There's one thing that really bugs me about sports.
Oh sure, there are a million things about sports that I love. I love sitting and watching a baseball game on a nice summer day. 10-9 or 1-0, it doesn't matter to me. Give me a slugfest or give me a pitchers' duel, it makes no difference at all. Just give me a beer or two and some sunlight, and I'm one happy camper.
I love waking up on Sunday mornings in the fall, knowing that over 10 hours of NFL action await. I love watching playoff hockey games go into overtime, as I wonder whether I'll be sitting in front of the television for only a split-second more, or if I'll still be sitting there when the sun comes up.
The one thing that really gets me doesn't have so much to do with the sports themselves, but rather the players. It frustrates me to no end the way in which professional athletes are put on pedestals and idolized by young children across the nation.
By no means am I attempting to put down athletes as a group. Most of them are, by all accounts, pretty good guys, with the Portland Trail Blazers serving as notable exceptions.
Rather, it's the fact that kids insist on calling these athletes their role models, idols and mentors simply because of their skill at hitting, throwing or dunking a ball. How many six-year-olds who idolize Allen Iverson have any idea that he bashed gays in one of his rap songs? How many little kids who looked up to Lawrence Taylor or Michael Irvin had any clue about their drug habits?
The fact is, that while excelling in athletics gives a person a higher profile, it doesn't make that person worthy of being role model.
But millions of kids across the country would beg to differ. Why? It's because sports pages day in and day out run pictures of and stories about their favorite players. It's because shoes, clothing lines and fat-reducing grills carry athletes' names. And while these athletes get all the attention, it's the truly important people in the world - those who really deserve to be called role models - whom the spotlight consistently overlooks.
That, at least for one day, ends here. For once, a man who was never in the limelight, who never scored a touchdown, who didn't even like watching sports, gets his moment in the sun. He's my role model, he's my source of inspiration, he's the person who both spoke about and lived by the ideals that I hold closest to me. He's my grandfather, Elliott Marcus, or "Pop."
Pop didn't have the easiest of upbringings, but he sure made the most of the opportunities that he had. After entering Lafayette College in September of 1942, he commuted from home while also working as a shoe salesman in whatever spare time he had. After less than two years, Pop was only a few credits short of graduating. He was accepted to dental school at Temple University, and was allowed to enter without completing the requirements for his undergraduate degree. Selling men's suits to make some cash, Pop finished dental school in 1948, got married and set up a general dentistry practice. For a child of the Depression, life had turned out to be not so rough.
But in 1952, he became bored with general dentistry. He spent two years at Penn's dental school, learning to be an orthodontist during the daytime. At night, he would maintain his practice, making sure that he was able to support his wife and the two kids that he had at the time.
"You have to enjoy what you're doing," he once told me. "It doesn't matter how much money you make. You need to enjoy your job."
This wasn't the only life lesson that I got from Pop. He was a man largely without pretensions, perhaps even to a fault. He didn't care much for social clubs or small talk. Pop had his interests, and he loved talking about them. He would rather have one best friend than 100 acquaintances, and those about whom he cared were always on his mind. I remember him asking me about everything I was doing, wanting to know every detail. Even though I knew full well how little he cared about football, he would spend 10 minutes asking me to explain the details of pass interference.
My mom tells me stories about how when I was an infant I would scream for hours on end. The most effective way of shutting me up? Pop holding me while walking up and down the hallway. Today, I can trace back old favorites - my knowledge of computers, the stock market and model cars, to name a few - all back to Pop.
Pop was, in a word, genuine. He was always making jokes, often about himself. He was always smiling. Most importantly, he was always eager to hear what I had to say.
In the late 1990s, Pop began to exhibit symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS attacks the body's muscles from the legs up, but leaves the mind intact. It has no cure. I watched as Pop went from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair, but he kept a smile on his face the entire time, and never let anyone feel sorry for him. He died on July 31, 1999, while I stood at his side.
For me, the hardest part about Pop's death was accepting the fact that he's not around to see everything going on in my life. I wish that he could have heard my stories about Duke, met my girlfriend, or read my weekly columns. I loved having him be so involved in my life, and it's hard knowing that those days are gone.
But in the 18 years that we shared, I learned a great deal about life from Pop, even outside of the words of wisdom that he was occasionally known to offer. I learned just from watching him, from seeing in front of me the type of person that I aspired to be. That's why he is - and always will be - a role model to me.
Evan Davis is a Trinity senior and senior associate sports editor.
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