Drug problem

This isn't a search for lost innocence. It is perfectly legit for a sports fan (and I know many daily newspaper writers aren't fans anymore) to think about what made them love sports in the first place and see how what is happening right now is an all out assault on many people's sensibilities.

1) I'll spare you the Bob Costas, sports-is-a-metaphor-for-life speech (well some of it), but when I first began playing sports, I learned a lot of lessons that carry over into my conduct in everyday circumstances. I learned that there are groundrules and that sportsmanship didn't mean, "by any means possible," but rather, "within the prescribed code for fair play." I know that sounds quaint. And trust me, I am not longing for an innocent time that never existed. I learned even then that there were always guys willing to cheat if it meant beating me. And I still prefered to lose with dignity than stoop to their level. It wasn't an incredibly difficult moral choice to make, because most other people felt the same way.

How is a kid who can figure out that Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds cheated their way to records supposed to behave? What is the lesson that teaches?

Performance enhancing drugs at the highest levels of the game have taken honor out of the game. It is troubling that so many people here don't feel that way. Players knew steroids were off limits. You can be the biggest libertarian in the world, but they still knew steroids were verboten (whether they agreed or not). And they chose to use anyway. So for them, in the corrupt atmosphere professional sports has adopted, it was about "any means possible," rather than "within the boundaries of fair play." And worse, it has made it nearly impossible for players to make the courageous choice--that they won't stoop to the cheaters' level. Because unlike in my amatuer sports life, careers and large salaries are at stake. So those cheats had a much greater impact than just their cheating. They put immense pressure on guys who probably wouldn't have cheated to cheat too. If you don't cheat--Jason Grimsley and others--there are 10 guys who will... and take your job and paycheck. In the new corrupt culture of sports, that is really the way it is.

2) Say what you want about any era in baseball, in which things about the game made for a not-so-level playing field. There has never been anything that has turned the game as upside down as this. Maybe the 1919 Black Sox scandal, but nothing else is even close. For argument's sake, if Mark McGwire without steroids is really Dave Kingman, what is the point in giving a crap about the sport, or its players achievements, anymore? Sports for me has always been about the human drama. I wrote this in another post; it is about humans testing the limits of what makes us human. And measuring the best against the best. Performance-enhancing drugs take that drama out of it. If one guy is using, how do you measure his achievements against another guy? What about the culture that exists now, where you don't even know who is using? How can you measure anyone's accomplishments without a dose of skepticism. Those who poo poo this, seem way too ready to take the soul out of the games. What's next? Genetically engineered players? Roboplayers? They surely can perform better than people. Why bother with the games at all? We can just run computer simulations.

But that brings me back to where I started. That isn't why I became a huge sports fan in the first place. Take the humanity out of it (instead of the old Wide World Sports opening, "the human drama of athletic competition," we now may as well have "the biochemical drama of athletic competition") and create a wild west atmsophere where any kind of "bending the rules" is fair game, and you lose me. I am guessing you also lose many other sports fans who aren't jaded by bad press box food.

 

It was starting to make me feel like a douche... Jason hasn't dismissed me as a phantom non grata in months. Seemed like it was time to lay off.