humor gets you through a hangover. I was being a buddy. I understood.
Now. When you do this job, you pray for columns that people look forward
to. And you certainly don't want to give them up. But when I sat down this
morning, and started to write about bean dip on your nose, wearing someone
else's pants, well, I felt a shiver of hypocrisy.
And I heard names.
Bruce Kimball. Petr Klima. Steve Howe. Mitch Green. Bob Probert. Reggie
Rogers. . . .
How much trouble have we seen in 1988 from alcohol alone, from men who
were laughing, tossing them back, having an innocently good time? Not one of
these people was sitting in a dark room, trying to poison himself. Most
emerged from bars, happy and confident, often with women on their arms.
And things ended badly. Their laughter turned to shock. In the mildest
case, it was Klima trying to crawl across the lap of the girl next to him, so
the police officer wouldn't see who was driving.
In the worst case, it was Rogers staggering out of his vehicle, dazed,
bleeding, seeing the three teenage bodies whose lives he had inadvertently
snuffed out. Or Kimball, dropping to his knees and weeping "Why me? Why me?"
upon seeing the carnage of two teenagers, killed by his mistake.
Where is the fun in this?
There is no fun.
And I can't joke about it anymore.
'Why? What did I do?'
Please know that this does not come from some self-bloated health nut. I
drink. Sometimes too much. In the sports writing business, it is almost
impossible not to. Truth is that New Year's Eve has long been a sort of an
inside challenge: Let's see how big a hangover you can handle and still make
it in by the bowl game's kickoff.
No harm was meant. But there is something wrong now, some line we have
crossed. The suds have turned sour. We, in the sugar-plum land of the sports
page, should not be burying children.
Yet we are. Too often.
Listen to this partial list of athletes arrested on drinking and driving
charges this year alone: Cal Ripken Sr., Tony Dorsett, Jeff Chadwick, Blake
Ezor, Andre Rison and Manute Bol.
Manute Bol? For Pete's sake, the guy didn't even speak English six years
ago! He was a Sudanese tribesman! And Klima? He was stolen out of
Czechoslovakia in 1985, supposedly dreaming of freedom. He has already been
arrested twice, booked, and sentenced.
Freedom?
Remember what Rogers said when they first told him of the manslaughter
charge? "Why? What did I do?" And you can almost understand it. What sports
broadcast today isn't sponsored by some beer company? What game can you watch
and not see rugged, handsome men toasting each other, as a deep voice coos
about "a cool frosty one . . ." or says "head for the mountains. . . .
Women toasting men. Dogs carrying six-packs. In the upcoming Super Bowl,
there will be a series of commercials featuring a mock football game between
beer bottles. What message are we sending? The advertising is so well-glossed
that you honestly forget there is alcohol in the stuff.
And yet most of the drunken incidents in sports stem from beer. Too much
beer. Just a couple of beers. I can handle beer. It's only beer.
Why? What did I do?
Haven't we had enough?
Enough. This should stop. I can think of no uglier confrontation than this
summer's Olympic diving trials, where Kimball, charged with manslaughter,
walked up that platform to compete. Diving fans cheered his "courage," while
friends of the dead sat in silent rage. Who cheers for them? Who weeps for
their children?
Please. Life is not a commercial. These athletes, for the most part, are
nice people, I know some of these people, and the hardest columns to write
have been the ones condemning them for a wrong that I, and probably you, too,
have at times committed.
It begins with attitude. People will never stop drinking altogether. But I
no longer feel right winking at the chug-a- lug. Somewhere along the line,
the idea of waking up with my tongue dry and my head throbbing has lost its
romance.
So in the memory of those bodies littered across a Florida lawn, and
those three teenagers scattered at a Pontiac intersection, the accidents that
happened and the accidents that just missed -- when we swerved and said,
"Whoa, that was close!" and kept going -- well, I hope you understand when you
pick up tomorrow's newspaper.
No capital letters. No pool table. No bean dip on your nose. Let's take a
break and wake up before noon this year. And if you must drink, please don't
touch the car keys, don't even think about it. It's not corny. It's not
preachy. It's just a New Year's resolution that says we really can live and
learn.
Our stomachs, and our children, will thank us.
COLUMN;CRITICISM; ALCOHOL;ABUSE;ATHLETE;NAMELIST