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Show Fame Overrated, Says Ruth Bullseye Follows Spotlight Fame is a spotlight one minute and a bull's eye the next. The people who cheer loudest when you succeed are those who throw pop bottles the hardest when you fail. The crowd begins by overrating over-rating you. When you don't live up to its exaggerated opinion of you, it underrates you. Nobody would be famous if people didn't go to such extremes. Loud cheers make heroes. Pop bottles make martyrs. Why can't people be sensible and take a man just for what he is? If we really understand under-stand a man, we do not worship him and we do not abuse him. It's all very well to be known all over the world. It pays big dividends. But dividends alone won't make a man happy. I know, because I've spent them. I think it is better to be known well by a few good friends trusted and liked and respected by them in spite of all of one's weaknesses and short-comings than to be cheered on every continent by people who think you're great. A famous man always feels as if he were living under false pretenses, that sooner or later he will be found out and showered with pop bottles. I've heard people say that the trouble with the world is that we haven't enough great leaders. I think we haven't great followers. I have stood side by side with great thinkers surgeons, engineers, engi-neers, economists; men who deserve de-serve a great following and have heard the crowd cheer me instead. In each case most of the crowd didn't know the names of my companions com-panions and didn't care. That has happened in pubiic gatherings which had nothing to do with baseball. Millions of people know my name. They used to cheer me bceause I could hit a baseball often and hard nothing more. They picked me for fame just for that. They didn't know who , built the stadium, who engineered the traffic, who invented baseball. They weren't interested. When people choose political leaders, they usually choose them because they can throw sizzling adjectives or knock somebody's reputation over the back fence. I'm proud of my profession. I like to play baseball. I like fans, too. They made me what I am, even if they did nearly break by skull two or three times with bottles and stones. But I think they yelled too loudly and yelled for the wrong man. I think that Fame hasn't any brains . Most of the people who have really counted in my life were not famous. Nobody ever heard of them except those who knew and loved them. I knew an old priest once. His hair was white, his face shone. I have written my name on thousands and thousands thou-sands of baseballs in my life. The old priest wrote his name on just a few simple hearts. How I envy him. He was not trying to please a crowd. He was merely trying to please his own immortal soul: So fame never came to him. I am listed as a famous home-runner, home-runner, yet beside that obscure priest, who was so good and so wise, I never got to first base. |