By TERRY McDONELL [Lapham’s Quarterly] – Among the greatest sports stories ever told, none pulls more sweetly at the heartstrings than the one about the Comeback Kid. The fall from grace followed by the rise to glory. The hero down in the count or left in the dust, making the come-from-behind move at the clubhouse turn, floating it out of the park with two out in the bottom of the ninth. The fan nation wonders where Joe DiMaggio has gone and looks to its greatest athletes to preserve its hope, and time was when they could provide the stuff of dreams and supply sportswriters with grist for the mills of legend.
The sweet story no longer holds true to form. The invincible Tiger Woods takes a leave from golf after multiple infidelities are revealed by at least nine mistresses. He says he is sorry. It’s hard to believe him. He returns to competition without his game, another middle-of-the-pack golfer. Michael Vick, the most exciting player in the NFL in 2006, goes to prison for dogfighting, returns to football without his game, and barely gets off the bench. Pete Rose, the banished “Hit King,” never to be forgiven for betting on baseball, hustles his own autographs in Las Vegas.
Sportswriters know too much to save them from disgrace in Mudville, and so the task falls to the flacks and publicists, the stylists, image consultants, and crisis managers who have become our newfound instruments of redemption.
Take the marvelous and true tale of Alex Rodriguez, an unlikely prospect for the role of the Comeback Kid.
Continued at Lapham’s Quarterly | More Chronicle & Notices.
