Sympathy for now, poor taste will worm way into Summitt story
So who wants to be the first person to heckle Pat Summitt from the stands because she has early-onset dementia? Who would like to be the first coach to recruit against her using her illness as a weapon?
These, and other nauseating thoughts today on, "What? You Think Everyone Has a Conscience?"
The news Comrade Doyel broke moments before Summitt publicly admitted Tuesday -- that at age 59 she has been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's disease -- came as a righteously shocking blow to people's sensibilities. A vibrant, perpetually engaged person, one of the finest and most accomplished coaches this nation has ever produced, learning that she is about to enter what is euphemistically called "the long goodnight" -- pretty horrible stuff.
Not that it would be any better if she was just Pat Summitt, Insurance Adjuster. It's just we know her as this, not that. And a lot more of us know her, so it becomes a larger matter.
But while she typically ennobled sports in America, it is often an ugly business too. A Darwinian at best, shameful at worst world in which the worst instincts often trump the best ones, and the more money you put on a table, or the greater the sense of tribalism, and the more predatory people you involve, the worse those instincts become.
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Thus, it is with clear eyes and a heavy heart that we report to you that some fan is going to try to make drunken or mean-spirited points some night by shouting about Summitt's disease. And that some other women's coach somewhere is going to use her disease against her when trying to sign the next hot freshman.
And it will be one more blow against civility and basic human decency. And someone will try to justify it as just being part of the deal.
Would that it were the other way. Would that there were things that we could agree are off-limits from our basic instincts. Would that we could take a minute to think and be human beings to someone who has shown more than enough times that she has that coming.
And it's easy now. She's not coaching. Or recruiting. She's a person coping with a disease for which there is not yet a cure. We just learned about it, and we feel awful for her, and hopeful for her in her struggle.
But we can't appeal to our better angels forever -- or at least we don't choose to. Eventually someone will feel compelled to yell in an auditorium that Summitt is ill, and do so in a cutting and likely profane way -- it may be the fan of another team, or a fan of Tennessee who has lost his or her humanity in search of a basket, or just a free-range jackass who needs the notice and doesn't mind being notorious in its pursuit.
And there will be a coach who is in a battle with Tennessee for a power forward somewhere who will "casually let it slip" that Pat Summitt has Alzheimer's. There is no more nasty business in this country than trafficking in talented children, which is a less polite way of describing recruiting, and it only takes one person to decide that that threshold is safe to cross.
You may, with your shocked sensibilities, choose to believe otherwise, that there really are things that nobody will consider proper or dignified or kind. You should be right. And maybe we'll all get lucky and this time you will be.
But I'm going with the percentages here. Someone will bring it up with the worst of possible intentions, because we too often justify the worst of possible intentions as part of the cost of doing business.
So here's to the first person who will think Pat Summitt's dementia is fair game for fan mockery, or for coaching advantage. But at least let them do the rest of us the honor of saying it to her face, where she can hear and see the kind of person who thinks it's just "part of the deal."
And then let them find out the hard way just how indomitable Pat Summitt has always been, and is now. There is, after all, more than one way to make a point, and we will leave it to her to make the best one, in the best way for it to be absorbed and retained.
If it also includes a footprint on the backside, we're OK with that too.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area.com
