With 134 posts in the 102 days since first cranking this Substack Central up on May 8, I thought yesterday would be a good day to give it — and my loyal readers — a rest. Did ya miss me? Did anybody notice? (Wink)
I watched my son’s game up in Winnipeg and he once again saved his team, the Sioux City Explorers, with a 7th-inning, two-run HR to lift his team to a sweep. He’d hit a 3-run HR on Friday night in the 9th to win the series opener. He’s having a great year, among the league leaders in batting (.336) and several other categories as the team is making a late playoff push.
Ran a few errands, hit the car wash, tried to survive the melting heat, and spent a lot of time thinking about Michael Sokolove’s New York Times Magazine story about Michael Oher and “The Blind Side,” a story which bothered me.
Like many of you, I saw the film “The Blind Side,” too, and of course, thought it was a wonderful thing; an uber-rich white couple from the South (Tennessee does count as a Southern state) reaching out to help an impoverished, destitute young African-American, bringing him into their home, essentially transforming his life. Why don’t more wealthy people do things like that?
A physical specimen, it turns out Oher has tremendous athletic ability, goes on to win a college scholarship, is drafted by the National Football League and goes on to have a fine career as an offensive lineman, protecting the quarterback’s blind side, from the left tackle slot.
Sokolove’s story explains that the idea for the movie came from acclaimed author Michael Lewis’s 2006 book “The Blind Side.” Lewis became a national name with his intricate examination of the Oakland A’s staff’s unusual statistical breakthroughs in order to find a way to compete in major-league baseball without a hefty player payroll. Using statistics, they found new ways to evaluate players and find a way to compete.
Since my son, an All-Atlantic Coast Conference first baseman for Florida State, seemed to perfectly fit the A’s “Moneyball” mode — great contact hitter, takes his walks, uses the whole field, excellent glove, productive player - while he was a low-round pick, the game he was playing seemed suited for the A’s.
Only two seasons into his pro career, it wasn’t. The game had changed again, the A’s now wanted home runs from that position, didn’t care about walks, defense, batting average. After two solid seasons in their minor league system, they gave him the Gold Glove for being the best Defensive First Baseman (this with MLB Gold Glove winner Matt Olson ahead of him in Triple A) on a Friday, then released him on Saturday, the last day of Spring Training.
The two first basemen Grady Fuson kept — (yes, the same ‘Moneyball’ Grady Fuson who told John “Well, if you want to keep playing…”) — were out of baseball within the year. In July of 2021, John hit fifth in the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup and was fourth in the National League in batting that month.
While Lewis’s A’s revelations might have been on point a few years earlier, by the time John got there, things had changed. Maybe that’s what happened with “The Blind Side,” I don’t know. Apparently, something was amiss.
Though I had read up on the Oher situation before this NY Times story and was surprised and disappointed to see there was such a fuss over what seemed such a positive film, something so hopeful for young people, maybe even those in disadvantaged situations. Was it a fairy tale? That occurred to me as I was watching it. But he did go on to play in the NFL. That was no fairy tale.
I didn’t know that Lewis was a family friend of the Tuohy’s, the wealthy Tennessee folks who took Oher in. While I wasn’t surprised that Hollywood had stretched the truth in making “The Blind Side” — when don’t they? — it did seem odd that now, after all this time, Oher was registering his objections, complaints and distress over how he was depicted in the film.
The New York Times Magazine story makes clear that financially he’s well off, he’s not doing this for the money. So why go after the two people who, almost without question, lent him a helping hand? I don’t see anyone disputing that. They extended a hand — and they didn’t have to.
From what I can gather from the story, Oher didn’t like how he was represented in the movie. He also doesn’t think the Tuoys distributed the money from the film fairly and he felt they “robbed” him of his personality by the way he was depicted.
First off, it was a movie, not a documentary so that should have been a tipoff to everyone. When they told Leigh Anne Tuohy that Sandra Bullock was cast as her, I’m sure she was flattered, but didn’t say, “Well, she’s prettier than me. That’s not right.”
There are scenes in the movie that aren’t in the book, that should have said something, too. And judging from the way Lewis wrote “The Blind Side” — it was their story, the Tuoys, about what happened, told through their eyes. I guess this is where I find it difficult to understand Oher’s issues here. They reached out to him and they didn’t have to!
They offered him a home, clothes, a truck, certainly never thinking they had a future NFL draft choice. Nobody would have thought that, seeing him as they did way back then. In an unusually generous move, they just helped him out. Turned out he had NFL talent. Who knew?
Reading Sokolove’s story — which to my eyes bent every possible way to boost Oher’s version (The Tuohys refused comment) — it made me wonder if there is room in this world for people to try to help someone else without fear of repercussions some day. Look around you. There is no shortage of personal injury lawyers is there?
It may well be that the way Tuohy’s handled things, the messy conservativeship, and the money accrued for the film wasn’t what Oher might have wanted. The truth was they were a lot more attuned to dealing with finances than he was. They were already rich. Did they need more?
Apparently, he seems to think they were ripping him off and, you know, maybe they were. These are complicated legal matters and we’re hearing just one side of it. It sure makes the whole “Blind Side” experience ugly now. And that’s sad.
As a lifelong liberal Democrat, the wealth imbalance in our country since the failure of Reaganomics has always concerned me and to me, from arms’ length, the easy story here is the poor, trusting dumb jock gets taken for a ride, another exploited African-American. We’ve heard that story before.
Except why would the Tuohy’s have helped him in the first place? Did they see sharing their story with Michael Lewis as a way for them to add to their wealth or as a way to put a positive message out there about race relations, about people with lots of money using it in extremely positive ways — like helping a Michael Oher?
Without knowing all the intimate details of filmmaking, if Oher was uncomfortable with how he was depicted in the film — as a kind-hearted, pretty naive homeless giant who knew nothing of football, certainly understandable given his living conditions — wouldn’t the 2009 release of the film have been the time to talk about it instead of all these years later?
Reading this story and others about the movie and Oher made me think about a young lady who was in my classroom a few years ago. She was a sweet, quiet student and it didn’t take me long to notice she wore the very same yellow top with a three-inch rip in the left side every single day. Day after day, week after week.
What to do? That wasn’t right, was it? When I came home, I mentioned it to my wife, who is easily the most generous person I’ve ever known. “We need to get her some clothes,” she said. “Where does she live? Let’s go.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m her teacher. Some old guy who teaches her English class can’t be buying her clothes. I wish I could. But sometimes, you really can’t help, as much as you’d like to. If the kids found out I’d bought them for her…If the administration found out…”
It might have been the right thing to do. Like the Tuohys did. But I couldn’t make myself do it. My wife put up a fight about it. The girl dropped out of school a few weeks later. Still bothers me.