Columnist Dean Juipe: McGwire’s no match for Utley

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | 10:31 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Powered by something of an illicit and perhaps soon to be banned substance, Andro-endowed Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs last season for St. Louis and was named Sportsman of the Year by many publications. At the overblown and cheesy ESPY awards ceremony Monday in New York, he was the honoree in three different categories and was the most prominent of the tuxedo-clad jocks.

Everyone clapped and cheered and patted each other on the back as McGwire was continually called to the podium.

No one, however, gave a thought to the questionable example McGwire may be setting through his devotion to an artificially produced body-building supplement. They were too busy yukking it up to notice McGwire may not be exactly the man some baseball-loving teen should emulate.

Purely by coincidence the real -- if unrecognized -- Sportsman of the Year appeared earlier in the day before a handful of media in Phoenix. With a lot less fanfare than was lavished on McGwire, Mike Utley took his first steps in more than seven years.

November 17, 1991, was the last time he had walked. It was on that date that Utley, an offensive lineman for the Detroit Lions, was paralyzed by a hit he took in a game with the Los Angeles Rams.

As he was carted off the field that afternoon, he managed to give a thumbs-up sign to his horrified teammates and 80,000 Silverdome fans. It was a gesture that belied the severity of the circumstances.

He is and probably always will be paralyzed from the chest and elbows down, yet two years ago he began regaining some feeling in his legs. Monday, aided and steadied by braces and two former teammates and his girlfriend, Utley slowly traversed 10 feet in a painstaking demonstration of his incredible fortitude and determination.

Among his incentives was to bring awareness to the Mike Utley Foundation, which is dedicated to research aimed at finding a cure for spinal-cord injuries.

It's a cause that couldn't have a better focal point than Utley, a big man (6-foot-6, 315 pounds) with an even bigger heart. "I'm not saying everyone will get as far as I've gotten," he said after his stop-and-go walk and referring to others in similar disheartening situations. "But they can do something today that they didn't do yesterday. Maybe they can go outside. Maybe they can wheel themselves around the block, and maybe tomorrow they can do two blocks."

He has a goal and the day it comes to pass will be unforgettable. He wants to walk from the spot on the Silverdome field -- where he once lay injured -- to the sidelines before a Lions game sometime in the future.

For a person once told he would never walk again, that would be an incredible feat. And think about the emotions that would overtake everyone lucky enough to witness the event firsthand or maybe even on TV; there would not be a dry eye.

"I want to walk off that Silverdome field and one day I will," Utley said. "It might not be tomorrow, but it will be someday. I guarantee it."

Whether he ever makes it across that field or not, Mike Utley is a real man who is a real hero.

The fact that he works every day toward an honorable goal that most of us would simply take for granted makes him the Sportsman of any Year no matter how many home runs some juiced-up behemoth may hit.