Be like Barry

Sporting News, The, Sept 7, 1998 by Paul Attner

In an era dominated by attention-seeking, self-absorbed superstars, BARRY SANDERS is the anti-Rodman--a humble man with deep-rooted values who won't let anything disturb his quiet lifestyle

All around him, people are going about the business of washing clothes: feeding quarters into machines, fumbling with boxes of soap powder, dealing with the inevitable boredom amid the relentless churning sounds. He seeks out a vacant washer and joins the dance, sorting his clothes and putting in his money and retreating to an empty space where he buries himself in a book while the mechanical marvels conclude their chores.

A few blocks away, the silence in his Miami Beach hotel room is disturbed only by an occasional clamor from an intrusive phone. The world he is trying to avoid wants him back, but he isn't around to receive the invitation. Here, in this laundromat, he can be Ordinary Man. Here, in this laundromat, if the other customers gaze upon his soft face and dissect his strong body and register a hint of recognition, they don't let on. They simply want to vacate this humid place as soon as they can and return to the rest of their lives.

He doesn't have to step fool in this laundromat during an offseason vacation. He could buy the whole place, if he wanted. He could hire someone to walk in with a bag of quarters and wash all day, if he wanted. He could take out laundry bags from the closet of his hotel room and stuff them full and send them off to be cleaned and the cost to him would be nothing but chump change, if he wanted.

But Barry Sanders doesn't want. There is something about leaving that hotel and walking those few blocks and having no one ask for your autograph and tossing dirty clothes into a washing machine that keeps him grounded, tie stubbornly refuses to wander too far from the lessons of his roots--from a family in which 11 kids elbowed for space in two bedrooms and his father made a living doing everything from shooting cattle in the head to laying roofing shingles in 100-degree heat anti where, everyone was expected to do whatever it took to survive and where he never was treated as anyone special. He was simply Barry, who was disciplined by his mom with a switch off the backyard tree just like everyone else and who carried out the garbage and washed dishes and went without a lot but never complained about it.

Months after that day in Miami Beach, he is sitting in a golf cart outside the locker room at the Lions' Saginaw, Mich., training camp, and he is talking about the laundromat, which he doesn't necessarily see as an unusual hangout for the best runner in football, when a thought suddenly jumps into his mind and he laughs a little at his own spontaneous creativity.

"Maybe a good rule in life," he says, "is never become too important to for your own laundry."

Alleluia and Amen. Want to know why Barry Sanders feels different from any other superstar in sports? Then consider the wisdom behind this simple Sanders' Rule of Life: Hey, buddy, don't ever get too carried away with yourself It's what stops him from surrounding himself with an entourage of bloodsuckers and hangers-on, from violating his body with tattoos, from trash talking and end-zone dancing, from endorsing an endless stream of products, from constructing an opulent mansion, from driving the fanciest of cars, from behaving in the ill-mannered fashion that we have come to expect from so many athletes.

Because, as much as possible, he wants to remain a regular guy. If you want to walk in Barry Sanders' shoes, be prepared to be underwhelmed. He has chosen to take the financial freedom produced by his athletic skills and carve out a life that is neither flamboyant nor extravagant. He sees the accumulation of materialistic trophies and constant selling of his name as obstacles to freedom, which fame and his job requirements already have limited more than he would like. And the fewer additional masters he must answer to, the more independence he can enjoy.

So while Michael Jordan and Brett Favre use their prominence to increase their wealth, Sanders spent this past offseason turning down millions in endorsement opportunities. Would he rather wake up too many mornings with a schedule to keep, just like during the season? Or, would he prefer to keep his calendar open, so if the mood struck him, he could jump on a plane and visit his family or walk to the nearest playground and get involved in a pickup basketball game with the neighborhood kids, the same kids he might take to see the Pistons that night as his guests? It is not a difficult choice.

"It probably is not wise if you want to live by the Business 101 textbook," he says, "but I value my privacy over more endorsements. I am tied down enough during the season so when the offseason comes, I don't put a priority on tying up any more of my time with football-related stuff. I try to get away from it as far as possible. I'm not complaining about my life; it is wonderful. But fame does limit your freedom and I don't want to intentionally add to the restrictions. I have different priorities."