Byline: Fred Mitchell
CHICAGO _ Antoine Walker's life-threatening experience with gun-toting, knife-wielding intruders at his River North home last week is the latest example of a scary trend in professional sports: Athletes are becoming increasingly frequent victims of street crime.
Criminals, after all, go where the money is, and pro athletes in the major sports reside in an extremely exclusive income bracket.
Last week three masked men entered Walker's posh River North residence through the garage, held a gun to his head, duct-taped his ankles and wrists and robbed him of cash, jewelry and his black Mercedes.
Walker escaped without serious injury, and the Mercedes and some of his jewelry have been recovered. But the emotional scars will linger, in part because Walker has been victimized before. In July 2000, he and former Kentucky teammate Nazr Mohammed, a fellow South Sider, were among five people robbed at gunpoint of cash and a $55,000 watch outside a restaurant on West Roosevelt Road. The diamond and platinum Cartier watch was Walker's.
'Any time your life is threatened, obviously you're going to be hurt by it,' Walker said.
Walker, a Miami Heat forward from Mount Carmel High School, stands 6 feet 9 inches and is listed at 245 pounds, but his size and strength didn't intimidate well-armed attackers on either occasion.
'I'm not Superman,' Walker said.
The Bulls and Bears employ full-time security personnel to look after players' safety on the road, and to warn them away from spots where trouble might find them in their home cities. Major League Baseball maintains security offices in each league city for essentially the same purpose.
But athletes are basically on their own when they're at home or out and about socially.
Cubs outfielder Cliff Floyd, who grew up in south suburban Markham, empathizes with Walker.
'I know exactly where he's from and I know some of the places he hangs out,' Floyd said. 'Being a Chicago native, it's sad. You want the best for your city, where you come from. You want to see the crime go down. This shows you that times have changed.
'I don't think you can live paranoid. The most important thing for me, for a lot of us, is our families. They're more vulnerable than we are.'
Sports history is replete with instances of athletes as victims of violence dating to 1932, when former Cubs infielder Billy Jurges was shot in his hotel room by a jilted girlfriend. Seventeen years later the Phillies' Eddie Waitkus, also a former Cub, was shot in Chicago by a young woman named Ruth Ann Steinhagen.
In 1978, Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock was shot and killed while visiting family in his native Gary, Ind., an innocent bystander in a domestic dispute.
More recently Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia and his cousin were robbed at gunpoint of $44,000 worth of jewelry and cash at a Cleveland hotel in 2002. That same year New York Giants receiver Tim Carter was carjacked outside a New Jersey movie complex and robbed of his BMW and $10,000 worth of jewelry.
NBA guard Stephon Marbury, then with the New Jersey Nets, was robbed of a $150,000 diamond necklace as he waited in his Bentley for a light to change in Manhattan in 2000. Gary Payton, then with the Seattle Sonics, was relieved of $30,000 worth of cash and jewelry in his native Oakland.
Being an athlete obviously doesn't ensure safe passage on the nation's streets.
'You've got to be careful where you go, who is around, what you do, how you dress, what you have on. You have to be cognizant of all that,' Cubs outfielder Jacque Jones said. 'There are certain situations where a guy could take it the wrong way, like (wearing) a lot of jewelry or flashy clothes or whatever.'
Floyd agrees.
'The more you see things happen, the more you say to yourself: `Should I wear this chain today? Should I drive this car today, or should I take off the (fancy) rims?' It makes you think about it, but then it goes back to wanting to enjoy the things that you worked so hard to do. So it's a double-edged sword. Sometimes it's a choice of life over death,' Floyd said.
White Sox shorstop Juan Uribe was exonerated following an alleged shooting incident in his native Dominican Republic last winter. Uribe's agent, Martin Arburua, suggested Uribe, his brother and a bodyguard were the victims of an extortion scheme, that the shooting incident 'probably didn't happen,' but countryman Sammy Sosa said Uribe should not have put himself at such high risk.
'As a baseball player and being at the level you are, you need to be surrounded by good people. Good people who can tell you, `Go to this place, don't go to that place,' ' Sosa said.
Sosa speaks from experience; he and his brother had a large amount of cash stolen from them in a Caracas hotel lobby in 2002. Sosa's agent, Adam Katz, called the amount 'insignificant ... maybe $1,000' at the time, but published reports put the figure at $20,000.
'If you go out by yourself and you punch somebody, you have to pay that guy for life,' Sosa said. 'You shoot somebody and you're in trouble. That never happens to me because I'm surrounded by good people. I would rather pay a bodyguard $1,000 and know that when I go out to a place, I'm going to have a good time and I won't be thinking about something happening to me. I will have somebody taking care of my back.'
Being safe in public and safe in their homes or hotel rooms are two different concerns for high-profile athletes.
'My girl might get tired of hearing it, but I'm telling her all the time: `When you come in the garage, keep your head on a swivel when you're coming down the alley. Keep your head on a swivel when you are taking the kids out,' ' Floyd said.
'I mean, I can get out of the car and if I see someone coming after me, I can run. But she can't leave our two kids. I always tell her that her situation is much different than mine. `Be home before dark, lock the door and put the alarm on.' '
But athletes and their families can't lock out the outside world completely.
'You have people coming into your house that you don't think about: the cleaning lady, the dry cleaner who comes in and gets my clothes,' Floyd said. 'I have the plumber coming in. There are a lot of things you have to think about. They know your routine. You have to trust them at some point.'
Cubs reliever Bob Howry was involved in an incident last month when a fan ran onto the field and approached him after he'd given up a go-ahead home run against Colorado in a game at Wrigley Field. Security subdued 24-year-old Brent Kowalkoski before he reached Howry.
'When you hear about something like (the attack on Walker), it makes you think about it a little bit more,' Howry said. 'More than anything, you're concerned about your family and you want them to be safe. There are only so many precautions you can take. If somebody wants to do something bad enough, I don't know if there's anything you can do to really stop them.'
Additional security has been accompanying Giants slugger Barry Bonds as he approaches Henry Aaron's career home run record, and MLB security spokesman Kevin Teenan said 'it's safe to say' they'll be with Bonds as his San Francisco Giants visit Wrigley Field this week.
Chicago-based agents such as Henry Thomas, Mark Bartelstein, Keith Kreiter and Fletcher Smith advise their clients to be wary of all their many acquaintances, some of whom might not have their best interests at heart.
Walker is moving out of his River North residence following last week's attack, but he says Chicago will remain his off-season home.
'I wish `Toine the best and I hope everything works out,' Floyd said. 'I hope everything calms down and he can get back to his life. Why should something like this happen to a person?
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