Anti-Climacus

AND, in the interest of even time, there's the other side, well worth remembering:

"The additional irony here is that Bowden?s team was in New York just last week, and the Reds players -- those selfish, strike-contemplating players who were on the other end of Bowden's Sept. 11 analogies -- acquitted themselves like heroes. Ken Griffey, often excoriated as the quintessence of the egomaniacal modern athlete, met the widow and orphans of Kenny Marino, a New York firefighter who perished in the collapse of the towers. Two weeks after the attacks, Katrina Marino had e-mailed the Reds, explaining her lost husband's fanatical devotion to Griffey, and asking if the outfielder could hit a home run in Marino's memory.

He promptly did just that.

As Griffey followed-up with a personal visit with the Marinos, his teammate Scott Williamson went to Ladder Company 2 in Lower Manhattan. Williamson's fiancée is pure firefighter stock -- her father and brother each district chiefs in Cincinnati, another brother, a captain. They brought shirts and hats from Cincinnati's department to the officers of Ladder 2, who lost 10 men in the attacks. The New Yorkers, in turn, gave Williamson a cap, which he wore on the field that night. Scott Williamson is from Fort Polk, Louisiana, and lives in Friendswood, Texas. And he went downtown and cried as honestly as any native of Manhattan."

A few small things, sure, but sometimes that's all that matters.