Starting Five

1. “God never gives you more than you can handle…” Except when He does. Twenty-six lives, most of them ages six and seven, snuffed out in less than 15 minutes of senseless violence in Newtown, Conn. In a gripping address outside his home Robbie Parker, father of six year-old Emilie, one of 20 children who died last Friday morning, said something along the lines of, “When you devote yourself to helping others, it is the quickest route to happiness.” (we cannot find quote, but it’s basically that). This holiday season Parker, 30, is our prince of peace.

2. That was Robbie Parker. Then there’s Rob Parker, who two days earlier,  in a Connecticut TV studio roughly 35 miles from the site of the Sandy Hook School, called Robert Griffin III a “cornball brotha.” If Rob Parker were white, he’d already be gone from ESPN. As it stands, the network has suspended him indefinitely. Shame on ESPN. This is an easy decision, and Mr. Parker’s track record of disregard for accuracy (accusing Kirk Cousins, then at Michigan State but currently RG3’s backup, of being involved in a campus fracas when he was miles away at the time) and, as one writer termed it, being “a sound bite in search of an audience”, is deplorable. He embodies the worst of ESPN’s “embrace debate” cause.

3. One week after putting LeBron James on its cover and honoring him as its “Sportsman of the Year”, Sports Illustrated puts our inaugural Sports Organism of the Year (The “SOY”), R.A. Dickey, on its cover. The heading: “The Year’s Inspiring Performers.” (as opposed to what a Sportsman of the Year is supposed to be? Hunh?) Feels to us as if SI was trying to have its cake and eat it, too. It couldn’t pass up the lure of a LeBron cover (and the Ad Sales guys were probably thrilled about being able to promote that), but it also knows a little bit about pathos. Tyler Kepner of The New York Times gives the New York Mess an E-1 on their handling of the Dickey negotiations, while our friend @okerland wonders if, once Dickey pitches for Toronto, his initials will become “R.Eh.”? 

4. Butler topples top-ranked Indiana in overtime, in Indianapolis, in a contest that all who saw have called a “classic.” It is possible to have a meaningful college basketball game before March, if all the elements of drama are accurate. We’d call this a Hoosiers-type scenario except for the fact that the Bulldogs have advanced to two Final Fours in the past three years while IU last ventured to one ten years ago.

5. In a possible preview of Super Bowl XLVII (we had to look that up), the San Francisco 49ers defeat the New England Patriots, 41-34, in the wind and rain at Foxboro. Noteworthy: the Pats came all the way back from a 28-point deficit to tie the score at 31-31. Also, Wes Welker of the Pats reached the 100-catch mark for a season for the fifth time, becoming the first player in NFL history to do so. Remember: Welker was not drafted out of college.

Reserves

President Obama’s powerful speech last night at the Newtown interfaith prayer vigil and Saturday Night Live’s inspired cold open one night earlier.

What Up With That? Christmas Spectacular? With Jackie Rogers, Jr.? Why not?

Adrian Peterson for NFL Most Valuable Player. In the era of the QB, it’s fortuitous and uncommon to have a rusher on pace for a 2,000-yard season. Then again, it helps to share a backfield with the “NFL’s worst quarterback”, according to Terry Bradshaw. A.D. (stands for “All Day”) rushed for 212 yards (a.k.a., he went NYC area code) yesterday in St. Louis.

Notre Dame nose tackle Louis Nix III (a.k.a., “Irish Chocolate”) the impetus of not one but two iconic goal-line stands for the 12-0 Fighting Irish this season, announces that he will return next season for his junior/senior year. Offensive tackle Zach Martin, a fourth-year junior who has started the last 38 games, will also return. The Irish basically picked up two first- or second-team All-Americans for 2013 with this announcement. It must be that South Bend weather and night life that is so seductive.

Kindergarten. Fairview Elementary School, Middletown, N.J. A cemetery sits between my house and school, which is just one reason that at age five I do not walk home. My mom picks me up each day after school at 11:35 a.m., but my parents both work at a local restaurant (ironically, a steakateria) that my dad manages. On this day my parents are in the weeds, so my mom calls a neigbor and asks her to pick me up. Except that the neighbor thinks my mom says, “12:35”.

Sitting on the curb. Waiting for my mom. Having no idea where she is. Confusion turns to panic which turns, after half an hour, to tears.  (granted, I may have been a bit of a crybaby) A classmate who lives just a block away from school, Vinnie Klunk, notices my anguish. He sits with me and waits. Vinnie is what we might today call a “first responder.”

The terror did not last too long — one hour –but it was palpable and real. And I’ve never forgotten the act of kindness of Vinnie Klunk (nor, of course, that incredible name of his). I thought of that episode a lot this weekend. Of those kindergarteners and a fear that was exponentially greater than mine. And of their need for a Vinnie Klunk to come and rescue them. But no one was able to save them. The last moments of their innocent lives were pure terror and fear. No one, let alone a kindergarten student, should ever have to endure that.

It was fascinating, was it not, that the teachers who were able to corral their students and save them emphasized over and over, not knowing if these were their last moments on earth, that they loved them. In the end, it may be all that anyone really wants, or needs: to know that someone loves them.