Real Accomplishments

I am a huge nerd and as such I find myself spending a lot of time in bookstores.  I was in Barnes and Noble today and I saw something that really made my head spin, and not in the good way either .  What I saw was a new hardcover book called "The Game of My Life:  A True Story of Challenge, Triumph and Growing Up Autistic."  The writer is a guy named Jason McElwain.  In case you don't know or have somehow forgotten who Jason McElwain is, let me give you a little walk down memory lane.  Jason was the autistic student who shot those 3 point baskets in that high school basketball game a few years ago.  If you don't remember, here, via the magic of videotape, is the story:

OK, now before I move forward with this blog I want to point out a couple of very important things.  The first is I am in no way trying to bash Jason MeElwain or attack him personally.  My comments are about the way his story was taken in by the public not about him personally.  I am sure he is a fine young man.  Second, I was a high school wrestling coach for the better part of a decade and it has skewed my vision of the world, particularly as it results to the game of basketball.  The wrestling community is at best suspicious of basketball and at worst down right hostile to it.  We tend to think basketball is a silly little game invented for the kids who weren't tough enough to be on the wrestling team.  Or just the tall, skinny unathletic kids -- they needed a sport, too.  A basketball player hitting a bunch of shots is going to be very, very unimpressive to us.

Now that I have gotten all my disclaimers out of the way I shall continue.  At the time it happened up until today in which I was involuntarily reminded of it, I never quite understood why this story was such a big deal.  That footage of him hitting those baskets was on ESPN constantly and Jason even go invited to the White House to meet Bush, who, it turns out, is not autistic.  Seriously, what is the big frigging deal with this story?  A coach puts his autistic team manager into the game when it is nearly over and the kid hits some uncontested shots.  In some states this wouldn't have even been allowed as a kid who isn't on your roster can't be allowed into a game; it would be like pulling Mr. Fields the AP Chem teacher down from the stands and putting him in the game. But people were fascinated by this footage. They seemed to be amazed at

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to reveal to you the man behind the curtain:  This sort of thing happens in youth sports all the time.  All.  The.  Time.  Back in the day, when I was coaching junior high football (which was actually pretty fun), one of the teams on our schedule had a player with Downs syndrome.  At the end of the game that kid went in as a tailback and our team let him run into the end zone for a touchdown.  The kid was ecstatic and it was just a very nice thing to do.  Funny, though, I never saw footage of it on SportsCenter.  On my beloved TV show "Friday Night Lights" a few weeks ago, Coach Taylor pulled his defensive starters from a football game and essentially instructed his backups to let the other team score to avoid being shut out in a very lopsided game.  It's called sportsmanship.  I hope I am not being unclear. I am not equating a highly functioning autistic person to a person with Downs syndrome. I am just illustrating that in sports it's not uncommon for kids with special needs to be given special treatment.

The thing that has stuck with me about this story and has bothered me is the world is filled with disabled athletes who actually overcome their handicap and compete against athletes who have no disability on a playing field that isn't at all level or rigged for them to succeed.  I would like to submit into evidence as my exhibit A a guy named Nick Ackerman.  Nick is a bilateral amputee, so he has no legs from the knee down.  Nick did not let this deter him from competing at sports.  In fact, a few years back Nick won a national championship in college wrestling at the NCAA Division III level. After taking the national title, Dan Gable sought Nick out for an autograph.

Maybe what we have here now is a nation that is so used to mediocrity or worse, this sort of story seems kind of impressive to us. Our pop singers can't really sing. Our actors are just pretty and bland. We elected Bush twice and he can't even say "nuclear." Basketball is a very easy game to understand, essentially any dope can figure it out ("The ball goes in the basket! Yay!!") Maybe that is why so many people seemed so blown away by the Jason McElwain story, it's easy to understand. Jason also is whole-bodied. In other words, he doesn't (and I think this is important) look disabled. Maybe the popularity of his story is really about our shallow nature, that we don't want to look at things that may be troubling for us to see. We can enjoy his success without feeling guilty about what ails him. After all, he looks just like us. He has all his limbs. He doesn't have any obvious signs of disability. He can speak articulately. He isn't in a wheelchair. Either way, we are setting the bar of recognizing true achievement by the disabled very low.

And what do we say to the struggling writer, the artist who can't get his serious novel published when the writings of an autistic kid who once made a bunch of 3 point baskets in a high school game gets a hardcover edition?