Nice job, well written, Ron Borges wrote a very good article on this same subject in August '03, I am not a Borges apologist, usually in the other camp, but sometimes you need to give credit where it is due:
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2003/08/12/no_sting_of_bitterness/
Darryl Stingley didn't say the human thing when he heard the news about Jack Tatum. Instead, he said the right thing, which is what has separated him from a lot of people for a long, long time.
Not as long as he's sat in the wheelchair that has been so much a part of his life all these years. Not for 25 years this very day. But for a long time the paralyzed former New England Patriot wide receiver has said the right thing but not for the reasons so many athletes say it today. Not for the wrong reasons.
Not just to mouth words that sound good or to con the public or to sell sneakers to kids. He's said the right thing because that's how he lives his life.
He believes, in fact, that it's probably why he still has a life so many years after his body was left broken on the floor of the Oakland Coliseum by the kind of hit everyone in pro football knows can happen but no one ever talks about. It's like the elephant in the corner. Everybody sees it's there. Nobody mentions it.
