King Kaufman's Sports Daily

We don't need disasters like Katrina to keep sports in perspective, but it's nice when an athlete gets it. Plus: A tennis "storm"?

Read more: Sports, News, Salon News, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

Sept. 1, 2005 | I've never been a big fan of the cliché that tragedy puts sports "into perspective." Whenever something terrible happens, coaches and commentators are always going on about how this really puts things in perspective, reminds us all that the sport in question is just a game.

Those of us in the "I have a life, thank you" community, which is almost all of us, already know that in the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter who wins this or that ballgame. When we talk about a game being "important" or "crucial," we're speaking within the context of sports, a form of entertainment.

We didn't need Hurricane Katrina to teach us that the problems of 25 guys from the Bronx don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, just as we didn't need Sept. 11 or Munich or Pearl Harbor or Ray Chapman getting beaned to teach us that.

It's the people making those "this puts things into perspective" comments who need to check their self-importance.

And there's no shortage of people in sports afflicted with a case of exaggerated self-importance, most notably professional athletes. That's why, with hyperbole, however understandable, emanating from the political world, it was heartening to hear a voice of perspective coming from that class this week.

Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway said of Katrina, "This is our tsunami," referencing last year's storm in Asia that killed an estimated 180,000 people, a death toll dozens or maybe hundreds of times higher than Katrina's will be.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said, "I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago." Death toll estimates from Hiroshima vary, but the city itself attributes more than 200,000 deaths to the atomic bomb.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., writing on Huffingtonpost.com, blamed the hurricane on Barbour.

The devastation from Katrina is almost impossible to fathom, and of course for those affected by it, including Holloway and Barbour, it may just as well be the tsunami or Hiroshima because it feels that way to them.

But the last place you might look for a voice of reason, perspective and nuance in the midst of this nightmare would be a football field in San Jose where the New Orleans Saints, having been evacuated early, were working out for their practice game against the Oakland Raiders, beyond which their future is an almost total mystery.

Next page: "It's not a 9/11 deal." Plus: Where did that hurricane hit?