When New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy's wife was in labor, Murphy took the first two games of the season off to be with his wife and their first baby, which he's allowed to do under baseball's collective bargaining agreement. For that, Murphy was criticized by some Neanderthals in the sports talk business, among them former Bengals quarterback and never-gonna-be-husband-of-the-year Norman Julius "Boomer" Esiason. Esiason opined that Murphy's wife should have had a C-section before the season so Murphy wouldn't miss any games (!!). He's since apologized to Murphy and the Mets. Another clueless cement head, Mike Francesca of WFAN in New York, said,
"You're a major league baseball player. You can hire a nurse. What are you gonna do, sit there and look at your wife in the hospital bed for two days?"The basic drift of the various negative comments was "athletes aren't there for the birth of their kids, that's a woman's job…men gotta earn a livin' playing sports," with the undertone that men who choose to be with their wife and child are somehow weak or unmanly. What's actually unmanly, and what is too common in the narcissistic world of professional sports, is not being a responsible parent and spouse, and putting your own ego over your family.
