Heroes On And Off The Field
Using his own youthful football obsession as a starting point, Stephen Dubner examines the nature of heroism.
By Sandee Brawarsky

01/24/2003

Stephen Dubner dates his football obsession back to 1972. He was 9. That was the year he got a football for Christmas, and it was the year of the Immaculate Reception ¡X a thrilling catch and touchdown scored by Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers, in the last moments of a game that would send the team to the Super Bowl. Dubner was rapturous, watching it live on a black-and-white television set in his family¡¦s house in upstate New York. Just about a year later, his father died, and that only deepened his infatuation with Harris and his sense that, from beneath his helmet, the running back was watching out for him.

You don¡¦t have to love football to be enchanted with Dubner¡¦s new book, ¡§Confessions of a Hero Worshipper¡¨ (Morrow). The memoir is not quite a sequel to his first book, ¡§Turbulent Souls,¡¨ his account of being raised in a large Catholic family, unraveling the story of his parents¡¦ journey from Judaism to Catholicism before they married, and his own journey back to Judaism.

In ¡§Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper,¡¨ the author, who called himself Franco Dubner when he was a kid, examines his own infatuation with Harris and looks more generally at the nature of heroes and heroism. It¡¦s a funny, knowing and tender book that¡¦s ultimately about love and loss, about understanding and growth. Franco Harris was the son of an Italian mother and an African-American father; he¡¦s described as having caramel skin and Roman features, and is seen as more principled, private and humble than most ballplayers. When asked, in an interview in his Upper West Side apartment, about what drew him to Harris, Dubner says, ¡§I never felt like I chose him, at least consciously. I chose him in the way you choose to fall in love. It just kind of happens.¡¨ He did sense a kinship, that Harris¡¦ mixed-race status made him a bit of an outsider, as did his own crypto-Jewish background.

Dubner admired his hero from afar, channeling his presence to fill a hole left by the death of his father. For many years, he had a recurring dream about his hero visiting him at home. About 20 years after those dreams and obsessions faded, he happened upon Harris¡¦ face on the cover of Black Enterprise magazine; the glimpse of his former hero reawakened many feelings as well as great curiosity, which landed him in the Pittsburgh airport, finally meeting Harris face-to-face. At lunch, he told Harris that he wanted to write a book about heroes and hero worship that would tell both of their stories. Harris was polite but probably not very interested. For months, he dodged the author¡¦s attempts to set up additional meetings. Many people would have read Harris¡¦ behavior as disinterest even though his words were always kind, but Dubner persisted, and he recounts his misadventures. Originally, he and his publisher thought the book would be a kind of ¡§Fridays with Franco,¡¨ sharing the guy¡¦s wisdom.

¡§I didn¡¦t expect to extract a philosophy, although I did expect to connect with him in a way that ultimately proved non-existent.¡¨

Dubner, 39, says that ¡§a light bulb moment¡¨ in writing the book was not about Franco, but about himself, just before his son Solomon ¡X named for his late father ¡X was born. He realized that in becoming a father, the notion of hero worship would shift, that soon he would be in the position of hero, needed by someone else, at least for a few years.

A former writer and editor at The New York Times Magazine, Dubner read widely about the psychology and mythology of hero worship; he also looked into literary and religious sources. He recognizes that the Christianity he grew up with ¡§may be the purest form of hero worship the world has ever encountered. ... I had been raised with a taste for a messiah. I simply substituted a football player for the Son of God.¡¨ He describes the very different outlook of Judaism, how in the Talmud a hero is seen not as ¡§the Great Man who defeats armies, but the plain man who defeats his own flaws.¡¨ For the no-longer-awestruck Dubner, the notion that heroes, whether great scholars or people of huge compassion or biblical figures, are imperfect beings is inspiring.

He writes: ¡§The great shock of reading Torah as an adult was seeing the humanity of its heroes. Not only were their flaws not buffed away; the flaws were central to their character ¡X and, I now saw, central to the Jewish understanding of heroism.¡¨

Dubner, who was the ghostwriter of a book of the late Lubavitcher rebbe¡¦s teachings, ¡§Toward a Meaningful Life,¡¨ also describes the kind of hero worship that surrounds the rebbe. Although Dubner never met him, he says that he ¡§came to admire not just his leadership and charisma but his generosity of intellectual spirit.¡¨

Many of his insights, as well as his footnotes, proved important when Dubner was beginning to seriously explore Judaism. He also writes about comic book superheroes, noting that Superman, Batman, Spider Man and Captain America were all Jewish creations, and that the Guardian of the Universe, a wizened sage in the Green Lantern series, was modeled after David Ben-Gurion. One surprise is that although his hero remains elusive, Dubner becomes friendly with Harris¡¦ mother, who shares some striking similarities with his own late mother. From these two women, he also learns a lot about heroism.

Since the book has been published, Dubner has heard from Harris¡¦ mother, who sent flowers, chocolates and a motherly note of congratulations saying that she loved the book. He got a message from Harris saying that he was looking forward to reading it. This weekend, Dubner will once again be face-to-face with Harris at a dinner prior to the Super Bowl in San Diego.

¡§I¡¦ll be surprised if he has read it,¡¨ Dubner says. ¡§His level of self-interest is very low; either it¡¦s true humility or a different kind of self-awareness than most people have.¡¨ He says he¡¦s still grateful to Harris, ¡§who led me to stand up a little straighter.¡¨ While writing the book, he again dreamed about Harris, but more related to the anxieties of writing a book than hero worship. These past few years, he¡¦s been watching a lot of football, and the Steelers are again one of his favorite teams. I ask to watch the tape of the Immaculate Reception, but it¡¦s in his office. Lately, he often views football games snuggled with his 2-year-old son and almost-year-old daughter who like ¡§the big, bright, noisy guys, trying to knock people down.¡¨ He closes the book with the hope that his children find people to love and admire, discover ideas that are worth living for and do good in the world and, above all, ¡§may they be their own heroes.¡¨