Where Have All The Bad Guys Gone?

Life in the age of the sports hero

I was initially writing this essay to make the point that sports villains no longer exist - at least not in a traditional sense. I was going to say that villains are now created not by their in game play, but by their off the field missteps. I was going to make some point about how with increased levels of competition, rule changes and the leveling of fines -dirty players no longer exist. I would go on to say that by taking the villainy off the playing field something was lost in sport. Then I watched a Miami Heat game.

 I hate Dwyane Wade.

 During the game, a playoff match versus the Indiana Pacers, Dwyane Wade flopped, elbowed opposing players (his trademark move - Google it) and whined to the referees the whole game. I was angry when he scored, infuriated when his fouls went un-whistled and downright homicidal when iffy fouls were called for his benefit. The Heat lost the game and I had a spark of joy about Wade going home to his multi-million dollar home, head hung low and tailbone aching from all the self-imposed falls on parquet flooring.

 Then, during the post game interview reporters flocked around Wade, shirtless with a towel draped over his shoulders. He spoke calmly about the loss and what needed to be done moving forward. The man from the court was all but erased. I then recalled pictures of him and his wife I’d seen smiling in the gloss of magazine covers that peered at me from convenience store shelves, the commercials I’d seen featuring him playing with his kids and the “NBA Cares” pieces detailing his charity work. Then, something left me. While I certainly wasn’t a fan of Dwyane Wade the player, I didn’t necessarily hate Dwyane Wade the man.

 In an earlier time most players lived, to the public anyway, entirely inside the game. Their narratives were static and well established. Ty Cobb sharpened his cleats, hockey enforcers ground their knuckles and linemen bit, punched and poked their way through each other. When the game ended most players receded from the collective mind, only to be remembered a few minutes before the opening of the next game. Each rule breach from the game before left unrepaired.

 In today’s game even those who seem to have done the unthinkable are redeemed. Ron Artest is one such story. In November of 2004, during a game with the Indiana Pacers, a fan threw a cup of Diet Coke on Artest; incensed, Artest ran into the stands and began swinging at fans, other players joined him and before the entire mess ended there were a few injuries and more than a few fines. Following his fine and eventual year-long suspension, Artest spoke candidly about his long standing mental health and addiction issues. He got treatment, came back to league, won a championship and even took home the NBA’s citizenship award for his public outreach on mental health counselling. Artest was redeemed, no longer a villain but a hero.

 In an era when we have more access to players’ lives than ever, the image of the player no longer comports to the narrative they create in the game. A good villain is better without a back story. Hannibal Lechter was initially presented as pure evil, but, a few movies down the line, a childhood trauma humanized him and explained his crimes. The reasoning behind his evil degraded him as a villain, pure evil is almost incomprehensible, a man acting out a damaged past is almost worthy of pity. Sports villains too were better before we knew what made them the way they were, before we saw their home lives, before they hugged with our team’s hero before the game and before our knowledge made heroes of them all.

 So I return to the point I set out to make - there are no more sports villains. As we learn more about the people who play games for our entertainment, each player movies from static archetype to a fully formed being. Each player has overcome adversity to play for our entertainment, each is the hero of his own story, except now the villain - the one he should triumph against, who makes his victory just, is gone.