Oklahoma City images put all in perspective
Eric Billigmeier
I never really thought I’d say this, but … thank goodness for
the K-Mart Greater Greensboro Open.
I have never needed to watch a completely meaningless golf
tournament more than I did Sunday. And I tried to watch every
meaningless shot, all the way to the meaningless conclusion. It was
quite therapeutic.
After all, consider the alternative. Birdies and bogies sure
beat the hell out of hearing another heart-breaking story from a
childless parent in Oklahoma City.
And while I’m at it, thank goodness for the NFL Draft on ESPN,
for the NBA on NBC, for UCLA baseball on Prime Sports, for a free
preview on Showtime, and for …
Jeez, thank goodness for every channel besides CNN, because the
only thing that CNN has carried lately is bad news. More death
tolls, more remembrances of the dead, more pictures of grief.
That’s it. Because that’s all there’s been to report.
But for those of us tired of crying, for those of us tired of
trying to understand this evil, there are always sports. Kind of.
Sports don’t make us forget; they just help us get through.
Like my mom said on Sunday, sport has always been there to help
assuage wounds. It serves a certain soothing function at times.
But not every time.
I didn’t lose a child, or a wife, or a best friend or any loved
one last Wednesday. And neither did, I would imagine, any of you.
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t lose.
And so on Sunday, my weekly day of impersonating a vegetable
with legs, I had to find something to do other than continue to
feel that loss. I had to avoid CNN.
But I couldn’t. And neither, I suspect, could you.
Because as much as an afternoon of totally meaningless sports on
television might help someone like me turn his head from tragedy
and malevolence, it couldn’t possibly close my eyes.
As much as I wanted to just sit there like a clod of dirt and
watch golf all day, I couldn’t. I found myself switching the
channel at 1 p.m. to witness the national bell-ringing. I found
myself switching again to hear the First Lady of Oklahoma speak to
her state’s people and barely hold back her grief. I found myself
listening to her, her husband, the President, Bill Graham Â
all of them.
And I found myself forgetting about golf.
And instead of trying to figure out something meaningless in the
sports world to write about today, something that might make a few
of you chuckle, I decided to give in. I can’t write funny things
when I’m not feeling funny. And this world isn’t funny to me right
now.
I could try my best today to offer a sports-like lesson about
Oklahoma City. I could talk about all the wonderfully courageous
firemen and rescue workers who, for all intents and purposes,
continue to give up their own lives (would you want to climb inside
that teetering building?) in their search for more innocents who
have lost theirs.
I could talk about the parents whose children are either
confirmed dead or still buried in the rubble  or even, still
alive yet completely traumatized, their lives never to be the same
again  and I could label those parents the real heroes of
this world. I could say how their actions in the coming weeks,
months, years of grief will be truly heroic.
And I could compare all the heroes of the Oklahoma disaster with
the alleged heroes of the sports world. Because they have been
numerous, especially recently. Ed O’Bannon, Tyus Edney  nice
guys who finished first. J.J. Stokes  a great guy who was
rewarded with a dream draft (for my own sake and for the sake of
Cowboy fans everywhere, it was regrettable, but for J.J., a job
with the 49ers is much-deserved). Steve Young, Tom Osborne, etc.,
etc.
We in sports enjoy the company of only a select few who we can
truly call heroes, and it’s always wonderful to see their heroism
rewarded with achievement.
But, my apologies, they’re not the real heroes. They’re good
people who finished first. But they’re not heroes. Those parents in
Oklahoma who have to carry on  and still provide role models
for the children  are the heroes. The rescue workers are the
heroes. Whoever gets the pleasure of putting those murdering sons
of bitches to death  well, they’re not heroes, they’ll just
have a great job for a day.
You know, I could probably make an entire column out of that
hero angle  but I’m just not up to it. Sports are important,
but this is life.
One of the golfers I so desperately wanted to follow on Sunday,
Peter Jacobsen, watched as his game collapsed around him down the
stretch. That’s better than watching a building collapse on top of
children. Even Jacobsen knows that.
Walking down one fairway on Sunday, Jacobsen looked straight
into a CBS camera and, instead of offering one of his usual
humorous soundbites, he simply uttered a sentence I don’t think
I’ll ever forget. "Our prayers are with all those people in
Oklahoma City; that’s for sure."
Amen, Peter. Sports can wait.