Occasionally, some superstar's wife comes down with cancer, some dreaded disease afflicts a child, or somebody close is killed in an accident. Too often, sportswriters and fans turn athletes into myths, stealing their humanity from them in the process. His team is in the midst of the playoffs. And they say he will play in game four. Yet all that fades away.
Games become just games.
It's our humanity that constantly reasserts itself, the often sad truth of human lives in a world that doesn't ask how high you can jump. Claude Lewis is a retired columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.