These days I take my heroes wherever I can get ’em. Earlier this week it was Maryland state Sen. Bryan Simonaire of Anne Arundel County. This week it’s some kid way out in Iowa. Joel Northrup is a 112-pound wrestler in a state that is rich in wrestling history. Frank Gotch, America’s greatest professional wrestler who did his grappling when wrestling was a sport, not a jock opera, hailed from Iowa.
According to Mark Kreidler, author of the high-school wrestling tome “Four Days to Glory,” the finals of the state tournament held every February are sold out months in advance.
Northrup was all set to wrestle in that tournament last week. With a record of 35 wins and only four losses, he had a good shot at winning a state championship. But he has to wait until next year. Northrup lost his first match.
Perhaps “lost” isn’t the correct word. Northrup chose to lose by default in his first match, rather than wrestle his opponent, who just happened to be named Cassy Herkelman. If you’re thinking that Cassy sounds like a girl’s name, you’re absolutely right. Herkelman is a girl.
Now Northrup’s family is very religious, some of those religiously nutty types who believe that it’s inappropriate for boys and girls to touch each other in certain ways. Northrup is also home-schooled but wrestles for nearby Linn-Mar High School. That home-schooled religious kid thing makes Northrup practically public enemy No. 1 in the eyes of some (yeah, think HBO talk show host Bill Maher here) and he’s taken some criticism for giving up his shot at a state title to adhere to his religious beliefs.
Rick Reilly, the former Sports Illustrated columnist who now practices his punditry for ESPN.com, might be the lead critic. To him, Northrup didn’t take a stand for religious principle and conviction. He made a “wrong-headed” decision based on religious conviction.
“If my God told me to poke the elderly with sharp sticks,” Reilly asked, “would that make it morally acceptable to others?”
Before I proceed, a little full disclosure is in order. I like Reilly; I like him a lot. He’s as superb a sports columnist as they come.
One of the reasons I no longer subscribe to Sports Illustrated is because Reilly no longer writes for the magazine.
And when he writes about a controversial subject and other journalists call him about it, Reilly is quick to return the call. I learned this some years ago when Reilly wrote a column about that famous Atlanta incident involving Ray Lewis and a post-Super Bowl fracas that left two men dead.
In his column, Reilly interviewed a couple of people who implied Lewis was guilty of murder.
Unlike Reilly, I had the advantage of attending Lewis’ trial in Atlanta. Not one prosecution witness testified to seeing Lewis kill anybody. Two prosecution witnesses said the so-called victims started the fight that led to them being fatally stabbed.
Reilly was wrong then, and he’s wrong now. His “poking the elderly with sharp sticks” is precisely the apples-to-hand-grenades analogy that simply doesn’t apply here.
Was Northrup supposed to abandon everything he’s been taught by his parents about his religion, abandon everything he believes in, because Reilly and many others in America believe it’s “wrongheaded”?
Abolitionists who were every bit as religious as the Northrups were considered “wrongheaded” in their time. Many of Martin Luther King Jr.’s fellow clergymen thought he was wrong to lead the anti-segregation demonstrations that led to his writing the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Sometimes “wrongheadedness,” Mr. Reilly, is in the eye of the beholder.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
