From the Sidelines: Getting intimate with pro athletes

By Soraya Victory

I had dinner with the Florida Marlins the other night at a steakhouse in New York City. More precisely, my family and I happened to eat in the same restaurant as they did, separated by dozens of other diners and the walls of the private party room (theirs, not ours).

I've never been a baseball fan. I wouldn't be able to name one Marlin player, and I even bet against them as a guest in Smack Zone last week (they fell to the Mets before going out for steak that night, earning me $3,000). Yet somehow I found myself asking the restaurant manager to take me downstairs to get their autographs on my menu.

He suggested we wait until they had finished their cocktails, and I agreed--it would be easier for me to approach a group of hungry athletes just coming off a loss if they had had a few. As I waited for the manager's okay, my family started questioning my sudden interest in the team. I had never wanted to get anyone's autograph before, except the Rumtumtigger when I went to see Cats, but, hey, I was a kid. I had always complained that baseball was a sport for mediocre, out-of-shape athletes, since the goal is to hit the ball hard enough that you don't actually have to run the 360 feet around the bases. So why bother barging into their private party room?

To answer my family, I joked that I wanted to see them getting drunk and eating steak since this spectacle might be more interesting than watching them play baseball. I later recognized, however, that my comment had some truth to it. I never did get my autographs, since the restaurant owner thought my intrusion would annoy the players (he promised to get the autographs for me and send me the signed menu), but I did manage to sneak down to the party room for a peek. With good seats at a game, you could get almost as close to the players as I stood, but you would only get to see them doing their job, and you would be watching with thousands of other fans. I stood there alone watching the reigning World Champions dressed up, hanging out, and eating the same food that I had just eaten.

My glimpse into the Marlins' off-the-field lives made me realize that often, the most intriguing thing about famous athletes is not what makes them exceptional, but what makes them common. Every season, they break records, reach new heights of ath-leticism, and amaze us with their seemingly super-human strength and skill. Sometimes it's just nice to know that they're human. They have their careers and endorsements, but they also socialize, screw up, and have bad days like the rest of us.

Athletes occasionally remind us of this fact themselves. Charles Barkley promised us in his famous Nike commercial that he was just a ballplayer--not a role model. We've seen Mike Tyson prove more than a few times that athletes can make serious mistakes. And let's face it, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire may be making baseball history, but I bet they get gas, too.

On Saturday night, the Marlins attempted in vain to be "of the people." I overheard a member of their staff talking to the restaurant manager. "They wanted to be in the restaurant, not in the private room," she explained.

You could argue that they just planned to eat in the public area because they wanted to spend some more time in the familiar spotlight. But they had just lost to the home team, so they couldn't have been too interested in the attention of New York fans (especially if those New York fans had bet against them). They probably wanted to have a nice dinner out, where they could relax and do a little people-watching--just like my family and everybody else there.

The Marlins' evening didn't go according to plan--and I went home without autographs--but my impromptu interest in the players and their desire to avoid the private room reminded me of one of the main reasons I care about sports in the first place. Of course I enjoy watching the games (with certain exceptions), but I'm more interested in the athletes as individuals--their personalities, their interests, their digestive problems. I would rather have a beer with Patrick Rafter than have box seats to his next match, and I would rather talk to Sosa about his kids than catch his next home run ball.

But since neither encounter is likely to take place, I can only hope I'll get that autographed menu to commemorate my meal with the Florida Marlins.

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