Gotta love this: a Marine Corps dad taking on Lebron James. From the Marine Corps Times:
Pro basketball superstar LeBron James used his @KingJames Twitter account to pump himself up for the remainder of the NBA season.
“20+ games left in phase 2,” he tweeted March 2. “I’m ReFOCUSED! No prisoners, I have no friends when at WAR besides my Soldiers.”
That sentiment didn’t sit well with South Florida Sun-Sentinel sports editor Joe Schwerdt, who has two sons in the Marine Corps, one in the Reserves and the other deployed to Afghanistan.
Schwerdt saw the tweet while at work and it “just struck a nerve.” He immediately began to write.
“Dear LeBron,” Schwerdt wrote. “Just wanted to let you know: You are not at war. You are not a soldier. …(W)hat you do and who you are is not even close to what they do and who they are.
“You are probably a nice guy,” he continued. “And you are not the first athlete to compare sports to war; athletes to warriors; games to battle. I don’t mean to single you out. But it is time to stop those comparisons.”
“People die in wars. They rarely die playing the games you play. If they do, it is not because they are attacked or shot at or booby trapped by an enemy. People lose limbs in war. Their bodies are torn apart by IEDs. Their legs and arms are ripped through by bullets and rockets,” he wrote.
Schwerdt goes on to say that James — and by extension, pro athletes like him — go to work in cozy arenas before throngs of adoring fans. Marines, on the other hand, go to work patrolling village streets, unaware of who the enemy is or what might be lurking around a corner.
He reminds James that, sure, athletes are susceptible to concussions. But servicemen in combat face post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, and loss of sight and hearing from bomb blasts.
“You travel to your games in the comfort of a chartered plane,” Schwerdt wrote. “You go home to an opulent mansion. You have little danger of coming home in a flag-draped box.”
You can read the whole article here.