Redemption the best remedy for animosity out here

There was no referee to call a halt so it was left to a game of ball to close the widening chasm and offer momentary respite.

ALL across this troubled nation, Americans are doing their best to choose redemption over animosity.

After a blizzard-delayed trip home for New Year’s, I returned to a very different place where introspection and accusation tussled for space on the airwaves and the media’s most influential voices drew long breaths before articulating their take on Saturday’s arbitrary tragedy in Arizona.

ESPN even waded into the murky waters of measured tribute on Monday, the connection being nine-year-old victim Christina-Taylor Green who was a granddaughter of Dallas Green, the former Philadelphia Phillies player who subsequently managed them to their first ever World Series in 1980.

Green’s managerial style matched the image we all have of those baseball oddballs who stand aloof, watching the action from the end of the bench as violence simmers just below the surface of their darkened eyes.

The man who once goaded his then boss, George Steinbrenner, in an act of career suicide would also famously describe himself as “a screamer, a yeller and a cusser. I never hold back”.

An acceptable quality if your daily routine is sending a bunch of millionaires out to hit and throw and catch and run. Less so if ratcheting up political rhetoric for financial gain on cable television is your game.

The debate raged on as both flanks of a divided media scored points and batted away accusation after accusation. There was no referee to call a halt so it was left to a game of football to close the widening chasm and offer momentary respite.

And of all places to host the first major sporting event of the year, Arizona must have felt a little queasy as 80,000 College Football fans from Alabama and Oregon descended on their grieving state on Monday.

The BCS National Championship game, the biggest event in the NCAA, was a colourful rebuttal to the violence that had preceded it by 48 hours, just over 100 miles southeast of the University of Phoenix Stadium.

Auburn University from the Alabama-Georgia border, a college campus that literally pops up out of nowhere, had sent their top-ranked Tigers to take on the University of Oregon Ducks — a first ever meeting of the two teams.

In what was a tense tussle, Auburn’s late field goal sealed a 22-19 victory which gave them the prestigious Coaches’ Trophy and the right to call themselves the number one football college in America.

As the ticker tape nestled down awkwardly on the wide shoulders of Heisman Trophy-winning Auburn quarterback, Cam Newton, he battled to find the words for his own personal journey towards redemption.

Newton had spent the season mired in controversy, dogged by allegations of cheating, stolen laptops and, most damaging of all, charges of his father having solicited money for his incredible talents. But he played like none of that mattered.

His journey back from a purgatorial punishment at a junior college in Texas in 2009 via a troubled but glorious second act in Alabama has an air of F Scott Fitzgerald about it. Newton’s own summation was more gritty: “Something bad has become something great.”

An NFL star in the making, Newton showed some readiness for the slings and arrows that he’s sure to face down the road when he limped off after a joyous, bruising evening: “I don’t want nobody to feel sorry for me, because throughout this year didn’t nobody feel sorry for Auburn.”

Another American life getting ready to enjoy a second act is Ted Williams, formerly of no fixed abode, Colombus, Ohio. Like Newton, he was happy to wait for his talents to find a bigger stage. Unlike Newton, he had to do his waiting at the end of a slip road off Interstate 71.

But when a Columbus Dispatch reporter offered him a “few dollars” to hear the sort of nondescript radio jingle that only robotic velvet could produce, Williams’ life veered wildly off-script as the former alcohol and drug addict was offered voiceover work and a roof of his own by the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and their sponsors.

All very Hollywood but if sport can stop a country from ripping itself apart, then the redemption of Newton and Williams will be vital and enjoyable.

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