Tiger should have listened to Joe!
DiManno: Early marriage a pricey mistake for some stars
By Rosie DiManno
Columnist
By Rosie DiManno
Columnist
Published Thursday December 10, 2009
Joe Namath, left, had it right, according to Rosie DiManno: Michael Jordan, centre, and Kobe Bryant should have done what Joe did. (Reuters, Getty & AP File Photos)
Joe Namath had it right: Bed them all, while the poker is hot. Just hold off on the I Dos until done with the I Dids.
For pro athletes, there’s usually a long cooling off period, often well into retirement, before they lose their studly attraction. Joe DiMaggio was 39 and out of the game when he wed the sexiest woman on Earth — though we know how well that worked out, and he’d been married once before Marilyn Monroe knocked his socks off, but never again after.
Point is, a jock’s sheen doesn’t go south at the same time as his skating legs or his pitching arm or his putting eye. The lustre continues to hover, especially for the greats and, like aging rock stars, there’s never a shortage of missus-minded nubiles from which to pick a maybe-happily-ever-after spouse and breeding partner. There’s no biological clock ticking down on their reproductive parts.
It is incomprehensible why the majority of sports celebrities get hitched at the peak of their careers or, especially with hockey players, before they’ve hit it big, betrothing themselves so prematurely to girls they date as juniors or in the minors. Are they cuckoo?
Yes, it’s lonely in the bushes with young comers frequently far from home and emotionally susceptible to the lure of togetherness. They probably need mothers more than they need wives at that stage of ripening. Then babies come along, often before any actual nuptials, and they’re trapped, just at the point when they have the bucks and the fame to indulge all their cravings and hot sex fantasies, can’t beat the groupies off with a stick.
Tiger Woods, as most notorious and current example, should have spent many more years sowing those wild oats few even realized he had in him, maybe no one so untuned to that gadabout-gonads yearning as his lovely young wife Elin, mother of their two small children, no doubt now in throes of anxiety and bitterness over the fragile state of their union, regardless of how much money Tiger has shovelled at her to stay put.
For someone whose entire life was scripted by his golf genius, perhaps marriage and fatherhood seemed the logical next step, that role he was required to fulfill at a certain apogee of outward maturity. Surely love was a factor, too; the conviction this was the woman for him. And apparently Wood still wants her to be that woman — just not the only woman, at least not on the evidence of all the others who’ve come forward over the past week to claim a piece of his roving ass.
Divorce has taken a huge toll on professional athletes, financially. Michael Jordan hit No. 1 on the Forbes list of all-time expensive celebrity breakups, with Juanita Jordan reported to have collected a cool $168 million. Elin could break that alimony barrier.
Sometimes, even the threat of divorce or the fallout of public shaming is enough to empty a guy’s wallet.
Kobe Bryant’s outraged wife — and, hoo-boy, she had a lot to be angry about — got a $4 million (U.S.) purple diamond on her finger in exchange for not giving the finger to her philandering husband. In retrospect, that bling seems a small price to have paid for domestic harmony.
Then there are the guys who never learn, racking up multiple divorces that drain their accounts. Jose Canseco once introduced his fiancée (later, wife No. 2, or was it No. 3?) as “the future ex-Mrs. Canseco.” Little wonder so many of these guys are still out there schlepping their celebrity status for pocket change on the pay-for-autographs circuit, ten bucks a pop.
Broadway Joe, by the way, was 41 when he married an aspiring actress in 1984. They were divorced in 1999 after she left him for a doctor specializing in penis and breast enhancement.
Joe Namath had it right: Bed them all, while the poker is hot. Just hold off on the I Dos until done with the I Dids.
For pro athletes, there’s usually a long cooling off period, often well into retirement, before they lose their studly attraction. Joe DiMaggio was 39 and out of the game when he wed the sexiest woman on Earth — though we know how well that worked out, and he’d been married once before Marilyn Monroe knocked his socks off, but never again after.
Point is, a jock’s sheen doesn’t go south at the same time as his skating legs or his pitching arm or his putting eye. The lustre continues to hover, especially for the greats and, like aging rock stars, there’s never a shortage of missus-minded nubiles from which to pick a maybe-happily-ever-after spouse and breeding partner. There’s no biological clock ticking down on their reproductive parts.
It is incomprehensible why the majority of sports celebrities get hitched at the peak of their careers or, especially with hockey players, before they’ve hit it big, betrothing themselves so prematurely to girls they date as juniors or in the minors. Are they cuckoo?
Yes, it’s lonely in the bushes with young comers frequently far from home and emotionally susceptible to the lure of togetherness. They probably need mothers more than they need wives at that stage of ripening. Then babies come along, often before any actual nuptials, and they’re trapped, just at the point when they have the bucks and the fame to indulge all their cravings and hot sex fantasies, can’t beat the groupies off with a stick.
Tiger Woods, as most notorious and current example, should have spent many more years sowing those wild oats few even realized he had in him, maybe no one so untuned to that gadabout-gonads yearning as his lovely young wife Elin, mother of their two small children, no doubt now in throes of anxiety and bitterness over the fragile state of their union, regardless of how much money Tiger has shovelled at her to stay put.
For someone whose entire life was scripted by his golf genius, perhaps marriage and fatherhood seemed the logical next step, that role he was required to fulfill at a certain apogee of outward maturity. Surely love was a factor, too; the conviction this was the woman for him. And apparently Wood still wants her to be that woman — just not the only woman, at least not on the evidence of all the others who’ve come forward over the past week to claim a piece of his roving ass.
Divorce has taken a huge toll on professional athletes, financially. Michael Jordan hit No. 1 on the Forbes list of all-time expensive celebrity breakups, with Juanita Jordan reported to have collected a cool $168 million. Elin could break that alimony barrier.
Sometimes, even the threat of divorce or the fallout of public shaming is enough to empty a guy’s wallet.
Kobe Bryant’s outraged wife — and, hoo-boy, she had a lot to be angry about — got a $4 million (U.S.) purple diamond on her finger in exchange for not giving the finger to her philandering husband. In retrospect, that bling seems a small price to have paid for domestic harmony.
Then there are the guys who never learn, racking up multiple divorces that drain their accounts. Jose Canseco once introduced his fiancée (later, wife No. 2, or was it No. 3?) as “the future ex-Mrs. Canseco.” Little wonder so many of these guys are still out there schlepping their celebrity status for pocket change on the pay-for-autographs circuit, ten bucks a pop.
Broadway Joe, by the way, was 41 when he married an aspiring actress in 1984. They were divorced in 1999 after she left him for a doctor specializing in penis and breast enhancement.
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 9:17 AM
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