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Most sports favor a particular body type and image. Basketball goes for tall and lean;
football for stocky and mean; running for ultra-lean; ice-skating and synchronized swimming
for squeaky clean. Golf and baseball, however, embrace all types of shapes and sizes. The
greatest baseball player of all time was Babe Ruth, whose girth was as celebrated as his home
runs. Golf covers the gamut from small (Chi Chi Rodriguez) to extra-large (John Daley).
When I was growing up, our family’s favorite golfer was Julius Boros because he was
overweight like my father. Boros was a role model of instant identification. I thought of
Boros after reading in the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports section that pudgy Darren
Clarke’s recent victory over Tiger Woods was a relief to fellow golf pros. Tour players
had begun hitting the weights to bulk up like Woods, but now they could go back to “the
more traditional 19th hole.”
Woods, it has been said, has packed on 20 pounds of muscle, but he refuses to divulge any
aspect of his specific training regimen. His workouts are classified knowledge—as they
should be for this driven competitor.
One of the greatest golfers of all time is Jack Nicklaus, who always carried a paunch that
no amount of dieting could discard. But as television and sports become ever more wedded,
sponsors are eager for the look that symbolizes the gym-toned and low body-fat physique.
Last year, when New York Yankees pitcher Hideki Irabu failed to cover first base on an infield
grounder, his mishap so irked owner George Steinbrenner that he called the overweight Japanese
import “a fat pussy toad” in The New York Times. In the playground those are
fighting words. On the radio talk shows, they too became fighting words.
In participatory sports such as triathlon and running, it pays not to be overweight. But
curiously, I know several ultra-marathon runners who run up to 100 miles per week yet still
cart around 15 or 20 extra pounds. Too much carbo-loading, or carbo-bloating?
In track and field, different physical types excel in different sports. The sprint races
favor the muscular and mesomorphic, while the long-distance running events favor lean, almost
sickly looking athletes who seem malnourished despite having the uncanny ability of clocking
sub-five-minute miles for what seems like infinity.
Culture and conditioning go hand-in-hand when it comes to fitness. I have a friend who travels
extensively in Tibet and Nepal. He uses Sherpa porters on his month-leg treks. These porters
are a foot shorter than him and many pounds lighter, yet they can carry nearly twice as much
weight as he can, and they walk much faster on the trails.
How do they manage this? According to my friend, carting heavy loads on their backs is a way
of life. “Humans are the beasts of burden in this part of the world,” he says.
“I have been on some trips where the women porters are as strong as the men. You lose
your machismo just trying to keep up with these women who are carrying more weight than
you.”
But when it comes to weighty matters, what sport or culture can compete with the Japanese sumo
wrestlers who weigh more than my Suzuki Samurai? These mountainous men are revered for their
size. The larger they are, the more famous they can become. Training to be a sumo wrestler
must be like camping out in front of one of those all-can-you-can-eat Las Vegas casino
buffets. Sumo wrestlers are quite strong, but are they healthy? What about their cholesterol
levels?
In my opinion, the beauty of sport (at least when I am in shape) is achieving that happy
balance between calories ingested and calories burned. You can binge without guilt. Or if
you feel guilty about wolfing down that package of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos, a two-hour
bike ride the next day evens the dietary score. Diet books cannot avoid that simple truth
about losing weight: To lose you need to burn more calories than you take in. It’s a
zero-sum game of intake and outtake. Now as to what kind of fuel you use, well that’s
another matter.
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