Heroes and others

The news that Michael Vick, he's the quarterback for the NFL Atlanta Falcons for those of you who do not know, is involved in dog fighting got us to thinking about heroes and assholes.

When we were a small monkey (if that turn of phrase doesn't make our old English teachers tear their hair out then we are not sure what will, but screw them anyway since this is our blog and not theirs) we were taught to idolize people who made a difference. Now since we also loved baseball and those were some of the glory days in Detroit Tigers history, 1968 through 1973, so we also idolized one of the team members. Most white kids idolized Al Kaline, and believe me he was damn good, he's a Hall of Famer after all, but our hero was a black guy with a little pot belly who played left field by the name of Willie Horton. He could do it all in our opinion, he could slug the hell out of the ball, he could field well, and he was gracious in his dealings with the media and with fans. He seemed to us to be a stand up guy.

We stopped being a huge Tigers fan when they traded Willie and when we moved from Michigan to Virginia but our love for Willie only grew through out the years. We found out many years later that during the first nights of the race riots in Detroit in 1967, which we lived through, so that means yes, we're in our mid 40's, so bite us, that Willie, at huge personal and financial risk to himself, saw fit to try to stop some of the rioting. What he did was put on his uniform and he went out onto the streets to try to talk people out of looting and rioting. What he did was astonishing because it was against team policy, the Tigers management told all players to stay out of the mess that was engulfing the city. If he had been hurt during the fracas, then the Tigers surely would have fired him or cut his salary, this was in the dark days of baseball before free agency liberated and protected players so the team would have easily gotten away with whatever they wanted to. So for Willie to have put everything on the line to help stop the violence was an extraordinary and heroic thing to do.

It also came to our attention that Willie was born in a place, Big Stone Gap, Va, that is not too far from where we live now, Johnson City, TN. Sadly however there is no plaque or any type of honor for him at the city of his birth because Willie is black and the population of Big Stone Gap is mostly lilly white.

It came to our attention a few years ago that Wille has adopted the Boys Club as his charity of choice and that he sponsors a golf tournament in our area each spring that raises money for said club. What makes this another reason to admire Willie is that his old pals from the Major Leagues come and play in the tournament and they mix and mingle and sign autographs for any and all duffers who sign up to play. The man is still giving back, and that's why we still admire Willie so much today.

But if Willie is someone to admire, then his evil opposite must be Michael Vick.

The rundown on Michael Vick is as follows:

• He left VA Tech early to chase the big NFL bucks.
  
• When he got busted for possessing pot he lied his way out of it and he hired an army of lawyers to protect his ass.
  
• He picked up a woman using the alias 'Ron Mexico,' had sex with her, gave her herpes, and then tried to deny it.
"Viva unprotected sex with groupies!"



• He refuses to accept any blame for not leading his team to a Superbowl victory, and remember this is the team that pays him millions of dollars to do just that.



• He thinks it's okay to force dogs to fight and kill each other for his and his buddies amusement.
  

It's a crying shame that the media wants kids and NFL fans to idolize Vick when he does crap like that. And it's an even bigger shame that someone like Willie Horton, a truly good and decent human being who is a true hero, is forever confused with that murdering rapist thanks to Bush the elder. But thank goodness that we were taught who to idolize and who to vilify.