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The nice young woman, the phenom basketball player who broke Pistol Pete’s scoring record yesterday, Caitlin Clark, played her last game on Iowa’s home court this past Sunday.
It got me thinking of a play I once saw called “Peter Pan.” I don’t remember much about it except one line when Peter Pan, a young boy, says he does not want to grow up. I remember hearing the actor say that line and being moved almost to tears. Utterly simple. Utterly profound.
Of course, who wants to grow up? Being a kid is fun and easy and there aren’t many worries. Growing up is scary conceptually and in actuality. This Bruce Springsteen song, Growin’ Up, captures the leery feeling we share about growing up as powerfully as any tune I can think of.
I worry now for Clark who is growing up right before us in a transition stage from graduating from college to starting a professional career in basketball. She’s on the verge of being a full-fledged adult and all the nuanced and nagging incongruities that come with it.
She’s already doing adult things like deciding which companies she’s willing to do ads with, figuring out how to make money to support herself, and answering endless questions from reporters who view her as a hot story that will bring eyeballs to their stories that will help enrich them. Still, the truth is, once Caitlin is no longer a hot story they’ll stop following her around. When they don’t need her to benefit themselves, they’ll abandon her, and isn’t that sad?
I don’t want her to grow up. I want her to stay exactly as she is right now. She hasn’t said anything that upsets people yet. She’s adored by so many. Her story hasn’t become complicated by the inevitable trappings and unexpected shockwaves of growing up.
The greatest of sports heroes get smacked around by adulthood no matter how much success they had on the field. Tom Brady is the greatest football player yet has had some rough marriages and a tense relationship with his coach, Bill Belichick, whom Brady didn’t think appreciated him enough. Feelings were hurt. All those titles but all that interpersonal pain. Being great at what you do doesn’t guarantee a great life.
Michael Jordan is the greatest hooper of all time but we all know his life hasn’t been all dunking highlights. He’s struggled with gambling problems and plenty of personal relationship difficulties.
Wayne Gretzky, as great as he was, was saddened to tears when he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings from his four-time Stanley Cup winning team, the Edmonton Oilers. The Great One had a really un-great day.
Michael Phelps won 20-something Olympic Medals but has battled depression and admits to contemplating ending his life because he didn’t find fulfillment after achieving so much.
Pete Maravich’s life was as tragic and dazzling as an athlete. Liquor, an over-demanding father, and a basketball-all-the-time childhood stunted his emotional development. It’s never all good for anyone no matter how great they become at their crafts.
Yet it seems near perfect right about now for Caitlin, but she’s a human being bound to run into plenty of problems of various sorts in the coming days, years, and decades because the adult world is difficult insensitive unforgiving, and self-centered.
Adults aren’t kids. They’re hardened and jaded. They hunker down to protect what’s theirs. They get less tolerant of people they don’t like or who can’t help them achieve their goals. Adults use each other and they manipulate, are cunning, and are cold; not always but more often than we would all prefer.
Caitlin is entering the WNBA where there will be all sorts of intense pressure on her to perform well on the court, and there will be plenty of players jealous of her notoriety that they feel they should have gotten in college and entering the league but didn’t. Jealousy towards her will be rampant.
It’s inevitable, seemingly, that once we elevate a person to superstar status as we have Caitlin there will be some people wanting to knock her off that pedestal and make her life more conflicted and not as straightforward and protected as it is now in Iowa.
Once outside the non-Iowa-like world, she’ll quickly find out so many people with different agendas than hers, values she doesn’t treasure, ideas and thoughts that she’s never heard before that will get her off-balance socially, emotionally, and intellectually. She’ll run into intolerance with an intensity she’s unfamiliar with. Although I don’t want this to happen to her, I’m pretty sure it will.
Why can’t we all just stay young forever? Why isn’t college a permanent state of being? Or being an eighth grader? Why can’t we be protected from outsiders who don’t care about us but sure do about themselves?
This is my wish: Stay the age you are now, Caitlin, at least in spirit and how you act. Smile as you do now. Keep being nice to people especially the millions of kids who worship who you are and what you accomplished. Maybe you’ll be able to handle the adult world and it won’t be as tough on you as it is on almost everyone else.
Maybe you really are that special person who will continue to be the same and make us feel good about the world because we like how you play hoops and carry yourself.
Maybe you’re different, a new kind of adult.
You’ve already proven you’re unique.
Never grow up, Caitlin Clark.
We love you the way you are right now.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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