Don't be knee-jerk about Taylor's death
Posted: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 6:03 AM
It’s nearly two days now that I’ve been trying to think of something intelligent to say about the murder of Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor. I’ve not had a great deal of success. It’s too numbing of mind and spirit.
Reading the wires, I can see I’m not the only one having trouble making sense out of what makes no sense to most of us but clearly seemed like a reasonable act by the as-yet-unidentified gunman. The Washington Post’s Leonard Shapiro does a better job than most in parsing this latest tragedy to befall professional sports. He’s spent more time close to Taylor than most of us, and Shapiro’s bottom line is that he’s not surprised.
He writes this without condemning Taylor, whose problems with self-control and discipline, not to mention the law, are well documented. Because Taylor was African-American, there’s an awful lot of knee-jerk reaction out there that makes Taylor out to be just another tough kid from a desperate place who couldn’t leave the street ethos behind.
But that’s not the case with Taylor. His father is a police chief; the young man grew up middle class. He’s probably closer in background to Andy Reid’s unfortunate sons than he is to Michael Vick or Pacman Jones.
When I realized that, a bit of a light flickered to life in my head. The common denominator in the troubles that increasingly afflict the NFL, just as they did the NBA, have less to do with race than they do with youth and testosterone. Young males are trouble, more likely to come to untimely ends than any other gender or age group. The only difference between ethnic groups is the preferred type of risky behavior.
I have no idea why someone broke into Taylor’s home and fatally shot him. We only know that a week earlier, someone had broken into his home in the suburban Miami village of Palmetto Bay. The town is, according to its Web site, is a very happy and carefree community known not for armed burglaries but for its many public parks.
I do know that it burglars like to work on houses that are unoccupied. I also know that you’ve got a better chance of being struck by lightning than of being shot by an utter stranger in your own bedroom in the middle of the night. That sort of thing is almost never a random affair.
The police will sort it out. In the meantime, we need to remember that this is a man who was greatly popular with his teammates and the owner of the team, Dan Snyder. That says a lot. He was also, they said, much more responsible in the 18 months since his daughter was born. He may have done some bad things, but who among us hasn’t?
And is really that much different that Ben Roethlisberger? Big Ben also felt the need to show what a tough guy he was, except he did it by riding a motorcycle without a helmet. That doesn’t have the same air of danger about it that waving guns around and acting like a thug does, but it almost killed him. It seems that the underlying psychology is the same, it’s just the cultural backdrop and mode of expression that’s different.
Or take Josh Hancock, the St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher who was killed in a traffic accident early this year. He drank too much and was talking on his cell phone when he piled into the back of a car on a freeway.
Or go back to Thurman Munson, the beloved Yankee catcher. Thurman wasn’t a thug, but he was Mike Ditka in shinguards and chest protector, a snarling, all-out competitor who never saw the need to make nice to the press. He thought he could fly a jet airplane. That was his way of showing how tough he was. He, too, paid with his life.
So, no ethnic or economic group has a monopoly on risky behavior, and we should probably stop pretending otherwise. It doesn’t mean we condone the thug lifestyle any more than we condone riding motorcycles without a helmet or drinking and driving. In each case, an athlete was doing something he thought was cool because of the culture in which he grew up. In each case, something bad happened.
Unfortunately, you can’t legislate brains into people, especially young, competitive males. You can only set a good example, stop tolerating behavior that has never been appropriate, demand accountability, and hope for the best.
And mourn Sean Taylor. He didn’t need to die.
