John Buren

It started with something so genuine, so gut wrenchingly sincere and moving. On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig, already suffering the debilitating effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, proclaimed himself ". the luckiest man on the face of this earth," as he said goodbye to the Yankee faithful on Lou Gehrig Day in the Bronx. Twenty-three months later the disease that would carry his name had taken his life. But unbeknownst to Gehrig, or anyone else for that matter, his public farewell had given birth to the exercise we now know as 'the tribute.'

Nine years after Gehrig's immortal address, the great Babe Ruth stood before a sellout crowd in the house that he built, and in a voice made hoarse and barely intelligible by the throat cancer that would claim his life, he too said goodbye to the fans and the game that had elevated him to the status of American icon. But that was the best of it and should have been the end of it.

Like a musician unable to ever match the creativity of his debut album, or an author who can never top the quality of his first novel, the tribute, both in concept and practice, has never been as genuine or convincing as it was in its earliest manifestations.

With hindsight providing us with the clarity of perfect vision, what we now know is that after Babe Ruth Day at the Big House in the Bronx, we should have put the whole idea of tributes away, realizing with our clear and perfect vision that we could never top those first two ceremonies.

But like the fools we so often are, we have tried both mightily and embarrassingly.

It wasn't that I minded Nolan Ryan's victory tour, or Kareem Abdul Jabbar's final swing around the NBA. These guys played forever, put up massive numbers, and were locks for their respective halls of fame. What has really dragged the whole concept of the tribute down is the pre-fab, over-produced, suck-up jobs we now lavish on the great, the near-great, as well as the once-upon-a-time-pretty-goods.

Lou Gehrig

Can anyone, with any degree of accuracy, count the number of tributes heaped upon Cal Ripken? Not to diminish the many accomplishments of his truly remarkable career, but somewhere along the line don't we reach a saturation point? Apparently not, because we just did the whole Ripken Tribute thing again on September 6, which was the eighth anniversary of consecutive game number 2131, and we never like to let those eighth anniversaries go unrecognized (to heck with the 10th & 25th, it's that eighth anniversary that always gives me goose bumps).

Tennis got into the act at this year's U.S. Open, where on opening night they interrupted play on the stadium court for just about an hour to conduct the Pete Sampras retirement tribute. No question, a player of Sampras' caliber is worthy of a big sendoff. With more grand slam singles titles than any player in the history of the game, he is unquestionably one of the all time greats, and indisputably the finest serve-and-volley player ever to pick up a racquet. But let's think about timing for a moment. Sampras hadn't played a match in a year. When he withdrew from Wimbledon in June, it became perfectly obvious that he was done. He could have announced his retirement in July, come out and said a few words to the crowd prior to the first night session at The Open, and been done with it. But nnnnnooooo! Sampras and his willing accomplices at the USTA had to put together a big schmaltzy production, sandwich it in between the night matches (so as to get better viewership on the left coast), and then finish it off with a shot of Sampras' wife wiping a nonexistent tear from her disingenuous eye when she realized she was on camera.

But unbelievably, it got worse.

A few nights later, after three days of rain delays and constant rescheduling of matches, we get The Michael Chang Tribute. A Samprasesque send-off for a player who in his seventeen-year career won precisely one grand slam title (the 1989 French Open), a player who was never ranked number one in the world, and a player whose most recent effort had been a four-set loss in the opening round of this year's Open.

But there is good news is all of this. At the rate we're going, if you are the runner-up for your club's B-league doubles title this winter, you may just have a shot at getting a tribute at next year's U.S. Open.

John Buren

You can contact John Buren at johnburen13@hotmail.com.