How long, oh Lord, how long?

With Tiger Woods playing in the Master’s, we were subjected to yet another press conference story – or non-story – about his personal life.  He apparently gave a bunch of carefully rehearsed non-answers about that, said he’s at Augusta to win (really?), thanked the people it helped him to thank, yada, yada, yada.

It was pretty much a continuation of the up-yours performance Woods has given ever since his Thanksgiving night car accident.  And given that even the people who cover him are pretty bored by the matter at this point, this probably will be the last we hear about it.  I hope.

Of course, there’s a part of me that wishes the media would have really gone after him, not so much for the incident in which his wife may or may not have beaten him, but for the way he’s pretty much clammed up about it.  He showed an amazing amount of contempt for everybody but Tiger in the way he handled the thing.  When you’re a big star – especially in a game like golf, where the Powers That Be are a bunch of old white guys for whom decorum is a primary value – a little contempt isn’t a big deal.

So this will someday be a line in Tiger’s obituary, way down past all the encomiums.  You’ll read it a few decades hence with a slight click of recognition.  “Oh yeah,” you’ll think.  “He apparently had an active social life.”

 And the jockocracy will be preserved.

In sports-mad, 21^st Century America, it’s both more sophisticated and less excusable.  In an era where some people will spend way too much time trying to disprove the legitimate birthplace of a black president, other people look at the peccadilloes of those we idolize for hitting a ball, yawn and continue to swallow their carefully crafted public images.

In a way, that’s as it should be.  Given the state of the things that really matter in this world, like war and world hunger, we spend way too much time as it is chasing the chimeras of sports.  On the other hand, why is it any longer necessary to idolize people, and pay them way too much, for hitting a ball?  Can’t we please, for the love of God, get an accurate picture of them?

What’s disturbing is that our idealizing of sports figures starts at an early age.  Slate.com had a fascinating little feature this week on kiddie biographies of famous baseball players, contrasting how they were portrayed for the youngsters with how they were shown in more adult biographies.

Included were books about Babe Ruth, Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.

Some examples:

• Where the kid’s book says “Babe liked to stay out late partying,” the adult biography says he once patronized every woman in a St. Louis cathouse – in one night.
• While the kid’s book quotes Rose explaining his hustling image by saying, "I guess I was born with all this nervous energy," the adult book quotes a teammate about Rose’s fondness for amphetamines.
• The kid’s book recounts a famous incident in which Cobb spiked an opponent while sliding into third and says the injured party “never accused Cobb of being a dirty player or of cutting him on purpose”; the adult book has the player saying exactly that.  (To be fair, Cobb has a reputation of being arguably the most unpleasant superstar ever in any sport.)
• The kid’s book mentions DiMaggio enlisted in 1942, but the adult book makes it clear that he did so only because his then-wife threatened divorce if he didn’t.
• The kid’s book talks about how loving Mantle was to his wife, but the adult book talks about how Mantle kept a collection of underwear from all the women he seduced.

I was waiting to see something about our own hometown hero, Roger Maris, but he wasn’t included.  I do recall, though, reading a book that mentioned Maris’ legendarily grumpy temperament and said his clubhouse nickname was “Red Ass,” baseball slang for a grouch.  I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, though; I suspect that what some people read as grumpiness may have been the taciturn nature so common to those who grow up here.  And besides, being a little less warm than other people isn’t even in the same league as intentionally spiking an opponent (and Cobb used to file his spikes to razor sharpness).

It’s the journalist in me talking, but I can’t help feel that if we were a little less likely to begin the idolatry at an early age it would be all to the good.  I’m not saying that some 8-year-old should be told the story about Babe Ruth and Seven Hookers (or however many there were), but can’t we find better people to idolize?  Don’t we realize that when we build monuments to the colossally arrogant that it’s setting us all up for cynicism?

And there are other consequences to this.  Is it any wonder, when we mythologize people like the bordello-bustin’ Babe, that we don’t grow up with much in the way of critical thinking skills?  Why are we surprised when public discussion of important things is polluted by a tsunami of crapola that too many people believe uncritically?

It may seem like a stretch to go from dirty ballplayers like Ty Cobb to things like “death panels” and “Obama is a socialist,” but the difference is more apparent than real.  It’s about our willingness to swallow myth uncritically.  Myths can have beauty and tell us much about ourselves, but like too much of anything, an overdose just isn’t good for us.