Cartoon by Carissa Marquardt.
Today, more than any other time in our history, is a time for heroes. For better or worse, athletes are magnified into larger-than-life personas, stretching past the media’s spotlight and seeping into our lives in an osmosis of fame and glory.
They are immortalized for making childhood dreams come true, for shooting the puck at an impossible angle to end a championship drought, for sending the bowl of chips sailing off our laps and into the air as we celebrate in the dim light of the television.
Growing up, it wasn’t so much what the athletes did.