Criminals in Sports

A comment to my last post got me thinking - the strain was tremendous! Everyone has been acting so surprised the last few weeks about Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds and steroid usage - like this is a big shock. Bonds was what - 180 lbs when he broke in and was a success? All of a sudden he's at the twilight of his career, a time when everyone else's skills start to degrade, and he's Mister Musclebound, hitting 70 home runs a year. And people are stunned that he could be cheating! Yeah, right.

Anyone out there remember Lyle Alzado? As much as I hated the Raiders, I loved to watch him play. He was an absolute madman - and we all found out why. He died from the steroid use in his 40's. I guess the players today know that they're bulletproof against this fate.

Add to this the outright criminals in sports - Ray Lewis and Jamal Lewis, both with the Baltimore Ravens come to mind immediately, along with Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers - and you have a situation where the short-term shareholder profit outweighs the long-term effects.

The business of "sport", and let's face it - that's all it is, has long overruled anything remotely resembling "sportsmanship". Cheating is not only accepted, it's encouraged. When I was a kid I was taught that if you knew you were out at a base but the umpire called you safe, you didn't just stand there thinking you got away with something. You told the ump the truth. Try that now and no team will touch you.

I treat "sport" these days pretty much the same way I treat Mel Brooks movies - good fun and worth some laughs, but not something to take seriously.