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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 120 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 60

The Jock as Fallen Idol


Mike Tyson's six-year sentence stirs debate about the glory
and excesses of America's star athletes

By RICHARD CORLISS -- Reported by David E. Thigpen/New York


    Of all the numbers Mike Tyson has generated -- the 36
knockouts, the half-dozen biographies, the hundreds of millions
of dollars in arena and TV revenue -- the one he never wanted
was 922335. For the next few years, that will be his ID as a
guest of the Indiana penal system. Last week Judge Patricia
Gifford sentenced Tyson to six years in prison (with parole
eligibility in 1995) and fined him $30,000 on his conviction of
raping Desiree Washington in July. Within minutes he had removed
his Rolex watch and silver tiepin and surrendered them to one
of his lawyers. The gray suit came off later. He'll be wearing
stripes for a while.

    If Tyson could shrug off his athlete's notoriety with the
same speed, he might pacifically endure his stir time. Can this
happen? The odds are long. In jail he runs a risk of being the
brutalized victim, under no laws but those of survival and
silence. There, some stark lifer with nothing to lose may be the
fighter of Tyson's nightmares. If any crime is more
underreported than date rape, it is prison rape.

    What brought Tyson down is what brought him fame: the
popular view of the male athlete. Tyson's skill made him champ.
The glamour that fans saw in Tyson helped him think he was
invincible, immune to rejection or conviction. And his belief
in his machismo -- the male athlete's mandatory arrogance --
made him insist that, in the matter of rape, he was blameless.

    "I am not guilty of this crime," Tyson said before
sentencing. "I didn't rape anyone. I didn't hurt anyone -- no
black eyes, no broken ribs. When I'm in the ring, I break their
ribs; I break their jaws. To me, that's hurting someone." Saying
this, he hurt himself. The judge, convinced that Tyson showed
so little understanding of his actions that he was in danger of
repeating them, could hardly prescribe leniency. Tyson will now
have some time to reconsider.

    It is not a happy time for those who like to believe an
athlete can be an admirable figure on or off the field of
dreams. In early March a woman accused three New York Mets
players, including star pitcher Dwight Gooden, of raping her a
year ago in Gooden's Florida spring-training home. Last week
three other women brought an $8.1 million suit against Mets
pitcher David Cone, charging him with various sexual outrages,
including masturbating in front of one of them in the Shea
Stadium bullpen in 1989. This woman says that as she left the
bullpen Cone told her, "You're a big baby. You're not invited
to showtime anymore." Cone and his accused teammates deny the
allegations. In angry support, 31 Mets players have declared
they will no longer speak to the media.

    This means, said baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, that
they are not speaking to the fans, and ``the fans own the
game." But fans also think they own the athlete; it makes them
possessive and protective. Some are suspicious of women --
sports groupies -- who sue wealthy athletes. Outside the Indiana
courthouse last week, a Tyson admirer carried the sign ANOTHER
GOLD DIGGER PREYS ON IRON MIKE. Other fans, who are sympathetic
to women's issues, simply will not be deprived of the winners
who for all their sins give sport its snap and thrill. Can we
forget this seamy stuff, the fans plead, and get on with the
game?

    What few fans dwell on is the cost of idolizing young men
who play games well. "Look at how we make our champions," says
Tyson biographer Montieth Illingworth, "and at the ethical price
that they have to pay -- that we all pay -- in their
development and the amount of profit we make from them. As fans,
we celebrate them as heroes. And Mike was a hero. But when it
comes to explaining why the hero has become the dark person he
has become, we fall short." And we fall short because we think
too much of them.

    Jocks are special guys. They have always been the kids
other kids wanted to be: the stars of the schoolyard. They are
faster and stronger and bigger. Smarter too -- for athletic
prowess requires a brilliantly focused intelligence. A
quarterback, dropping back to pass, must execute a complex
equation of geometry and physics to get the ball to land on the
fingertips of a receiver running 50 yds. downfield. It is a
gift, a sort of genius.

    The gift brings adulation and pressure. Fans love the
classic simplicity of sport, the win-lose situation, but it has
to be hell for athletes. They get grief from the guys in the
bleachers and obscenities from the coach in the locker room. And
so athletes can get trapped between the demanding hero worship
of a little brother (the fan) and the tutorial sadism of a stern
father (the coach). They may grow old but never grow up, in a
tangle of abuse and adulation, discipline and excess.

    Which men can perform these feats with such grace, however
doggedly they tried long ago? Which men would care to perform
their jobs in stadiums with 60,000 critics, half of whom are
loudly demanding that they fail? And which men, if they had the
skill and could stand the heat, would not be tempted to
surrender to the voluptuous perks of celebrity?

    We pay athletes lavishly. But they pay too. It does not
diminish Washington's pain and suffering -- or those of other
women who have borne an athlete's rampant sexual ego -- to
grieve as well for Tyson. He will be known as a number, but he
can't shake his fame.