In the fall of 1959, Warren Sutton did something that got him in a lot of trouble. A star collegiate athlete entering his junior year, he began dating the 18-year old daughter of an official of the university he attended. Her age wasn’t the thing that got him in a lot of trouble. The fact her father was bursar wasn’t the thing that got him in a lot of trouble. No. the trouble came about for the most superficial of reasons. You might even call them “skin-deep.” Specifically, his was black and hers was white.
While not prohibited in New York State, interracial marriages were not granted constitutional protection until 1967 when the Supreme Court struck down a Virginia statute banning such arrangements. Warren Sutton merely dated a white woman. He didn’t marry her. Still, he was hounded out of Alfred University that year, eventually finishing his stellar college basketball career at Acadia University in Canada. How good was he? He was good enough to be drafted by the NBA St. Louis Hawks. He opted for a more promising career in Continue Reading “The Man Who Refused to be a Victim”
Playing Through the Pain
It’s a classic “guy” thing. Playing through the pain. It’s also a throwback thing. It harkens to an era when (especially football) coaches would admonish you for dogging it on account of a presumed injury. These coaches themselves reflect an even earlier epoch, one where boot camp drill sergeants berated new recruits, pushing them up to and then beyond their physical limits.
We can’t do that anymore. We now live in a sissified society, constrained by both the very real fear of catastrophic liability claims and an unnatural craze that decries all things alpha male. There was once a time – from our Continue Reading “Playing Through the Pain”