It took brains to get as big as Michael Jordan

— If you are like me, you cannot help but know that today is Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday.

I have been hearing about it all week. It’s been the calming static in my headphones at the gym. I look up and catch images of MJ from 25 years ago on the TV monitors. ESPN has been putting on the full Tebow for MJ’s 50th, and why not? There are plenty of highlights to show, plenty of former opponents and teammates to interview, plenty of middle-aged men willing to get misty-eyed, and even the man himself taking the opportunity to reminisce.

This is how we do things now; baby boomers were the first generation to grow up in the era of ubiquitous television, and most of us have spent a considerable portion of our lives apprehending the world through the electronic prism of a tube. Our memories can be perpetually refreshed by highlights, we accept the hype and wax sentimental, reminding ourselves how fortunate we were to stand witness to greatness. Anniversary retrospectives allow father’s a chance to nudge their sons into heedfulness, to take notice of the “greatness” from a time before they were born.

Though I recognize ESPN as an evil force which has corrupted if not destroyed sports writing, and made celebrities of more than a few cynical mediocrities, I do not think there’s much wrong with attending the circus, if that is what you want to do. (I could change the channel.)And ESPN is but the worst offender. Sports Illustrated is giving the man his 50th cover for the occasion and the NBA has all but dedicated their All-Star weekend to him.

On one level, Jordan probably deserves it. Consider the economic engine that he was (and, to some degree, still is). How do we begin to calculate what he was worth to Nike, the NBA, to the city of Chicago? I’d guess many billions. In the era of hyper-capitalism, this is not something we can dismiss. We might find it charming to learn that Stan Musial lived in a modest neighborhood and strung his own Christmas lights, but even in those days before ginormous TV contracts he was probably underpaid. And so was Michael Jordan.

I’ll leave it to others to argue whether Jordan was the best ever to play the game. (I’m not sure that’s true. I am sure that that’s not a debate anyone needs to take seriously.) The real importance of Jordan is not what he accomplished on the court, but the mark he established on the American imagination - the brand that he became.

Before Jordan, black athletes were perceived in various ways-they could be political troublemakers like Muhammad Ali or quiet avuncular figures like Ernie Banks. They were either “dignified” like Hank Aaron or “natural” like Willie Mays. They could be loved or feared, valorized or demonized by the dominant media, marketed in the reductive way that sports figures often are.

There is nothing inherently honorable in the pursuit and practice of sport. At best, professional athletes aren’t authentic heroes, merely men and women who employ their bodies to earn their livelihood. It is hardly reasonable to expect them to be any better than the rest of us.Given that our society identifies athletic talent early and rewards it extravagantly, we shouldn’t be surprised that a great many athletes seem spoiled and surly. Many of them have been pampered and fawned over since they were children-can we be shocked to discover that some of them turn out to be emotionally stunted and self-absorbed?

Yet Jordan repudiated the stereotypes of the urban black athlete. Like Tiger Woods, he is a child of the suburbs, seemingly scoured clean of rough edges. He had none of the edginess and obvious distrust that seemed to define so many young jocks of his era-think of Albert Belle, Allen Iverson and NFL quarterback Jeff George.

Jordan was aloof, set himself apart from the crowd (and even his teammates) in much the same frosty way as a Joe DiMaggio or a Ben Hogan, but-as a player, at least-he never indulged the kind of cocky churlishness that is almost as much a part of our games as the balls and uniforms. While aggressive self-aggrandizement was and is part of the culture of professional sports (and, for that matter, urban America), the young Jordan was able to hold still and be quiet and let his presence and talent fill the void.

Jordan actually changed the way some people thought about young black men. There’s a revealing scene in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing from 1989, where Pino, the racist pizza cook played by John Turturro, explains to Lee’s Mookie that he can hate black people while admiring performers like Prince and athletes like Michael Jordan because their talent somehow made them “different”-because they transcended their blackness.

But what made Jordan special wasn’t merely athletic prowess. He was a sublime player, but no matter how great a player he was he couldn’t have become Michael Jordan but for that singular combination of looks and brains and grace that combined with his physical gifts. Michael Jordan, superstar, exists separate and apart from Michael Jordan, athlete.

And Jordan did seem a “safe” hero-while other black athletes of his generation could seem especially prickly and fueled by grievance, Jordan emerged from the University of North Carolina with a New Southerner’s ease and patience. He had, especially as a young player, an easy unforced smile and a way of fitting in with the power elite.

Now, there is a sense that perhaps he is not so comfortable away from the court, though Forbes estimates that he still makes $80 million a year. He failed as a baseball player. We watched his awkward end with the Washington Wizards, and his disastrous handling of Kwame Brown after he took over as that team’s president of basketball operations. Jordan owns 80 percent of the Charlotte Bobcats, a team that set an NBA record for haplessness last season.

Jordan’s famous reluctance to take sides on divisive issues-“Republicans buy shoes, too” he famously quipped-rendered him a blank screen onto which we could project our assumptions. While the TV commercials suggested that we all wanted to “be like Mike,” the greater part of his popularity might have derived from our imagining that he might somehow be like us.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com Read more at blooddirtandangels.com

Perspective, Pages 76 on 02/17/2013

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