From Heroes to Celebrities to Moneyball: The Life Cycle of Professional Male Star Athletes Adjusting to Shifting Forms of Competition and Changing Political and Cultural Economies 1
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1070289x.2011.609423
ISSN1547-3384
Autores Tópico(s)Sport and Mega-Event Impacts
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments The following acknowledgment is authored by Roz Antoun, wife of Richard Antoun (who died tragically on 4 December 2009 just after completing revisions of this essay): This article, which comes at the end of Dick's career and life, synthesizes his love of social anthropology and his lifelong passion for sports. Dick valued fair play and hard work in his own pursuits and in sports. These criteria informed his enjoyment of the game, his relationship to the players and his teams, and his judgment of whether a team deserved to win or lose. Growing up in Massachusetts, he rooted for the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots, bringing them into his life as though they were family. When his teaching career brought him to SUNY, Binghamton, he expanded his sports enthusiasm to the Syracuse University Orangemen Basketball team. Every day, for over four decades, Dick ingested the sports pages of the local newspaper, clipping articles about his teams and keeping copious statistics on his yellow pads. He watched his teams on TV, put up with static on the radio just to hear his Red Sox play, and reveled in delight when satellite radio allowed him to follow his team wherever and whenever they played, even way into the wee hours of the night. Dick loved walking the local Binghamton trails, protected from the sun by one of his fourteen favorite Red Sox caps. You'd see a broad smile come over his face whenever he was approached by a fellow fan with a similar cap, acknowledging them with a tip of his cap. Dick was sustained through the harsh upstate New York winters by the anticipation of sitting in Fenway Park on a summer's day, his son Nicholas at his side, rooting for his team, the Boston Red Sox. Father and son savored the play and the after-game discussions and analysis, but always with a mind to whether the game was “well-played and the players deserved a victory.” My husband would be pleased that his ideas and analysis of the extreme changes in the sports world are available for fans, scholars and enthusiasts to think about, criticize and learn from. Author's acknowledgment: I thank the following colleagues, friends, and family members for reading an early draft of the essay and enriching it with their comments and criticisms: Roz Antoun, Ted Brewster, Marvin Cohen, Doug Glick, Mike Little, Dick Moench, Dick Rehberg, Ed Segal, Bob Singer, Peter Stahl, and Jeremy Wilson. Of course, the responsibility for the final version is my own. Address correspondence to Thomas Wilson, Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902. E-mail: twilson@binghamton.edu Notes 1. Female professional athletes are not covered in this essay. The focus is on American male professional athletes, but English athletes will be referred to for comparison. 2. Umberto Eco as quoted in Smart (2005 Smart, Barry. 2005. The Sport Star, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]: 1). 3. The Landmark, Holden, Massachusetts, 5/8/08. Art Johnson was not a professional “star” athlete and not, therefore, a proper subject for this essay. But that is the point. Even with a losing record, he was a hero and a minor celebrity in his hometown. 4. The fantasy life of the fan before the advent of television was probably richer. As a teenager in Massachusetts, I recall closing the door to my room (so my sisters would not disturb me) and listening to baseball games over the radio. If rain canceled the local game, the sports announcer broadcast another game from another city in such a way as to make it sound “live” as it came in over the teletype machine. There are several levels of imagination/fantasy involved here. 5. In Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball, Gmelch quotes managers and players as saying, “Succeeding in pro ball is 90 percent mental,” and, “Baseball is 80 percent mental,” (2001: 115). 6. Michael Messner attributes the attitude of male athletes “never being satisfied with their performance” to the intersection of three processes: the socialization of men and boys into the world of organized sport; and “the dovetailing of the competitive structure and values of the sportsworld with the tendency of boys and young men to define themselves positionally … ,” i.e., to define themselves occupationally and to always see themselves in a competitive hierarchy, e.g., win, place, show or, more sharply, winner or loser (Messner 1992 Messner, Michael. 1992. Power at Play, Boston: Beacon Press. [Google Scholar]: 51, 199). 7. In this essay the overwhelming number of examples given are American athletes, whereas the title of this essay is professional male athletes in general without ethnic specification. If I were to add the qualifier “American” it would be misleading for two reasons. First, increasingly, many professional athletes who participate in American sports are not American (e.g., Latinos and Japanese in baseball, Europeans in basketball, Canadians in hockey), though they still participate in the American sporting structure, which molds the competition in a certain way. Second, I hold that many generalizations about the life cycle are applicable to professional male athletes from other nations, though I do not have the data to substantiate it. 8. In 1985 a riot at a Birmingham-Leeds match had resulted in one fatality, and a fire at the Bradford Parade Grounds had killed fifty-five. In Belgium, thirty-nine Juventus fans were killed in a riot with Liverpool fans. Prime Minister Thatcher placed a particular spin on these events: hooliganism (King 1998 King, Anthony. 1998. The End of Terraces: The Transformation of English Football in the 1990s, London: Continuum. [Google Scholar]: 74). 9. The abolition of the license fee for television in England in the l980s was analogous in its significance and dramatic effect on the cultural economy to the abolition of “sustaining time” for radio in the United States (where its greatest impact was in the domain of religion, rather than sports) in the early 1960s. Sustaining time required radio networks to provide equal free time to religious broadcasters of different denominations because it was in the “public interest.” Thereafter, radio and television stations were allowed to sell commercial time to religious broadcasters. Religious fundamentalists and evangelicals took advantage of this change to dominate religious broadcasting on television and radio (see Antoun 2008 Antoun, Richard T. 2008. Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian. Islamic and Jewish Movements, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. [Google Scholar], chapter 5 for details). 10. The only thing a player could do if he was unhappy with his old contract and wanted a substantial rise in salary, based on his superior athletic performance the previous year, was to “hold out”; that is, he did not report to spring training the following year. Montville's biography of Babe Ruth reports on his extended holdout in the year 1930 (2006). As the beginning of the regular season approached, pressure built up on both management and the player to sign a new contract. The sportswriter Dan Daniel acted as a mediator between the owner, Jake Ruppert, and the Babe and got him to agree to sign for the unprecedented salary of $80,000 in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he was holding out (Drebinger, in Holtzman 1995 Holtzman, Jerome. 1995. No Cheering in the Press Box, New York: Henry Holt. [Google Scholar]). It should be noted that only big stars contemplated holding out, and very few of them ever followed through. 11. The delocalization of Indiana collegiate basketball began earlier than the following example indicates. It began with the arrival of Bobby Knight on the Indiana University campus in 1971. Previous to that time, the great majority of recruits for the Indiana University basketball team were from in-state high schools. The same in-state recruitment policy was followed by other midwestern state universities. Knight began recruiting from schools in New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The other midwestern universities followed suit to stay competitive (personal interview with former Indiana University basketball coach, Lou Watson, 1974). 12. ESPN (the satellite television channel launched in 1979) grew to be a major network, largely on the basis of its coast-to-coast coverage of collegiate basketball. 13. See Seth Davis (2009 Davis, Seth. 2009. When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball, New York: Henry Holt. [Google Scholar]) for details. 14. See Montville's biography (2006 Montville, Leigh. 2006. The Big Bam, New York: Broadway Books. [Google Scholar]: 167–171, 185–189, and 197); and Hunt's account in Holtzman (1995 Holtzman, Jerome. 1995. No Cheering in the Press Box, New York: Henry Holt. [Google Scholar]). 15. See Smart (2005 Smart, Barry. 2005. The Sport Star, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]: 112–129). The concept of multivocal symbolism was developed by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his Forest of Symbols (1967 Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]). Another supercelebrity-athlete associated with a superbrand with multivocal meanings is the English football player David Beckham, who is associated with Adidas. Beckham's multivocalism meant “all things to all men” [and women]: young men were drawn to his “metrosexual image,” older, conservative men to his monogamy and commitment to family, younger women wanted to marry him and older women wanted to mother him (Syed 2003, as quoted in Smart 2005 Smart, Barry. 2005. The Sport Star, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]: 164). 16. The sportswriter Tom Verducci and former player and coach Joe Torre record in their book, The Yankee Years (2009 Torre, Joe and Verducci, Tom. 2009. The Yankee Years, New York: Doubleday. [Google Scholar]: 245, 253), that Alex Rodriguez, the superstar signed by the New York Yankees in 2004, insisted (unlike other star players) that he have his own personal clubhouse attendant inside the ballpark so that if, for instance, he wanted a cold drink during the game, his attendant would instantly be informed and bring it to him. This kind of notoriety was noted by his Yankee teammates, who referred to him as “A-Fraud” behind his back, rather than “A-Rod,” his media nickname. Rodriguez could not assuage his desire for fame by his superstar athletic performance statistics or his stardom on the field of play. 17. See John Branch, New York Times, 5/29/09 for details. 18. The latest index of player popularity is the number of “followers” on Twitter, which is catalogued at Championist.com. According to this index, New York Knicks guard Nate Robinson is the greatest crowd-pleaser, with over 35,000 followers, New York Times, 10/21/09. 19. See Torre and Verducci (2009 Torre, Joe and Verducci, Tom. 2009. The Yankee Years, New York: Doubleday. [Google Scholar]), chapter three, entitled “Getting an Edge,” for an analysis of the impact of McGuire's and Sosa's performances on other athletes who decided the drug route was the path to celebrity and riches. 20. In baseball, the more valuable new statistics include the range factor and defensive efficiency for fielding and OPS [on-base (average) plus slugging (percentage)] for hitting. 21. See Lewis (2004 Lewis, Michael. 2004. Moneyball, New York: W. W. Norton. [Google Scholar]) for an excellent, well-written description of this new sports strategy and the attempt of the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane, to introduce it in Oakland. See also Keri (2006 Keri, Jonah. 2006. Baseball between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong, New York: Perseus Books. [Google Scholar]), for many examples of sabermetricians' attempts to produce more valuable hitting, pitching, and fielding statistics than the prevailing “glory statistics.” 22. See Lewis (2009 Lewis, Michael. 2009. Money (basket) ball, The New York Times Magazine. 2/15/09 [Google Scholar]) for details. 23. See Bruno Bettleheim's classic statement and analysis of the problem in “The Problem of Generations,” Daedalus (1962). 24. See Gmelch and Weiner (2006 Gmelch, George and Wiener, J. J. 2006. In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [Google Scholar]), which covers managers, radio broadcasters, scouts, front office people, trainers, athletes' wives, and umpires, as well as players at the minor league level. Gmelch (2001 Gmelch, George. 2001. Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball, Nebraska: Bison Books. [Google Scholar]) follows the professional baseball player's career from the lowest minor leagues to the highest. 25. See Gmelch (2001 Gmelch, George. 2001. Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball, Nebraska: Bison Books. [Google Scholar]), chapter 7. 26. See Lewis (2004 Lewis, Michael. 2004. Moneyball, New York: W. W. Norton. [Google Scholar]) for details. 27. This capsule account of Fidrych's career is based on the following newspaper accounts: New York Times 4/14/09 and 4/19/09; Press and Sun Bulletin, Binghamton, New York 6/23/86 and 4/14/09; and Worcester Telegram and Gazette 4/14/09 and 4/15/09. 28. For McNamee's relationship to Clemens as a trainer, friend, and facilitator of his drug habit, see Thompson et al.'s convincingly detailed study (2009).
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