Baked potato plain ... no dressing, please

Bob Morgan Carry On
Posted 7/16/13

Everybody’s always screaming about transparency in our society and it seems to me all we’re getting out of it is more naked people.

For example, my computer homepage is all about news of every stripe. I went to it the other day and it offered …

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Baked potato plain ... no dressing, please

Posted

Everybody’s always screaming about transparency in our society and it seems to me all we’re getting out of it is more naked people.

For example, my computer homepage is all about news of every stripe. I went to it the other day and it offered me a chance to “connect a bikini bod to a famous face,” see race car driver Danica Patrick’s “bronzed thighs” (their description, not mine) and look at photographs that will be in ESPN “The Magazine”’s 2013 Body Issue. Granted, those opportunities were definitely more interesting than, say, looking at yet another news story about fussy ol’ Mitch McConnell, or cantankerous John Boehner, or dried up Harry Reid.

As it turned out, Danica took the picture of her “bronzed thighs” and put it out for the world to see. That says something right there about the growing desire to be “nekked” as we say in Clarke County. And the “connect a bikini bod to a famous face”? I didn’t even bother; how many famous present day starlets or entertainers or singers would I know? Not many I assure you. Now, ESPN’s Body Issue is another matter altogether. If you’ve never seen or heard of it, it consists of beautiful, tastefully done and artistic photographs of athletes doing what athletes do: running, jumping, swimming, throwing and so on. It’s a celebration of the human form and the magnificent engine that is the human body.

This is not to say I recognized all the naked athletes that are coming out in the 2013 Body Issue. I didn’t recognize some of them and I didn’t know all the names either. For example, I’ve never heard of Miesha Tate of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. However, I assure you the next time I hear Miesha’s name I will have a, uh, face to put with her name. Nor did I know the female race car driver who, oddly enough, was carrying a gas can. Danica with the “bronzed thighs” is about the only female race car driver I know since car racing isn’t a sport I follow. Nor did I know the naked female snowboarder, naked female dirt bike racer, naked female boxer or naked female volleyball player. I assure you I didn’t know the naked male and female rock climbers. (Yes, you heard me: naked rock climbers!)

Plenty of athletes I do know have taken their clothes off for The Body issue. Basketball player Blake Griffin did it. Soccer player Hope Solo did it. Major League baseball players Matt Harvey and Nelson Cruz are doing it for the upcoming issue. But the person included in the upcoming issue that is most noteworthy to me is golfer Gary Player ... 77 years old! Obviously, gettin’ nekked is for everyone and that brings me to the reason I’m writing this.

Seems to me fair is fair. If ESPN is going to showcase the human body in many farflung athletic endeavors and is going to include ages from 20 to 80 in this birthday suit extravaganza, I ask you who is any more important to global sports than the guy sitting at home watching athletes run, jump, throw, and, yes, climb sheer rock facings? He may be called a “couch potato” but he deserves inclusion in The Body issue since his body is as much the result of watching sports as, say, Blake Griffin’s is from playing sports.

If a strategically placed gas can (the female race car driver), hamburger (the female snowboarder cooking out), or hand or knee (male gymnast spinning and female dirt bike racer flying through the air respectively) can be used to shield, block or cover up parts of the human anatomy, why can’t the couch potato be photographed propped on the couch in his birthday suit with a strategically placed bowl of corn chips or cheese puffs? The way I see it, the need for transparency, in this case in sports, demands that the couch potato be allowed to grace the pages of the The Body issue.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.