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. <\/p>\n
And I’m not talking about the betting line on tomorrow’s football game.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.
\nMax Schmeling, the German heavyweight died yesterday at 99, after a full and successful life.<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
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…<\/a>). It’s nice to see that kind of success; so many dream of making a stake and then building on itand so few do.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n