The Proof Is In The Picture

As a Braves fan, I was always amazed by how much the Atlanta faithful loved outfielder Jeff Francoeur when he was a member of the team.  After a fast start to his career, Francoeur's performance declined rapidly and severely to the point that he was one of the team's least productive players.  In spite of his on-field deterioration, Braves fans continued to name Francoeur among their favorite players.  He had his own cheering section ("Francoeur's Franks") in the right field stands, fans rushed to team stores to grab his jersey and he was constantly being interviewed by the media.  I always assumed that people liked Francoeur mainly because he was attractive, had a nice smile and looked good out on the field.  Even if he wasn't a great ball player, he looked like a great ball player - at least by Hollywood's standards.

Earlier this week, a photograph of a runner participating in a 10K race went viral (see below).  The runner, identified as 25 year-old Zeddie Little of New York, differed from the sea of runners around him in only one respect - he looked good while jogging down the streets of Charleston, SC, while everyone else looked winded, fatigued and awkward.  The fact that Little was in the middle of a pack that included a middle-to-late aged woman wearing an Atlanta Braves visor doesn't seem to bother anyone.  Little's ability to flash an attractive smile at the camera while jogging was enough to have his picture plastered all over the internet and create a brand new online meme.  At the risk of making too much of Little's fifteen minutes of fame, I think the photo's recent popularity says a lot about how we as American sports fans think about the way we want athletes to look.

Zeddie Little certainly is a photogenic runner - I can't argue with that.

We know that in order to be the best, you need to push yourself.  Most of the world's greatest athletes got to the top by working hard and training more than others around them were willing to.  Usually, that hard work and effort isn't pretty - as any athlete or former athlete will tell you, it involves a lot of unflattering facial expressions and awkardly grueling body positions, and is almost always accompanied by looks of pain and fatigue.  Yet while we might respect the effort associated with images of maximum exertion and exhaustion, we don't want our athletes to look like this or this.  Instead, we'd always rather see our athletes smiling handsomely and looking collected, regardless of how well they're actually performaning (and by the looks of the picture above, Little wasn't performing very well in this race).

Maybe this explains why people loved Jeff Francouer so much, even when we was striking out much more often than making contact.  While the Braves outfielder may have struggled constantly during his final years in Atlanta, at least he usually looked good while doing it - call it the Anna Kournikova rule.  At the same time, it might explain why athletes known for their hard work and determination - such as former UNC star and current Indiana Pacers player Tyler Hansbrough, for example - are so often hated.  There seems to be a disconnect between what we say we want from our athletes - passion and effort - and what we really want our athletes to look like while in the heat of the moment.