December 3, 2009
Tiger, The Babe, & Lardner’s “Champion”
Ring Lardner
Tiger Woods cheated on his wife with some cocktail waitresses and the world is a-twitter.
How did we get here?
Perhaps it was around the time of Watergate and Ball Four, the early ’70s, when journalists decided that it would be better — more profitable — to start hero-bashing. And from its humble start, this sport has grown — fed by the 24-hour news cycle, the internet, and perhaps Joe the Plumber’s grave dissatisfaction with the complexity of modern life — to something approaching ritual. We have human gods (i.e. celebrities) now; we look up to them, we feel idiotic for doing so, and we must kill them, so to speak, to regain our self-respect. But this is an error: such a good can only be the fruit of creation, not destruction. But nevertheless we moderns delight in destruction.
Somewhere Babe Ruth is winking. The Tiger Woods of baseball was never crucified publicly for his private failures. The Bambino, a married man, bedded scores of bimbos during his heyday and often played drunk, but who knew? When he once famously puked on third base after legging out a triple, fans simply assumed he was a bit tired. The Fourth Estate exchanged knowing winks in the press box and kept their traps shut, so Little Billy could keep his untarnished image of the Babe.
Ring Lardner was a contemporary of the The Sultan of Swat, and he fictionalized the media’s sugar-coating of sports heroes in “Champion.” This story, from his collection How to Write Short Stories (1924), is the humorous and disturbing account of a talented boxer, Midge Kelly, who scores his first knockout at seventeen — the “knockee” being his younger, crippled brother. He then beats up his own mother, and runs away from home. On the path to boxing glory the man cheats a legion of trainers, friends and women — financially, emotionally, sexually. For instance, he leaves his bride the day after their wedding and when she later writes begging for a little money so that their child won’t starve, he ignores her. He treats his forgiving and needy kin the same way. One can imagine even Tyson wincing at the inhuman nature of this “champ.”
At story’s end a reporter interviews Midge’s trainer and gets a sugary tale of a young man who says his prayers and loves his family and all the rest. So that’s the story that’s published in the paper. And even if any aggrieved party had challenged the story, or come out with the brutal truth, it wouldn’t have made print. As the editor would have said, “You can’t print that. People don’t wanna see him knocked down. He’s champion.”
How times have changed.
