RODMAN BETRAYS VALUES OF OUR PAST HEROES.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

``I know I'm from another age, and this is a new day and all, but it's still not right.''

- Roxie Campanella

widow of Hall of Fame baseball player Roy Campanella, on the Los Angeles Lakers preparing to sign bad boy Dennis Rodman.

No, it isn't right, Roxie. Not right at all. But we're from the old school. What do we know? We're dinosaurs.

Class and dignity - a couple of attributes your husband, Roy, and Jackie Robinson took deadly serious when they were busting up the color line for all African-American athletes back in the '50s - took it on the chin again Monday.

They've become anachronisms, Roxie, these old concepts - musty words from the old school that just don't cut it anymore in the ``Just win now, baby, at all costs'' school of pro sports.

Class and dignity get thrown out with the trash when a proud franchise that brought NBA championships to Los Angeles with class acts like Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson go slumming and hire a worm to try to win another one.

A one-man freak show named Dennis Rodman who doesn't have the class and dignity in his whole tattooed, pierced, butt-ugly body that men like Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson had in one pinkie.

Like you suggested Monday, Roxie, this guy must have flunked American history. He doesn't have a clue, much less care, about what went on before he graced Earth with his presence.

``Roy and Jackie took so many insults, and had so many things done to them, but they never let any of it affect their class and dignity,'' Roxie said.

``They knew that by keeping their heads high - by being men, not boys - they were making it better for the black kids coming up after them. But a guy like this - Rodman - he's destroying it all.

``What kind of trail is he blazing?'' she asked. ``He's turning it into a freak show. Roy and Jackie would go crazy if they were still here.

``They'd have a fit because we're letting it all slip away. Our class and dignity.''

Beautifully said, Roxie.

The sad thing is there are so few people from the old school around, or willing, to throw that fit for Roy and Jackie.

Someone to burst in the front office of sports moguls who hire druggies, wife-beaters, rapists, bullies and other assorted forms of low life only because they can jump, run, skate or hit a ball farther than a guy without criminal tendencies.

Someone to stand up for the tradition of Roy and Jackie, and say: ``What the hell is going on? This is what we tore down the color line for? A freak show?''

Wouldn't it be wonderful, Roxie, if just one more time we went into an arena, ballpark or football stadium and watched class and dignity beat the freaks and felons?

Yeah, I know. I'm dreaming again. That's thinking from another age. The old school.

It's a new day. New fans, too, I guess. Guys like Rodman sell tickets and help deliver championships. That's all that counts.

That's what the Lakers are telling us, aren't they? Sign Rodman, and pass Jerry West some Rolaids.

If pro basketball's bad boy wants to smack around some women, cross-dress, act like a damned fool and, in general, spit in society's eye - hey, what's the harm?

Lighten up. He's just blazing another trail.

And what a grand trail it is - isn't it?