Tragedy reminds us that celebrities are people, too

I've never liked anything about Mike Tyson, not even the way he boxed. I grew up favoring the litheness of Muhammad Ali over the brutishness of Sonny Liston. So I wasn't about to cheer for a bully like Tyson, who beat, raped and bit his way through life.

Yet to my surprise, I found myself feeling truly sorry for him last week when his 4-year-old daughter, Exodus, died in a household accident. She got a treadmill cord entangled about her neck. No parent – not even one who talked of eating or maiming other people's children – deserves that.

Tyson's tragedy illustrated something I sometimes forget: Celebrities are people, too.

Dysfunctional, egotistical, foolish people, in some cases, but they fear for their kids' safety, same as the rest of us.

Years ago, I was in the home of a major league ballplayer. It was a model of wooded privacy in an exclusive neighborhood. Yet his wife told me she worried about her kids' health, nutrition, schools and friends. They were concerned about their kids' swimming lessons and their hurt feelings, too.

The only difference was they didn't have to worry about money.

She also said she missed her husband being gone almost all the time. When she mentioned it to a friend, she was met with this retort: "You'll never have to worry about money the rest of your life! How can you complain about a thing like that?"

The answer is easy: Because their lives are a lot more like ours than we think. They fret about whether their kids are paying attention in class and watching too much TV. They think about their sister's divorce or their father's depression. They agonize over their post-career plans.

I'm assuming Tyson worried about his daughter, too. "There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Exodus," Tyson said in a statement to media. I believe him. He said several years ago that his kids were the most important thing in his life.

Even people as broken as Tyson see the goodness in their children.

Utah has witnessed considerable tragedy among its own sports figures. I'm convinced the vast majority of us were pulling for Derek Fisher when his daughter was diagnosed with an eye tumor two years ago. Taking care of her medical bills wasn't an issue for him, but taking care of her was.

I'm not a big fan of Carlos Boozer's game, but I'm a fan of his son Carmani – though I've never met him. I'm happy he won his battle with sickle cell anemia. It's nice when a player can worry about his baseline defense, rather than his son's health.