Rafael Palmeiro plays while most Cuban-American athletes sit in protest of the government's reprehensible snatching of Elian Gonzalez, and the Rangers first baseman figures that's fine because ``that's a local issue down there.''

 Is this guy for real?

 I do not argue with Palmeiro's right to make a personal decision and act on it. I have no quarrel with him playing, or sitting, or standing on his head if the spirit moves him -- just as I would expect no one would argue with my personal decision to stay home from work Tuesday.

 But to imply the issue should not touch a baseball player's life in Texas because the drama doesn't involve sports and is being played out in Miami is socially amiss.

 The fact is, no matter what side of the fence the Elian Gonzalez saga finds you on, you cannot be so oblivious to life as to think it doesn't affect sports.

 Sports, you see, is not simply about games people play. Sports is not a candy store where one finds the antidote for the day's bitter pill.

 Sports is a part of life, and the tether that connects them can never be cut.

 Sports is about racing, but also about race relations.

 Sports is about stats and sex, lobs and love, hoops and hate.

 Sports is about human strengths -- that's why these men and women are so often dubbed heroes. And sports is about human frailties, which is why so many of those heroes fall from grace.

 Think sports isn't about religion? Ask Reggie White or Muhammad Ali.

 Think it's not about politics? Ask Bill Bradley, Jack Kemp, J.C. Watts or Steve Largent. Or the members of the 1980 U.S. Summer Olympic team who weren't allowed to travel to Moscow.

 Like it or not, the Elian issue spilled onto the sports pages the second that crying child was carried from his home against his will. The image touched anyone with a heart.

 Including athletes.

 ``It's not so much a custody battle, like everyone thinks it is,'' said third baseman Mike Lowell, one of six Marlins who sat out Tuesday's game in protest but returned Wednesday. ``It's a political issue.''

 It's also a sports issue that resonates from coast to coast.

 In Los Angeles, Lakers forward Glen Rice marched in a picket line for two hours in front of the Federal Building with approximately 400 other demonstrators. Rice saw the Elian snatching and how it affected his Cuban-American wife, Christina Fernandez Rice.

 So why did Glen Rice walk the picket line when he could have been resting the legs that help launch his sweet jumpers? ``I was being a human being,'' he told The Los Angeles Times.

 ``My husband is more than a basketball player -- he's the head of a household,'' Christina told the newspaper. ``He doesn't just live on the court, he lives in the world.''

 Rice and the others who protested the government's mishandling of the Elian extraction live in a country that, sadly, is largely indifferent or unsympathetic to their cause.

 The Marlins' three Dominican players who sat Tuesday took a beating on the radio airwaves Wednesday.

 ``A lot of people came here like the Cubans,'' outfielder Danny Bautista said in explaining his decision to sit. ``We were on the same boat together.''

 The sad thing is these players were criticized by the same people who would defend Sandy Koufax's right to stay off the mound on Jewish holidays, or Serena Williams' right to pull out of a South Carolina tournament because that state flies the Confederate flag over its capitol.

 In an age when John Rocker is applauded in Atlanta, I would argue that condemning the six Marlins players who joined the work stoppage reeks of intolerance and borders on bigotry.

 These men showed they do not remove their social conscience when they put on their uniform. That is a lesson Palmeiro -- and the critics -- should be interested in learning.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald