I have an unhealthy obsession with tragic athletes. Left to my own devices, I would probably serve up hard-luck and self-destructive athlete stories here every single week. I’m supposed to be working on a book about them; then I got a concussion of my own, again, and suddenly didn’t feel like thinking about Pete Reiser for a minute. At least I know better than to go all method on this one.

One thing I’ve noticed, though, is what a strong role morality plays in this realm of sports. For one, there are the recurring themes of martyrdom, or injustice. It’s hard to not grant certain players sainthood for their suffering or privation, no matter what kind of person they are (or were). On top of that, it almost doesn’t matter what kept dude out of the game. There are plenty of drug casualties who end up sympathetic figures, even if—and I say this in the most plain terms possible—they fucked themselves.

The one unforgivable offense, however, is just totally shitting on the fans. When an athlete not only scuttles his own career, but does so when a city badly needs him to inspire instead, he’s gone way past the pale. As soon as place enters the picture, we are in scapegoat territory, where coming up short is failure, and fan sentiment, for years afterward, is reserved for righteous indignation. That’s especially true for teams that could really use a hug, or a war cry. I wonder, though: Couldn’t pressure, and the burden of playing local savior, help bring a man down? It’s right there in the wording; all that’s missing is a direct, downward vector.

If there were a special Basketball Hall of Fame section of Cancers, Stephon Marbury might be its first inductee. Good luck finding a player as associated with wide-eyed promise and egomaniacal decline, a cycle Marbury repeated over and over again. Steph always put up numbers, always wowed us with his play. And yet everywhere he went, things went wrong, usually because Steph just never understood his place in the basketball universe. And how could he? Until it was too late, the sports world continued to act like Marbury had a prayer of bringing back, say, his hometown Knicks.

Then it all caught up with him—Minny, New Jersey, Phoenix, and that last stand at Madison Square. Now he hawks apparel in China, while making a name for himself as the most enthusiastic NBA-to-CBA ambassador (sure, let’s eschew “transplant” or “refugee”) yet. Mark Jacobson’s 2001 Marbury profile for New York is titled “Stephon vs. the Curse,” but that’s just a particularly sinister way of telling us that an on-the-skids Marbury is expected to deliver a franchise that’s never known nothing but tragicomic failure. It’s a convenient narrative, the prodigal son come to clean up the home he left behind. But Jacobson, naturally, is skeptical. He acknowledges Marbury’s talents. In 2001, this was unavoidable. And yet two wrongs almost never make a right, except in the pictures, and Marbury’s career has always been more sitcom than cinema.

Boxer Diego “Chico” Corrales passed away in 2007. “Passed away” seems wrong for such a violent end to a turbulent life; he died in a motorcycle accident, the kind of end you might have predicted. Only 29, he was going too fast and didn’t quite know what he was doing; Corrales had a history of drunk driving and drug abuse, but in this case, as a Las Vegas police sergeant put it, “He basically killed himself.” Corrales grew up hard in Sacramento, running with gangs but also finding time to get a degree in the culinary arts. He was a blazing, powerful fighter, one whose career was waylaid by legal problems and ping-ponging between weight classes and ultimately remembered for a pair of 2005 fights with Luis Castillo. Corrales took the first, Castillo the second, and a third never materialized. In these two bouts, Corrales achieved immortality, two nights set apart from the rest of his life.

Boxing is funny like that, capable of viewing single evenings as the stuff of legacy, and disregarding everything else in between. With titles more meaningless than ever, it’s sometimes just all about participating in a classic, or in Corrales’ case, two. In “The Rise and Falls of Diego Corrales,” written by Jason Probst for The Sacramento News & Review, we see a very different view of what a fighter can be—and what Corrales could have meant. Here, well before his Castillo run-ins, Corrales is an embattled local hero. He seems pretty damn close to forfeiting that largely ceremonial title.

Then again, with his national star back on the rise, that may not have mattered. Professional boxing operates according to its own logic, one where the two most popular, accomplished men in the sport may never fight due to contract issues and petty squabbles. Corrales wasn’t going to uplift Sacramento, and even as the boxer provides yet another example of his pluck and toughness, there’s a sense that he’s slipping away from his city. Probst’s piece is bittersweet: Local boy makes good, maybe, again, but we’ll only know for sure when he stops belonging to us.

And then, well, there’s the inverse: a whopping Roy Blount, Jr. piece from (where else?) Sports Illustrated in 1976. The possum has no personal narrative; it’s a species, not a career or a legacy. Yet time and time again, it has made life better for those who took an interest. I still don’t know if this is for real, but even if the possum is just a metaphor, Blount adds something to the discussion. The possum didn’t give up on us, we gave up on the possum. It’s a free agent of hope and good cheer, just waiting to lend its gifts to a regional, or national, identity.

There are probably more things like this in the world than there are Marburys or Corraleses; more athletes, too. Maybe, when it comes to civic identity, we should stop falling for the bad boys, or the dudes who can’t possibly make our city, and themselves, happy. If this sounds like dating advice, that’s because locale-minded fandom often reads like a dating show.

Rule number one of romance? Look for the marry, not the fuck. Even if it’s a possum.