None of this is probably news to those better-informed about sports than I am, but I saw some seriously good news in the sports section of the newspaper today and wanted to comment on it.

And I’m not talking about the betting line on tomorrow’s football game.

First, an admission. I haven’t been to a professional sporting event – other than the AMA Superbike races at Laguna Seca – in over five years. We don’t have television, so I don’t watch sporting events on the tube. When I try, I just get bored and restless, and pretty soon have picked up a book or headed outside to go do something.

I do read the paper cover-to cover every day, so get some education on events in the sports world – like I get recipes – and usually don’t pay a lot of attention. Today I did.
Max Schmeling, the German heavyweight died yesterday at 99, after a full and successful life.

He’s famous for beating – and then losing to – Joe Louis and for briefly being a favorite of Hitler who used his victory as evidence of Aryan superiority. There’s probably some interesting history about his relationship with the Nazi Party (he never was a member), but what’s most interesting to me is two things:

First, he fought several times for paychecks right after the war – and then invested his purses in the Coca-Cola frenchise in Germany,which made him a multimillionaire (and reminds me that I need to rent One, Two, Three…). It’s nice to see that kind of success; so many dream of making a stake and then building on itand so few do.

Second, and most important to me, Schmeling quietly assisted Louis during the least part of Louis’ life – when he was impoverished – and paid for his funeral when he died.

People who follow boxing and other martial arts say that it takes a combination of skill, physical ability, and heart to win. Through an unecessary gesture to a man who badly beat him in the ring, Schmeling showed that as his skills and physique may have deteriorated over time, his heart remained huge.

And today, a football player named Warrick Dunn was named the NFL “Man of the Year.”

Through his “Home For The Holidays” program, created during his rookie season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1997, the three-time, 1,000-yard runner has found a way to honor his mother’s memory.

So far, he has helped 52 single moms become first-time homeowners by making the down payments on fully furnished homes in Tampa, Atlanta and his hometown of Baton Rouge, La.

The initiative has been so successful that several other NFL players have contacted Dunn for guidance in setting up similar programs.

That would be Good News indeed; members of the media-anointed elite, hugely rewarded for their talents with wealth and celebrity who in a series of small acts change the lives of hundreds. It would a very good day indeed if that were to spread.