The Thin Line

Professional Sports is a wonderful thing. It is the ultimate (and only real) reality show. The different sports serve our needs for friendship, competition, justice, violence, and validation just to name a few. It’s the great escape and who doesn’t need some of that in the crazy world we live in. But for the athletes it’s very different, to them it’s job first and a game second. Hopefully the little boy in all of them, the thing that made them play to begin with, never leaves their side.

Ultimately professional sports come down to one’s performance and how much someone is willing to pay for it. A player is always one bad year, or one bad injury, from being let go. That scenario is a cruel and hard fact of all professional sports and there in lies the rub for all pro athletes. How far do I go in risking my career for one game?  How far do I push an injury?  How much pain makes sense? In the movie “North Dallas 40” there is a scene which encompasses a pro player’s duality of existence. The player says to his coach when management wants us to go the extra mile or play hurt, you tell us we should do it for the team and the love of the game, but when we are hurt or used up, you tell us sorry we have to let you go but I’m sure you understand it’s a business….

     The New York Giants just released Ahmad Bradshaw . . . a true warrior who played hurt and gave his all every week and made the Giants a lot better. He truly went above and beyond the normal sacrifice, in pain and commitment.  The Giants had to make a decision about his future and decided his price tag was too high to take the risk for next year, so they released him. Bradshaw brought class, guts and heart to the team. He could have protected his future and not play hurt, but true heroes don’t do that. Are the Giants wrong?  Not really but it doesn’t really make them right, either,