Demanding equal play for those from smaller sports

Wednesday, May 6, 1998

Demanding equal play for those from smaller sports

COLUMN: Jockeys, curlers, sports columnists all deserve nookie
as much as basketball, football stars

Did anyone see that Sports Illustrated cover article last week?
The one about athletes fathering illegitimate kids?

I’ve never been so angry in all my life. The list compiled by SI
read like a whose-who of sports’ upper echelon: Shawn Kemp (seven
children by six women), Dave Meggett (four kids with three women),
Larry Johnson (also four by three), Latrell Sprewell (three by
three women before he even turned 21), Mark Messier, Oscar De La
Hoya, Steve Garvey, Kenny Anderson, Jim Palmer, Gary Payton …

Which of course means one thing: All these guys were gettin’
serious play.

But what about the other guys? As part of what seems to be my
continuing quest to represent the sporting world’s forgotten souls,
I must ask, "Where’s the pooty for the guys from the smaller
sports?"

Basketball players get a lot. Football players get a lot.
Baseball players get a lot. Hockey players get a lot.

Think javelin throwers get game? Doubtful. Guys who do luge?
Unh-ungh. Curlers? No. Jockeys? Don’t be ridiculous. And I won’t
even get started about the studs who play IM softball.

Hey, don’t these guys deserve a little nookie, too, for their
efforts?

While Shawn Kemp was schtupping half the Northwest, Tim
Somerville, captain of the U.S. Olympic curling team, was busy not
getting any at Nagano and Lillehammer.

Now, I didn’t actually talk to Tim, or anyone else mentioned in
this column, for that matter, but if I did, I’m sure he’d be pretty
upset about his lack of game.

"I just don’t get it," he might say in his nasally Wisconsin
twang. "I’m a world-class athlete like Shawn, I have the same
number of championships (zero), and I even have a groovy mustache
like he does, yet he gets all the poo-nanny."

Obviously, Tim, our friend Shawn missed that day in kindergarten
when they covered sharing.

As did Wilt Chamberlain.

Hey, Wilt, don’t you think you were being a little greedy,
buddy? You could have kicked a couple thousand over to the guys in
the smaller sports and still easily have been the most prolific …
uh … scorer in NBA history.

Triple jumpers, for example, would have been perfect candidates
for Wilt’s surplus, as would most any of the participants in field
events.

Face it, the "field" part of "track and field" is getting
gypped: while Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, et al sprint off with
the honeys, the high jumpers and pole vaulters go home alone.

I don’t follow the logic here: why would women intentionally
choose someone known as "the fastest man in the world" over the
guys who get up the highest and know how to use their poles? (Jeez,
this column’s sinking lower and lower by the second.)

I also don’t understand why lugers don’t get any. Talk about a
sport that just lends itself to the dirty deed: in doubles luge,
one person lays down in a tight rubber suit, then the other lays
down on top with their rear in the other’s crotch. If that’s not
some kind of kinky soft porn, I don’t know what is.

Even the name, "luge", sounds vaguely sexual.

And yet, the luge guys have no game compared to their
counterparts in the major sports. This winter, Chris Thorpe and
Gordy Sheer took silver at Nagano for America’s first ever luge
medal, but do you think either of them have seven kids by six
women? Probably not. In fact, unfair as it might seem, I doubt they
even have that combined.

For their part, the lugers are doing what they can to rectify
things, with the International Luge Federation (FIL) passing a rule
a few years back allowing mixed doubles (Heh, heh, heh!).

But the powers that be appear set against the luge boys, as the
International Olympic Committee expressed the feeling that doubles
luge doesn’t look "nice," FIL officials told Reuters this winter.
It seems the IOC was a little disturbed by the sexual nature of the
sports’ positioning, and as a result will likely nix plans for coed
racing, killing the racers’ chances for a little somethin’ –
somethin’ on the ice.

Hell, even NASCAR drivers get some, and most of those guys
aren’t exactly pretty: a lot of them look like they came straight
out of the cast of "Deliverance." And they’re not even really
athletes: the cars do all the work.

So, then where’s the action for jockeys? They let something else
do all the work. They’re not exactly GQ material. But do they get
mad game? No.

For jockeys the hang-up, obviously is the height – women just
dig tall guys, plain and simple. But ladies, you’re forgetting one
important thing: when a man only comes up to your waist, it means
he wouldn’t even have to leave his feet to … well … you know.
Think about that, ladies.

If that’s not enough to change things for my vertically
challenged equestrian brothers, I have another idea: why not hook
jockeys up with women gymnasts? Their heights are right, they both
ride horses (one pommel, the other thoroughbred), and I’m not
really interested in either one of their sports. It’s a perfect
match.

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple to cure the puntang
deficiencies of other sports, and the list of their members goes on
and on.

Cross country skiers don’t knock boots, at least not in
countries without umlauts in the alphabet. Ping pong players get no
love, Olympic sport or no Olympic sport. Ditto archers. Marathoners
only wear themselves out on the course. Same with cyclists. And
when was the last time you heard a foozball champion brag about his
innumerable conquests?

When will this injustice end?

The time is now: the bias against smaller sports must be
overcome, and these guys must finally be given the chance to incur
the paternity suits they so rightly deserve.

Kariakin is bitter because he’s not getting any either. He
sympathizes with the lugers and would like to be sued for
paternity, though he can only pay $20 a month for child support.
Any responses, volunteers, or offended readers can e-mail Rob
Kariakin at [email protected].