Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sports, "Hunt's Grunts"

The Ultimate Sacrifice

Yes, I’m a true Gemini...  

By Hunt Archbold

For me, this week brings forth a time of mild celebration as yet another birthday will come and go. Yes, I’m a true Gemini, complete with multiple personalities and the inability to give one thing my full concentration, while somehow always managing to arrive tardy for appointments and turning in stories past deadlines (just ask my editor). A late May birthday has treated me super-swell over the years, and maybe it was preordained, as this would-be rascal was born at 5:45 p.m. on a Sunday in the Summer of Love, the same day the No. 1 song in the country was “Groovin’ (on a Sunday Afternoon)’’ by the Young Rascals.

One of my fondest birthdays came in 1981 during the height of Fernandomania, when my dad took me to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to see the Braves and the ageless Gaylord Perry hand the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela (8-0, 0.50 ERA and four shutouts at the time!) his first-ever Major League defeat. I still remember it like it was yesterday. And yes, I’ve blown it out pretty good at times over the years; there was a period in the late ’80s and early ’90s when I would go streaking every year on said day. I think my lavender socks, the only garments I wore on one such Ray Stevens special, are still nailed to the wall in a Greensboro, N.C., sports bar.

But more than birthdays or the unofficial start of summer, this week marks a time to recognize the sacrifices of American’s fallen from the Revolutionary War to the present. Memorial Day is a very important holiday in my opinion, though it has unfortunately been overshadowed by all the distractions that come with the three-day weekend holiday to the lake or the beach.

The sporting world has had a love affair with Memorial Day over the years. The Diamondbacks-Braves game at Turner Field is one of five afternoon MLB games scheduled for that day, and Detroit is expected to be extra-busy with a pair of playoff games, with the Penguins and Red Wings on the ice and the Celtics and Pistons on the hardwood. On Monday of this week, the PGA Tour’s top golfers will begin arriving in Dublin, Ohio to compete in the highly regarded Memorial tournament, with the U.S. Open just a few weeks away.

And speaking of golf, President George W. Bush revealed earlier this month that he has given up the sport in a show of support for our troops. What a guy, that Dubya! Whether he chooses to spend his time on the links or not, the so-called leader of the free world has had his head in a sand bunker for much of his tenure in office.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,’’ Bush told Politico, the Washington, D.C.-based political journalism organization. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.’’

This comment is plain pathetic. To imply that Bush somehow stands in solidarity with the families of American soldiers by giving up golf is deplorable. Truly, he doesn’t understand the idea of sacrifice for your country and military service. If the president really wanted to show solidarity with the troops and their families, maybe he should give up breathing, as more than 4,000 of our troops have; cut off one of his limbs to be more like more than 6,000 of our soldiers; go blind, as more than 2,000 of our fighters have; or send one of his children off to Iraq, as more than 200,000 families have done. Or maybe he should suffer brain damage, as more than 7,000 of our troops have … oh, wait, Dubya’s already brain-damaged!

One individual who has sacrificed is Mary Tillman, whose book, “Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman,’’ was issued earlier this month. Pat Tillman, of course, left a multimillion-dollar contract with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks, only to be killed in a highly controversial and covered-up case of friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. Mrs. Tillman has been busy making the talk show circuit promoting the book, which has received favorable reviews and is based on her review of uncensored documents and charts uncovered during her family’s efforts to cut through misleading accounts of her son’s death.

Mary says she wrote the book so the public would have a better understanding of her son as a person, but also to frame the layers of lies that Bush and the government have presented in order for people to better understand what it feels like to have a family member’s service disrespected by his or her government. In the book, she writes about unraveling the truth even as it compounds anguish:
“Pat was honest and incorruptible; he would be offended and outraged about the actions taken in the aftermath of his death. We owe it to Pat to find out who is behind these deceptions, and how high it goes.”

Yes, for all that Pat Tillman gave for his country and for all the American citizens he inspired, it’s the very least he deserves.

Happy times … and beyond Memorial Day, never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice.