Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Nolan Ryan's power makes us all cower

Nolan Ryan may go down as one of the best pitchers of all time, if not THEE greatest. Of course things like this are pure opinion, even with the stats to back it up.

Ryan sure was a work horse, and a guy that reminds me of him would have to be Justin Verlander, the Tigers pitcher. But I digress.

The article wasn't anything spectacular, but it made some good points. The way men and minorities are treated in the media is quite different. I don't really see how this is just a sports problem though. These social "norms" are norms for a reason, that's they way it's been for a long time. I'm not saying those are right in any way (just to save myself fromt he wrath of Gwen and Breland), just that the idea of the American Cowboy and the pure masculinity of sport and even society's view of these subjects stems from the building of America itself.

It is hard for me, and other white males I presume, to fully understand what being put on the back burner feels like, because for so long, as seen in history books, white men have run the civilized world. I know I'm digging an extremely large hole for myself, but that's just the way history has gone. The people who win wars write the history books.

One thing I really enjoyed about this piece was the idea that in his heyday, Nolan Ryan was the epitome of masculinity, or the "Embodiment of Male Athleticism" as Trujillo says. It reminded me a lot of the way we view James Bond on the silver screen.

If you look through the years of James Bonds' you see a trend: the Embodiment of Masculinity seems to change with every new James Bond. When my favorite Bond actor was playing the 007 agent, Sean Connery, the idea of maleness was a physically fit, but not overly muscular man who was extremely well spoken, and a true lady's man. Through the ages that has changed when Roger Moore took over the role from George Lazenby, the idea of masculinity has changed, and has continued to change with every new Bond, all the way up to Pierce Brosnan and current Bond, Daniel Craig.

I'm sure that Bond films and actors show people the "new masculinity" but they sure do a good job showing the world exactly what they think masculinity means to them.

As this relates to the article, I think that it is unfortunate men and women are treated differently on and off the playing field, but as we've seen with the recent reelection of Barack Obama, anything is possible with the right people. (Think Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King in the Battle of the Sexes). It only takes one person with one idea.

-Ean Dunn

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