Men on the Edge of Panic: Boomer Esiason, Mike Francesa and Toxic Masculinity (The Nation)

Tori and Daniel Murphy

A little background may be necessary here for those who do not follow baseball (like me). Recently, Daniel Murphy of the New York Mets received a LOT of criticism for taking paternity leave that caused him to miss opening day. In essence, he getting blasted for choosing to be with his wife for the birth of their child rather than play in the opening day game (1 of 162 games each season).

Former NFL quarterback stuck his foot so far down his throat that he had to issue a very contrite apology.

Yesterday's post looked at the ways paternity leave is changing for men. So here is some response from David Zirin at The Nation on this issue.

Men on the Edge of Panic: Boomer Esiason, Mike Francesa and Toxic Masculinity

Dave Zirin on April 7, 2014

Daniel Murphy of the New York Mets received criticism for taking paternity leave this week. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

This is not another shooting-fish-in-a-barrel commentary about the antediluvian swinishness of Boomer Esiason and Mike Francesa. This is not another swipe at their comments criticizing the efforts of Mets second basemen Daniel Murphy for missing opening day to be with his wife for the birth of their child. For those who missed it, Esiason opined, “I would have said, ‘C-section before the season starts. I need to be at Opening Day. I’m sorry, this is what makes our money. This is how we’re going to live our life. This is going to give my child every opportunity to be a success in life. I’ll be able to afford any college I want to send my kid to, because I’m a baseball player.’”

Fellow troglodytic troll of the NYC sports radio airwaves Mike Francesa commented, “You’re a major league baseball player. You can hire a nurse.” Francesa also called the paternity leave at his own company “a scam-and-a-half.”

Many have verbally stomped them for the nature of their comments—well done, Chris Hayes—and Esiason also issued a fulsome apology.

I spoke to my friend Martha, who is a midwife—and a Mets fan—about their comments. She said simply, “I would ask if they knew how it sounded, talking about this woman like she is a human incubator to be cut open in a dangerous, often unnecessary surgical procedure so Murphy can make it to Citi Field on time. I would ask that, but honestly, if you can’t see why the asshole-levels on these comments are off the charts, then I can’t help you.”

I also spoke with Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL player and someone who has devoted his life to challenging the ways in which sports have the capacity to communicate a toxic, destructive brand of masculinity. Ehrmann said, “I think these comments are pretty shortsighted and reflect old school thinking about masculinity and fatherhood. Paternity leave is critical in helping dads create life long bonding and sharing in the responsibilities of raising emotionally healthy children. To miss the life altering experience of ‘co-laboring’ in a delivery room due to nonessential work-related responsibilities is to create false values.”

Ehrmann also pointed out the ways in which these statements create a culture that normalizes the alienation between fathers and children. He said, “Comments like these put every man in a position to think about career and co workers opinions ahead of father/husband/partner roles. So even in companies with paternity leave, many new dads won’t or feel like they can’t take advantage of leave without a stigma being attached to them…. This is one more arena where sports/athletes could be a metaphor for social change and elevate the birth/nurture/fatherhood role and responsibilities over work.”

He then said to me that this kind of sexist mentality not only harms families, not only harms men, but also quite specifically harms athletes. “I’m convinced the number-one common denominator in locker rooms is father-child dysfunction,” he said. “It’s what pathologically elevates many performances. ‘I will prove to [the coach/father figure] I am worthy of my dad’s love and acceptance,’ at the expense of self and others. If any group should understand need for dads in delivery rooms it should be athletes and the athletic world.”

I would also add that the only reason Daniel Murphy even had the option to take this time off is because it was collectively bargained into his contract by his union. There are millions of men in nonunion jobs who don’t even have this option, not to mention millions of women who risk their employment in the United States by taking time off after the birth of their child.

I think there is something else going on as well. The comments from Boomer and Francesa smack of a kind of existential fear from an older generation of sports radio jockeys about the ways in which definitions of masculinity and sports have been rapidly changing. There have been two dominant kinds of masculine archetypes for the last thirty years in sports. Either you could be heterosexual, misogynist, talking loudly but saying nothing with a goal of trying to become a commercial brand; or you could be a heterosexual evangelical Christian, talking humbly with a goal of trying to become a commercial brand. Those who strayed outside of these norms have only done so with considerable risk to their standing in the media or even their job.

But in the last two years, these archetypes have changed. We have seen players such as Jason Collins, Robbie Rogers and Michael Sam break new ground as gay athletes. We have seen Royce White and Brandon Marshall speak out about their mental health challenges and show that this kind of openness does not demonstrate weakness but courage. We have a new cultural consensus that does not see concussions as a bizarre badge of honor but a danger sign. We’ve had Jonathan Martin go public about being bullied by teammates, forcing the NFL to confront long-standing locker-room behaviors. Poisonous, narrow definitions of masculinity are being challenged. A player’s missing opening day to be with his wife on the birth of their child clearly caused Boomer’s and Francesa’s brains to rupture. Their idealized sports world as a masculinist cocoon absent of progress and insulated from the real world, where every day is 1985 (or even 1955), is withering before their eyes. People are deciding that ruining your life and your relationship with family in the name of a code that impresses the Mike Francesas of the world isn’t worth it. This is progress, but as in any time when we see progressive healthy change, the hounds of reaction will still nip at its heels.

Tom Ley - The Importance of Catch

Tom Ley posted this article at The Good Men Project on the importance of playing catch. Like Tom in this article, I did not have a father to play catch with me - I had a father for a while, and he was a huge baseball fan and wanted me to play ball, too, but he never wanted to play catch with me.

I was not a very good baseball player. I was better than most kids, but not as good as I was at football, soccer, or basketball. While my father was still alive, I chose soccer in the spring over baseball, and I was sure at the time that I had forever disappointed him.

But I did like to play catch with my friends to pass time on a cool spring Saturday afternoon. Those are some of my best memories from childhood - throwing the ball back and forth, talking about our favorite players (Willie Stargell and Willie Mays), practicing trick catches, or just shooting the shit about whatever.

I don't know if kids play catch like that anymore - I hope so.

I stopped playing catch because soccer became a year around sport for me by the time I reached high school, but for Tom Ley stopped for different reasons . . . .

The Importance of Catch

By Tom Ley
May 22, 2011

When your brother is the closest thing you’ve got to a father, sometimes playing catch means a little bit more.

I didn’t come to love baseball the same way most people do, or at least not the same way that movies like Field of Dreams and The Natural would have you believe most people do. According to the final scene in each of those movies, baseball is a game that’s shared between fathers and sons. The all-American father passes down his knowledge and love of the game to his son by teaching him all about the wheel play and the double switch. The sprightly young kid starts wearing his ball cap to bed at night and asks his father if he wants to have a catch every Sunday afternoon, and the lifeblood of the American Pastime is replenished.

As a kid who grew up without a father, I didn’t quite fit into this narrative. Yet somehow, by grade school, I was head-over-heels in love with baseball. I spent large portions of my young life poring over Becketts to find out how valuable my baseball cards were, memorizing and imitating the batting stances of my favorite baseball players (I had Ken Griffey Jr. totally nailed) and most importantly, playing catch in the backyard with my older brother.

Like most kids do who don’t have fathers, I’ve spent a great deal of my young life seeking out replacement father figures, surrogates who could provide me with some kind of hodge-podge blueprint of masculinity. Lucky for me, my brother, only four years my senior, was more than capable of serving as the most important of these surrogates.

I’ve always loved and respected my brother more than anyone else in my life. If there was a song he liked, I liked it too. If there was a TV show or video game he liked, I liked it too. I respected him so much that sometimes I got huge amounts of enjoyment out of simply watching him do stuff. I’d lie on the couch and watch him build what I thought were the most impressive Lego structures that had ever been constructed. I’d sit over his shoulder and watch with unwavering focus as he played Star Wars X-Wing on our computer (we had it on floppy disk, because we were cool). So it’s not surprising that when my brother started getting interested in baseball, I was eager to follow his lead.

He ushered me into the game as well as any father ever could have. With unyielding patience, he taught me how to catch pop flies, how to properly grip a fastball, and how to line up my knuckles on the bat handle.

He even taught me how to pitch. He spent hours squatting across the yard from me, receiving pitch after pitch while giving out advice and encouragement until I could pop strikes into his mitt with ease. He did all of this while he was, himself, still a child.

Those early years spent throwing pitches in the backyard until the sun went down made for some of my fondest childhood memories. Regrettably, due to a lurking smallness within myself, my affection for these moments would begin to wane rather quickly.

As I grew older my love for baseball intensified, but it was a love that existed in the abstract. I was enchanted by the idea of baseball, by the fact that the design and mechanics of the game were so radically elegant and unique. There was no time limit, no goals standing at opposite ends of a long field or court, and the game’s most important players only showed up once every five days.

Read the whole article.

Tags: boys, fathers, brothers, baseball, relationships, fatherloss, The Good Men Project, Tom Ley, The Importance of Catch, regret, childhood, father figures