|
Pity the media: With the election over it’s just that
much harder to whip the public into a half-decent frenzy.
Now batting for George Bush and John Kerry are two of
the country’s most prominent role models for children and young
athletes, Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds. According to widely
reported grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle,
Giambi, of the New York Yankees, admitted to taking steroids and
other so-called performance enhancing drugs. The Giants’ Bonds was
a bit coyer, copping only to using mystery substances provided by
his trainer.
Who’d have thought? Professional athletes with 24 inch
necks taking steroids. I’m shocked, shocked. Next they’ll tell us
pro wrestling is faked.
Steroids have been baseballs’ dirty little snicker for
years. Thanks largely to the players’ union, the sport’s testing
rules are so flimsy the East German women’s swim team could have
passed, moustaches and all. Now that a couple of marquis players
may be involved (as if it’d be the bench warmers), it’s suddenly a
scandal.
The real scandal is the fact that it took so long for
anyone to care, but it’s here now and it’s a bandwagon. There have
been primetime television specials, pundits are lamenting the
example set for high school and college athletes, and at least one
US senator is threatening legislation. The opinions range from
outrage to placing the blame on society.
According to the latter, everyone’s doing it, and not
just athletes and their steroids. Steroid use has been compared to
Gatorade, plastic surgery, hair dye, Ritalin, Prozac, Viagra and
anything else people do for an edge. This argument has some merit;
we have developed a popular pill culture that finds the answers to
too many of nature’s little inconveniences rattling around a
prescription bottle. However, there are significant differences
between that and drugging for big league bucks.
Take Viagra, which, for the record, I don’t. Even if I
did, I don’t get a paycheck for the activity it enhances, much less
endorsement money. To the best of my knowledge I’m not competing
with anyone. It would cheat no one.
Steroid users in sports are cheating, period. Even with
major league baseballs’ wink-and-a-nod approach, the drugs are
banned. When an athlete breaks the rules and wins, he or she cause
others to lose who may not have otherwise – unless they’re doped
too, I guess, in which case may the best chemist win. If it has
come to that, let’s drop the illusion that sports are anything more
than a lucrative science contest.
Sports professionals have increasingly shunned the role
model label, which may indeed follow a social trend though I can’t
quite bring myself to blame society for personal decisions. Still,
no one wants to be responsible for anything, a problem that has
wrought everything from deadbeat dads to no-fault divorce and
abortion on demand.
I have heard one version or another of the phrase “We’re
not trained to be role models” a thousand times since the steroid
story broke. The answer is simple: Then get trained if you have
to, you big lunks. Like it or not, kids look up to and emulate you.
Sports figures are role models by the nature of the
game. It’s as much a part of the job as sweat, athlete’s foot, and
groin pulls. They don’t train for those either but they do deal
with them.
Babe Ruth, Cy Young, and a long list of other sports
legends were boozers, cads, and often not the kind of people you’d
want influencing a child under the age of 30. They did, however,
know they were looked up to and had a healthy respect for the
respect.
That’s seen as old fashioned now, but the old timers
also got their records the old fashioned way too. They earned them.
|
