John Weston Parry - The Athletes Dilemma: Sacrificing Health for Wealth and Fame

The Athletes Dilemma

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Parry, John Weston, 1948 author.

Title: The athletes dilemma : sacrificing health for wealth and fame / John Weston Parry.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016045936 (print) | LCCN 2017010641 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442275409 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442275416 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: SportsPhysiological aspects. | Sports injuriesMoral and ethical aspects. | AthletesHealth and hygieneUnited States. | AthletesDrug useUnited States. | Doping in sportsUnited States. | Risk taking (Psychology)

Classification: LCC RC1235 .P37 2017 (print) | LCC RC1235 (ebook) | DDC 617.1/027dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045936

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Sports have provided me with a lifetime of enjoyment. My father, who grew up in the New York area, imprinted the pleasures of being a two-sport Giants fan, even after our baseball team moved to San Francisco in 1958. My baseball loyalty was cemented as a young child when the Giants swept the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series. I still rememberspurred on by many replaysWillie Mayss famous over-the-shoulder catch and throw on Vic Wertzs blast to center field. I shared those precious moments with my dad, staring at shadowy images on a thirteen-inch black-and-white television set, listening to the eloquent play-by-play of Russ Hodges that only this languid game could engender. Little did I know that it would be fifty-six years until the Giants would win the World Series again, again, and again. Unpredictability is the magic of sports.

My first memorable experience with professional football was on December 28, 1958. My father and I listened to a transistor radio in Central Park, while playing catch, because the telecast had been blacked out in the New York area. Our Giants lost in sudden death to the Baltimore Colts in the championship that is considered by many to be the best ever played. Numerous football Hall of Famers participated, including Johnny Unitas, Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Roosevelt Brown, and Emlen Tunnell. Pat Summerall was the Giants placekicker. Yet, the first basemans mitt my father wore on that chilly day is the far more precious memory. That glove sits on a shelf in our living room next to his ashes.

My professional basketball loyalty was not established until the early 1960s. Dad did not follow the sport, but he, my mother, and stepmother all supported equal opportunity and racial integration throughout my young life. Thus, as an adolescent, I was drawn to the team chemistry that allowed the pretty well-integrated Boston Celticsled by Bill Russell, Red Auerbach, Sam and K. C. Jones, Bob Cousy, and John Havlicekto win a multiplicity of championships over opponents with even better individual talent. Team defense, prodigious rebounding, exquisitely blocked shots, long release passes, stop and pop, Auerbachs victory cigars, and the Celtics parquet floor became forever etched in my psyche.

For me civil rights were best captured in sports by Paul Robeson, Arthur Ashe, Bill Russell and the Celtics, Willie Mays, and Shirley Povich. I did not fully appreciate Jackie Robinson until some years later, undoubtedly because he was a Dodger and Richard Nixon supporter. As a senior at Lake Forest College in Illinois I wrote my honors thesis on spectator sports in American society. I examined how those sports affectedand were affected bylaw, politics, government, and perception. The social upheavals in our major sports, which were still percolating in 19701971, presented me with a grand opportunity, although it meant that my thesis became almost book length, if not book quality.

During my college years, I also became a Chicago Blackhawks fan. Hockey was the one major North American professional team sport that I had never followed more than casually. By close proximity and osmosis, however, I soon became captivated with the exploits of Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Tony Esposito. My Blackhawks loyalty, however, did not endure, because in the early 1980s, a new and more engaging proximity made me a fan of Rod Langway and the defense-minded Washington Capitals.

Since law school, I have had a long career in Washington, D.C., focused on mental and physical disability law, disability and health rights, and diversity. My favorite pastimes have involved sports, particularly playing tennis and exploring the outdoors with close friends. Often, though, I have been a stationary spectator enthralled with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Since the late 1990s, I have cheered for the Baltimore Oriolesexcept on the rare occasions when they have played the Giantsmainly because my daughter, Jennifer, became an Os fan as a child. My wife, Elissa, generally dislikes sports, although she will watch womens gymnastics and ice-skating in the Olympics, if it is scheduled conveniently. Elissa strenuously objects, however, when some stupid sporting event, particularly a football game, causes a delay or cancellation of a Sunday night television show she enjoys watching. For her, it is the infamous Heidi fiasco in reverse.

Elissas sports animosity reflects an underlying love-hate dichotomy in America, which divides mostly along gender lines. That certainly has been true in my two householdsboth as a child and a married adult. It has been due not only to the natural inclinations and interests of those involved (Mars versus Venus), but also because, historically, organized sportsTitle IX and other civil rights laws notwithstandingtoo often have excluded or diminished the roles of girls and women. Fortunately, that type of gender bias has been receding, albeit too slowly.

Love-hate relationships were a part of several psychology courses that I took in college. In those days, psychology was influenced more by humanism and psychoanalysis than brain science, which predominates today. While Freud frequently mentioned the juxtaposition between love and hate, it was the Scottish psychiatrist Ian Dishart Suttie who elevated this fundamental human paradox to a psychological principle in