So little did anyone know that when the 4th of July holiday of 2009 started as many others prior to it, that sports fans would be shocked of the news that Steve McNair was dead.
In the days since his death we have learned that it wasn’t just the man who was killed but his near squeaky-clean image has forever been changed along with the tragic death of the once former Sports Illustrated cover boy.
I was always fond of McNair, maybe it was the fact that he opted for a small Division I-AA college to prove he was a QB instead of the bigger D-I schools courting him to play a different position. Or maybe it was even in the defeat, against my St. Lois Rams, in the Super Bowl how he carried himself, both on and off the field. Or maybe it was the fact that he always seemed to be above the fray and stayed out of trouble.
As details of his death continue to come in the picture is starting to come together. I am not here to conjecture or add to speculation about what McNair was doing in his private life, but I couldn’t help but recall the devastation I felt after the 2002 death of one of my boyhood idols Darrell Porter.
Porter fought demons all his life, and while I met Porter a few years prior to his death as he played in a golf tournament with some friends of mine at our country club I enjoyed immensely the time he gave me and the trip down memory lane we had in the clubhouse after the tournament. He even signed a baseball for me and added his favorite Bible verse along with his signature.
Everyone had thought Darrell had won the hardest fight of his life. I was crushed to learn in that summer of 2002 that he had lethal amounts of cocaine in his system.
In no way do I mean to compare a substance abuse battle with death via gunshot, especially when it appears that McNair’s death was the result of a murder-suicide, and we can only speculate on the motives of a disgruntled girlfriend, so for the sake of this column, the speculation ends now.
The point is everyone has demons. Most of us have the luxury to battle these demons on our own and not have them play out on the public stage. McNair and Porter, unfortunately, had their battles play out (or at least in McNair’s case the results of his demons) in the public arena. Of course, part of being a celebrity is giving up a part of that private life and having your business, good or bad, be part of the public consumption.
Regardless of the demons – drugs, women, alcohol, anxiety, mental illness, financial management, etc. – batting them can often be the common denominator between celebrities and everyday people. The outcomes, good or bad, playing out in headlines everywhere with those left behind having a host of new questions and feelings to deal with, making the situation even more painful for family and friends who were close to the celebrity.
So instead of asking why a famous former Pro Bowl QB, complete with a wife and four children, would openly start to date a cocktail waitress and vacation with her in the tropics, buy her a luxury SUV, have a condo only miles from his family home, we just have to accept it for what it is.
Instead of asking why one of our childhood heroes would battle drugs, appear to recover, site the Bible in public speeches only to be found dead from the results of cocaine use, we have to just remind ourselves that even some of our heroes have demons, and their battles end up in our living rooms.
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