(AP)
Yao Ming, left, and his wife, Ye Li, are living proof that the world is getting taller while American are getting shorter. Columnist Frank Deford says it is time to end this gross discrimination in sports and let tall people have their rightfully ordained place atop the sports world.

Frank Deford, The Examiner
2007-08-16 07:00:00.0
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Did you see that Yao Ming got married not long ago? Well, if you were there in Shanghai you couldn’t miss it.

After all, he’s 7-feet-6, and his petite bride, Ye Li, is 6-feet-2. But then, this is telling. Americans are getting shorter.

Well, we’re not getting shorter, it’s just that Yao Ming and Ye Li and lots of other people around the world are getting taller.

Good grief, Dutchmen now average — average— more than six feet. However, for about the last fifty years, our guys have been stuck at around 5-foot-9-and-change.

No wonder we don’t win basketball games against other countries much any more.

How can this be? The very image of the American was of that long-legged, rangy, rawbone type. Tall in the saddle, hombre.

Now our most popular sport, which is, significantly, known as “American” football, features some fat 300-pounders. Maybe the American century was really just the tall century.

Why shouldn’t we have ruled the world? After all, studies have shown, the long and the short of it, that tall men do better in life. They win the best jobs and the best-looking women. The ultimate for a fellow is to be “tall, dark and handsome.” Right? And in this triad, tall even comes first. And a study at Princeton reveals that tall men are, simply, smarter than the wee ones.

Me being 6-foot-4, I accepted this news with the height of smugness.

Our two greatest American leaders, Washington and Lincoln, were exceptionally tall, and right up till the end of the American century — the tall century — it was unusual for the shorter presidential candidate ever to win. Indeed, given what a mess of things the shorter choice — George W. Bush — has made of his presidency in the fat century, Hilary Clinton’s main obstacle may not be that she’s a woman, but that she’s shorter than most men. We gotta stand tall again.

In sports, though, the best athletes still get taller. Could mighty mites like Ben Hogan or Rod Laver ever rule their sports again? Some basketball guards are the size of centers of a couple generations ago.

Cal Ripken, who just went into the Hall of Fame, might best be known for his iron-man credentials, but his lasting influence was to prove that a shortstop could be a tall stop.

Nonetheless, since I am sure us lofty follk are also more fair and decent than the rest of you pipsqueaks, honesty compels me to offer this grudging addendum to the Princeton study. That is, it is the little guys who invariably end up running sports.

How to explain this? I call it the Coxswain Authority — coxswain being the pee wee who sits forward in the back of the scull and just screams at the giant rowers who are sitting backward and doing all the hard work: “stroke, stroke, stroke . . .”

The Coxswain Authority is especially, ironically, evident in basketball. Hoop coaches are invariably little guys. Oh, occasionally a forward like Phil Jackson or Don Nelson becomes a successful coach, but the really big guys are still thought of as mindless goons. Coaches in other sports likewise incline toward the diminutive, regress toward the mean.

Generally, we just assume that the little players, the pepperpots, the playmakers are the brains of the outfits.

As a tall person, I say it is time to end this gross discrimination in sports and let tall people have their rightfully ordained place, smartly running games, the way we run everything else so well.

Frank Deford’s column also appears as commentary Wednesdays on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He can be reached at flamegarden@aol.com.