Tiger don't know Jack

[The Sheepdog]

and Jack don't know Tiger

Their worlds are too different.
After reading the thread about Tiger's graciousness or lack there of, and why can't he be more like Jack, I wanted to post my thoughts on the whole comparison debate.
Although I am 39 years old, my favourite era in sports has loooong since passed. I am totally captivated by the legends of the 20th century right up until the 1980's. There were so many interesting personalities in every sport. Think back to the history of your favourite teams and remember the men, the championships, the historic losses, and the legendary stories that defined them. As a Red Sox, Celtics, Packers, and Edmonton Oilers fan, I relish and cherish their histories. In the world of individual sport there was Ben Hogan, Walter Hagen, Sam Snead, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and Jesse Owens. And the truth is that there were several personalities in this golden age; men with pride, men with arrogance, men with ferocity, men with grace. The great thing was that they all had heart and spirit, and flaws and faults, and they were allowed to. It's what created the legends and the lore, what endeared us to the players. They were just like us.

And then came the age of information and technology.
The media of today is so unbelievably overblown, overdone, and downright terrorizing, that someone like Roger Maris would have ended up in a mental institute. The technological advances in sports have gotten to the point where you almost need a Masters degree to be a professional athlete. The millions of kids now competing to play professional sports in a market that has comparatively very few jobs means that kids are almost bred to be professional athletes. So many of today's top athletes are robots, or at least they appear that way in the media. Gone are the days of the swashbuckling ball player, the face of a franchise, or even the free-swinging golfer. They've been replaced by strict guidelines, salary caps, and Trackman.
Unfortunately this is just the nature of our society. We have created it. If you don't believe me, just go to your kid's hockey or ball game. And it goes way beyond sports. I wasted about an hour of my life tonight watching a part of The Grammy's. However, The Foo Fighters won an award and Dave Grohl had a fantastic acceptance speech. "This shows the human element of making music is what's important. Singing into a microphone, learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect. It's not about sounding absolutely correct. It's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here (your heart) and what goes on in here (your head). ... Long live rock `n' roll!"
That human element Grohl speaks of is missing in today's top athletes. I believe because of this shift in our society, it is completely unfair to compare the robots athletes of today with those of the "glory" years. The age of technology has made the game easier and accessible to so many more aspiring athletes, but the age of information has made the life of these top athletes unbearable.
So is Tiger as graceful as Jack? Is he as good as Jack? Who knows? Is Pujols as good as Gehrig? Is Brady as good as Montana? Are either as good as Unitas or Graham? I believe that their environments were so different that they are incomparable. I know which era in sports I prefer, and the type of athlete I prefer. I also know the pure and genuine age of sport is over, and I accept that.
You don't have to love Tiger, and you don't have to hate Tiger, but you do have to accept him. Or you don't, in which case you lose.