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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 24
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Joey Votto and the cretins who come out of the woodwork
As Joey Votto walked off the field following batting practice before the Reds Futures Game April 4 at Fifth Third Field, I met him at the dugout steps and asked if we could talk for a few minutes.
The Cincinnati Reds first baseman led the way to the end of the dugout, where I asked him something about how it felt being back in Dayton again since he’d played for the Dragons in 2003 and 2004 and was very close to his host family here.
He offered up a couple of Dayton memories with a smile, after which I happened to bring up his dad, who had died last August. I had no agenda, other than I knew I had found it pretty tough when my dad died.
I asked something along the lines of “The season starts in two days and this will be your first Opening Day ever without your dad. Is that tough to deal with? Do you have any special memories of him on Opening Day?”
His face drained. His smile melted and for a good while he said absolutely nothing. “I’m not going to talk about this,” he finally said in little more than a whisper. “I’m not going there.”
I felt bad and it took me a few seconds to regroup. He never did quite refocus on our conversation, which ended a couple of minutes later.
I wrote about that encounter last Saturday night after Votto — who had missed most of a month for what, at the time, was only said to be “a stress-related” incident — played nine innings with the Dragons on a rehab assignment here.
In the Saturday blog, I wrote: “He’s scheduled to play for the Dragons Sunday and that may be especially challenging. It’s Father’s Day and last summer when his dad, Joseph — a Toronto chef and his son’s biggest supporter — died, Votto took the loss especially hard. He took a week off for bereavement, then returned to the Reds and was given some extra time out of the line-up by manager Dusty Baker.
“Before he left, he had asked the club to keep the death quiet until his return. Since then, he’s only talked on a couple of occasions — and very briefly — about losing his father … Sunday, I imagine thoughts of his dad will be swirling beneath the surface.”
By the next day — as is too often the case in the blogosphere — some real cretins came out of the woodwork.
In the internet chat rooms, the sports blogs and every other open web forum, people are able to hide behind a fake name, a catchy moniker — freyourmind and million dollar baby come to mind in this instance — and never have to reveal their identity or take responsibility for what they say.
And so somebody like freyourmind writes: “stress related, what a pus. hey million dollar baby we all have stress I say get over it and get back to your job. In my opinion they are all spoiled brats. peace”
Of course many people were sympathetic, but there were also ones whose comments were so nasty that I either killed them off my blog or erased them from my phone messages. To me you are a coward if you attack someone, but refuse to use your name.
The people who tried to make Votto a pinata — not just on my blog, but at other internet sites and on some sports talk radio shows — questioned everything from his sexuality to his toughness and his commitment and care for his teammates. Their common thread often was their lack of civility and that’s what I hate about the whole blog, open-forum free-for-all that’s now so popular.
Athletes are human, too. Some of these comments hurt them and their families and none of us is any richer for the vilest rants.
And as everyone now knows — three nights after he appeared here in Dayton — Votto, back with the Reds, told reporters in Toronto that the loss of his dad is the thing that put him into the mental tailspin he’s still trying to recover from.
He told how he’s been hospitalized twice, how he experienced panic attacks and called 9-1-1 in Cincinnati. He said he thought he was going to die.
My heart goes out to Votto. To me, it took real courage to address the situation publicly. He’s now working to make himself better. He’s getting counseling, he’s likely got some medication and he should have all our understanding and support.
As for the always-at-the-ready attackers, my guess is they’re not shamed or chastened by any of this. They’ll continue to cloak themselves in their anonymity and wait for someone else to tear down and besmirch.
TweetCOLUMN: Adreian Payne says “No” to Juwan Staten
Kentucky sent him a fancy notice made to look like it was from ESPN announcing he’d just committed to the Wildcats.
Tennessee, Adreian Payne said, has sent him “stacks and stacks of stuff.”
Ohio State just added assistant coach Jeff Boals, who has a close relationship with him and now is trying to lure the 6-foot-10 Jefferson High senior to Columbus next year.
And then there’s the University of Dayton, which, among other things, has Juwan Staten, the UD-bound guard, doing its bidding.
“We’ll both be out with our buddies and I never know quite when it’s gonna happen, but I do know it IS going to happen,” Payne laughed. “Pretty soon Wan will go, ‘C’mon, go with me (to UD).”
When it comes to Payne, Staten is like a travelling salesman because he’s also pitching Oak Hill Academy, the national prep school in Virginia he’s transferred to out of Thurgood Marshall High.
“Oak Hill says they don’t recruit, but they do,” Payne said. “They have Wan calling me a lot trying to get me to go with him. I looked into it, but I don’t see the point for me.”
This is what’s its like to be one of the best uncommitted players in the nation.
Payne told people at the NBA Top 100 camp that he took part in last week in Virginia, that he’s already received a dozen scholarship offers. In its prep prospect rankings, rivals.com rates him the eighth best player in the class of 2010. Staten is No 59.
Payne was at Daequan Cook’s basketball camp Tuesday, June 23, when the Portland Trail Blazers 7-foot center Greg Oden — Cook’s pal and former OSU teammate — walked in.
Soon Payne and Oden were talking. “You playing out here today?” Oden asked.
Payne shook his head and camp director Albert Powell explained: “I won’t let him. I don’t want to risk anything. He has too much at stake.”
Over the next two weeks Payne travels to Phoenix to take part in the camp run Suns’ big man A’mare Stoudemire and then San Diego for LeBron James’ camp. The rest of the summer he’ll travel the country with his All Ohio Red AAU team, which includes Staten and the OSU bound pair, Jared Sullinger and Jordan Sibert.
After Oden met with Payne, he recalled another Dayton-bred talent he met for the first time. He was playing for an Indiana AAU team coached by Mike Conley Sr., who brought the players to Dayton’s McFarland Junior High for some workouts.
“We already had Aaron Pogue on the team and then they brought this other kid in for a tryout who was supposed to be pretty good,” Oden smiled. “I figured he was just some street ball player.”
Cook remembered that meeting, too. “I walked in for my tryout and the first guy I saw was Greg. It’s pretty rare to see a 7-footer when you’re as young as we were, but it didn’t bother me.”
Oden laughed: “As soon as we started playing, he just killed everybody. Right then I knew Dayton has some pretty good talent.”
Adreian Payne is now proving nothing has changed.
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