DAWES: EQUAL WHEN IT COMES

May 03, 2005, 1:00:35 AM by Rufus Dawes - FAQ

Jerrel Wilson’s death a couple of weeks ago and Johnny Sample’s passing last week should shake anyone who remembers them as players. They remain young men in our memory but the truth is both retired long ago with Super Bowl rings and quickly passed out of the limelight that is the fate of all athletes. Only the very few – Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth and a couple of their stature – stand the test of timeless popularity.

Wilson’s name surfaced recently when the Chiefs drafted a punter, Dustin Colquitt, who team officials hope will have half the career that his predecessor had. The outspoken Sample played on the Baltimore Colts’ 1958 championship team and also on the New York Jets’ Super Bowl III upset of the Colts.

The deaths of players of that era are starting to add up, in case you haven’t noticed. Already gone to the Great Hereafter from the Chiefs Super Bowl championship team are Wilson, Aaron Brown, Buck Buchanan, Reg Carolan, Jerry Mays, Remi Prudhomme, and Jim Tyrer, and there are more that are suffering from the usual ailments that befall anyone who reaches 60 plus years of age. It’s the natural order of life.

Today’s sports scene is often written up as a “loss of innocence”; a judgment which admittedly depends for its effect on how innocent you thought athletes were 40 years or so ago. All athletes are innocent to a degree, but too many of today’s players seem to act in a way that it will be their lot in life to continue to live in much the manner they have after their playing careers are over. The plain and awful truth is even if you are able to have what passes for a long career in sports you will likely spend the majority of your life looking for some other way to make living.

So, when athletes start to think that it will always be a life of fame and fortune, they should recall one of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite tales:

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations.”

They presented him with the words,

“And this, too, shall pass away.”

It all passes: the fame, the money, the memory of what you once did on the football field, even the familiarity that accompanies your name.

And when the end comes, as the English poet John Donne said, “It comes equally to all of us and makes us equal when it comes.”

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.

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Prodigiously well-researched, informative and opinionated, Rufus Dawes examines media coverage of the Chiefs occasionally throughout the year.