Famous athletes are full of surprises for happenings away from the games that make them famous…Tiger Woods might be the poster child. Twice last month, it happened to famous athletes from different sports and different eras, one for what he said, one for what he didn’t say.
Exhibit A: Reggie Jackson. Exhibit B: Connor McDavid.
Jackson was on TV prior to the Juneteenth major-league game in Birmingham, which happens to be where he played his final minor-league season before going on to fame in the big leagues. The 1967 season was memorable for Jackson, but not for the reasons Alex Rodriguez thought when he lobbed a softball question at him during the pre-game show.
“How emotional is it when you come back to a place you played with one of the greatest teams around?”
Jackson paused. Then he unloaded, on a night when Birmingham and its Rickwood Field — the oldest baseball stadium still standing, were being celebrated on “freedom day” and the emancipation of black slaves. It was not the Birmingham that Jackson remembered.
His surprising soliloquy included this:
“It’s hard. The racism when I played here…I wouldn’t wish on anybody. We went to Charlie Finley’s [the Oakland owner who brought Jackson to the majors] country club for a welcome-home dinner and they pointed me out with the N-word, saying: ‘He can’t come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out. He said ‘We’re going to the diner and eat hamburgers.’”
As a baseball writer during the Jackson years, I respected his willingness to say what he thought — that’s freedom of speech. I thought I’d heard and read everything there was to hear and read about Mr. October, but this was news to me. Judging by pre-game anchor Ken Burkhardt’s reaction, I wasn’t alone. Burkhardt, a child when Jackson played, was almost speechless.
McDavid, the world’s best hockey player these days, said nothing when he was decorated as the best player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy. McDavid didn’t even say thanks because he skipped the on-ice, post-game ceremony after he and the Edmonton Oilers lost the deciding game to the Florida Panthers.
What makes McDavid a “distant replay?”
He’s not, but Roger Crozier is. Crozier was the first player from a losing team to win the Conn Smythe. McDavid was the sixth. Crozier was Detroit’s goalie in the 1966 playoffs, the closest he ever came to winning the Cup. His Conn Smythe prize was $1,000 and a gold Mustang convertible.
There was only a Cup presentation after the final game in those days.The Conn Smythe winner was just announced, so Crozier have no presentation to skip. Because McDavid did, he has been called no-class, ungrateful and disrespectful.
McDavid was the brightest star of the playoffs, as was Jean-Sebastian Giguere, the last losing-team Conn Smythe winner (Anaheim, 2003). Giguere later recalled the experience: “I was by myself on the ice. I put the trophy on the trainer’s bench, because it’s not something you want to share with the guys. It’s a sad moment.”
If McDavid had asked me (he didn’t), I’d have recommended he graciously accept the award and disappear.
He’d only have had to say thank you.
