The search for RELLevance

That is a good question Rell, and I would say it like this, how do we remember anyone in the limelight? By their achievments or the short comings...we should always look at the positive that anyone brings to the table, so in their death we should remember them for the good things they have done...(provided the good out weigh the bad)

he looked hot when he wasn't so pudgy...better question should we remember him as a pudge or not?? just teasing

He was a sports hero, and that never changed. He should be remembered based on his performances.

I read that article when it came out. (Yes, I read Sports Illustrated occasionally; it's got very good writing.) And prior to that piece, I had not heard of these allegations. But I thought it was kind of foul (no baseball pun intended) to have an article based on unproven allegations and hearsay that sullied his reputation. I'm not saying he didn't do any of those things; I'm just saying that we don't KNOW that he did.

In general, I feel that sports icons are not Nobel Peace Prize winners, therefore I think it's unfair for sports fans to judge them based on things beyond their sports career. It's easy to pick them apart, their lives are on display. But we really don't know their total person. And who are we to judge? People living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

I pretty much agree Summer. Until the allegations are proven (and a lot of people who are bringing this up fail to mention Puckett's acquittal of the allegation mentioned in the article) I don't see any problem with omitting them. Then again, I see no problem with mentioning them either as long as you make it clear that he was acquitted.

Of course the acquittal doesn't mean that he is innocent (hence not guilty), but it does mean that the charge was not adequately proven in a court of law which is the only arbiter we have so I think it deserves the benefit of the doubt unless some sort of tampering or abuse is proven.

With that being said, I have no problem highlighting people's mistakes either, many times it add a degree of humanity to people who were seen as somehow more than such.

Some baseball players are on steroids or some form of performance enhancing drug, which we know can alter moods. While these allegations have not been proven these women did take out restraining orders against him. I feel that we should admire athletes for their athletic prowess and nothing more. Children shouldn't look up to them and we shouldn't try to put them on a pedestal either. Clearly we just keep getting duped.

Everyone should be remembered for their totality. When we highlight only the good, we indavertently turn folks into idols and thus set unrealistic goals for ourselves (see Martin Luther King, Jr.). But when we look at the good and the bad, we realize that they are human - just like us - and that despite our own shortcomings, we too can be successful, because they were.

I just know that if I'ma alive when Jordan dies, I don't wanna here anything about gambling, cheating with Vanessa Williams etc.

Honestly, I don't care. I'll remember him more for the shot against Utah then whether or not he cheated on his wife.

I know that's terrible, but I'm just being real.

if he's a hero, you have to acknowledge the bad. the bad is what tends to make heroes, that they have overcome some sort of human frailty to become who they are.

the real question, as a member of the media, is this--when writing a piece on someone dead, what do you hope to accomplish? only so much is accomplished lavishing praise upon someone. after puckett died, i read the same piece about how sunny he was about eight times.

more important from where i sit is a critical analysis of why we care that a particular person had died. what was it about them that made them noteworthy? and within that, what can we take from it?

puckett was important not just because of his talents--which were literally once-in-a-lifetime--but because of how his obvious love of baseball defined him and his team.

but once baseball was gone, he seemed to have little to cling to and became very bitter. that so much of this was caused by the absence of baseball makes it impossible to properly appreciate what he meant for baseball--and vice versa--without at least discussing that. especialyl considering how foul some of the stuff was that deford uncovered. deford was wrong for doing that piece right around jury deliberations, but that's for another day.

ok, i think i'm done.

Death evokes thought. I'm a sportswriter who chooses to throw out a name and let the reader mentally grasp as well as characterize said name like reaching for the farthest visible star. I'll intentionally leave something already known out of a piece because it's already common knowledge. What I won't do as a writer is slam, pile on, criticize or whatever just for the sake of catching a major outlet's eye. Writing is freedom....Kirby is free..Running two women for over 18 years prolly drove him insane..this doesn't mean he can sexually assault women or choke them of course, but what he did on the field remains sacred, regardless of the haters..let him roam.

Michael Tillery
Blacksportsnetwork.com

You really have shed some light on him for me, because I was familiar with the name and him being a Hall of Famer, but I did not know about the other stuff. Hmmmmm....that interesting.