The Embarassed Fan

From LASportsblog.bravehost.com

By: Mathew Berson

I am embarrassed to be an American sports fan. Once thought to be the escape from the tedium of everyday life, professional sport in this country has become mired in corruption and criminality. Never before have the three major professional leagues in the United States- the NBA, the NFL, and MLB- faced such scrutiny due to the pitiful and immature behavior of the people involved. Professional sport in this country faces a public relations nightmare. I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the NBA’s David Stern or MLB’s Bud Selig if it were the end of the world. The credibility of American sport hemorrhages as these three men attempt sew up the scars; however the damage has already been done.

For years, the honorable American public has hoisted professional athletes on a pedestal. Our athletes epitomize the American ethics of hard work, personal sacrifice, and delayed gratification, three traits that our society values in every individual. Their ability to make the big play under pressure, to work just a little harder to get that extra yard, to never give up because there is always a chance, have awed the American public into creating god-like figures. We forget they are human. But we worship our athletes, we criticize our athletes, and we look to our athletes for inspiration and hope when all else in our lives isn’t even worth mentioning. The professional athlete had become the picture of what every American should want to be: hardworking, successful, and healthy. However, it seems that recent events have convinced us just the opposite. The athletes once regarded as role models are now the kind of guys that hang out under the bleachers, the ones that every parent doesn’t want their kid to hang around with.

The NFL has had a rash of player misconducts as of late. After years of former commissioner
Paul Tagliabue’s apathy towards punishing players, new commissioner Roger Goodell has stepped in and cleaned house with those who dare to break the law. Adam "Pacman" Jones was suspended for the entire season earlier this year due to his involvement in about eleven different police investigations and a couple of night club shootings. You think a guy who makes a couple million a year could control his throw-money-at-strippers-and-start-a-fight-at-a-nightclub-where-someone-gets-shot problem, but this guy never fails to amaze. Also, Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry and Bears’ tackle Tank Johnson were each given an eight game suspension by Goodell for their various run-ins with the law. In fact, the entire Cincinnati team was suspect last year, as nine players in total were arrested throughout the season, prompting Goodell to ask coach Marvin Lewis if he needed help in controlling the players in the locker room. It seems like every week there is a new NFL’er on the wrong side of the law.

And now the Michael Vick situation. Here’s a guy who has everything in the world: a cannon for a left arm and rockets for legs, a ten-year $130 million contract, his own shoe line and clothing label, and the city of Atlanta at his fingertips. But yet this same guy, the number one overall pick in the 2001 draft, has the audacity to put all those things on the line for what? Dog fighting! Are you kidding me? It has to be one of the cruelest, most barbaric practices in the history of mankind, and this guy does it. Why? He surely doesn’t need the money, so he must just have an unhealthy obsession with watching two bitches fight. Maybe he should have just convinced a drunk girl that her boyfriend was cheating on her with the other drunk girl across the room and got them to fight- now that’s my kind of bitch-fight. I like the ones with torn clothing and pulled hair, not the ones with bloodstained carpeting and breaking sticks (which were used for pulling dogs’ teeth apart). Vick’s dog fighting scandal is as shocking as it is ridiculous.

If the National Football League hasn’t caused American sports fans to throw in the towel, just look to the NBA for yet another reason to wash your hands of American sport. David Stern faces a commissioner’s worst nightmare; Tim Donaghy, a 13year veteran official, faces allegations of making calls to affect the point spread in games in which he or his associates had wagered on. Having been tracked down for months by the FBI, Donaghy is believed to help federal investigators bring down a mafia-organized gambling network in exchange for leniency. Stern faces a Goliath-like battle. He must restore the integrity of the game in a league that already is poorly perceived by much of the United States while at the same time working to ensure that corruption on this level never finds its way onto the court again.

But the damage has been done.

How many times have you screamed at your TV, "What the hell kind of call was that?!" after some bald idiot blows his whistle for a foul that looked more like a playful pat on the back than reach-in foul? We’ve all heard Bill Walton say, "I don’t know what he saw. That was the worst call in the history of Western Civilization!" From now on, every single time there is a suspect call in a game people watching will have NO reason to think the referee is NOT throwing the game. Hecklers will replace "HEY REF! GET OFF YOUR KNEES, YOU’RE BLOWING THE GAME!" with "HEY REF! MAKE SURE THE HOME TEAM WINS BY FIVE POINTS! I NEED TO FEED MY FAMILY!" By losing the credibility of the officials, the NBA has lost the credibility of its league. If those who control the actual game cannot be trusted, than the American public can never be totally certain what they’re watching is unbiased and legitimate.

With everything happening in the NBA and NFL, you would think that Major League Baseball would be cashing in on Barry Bonds’s pursuit of Hank Aaron’s home run record. Instead, the American public clenches its teeth as Bonds inches closer and closer to the record; with his name along with Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi surfacing amid the BALCO steroid scandal, we question whether or not those homeruns Barry hit were really the work of a man, or a superhuman machine hopped-up on human growth hormone and horse tranquilizers. We all know the answer, but we just can’t prove it.

The truth is that baseball has been plagued by steroid use for years. When Jose Canseco released his book in which he detailed times when he injected steroids with Mark McGwire in the A’s clubhouse, the American public thought he was just out for the money after his career hit brick wall. However, his book opened the can of worms that is now the steroid controversy. After a couple of congressional hearings in which Rafael Palmero, McGwire and Giambi were questioned about steroid use in baseball, Selig has felt the need to hire former Senator George Mitchell to head an investigation into the problem that is wrecking the sport. Although none of these players have tested positive for steroids or openly admitted taking steroids, the fact that the Federal Government and Major League baseball are individually investigating them gives any individual the right to assume that there was definitely foul play going on. The government doesn’t just go around handing out indictments like candy.

So now we’re forced to ask:

Could Mark McGwire really hit 70 home runs in a single season without the help of steroids? Could Slammin’ Sammy Sosa really keep pace with Big Mac if he weren’t on the Juice, too? How did Barry hit 73? How did Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996 when his highest total in every other season was just 24? What is "the clear"? Did Viagra really hire Rafael Palmero to be its pitchman, or did impotence hit Rafi at age 37 after years and years of steroid use?

This brings me back to the old adage: nothing is what it appears to be. As we watched the Sosa-
McGwire home-run battle and Bonds’s demolition of the single season home-run record a few years later, we were awed by the distances of the home-runs, captivated by the media’s relentless coverage of the chase, and charmed by the players’ professional, yet playful charisma under relentless pressure and scrutiny.

We were fooled.

As Barry Bonds rounds the bases for the 756th time in the near future, we will clap dubiously in the wake of what has become the biggest scandal to rock Major Leagues since Pete Rose’s gambling problems. Once thought of as the greatest record to hold in American sports, the all-time home-run record is forever tainted. When his career finally ends, the American public will most certainly add a mental asterisk to whatever number ends up next to Bonds in the history books. Once the most coveted number in all of baseball, 756 will forever be specious symbol of deceit and dishonesty and will now forever be regarded as the most suspicious record in the history of the American Pastime.

As Selig, Goodell and Stern scurry to save the integrity of their leagues, the American sports fan can’t help but feel betrayed. Sport, once ripe with fair competition, sportsmanship and hard work, has become a housing ground for individuals whose superior athletic talent is outweighed only by their own lack of common sense and self-discipline. Instead of gods, the American public worships morally bankrupt delinquents who just happen to run faster, throw harder and hit just a little bit better than the rest of us.

I’m surprised Maurice Clarett didn’t make it.

While Maurice Clarett melts behind prison bars for cocaine possession, illegal firearms possession, and DUI, Mathew J. Berson will be sunbathing and scummin’ it along the local beaches of Isla Vista.