First some background: I'm a baseball player. I've played baseball every year from 1984 (another post on that year some other time) until 2006 and ached to play it in both 2007 & 2008. Some of my fondest, most cherished memories are from watching ball games with family or playing ball during the spring, summer and fall.
Given that information, it may be surprising to learn that I wasn't surprised at all to find out about the rampant use of steroids in the 1990s and early 2000s. The surprising part about the scandal was that it came from a book written by José Canseco and that anyone was surprised by his claims. Looking around at the sizes of players over the years, the amount of mass put on by players, it seems like everyone tried to ignore the abuse in the hopes it would just go away. One of the problems with cheating and short cuts though, in anything not just sports, is that the longer they go unchecked the more rampant they'll become.
Flash forward to today (February 10th, 2009) to hear a radio talk show talking about why people should care about the stars who used and abused steroids, calling out Alex Rodriguez in particular for being a role model that everyone should be let down by. For the parents of today, looking at his actions on the field and off, if Alex Rodriguez is a role model for your children you're doing something wrong. Likewise for Tie Domi, José Canseco, Kirby Puckett, Rafael Palmeiro and even Roger Clemens. Truthfully I don't know if there are role models in sports anymore for the children of today other than the bit players like John McDonald, nor do I even know if there ever were any role models in the form of "Superstars". Look at Babe Ruth - alcoholic & unfaithful. Ty Cobb - by all accounts one of the meanest players and people ever to play the game of baseball.
So who should be role models for our children? Who should be the ones they look up to and try to emulate. I've said it before, I'll say it now and I'll say it again. The role models for our children should be us. Everyday people who work, pay the bills, take care of their own and help out their neighbours and others. The role models should be the ones who do everything they can to provide for their children and their families, then come home and manage to make time for their wives, their husbands, their children, their siblings and everyone else in their lives. I'm blessed to know a number of these people I would call role models, I work with them and am proud to call a number of them friends.
To all of them, to everyone that inspires me every day by being themselves: Thank you for being one of my role models. For helping me to realize where I want to be with and for my family everyday, and how I want to be with my children when I have them. I don't know how you do it, and I hope and wish for the strength to do the same when my time comes.
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5 years ago
Really good post, Dan. I think role models do exist among "the famous" (sports stars, movie stars, TV stars, etc) but they're often the exception, rather than the rule.
ReplyDeleteWhen our daughter (now grown up) was young and we'd be out somewhere with her, my wife and I always tried to point out behaviour that went on around us as ways for our daughter to form her own values. We'd draw her attention to the waitress who goes about an often thankless job with a big smile even when a customer's being jerky toward her; the teacher who stays late every day to help his students; the teenager who notices an older woman struggling to carry her groceries and rushes over to help.
And, of course, people can be "reverse role models" sometimes, too: the driver who gladly accepts the opening into traffic that you give him and then cuts another car off in his attempt to get where he's going as fast as he can; the mother in the restaurant who ignores her screaming child because she's grown accustomed to it and doesn't care that anyone else might be bothered by the noise during their meal; or the girl who wouldn't hold a door for someone walking behind her if her life depended on it.
I like to think that Tammy turned out so well in part because she absorbed all of the data from those thousands of role models, good and bad, and built her own personality from what she'd learned. I never personally worried that she'd take many of her cues for the antics of people like Britney Spears, Jose Canseco or Charlie Sheen.