Sis boom bah

I made a point of watching "60 Minutes" last night, because I was dying to see Mike Wallace's interview with Ricky Williams, the star running back who abandoned his contract with the Miami Dolphins so he could study a spiritual healing practice in California.

My interest in sports has always been passing at best, but my ears prick up when I hear about maverick athletes like Williams, 27. Sports doesn't know what to do with these characters, whose utterances tend to be atypical of sports interviews; most athletes tell journalists things like, "We gotta get out there and compete down the stretch," but last night saw Williams saying, among other things, that NFL salaries are "blood money." That was before he went on to talk about his spiritual discipline, Ayurveda, and to mention that his hero is Bob Marley, for whom he named one of his daughters. Till recently Williams wore dreadlocks in tribute to his hero; I always loved this offensive picture of Williams and Mike Ditka.

Ricky Williams is my new favorite outsider athlete. Before him it was Billy Bean, the first openly gay professional baseball player, and before Bean it was the late Bison Dele, the former Chicago Bull and Detroit Piston who left pro basketball to live in a tent in Australia.

Back in the day there was speculation that Dele might be gay, and I wasn't a bit surprised when Wallace prompted Williams to talk about his sexuality. Williams has three children with three different women but is single now, and when asked by Wallace who the right girl might be, Williams replied that "they" haven't come along yet. Gay sports fans everywhere noted the gender-neutral pronoun.