Lets Hope The Sports World Can All Agree to Take a Knee for Arnie, Jose

The Deaths of Arnold Palmer and Jose Fernandez Cost the Sports World
a King and a Prince on the Same Day

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The sports gods were busy Sunday, and the sports world endured a very difficult day.

First, news broke that Jose Fernandez, the 24-year-old star pitcher for the Miami Marlins, had died in a boating accident. Then word came via the wires that Arnold Palmer had passed away at the age of 87.

For more on Fernandez, I’ll leave that to the great Vin Scully.

As I was sitting watching Sunday Night Football, the really clever “Peyton on Sunday Morning” commercial coincidentally came on as word began to spread on Twitter that Palmer had died. It was symbolic in many ways, specifically since Palmer invented the sports “pitch man” role that Manning has so effortlessly and impressively adopted. 

Having lost another King earlier in the year in Muhammed Ali, I found myself gasping for some semblance of literary breath. I thought that, in this current and important time of our country’s battle with social consciousness, I hoped we could all take a knee, together, for one of the most important figures in sports history and for one poised to become one.

Palmer’s playing legacy has been well defined. If you don’t know them, click here. The reality is, Palmer was as important to sports — and sports culture across the board — as anyone we’ve seen over the last half century. In the same way that Ali wasn’t just a boxer, Palmer didn’t just play golf. I openly wondered in this particular piece what’s happened to the greatness in sports as it pertains to discussing the current landscape.

Palmer’s passing is both sad and even more substantial. His merging with the invention of television transcended sports in the same way that Michael Jordan merging with recorded video did. Those of us who owned VHS copies of “Come Fly With Me” and who would hit rewind over and over watching unthinkable dunks, in addition to watching the Bulls on “NBA on NBC” every weekend, knew the power of television meeting persona.

That started with Palmer.

Simply put, Palmer perfected sports marketing in building his brand.  While those efforts may not have life or death implications, it helped build IMG, the most powerful agency in sports history. The result was the financial stability of thousands of athletes for decades to come.

“He took the machete and made the path for us,” Lee Trevino once said in a recent documentary made for The Golf Channel, an idea first birthed by Palmer. “He was the first to put golf and business together,” Trevino continued. “He and (Mark) McCormack were the first to realize there was a marketing value when it comes to golf.”

Palmer’s legacy wasn’t easy to follow. Just ask fellow PGA Tour player Rocco Mediate, who grew up in Greensburg, PA — right in the shadow of Palmer’s backyard in Latrobe just outside of Pittsburgh. I had the great fortune of covering the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont as well as editing and contributing to the onsite program for GOLF Magazine and Golf.com. Leading up to the event, a group of us went to go play at Totteridge Golf Club where I saw Mediate in the grill room. He looked as upset as any athlete I had ever seen. He had just failed to qualify for the event.

I asked him for an interview and he declined, only saying that it “was a hard one to sit out being at home and all.” He would later tell the press that he felt he let Mr. Palmer down as well.

Mediate would finish runner-up to Tiger Woods in a playoff the next year at Torrey Pines.

For me, Jose Fernandez the player was a relative unknown in the grand scheme of baseball, and that’s what makes me the most sad. I’ve seen him pitch, kept him on my fantasy keeper team as he fought back from Tommy John surgery, and watched him dominate the New York Mets earlier this year. But the reality is I don’t know much because I, like all of us, didn’t get to see enough. At just 24 years of age, his career and impact on the sport was just starting to take off.

It’s hard to put into words what a day like yesterday feels like to a sports fan. I choose to hold Arnold Palmer in his own class and in his own comfortable seat because he was as important to sports as Ali, Jordan and Babe Ruth. He made the sports world easier. He made it and lucrative.

Losing two people — one on the rise and one who has shined brighter than almost anyone in any sport for almost seven decades — on the same day, just hurts. They impacted millions and allowed for millions more to dream that the impossible was possible.

“Arnold and Jose both embodied the American Dream. Arnold used sports to build a brand ,” says Joe Casale, a former sport agent and one of Forbes Magazine’s top 100 sports business follows on Twitter. “Fernandez became an American citizen after four tries and became a symbol of pride to millions of Cubans and Non-Cubans. He led an impactful and important life in just 24 years.”

I hope we can all find it in ourselves to take a minute of consciousness out of our day to thank them both.