Gary Seymour, sports@wolfrivermedia.com
Good times in the office today because there is a new hire in the newsroom and the whole staff takes part in the first-day orientation. We line up and greet our new colleague walking past the welcoming line by splashing him with printer’s ink and beating him on the head with rolled-up newspapers.
Personally, I’m partial to the fwop that only a Sunday paper can deliver.
Because nothing says welcome to the fold, brother, like a series of uninterrupted poundings that you’ll remember all your life.
Now, if the preceding paragraphs struck you as slightly odd, cruel, deranged or psychotic – it is because the subject of hazing in sports is all of the above, plus a side order of asinine.
Hazing became a news item last week, beginning with the Baltimore Orioles’ announcement that there will be no more shaving cream pies in the face during any postgame interviews.
You know, the hilarious bit where the unsuspecting interviewee takes a paper plateful of shaving cream in the face and continues the interview. It was funny the first ten thousand times or so. But the bit has grown a little threadbare, almost to a point now where the interviewee could save a few steps and just show up at the interview already pied up.
But enough is enough, the Orioles decided, citing safety as the reason for the face-pie moratorium. Here’s another reason: it’s not funny anymore.
While it’s possible to injure someone’s eye in the course of that particular bit, the shaving cream pie in the face is lightweight stuff, often just an ego deal where the one doing the smashing is trying to grab some of the spotlight.
The story brought forth by Cherry Starr, the wife of retired Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr, was not lightweight stuff.
She said that the back problems her husband has suffered all of his adult life began at a hazing when Starr played at the University of Alabama.
To gain acceptance into Alabama’s “A-club” for varsity athletes back in 1954, newbies were made to walk through a gauntlet of teammates wielding paddles. Those already in the A-club swinging the paddles got their money’s worth. Starr was hospitalized, in traction, after the incident. But he was in the A-club!
Back injuries are among the most excruciating ordeals anyone can endure. Every single movement made during the course of a day is done without thinking about your back. When your back is injured, you become acutely aware of each movement, and the quality of life suffers tremendously.
The fact that Starr played quarterback in the NFL for 16 painful seasons, winning five championships along the way, only adds to his legacy as one who pulled off the feat and still managed to come away from it underrated.
Brian Bartlett Starr performed in an era when players shook off and played through horrifying injuries. A career in the NFL will almost guarantee some degree of injury. Starr, and every other athlete trying to make the grade, did not deserve a non-playing injury that would vex him all his adult life.
Anyone in the Crimson Tide’s A-club still living and paying attention to stories like this should take the opportunity to renounce the half-witted tradition that adds nothing and takes away a lot.
Defenders of the aggravated-battery custom need a better excuse than “it’s always been that way,” because it hasn’t always been that way. Somewhere along the line someone rolled in from Stupidtown and decided that a good way to ring in a new season would be to beat all the newcomers to within an inch of their lives.
Of course, a reversal of this idiocy would require the application of common sense, which unfortunately today is not very common.