Perspective, please on Sox' 'Dollgate'
INSIDE PITCH | To cancer survivor and prospective dad, dolls in clubhouse are just kids' stuff
My wife is barefoot and pregnant. No, really, she is. She's cooking in the kitchen as I write this.
And we couldn't be more thrilled.
(AP)
PHOTO GALLERY
White Sox 6, Twins 2
So what is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking service that allows readers like you to receive updates (or "tweets") from Joe all day long via our Web site. Check back all-day long as Joe updates you on the latest Sox news -- from the game and practice to on the road and from the locker room. You can also get updates sent right to your phone or IM whenever Joe has news to share -- for free.
Perspective is a strange thing at times.
See, back in 2005, we never thought having a second child was possible. Heck, I didn't think seeing 2006 was possible. I had just finished up with my last batch of chemotherapy, and we were waiting to find out if the flip-of-the-coin prognosis of my Stage 4 Follicular Lymphoma was going to come up heads or tails.
I called heads. So far, so good.
Three years later, I'm supposed to be appalled by the sight of blow-up dolls in a baseball clubhouse? I repeat, blow-up dolls in a baseball clubhouse.
Before my flight from Toronto even hit American soil, I had read everyone's column. They hadn't been written yet, but I knew who would write what. I knew someone would be appalled, someone would want the White Sox organization further tarred and feathered and I knew what Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey would write.
It would be no big deal for him. Like myself, Morrissey is a recent cancer survivor. Perspective.
No one is wrong for feeling upset about ''Dollgate,'' or appalled, embarrassed -- pick an emotion. That's the beauty of a newspaper: People can express their different opinions. But let's take a step back for a second and look at the big picture.
We embrace athletes when they ''play the game like a kid.'' We laugh when they give each other a pie in the face on camera. We applaud when they throw their bodies around with little or no regard for their safety.
Then we act shocked when there are blow-up dolls propped up in the clubhouse?
We can't have it both ways.
Clubhouses and locker rooms are nothing more than fraternity houses. You understand that when you get into this profession. And the idea that the Sox are the lone culprit in this is absolutely ridiculous. Some of the biggest porn collections I've seen the last 11 years were in the clubhouses of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
I also would like to tell you I have seen blow-up dolls and sex toys on display in the locker rooms of female sports teams, but I can't. Male sportswriters are not allowed on that hallowed ground. There's your gender equity. There's also hypocrisy at its finest.
The sad thing is there was a huge story in the city to start this week, but while everyone was stumbling over each other to get out to U.S. Cellular Field and give their verdict on the Sox' traveling collection of misfits, it was missed.
I have met Sun-Times sportswriter Lacy J. Banks only once, but his blog in which he talks about the fight he faces with heart failure and cancer -- both brain and prostate -- is nothing short of heroic. I'm not 100 percent sure, but I would think blow-up dolls in a clubhouse weren't that high on Lacy's mind this week.
Perspective.
I could sit here and say, ''Hey, boys will be boys'' or ''Real men wouldn't be offended by blow-up dolls.'' But that's not the point. The point is at the end of the day, who really cares what the Sox had in their clubhouse before a game?
So am I just an insensitive, chauvinist pig?
Well, my wife is barefoot and pregnant ... I couldn't be happier.
