PHOTO BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Nov. 27, 2016, file photo, New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski (87) walks off the field with an injury during the second quarter of an NFL football game against the New York Jets.
By STEVE KRAUSE
Once in awhile, athletes whose entertainment value equal, and often exceed, their on-field talents, come along to make life interesting.
I can probably count, on one hand, the ones from this venue who provided such entertainment in my lifetime. There’s Derek Sanderson of the Bruins, Ken Harrelson and Bill Lee of the Red Sox, and Rob Gronkowski of the Patriots. They naturally drew attention to themselves. They had the one-word nicknames by which most people knew them: Turk, Hawk, Spaceman and Gronk.
There were also a handful of wannabes — guys who either didn’t have the the requisite athletic chops to back up their showboating, or whose antics were boring, unoriginal and ultimately divisive (Manny Ramirez comes to mind).
We bring this up because it’s beginning to appear as if the age of “Gronk” may be ending. It’s not totally his fault. Gronkowski hasn’t taken his eye off the ball and let the endorsements and the fame take over his life, which is what caused Sanderson’s demise. And he hasn’t antagonized his team’s management the way Lee did.
But however it happens, the fact is that Gronk — and probably Gronkowski too — are in danger of being obsolete, at least as far as “their” value to the Patriots.
It’s hard to face the reality that Gronkowski’s career is at a serious crossroads. Because from all indications, and despite his reputation as a party-hearty kind of guy, he cannot stay on the field.
News that Gronkowski needs back surgery to repair a herniated disk is unsettling because this is the third time, this year alone, where injuries have derailed him. He had a hamstring issue that lingered into the start of the season. Then he suffered a punctured lung after being run over by a freight train named Earl Thomas. Now … this.
He’s already had two back surgeries. He broke the same arm twice, and had such a bad ankle sprain that he was practically hors de combat in the team’s second Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants.
Add to all of that a torn ACL suffered three years ago in a game against the Cleveland Browns and you have a guy with all the telltale signs of having his body break down well before its time.
Lack of attention to conditioning doesn’t seem to be the issue here. What does seem to be the issue is that the man is so blinkity-blank huge that even if he’s flying down the field at warp speed, he’s a great, big easy target.
He can still go on trying to be “Gronk” if he wants to. You don’t have to have a structurally-sound body to go around acting goofy, drinking beer, and riding a party bus (though he might want to go easy on the dancing). It’s just that once you lose your athletic mojo, you can clown around all you want and it doesn’t have the same effect.
Look what happened when an old, drunk, shadow-of-his-former-self Joe Namath told ESPN’s Suzy Kolber on national TV he wanted to kiss her. If he’d done back when he was “Broadway Joe,” fresh off an improbable Super Bowl win, it would have been considered puckishly charming. But in 2003, it was just pathetic.
When Derek Sanderson’s athleticism and hockey skills began to fade, this whole “King of Daisy Buchanan’s” schtick wore out and The Turk ended up with severe substance abuse and financial issues. Bill Lee was run out of town once his shoulder got so bad he couldn’t break bone china with his fastball. The only guy who managed to maintain some of his on-field panache once his career ended was Harrelson, who took his love of baseball and his good ol’ boy image to the broadcast booth.
I will say this: I will be one sad hombre if this is the beginning of the end for Rob Gronkowski. Guys like him, who seem to live and work outside the strict confines of their dour, joyless organizations (and the Red Sox of the 1970s and the current Patriots really do fit that definition), are almost twice as refreshing as they would be otherwise. He makes the Patriots fun to watch, even if he also helps make everyone who’s not a fan hate the team even more.
But it’s as obvious now as it was back when Sanderson hit the skids: You can’t carry off being “Turk” if Derek can’t skate anymore. And you can’t be “Gronk” if Rob Gronkowski can’t play anymore.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].