This is what I generally tell people who ask me what the athletes I cover are really like: “I don’t know.” Now, that is a two-pronged response. I learned a long time ago that most people don’t really want to know what their heroes are really like. Dozens of times, I would be asked my impression of Player X, J or Q.
“Is he a good guy?” they ask.
Well, he might be. But he also might have a drinking problem. He also might be rumored to have been on the juice. Or a womanizer. Or a man-izer. Or was falling-down drunk before a big playoff game. Or was seen spotted laughing his butt off after a crushing playoff loss. Or any of a hundred other juicy tidbits. And you know what you invariably hear when you tell these stories.
“No, I hear he’s a good guy!”
And you know something? Sometimes it’s better that way.
For me, the moment I stopped trying to tell people what these guys are “really like” was the moment I would never truly know what these guys were “really like.” And that was the day almost exactly eight years ago when the news started to break about an incident at Jayson Williams’ house, and when that news started to get sadder and sadder, more and more sinister.
I was at the Olympics in Salt Lake City when it all happened, and I remember a bunch of us hurrying over to the NBC portion of the main broadcast center, none of us quite believing the details as they were coming in. Remember, at the time, Williams was an effervescent NBA voice on NBC, an ascendant star. Those of us who “knew” him kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead, what we got was an anvil. And worse.
The whole while, it was impossible for me to shake the lasting image I’d had of Williams, forged less than a year earlier, an early summer day at his mansion in Hunterdon County, in the countryside of Jersey, named the “Who Knew? Estates.” This was the day he officially would bid farewell to basketball, and in typical Williams fashion the crowd at his house that day was an eclectic one — teammates, friends, family, writers, Michael J. Fox, Joe Piscopo, Ken Daneyko, lots of kids. Jayson happily showed everyone his dream world: the par-3 hole in the back, the horses, the pool . . .
And, yes, the guns, stored in his bedroom. That last sight would make more sense only later on.
Soon enough, as more details emerged, as we started to see a completely different Jayson Williams than the one any of us had ever seen before, it was clear: we really don’t know these guys, can’t know these guys, can’t pretend to know these guys. Maybe it’s always been that way, though I suspect it’s gotten more ambiguous as time has moved on.
Jayson Williams was in the news again this week for allegedly driving drunk in a wrong-way SUV crash on the Lower East Side. I wish I could say I was surprised as I was eight years ago. I wish.
Hall of Fame vote matters — to most of us
I can’t speak for everyone who has a Hall of Fame vote. I only can speak for me. So I will answer the onslaught of anger of people who have a lot of questions about how someone (say, Bert Blyleven) can keep becoming more and more Hall-worthy through the years without throwing a single pitch to aid the candidacy.
And it’s simple: if you take this vote seriously, you are always are evolving.
Look, some choices are easy to make. Mike Jackson was on this year’s ballot, for instance. Mike Jackson’s career numbers: 62-67, 3.42 ERA, 142 saves, 40 of them coming in his career year of 1998, when he did have an otherworldly ERA of 1.55 and finished 21st in the AL MVP vote. I did not vote for Mike Jackson. Neither did anyone else. Nobody voted for Shane Reynolds or Ray Lankford or Todd Zeile. David Segui’s mother apparently had a vote, but she was the only one who voted for him.
Others? If you care about the vote — and if you don’t, you ought to have it taken away — you keep evolving. Your opinion changes. You use context. My first year as a voter, I didn’t vote for Blyleven. I am not convinced he belongs. I reached that conclusion with no small effort of thought. Most voters are like that, I think?
Are we always right? Obviously not, because Roberto Alomar was denied this year. But this is something almost all of us take seriously. I can assure you of that much, at least.
VAC’S WHACKS
* I don’t like his methods, his philosophies, or really anything else about the way Eric Mangini goes about the business of coaching professional football, and I have felt that way for a long time. That said, Mike Holmgren did an honorable thing giving Mangini another year on the job in Cleveland. If he’s as bad as a lot of us think he is, Holmgren will see that soon enough. But even Rich Kotite got two years to prove his foofery.
* Am I the only one who finds it completely jarring how much Jon Gruden sounds like Jeff Van Gundy on the air?
* SNY should do itself a favor and snap up David Cone immediately. If not sooner.
* Has there ever been a better cover version of a song than Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss?”
Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@ 24hbongdda.site. His book, “The First Fall Classic,” is in bookstores everywhere.