Sports, please stop using Muhammad Ali as a mascot. Seeing him in the condition he's in is not inspiring, it's not life-affirming...it's not positive in any way, shape, or form. When he was wheeled out for opening night at the new Marlins Park in Miami earlier tonight, it was bitterly sad. The crowd chanted his name as if their support was going to get him to stand up, do the "float like a butterfly" thing, toss a 95-mile-per-hour heater to the catcher, and then grab a mic and tell George Zimmerman to kiss his ass. But all he was able to do was gingerly hand a baseball to Hanley Ramirez (a transaction that was more Ramirez taking the ball than Ali giving it over) and then sit there while the Marlins took a picture with him. He was barely even able to raise his hand to wave to attendees.
Ali was "The Greatest"—an man whose outsize personality and athletic brilliance brought millions to their feet; now, he's a cautionary tale—a formerly witty, vibrant man who got hit in the head a lot and is now trapped in a useless corporeal form. It's said that he's still pretty sharp mentally, but he can't really express himself because his body doesn't work anymore. That's terrible, and while people understandably like to be in his presence because he is, after all, Muhammad Ali, his appearances feel more like exploitation than celebration, and they tend to cast a pall over the events that they're supposed to make more special. He was a spectacular athlete, the likes of whom comes along only once in a generation, and nobody wants to remember him this way.
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