COMMENT: Feel as inspired as you wish about goals, tries, wickets, aces and birdies, and even hospital visits, donations and displays of heart-tingling, altruistic, on-field generosity. Yet there is clearly a distinction between "sporting heroes" and "true heroes".
The former brighten up moments, afternoons, days, maybe even weeks and months. The latter change lives, families and entire cultures. But that does not mean a human cannot
be both. And to my mind, Jackie Robinson is the prime example of this.
Thursday marked the centenary of Robinson's birth, and in the United States, there were appropriate celebrations of perhaps the most influential sports figure in their history. But bubbling beneath all the grand words, all the official tributes, all the unveilings and memorials, there was unofficial solemnisation.
And it insisted that within sport in the US and yes, in the entire world, the Robinson legend still falls on deaf and ugly ears.
Born into a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia, Robinson had naturally experienced racism a long time before he became the first African American to play Major League Baseball.