Cheating

Baseball – like one of America’s most beloved cartooned protagonists, Charlie Brown – can’t win, no matter how hard it tries.

Since the questions and requests for thoughts on the suspension of Manny Ramirez last week, Roger Clemens’ personal mission to seek the truth and the continuing soap opera of Alex Rodriguez have subsided some, this feels like a far more comfortable time to speak some about the overarching theme of performance-enhancing use in the sport.

After the initial surprise (or in the case of Ramirez, complete and utter shock) and some time to read various reports, opinions and Facebook comments, the overall news elicited a mere shrug of the shoulders. It’s not so much that baseball fans have become completely numb to the accusations and confessions of PED users; the personal shock comes from the fact that Manny is one of the best pure hitters to ever step in the batter’s box. The eventual ambivalence stems from the open secret that Major League Baseball has quite the history with cheating.

The lone difference these days is that the players truly have the upper hand.

This is a league that banned non-white players for six decades from its professional infancy in the 1870s until 1947 when Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby were the first black players to play in the modern era. Considering that there were talented players of various hues and households that were barred from the majors, do you really think that the New York Yankees would have won 26 championships or that Ted Williams would have been the last player to bat .400 for an entire season?

This is a league where the reserve clause bound players to one team, even as many owners did little to improve the long-term performance of their clubs. Beyond the fact that a player could not freely negotiate his worth to his current club and offer his services to another employ, this allowed owners to have their way with their players. Instead of being granted their release to sign with any franchise, the most valuable players on the team were either coerced to re-signing for not much more than the previous contract, traded to other teams for the rights to other players or traded outright for cash. If this did not keep some teams in perpetual awfulness for years and years, then certainly another pro-cheapskate owner tactic has.

Over the past few seasons, MLB has given several teams revenue sharing payments from higher-payroll teams such as the New York Yankees and Mets, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and (Anaheim) Angels. Revenue sharing is baseball’s version of welfare, subsidizing some of the payrolls for the Minnesota Twins, both Pennyslvania teams (yes, even the Phillies got a piece back in 2006), both Florida franchises and the Oakland As. The idea that a few billionaires and corporations refuse to follow the adage “spend money to make money” shows how short-term thinking can kill long-term competitiveness (and wealth).

This is a league – a business, rather – that is exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act based on notions in 1890 that it could not remain popular and profitable with a significant competitor lurking in the shadows. This exemption may have very well been the reason for the existence of the reserve clause and the continued fuzzy math of the current economic model.

As great of a league as it is, we must keep in mind that this is an organization that allowed for spitballs, as evidenced by one of the Hall of Fame’s most infamous inductees, Gaylord Perry. He may have earned his credentials with other pitches; however, he was the best of all the junk-throwers of that era.

So what does all of this have to do with juicing, 50-game suspensions and salacious books? For all of the anger and indignation that we feel and want others to feel, the truth is that baseball has never been a sport on the up-and-up. This isn’t to say that the entire culture is dirty to those of you who believe PED use taints the game and its players. This post doesn’t give the players the chance to abscond themselves from responsibility of their own bodies. Yet, it’s too easy to shake a fist at the current shepherds of the game when there has always been some sort of skirting of the rules.

More...

Yeah... more about that guy in an excerpt of this week's article for the New York Beacon:

"Not too long ago, some people were willing to cut affable sluggers like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa a little slack for their alleged use. The popularity of both players – known for their home run chase over ten years ago – took some hits at the time, but it was during the infamous Congressional hearings back in 2005 that it made a nose dive because of their reluctance to discuss their still alleged drug use. Barry Bonds, the current home run king, seven-time Most Valuable Player and another alleged user, was never thought of fondly by the media or many of his peers, but the last thing the former Pittsburgh and San Francisco star was concerned about was his image. Rodriguez, like Bonds, has rarely, if ever been revered, but this is because he has been so aggressive in crafting his persona. Now, on top of the game’s richest contract and the pinstripes he wears, he loses even more favor for actually confessing to what he calls ‘a stupid mistake for a guy with a lot of baseball to play’."

Thankfully, the Nets' beat will begin this week; keeping the focus on something in-season and these days, less controversial. It's going to be a long year at the new Stadium, and not for what's on the diamond.

Then again, most of us in the press can't recall when has it been otherwise.

Now, it's time to make you happy... sort of.

Did you know that the man behind musical excellence, as discussed a while back...



was also the man behind this audio brilliance?



And while he's not the composer, writer or choreographer of this superior dose of entertainment...



it would be nothing but the hotness if he was in any way, shape or form involved with the creation of this episode of lyrical fitness.



Grateful 80s-born, 90s-bred children thank you, Mr. John Tesh.

And I thank you, former college radio show co-host for forwarding along the wonderfulness of being a Niners fan.

Geez...

Just as questions have been asked both off and online about Alex Rodriguez's alleged, then admitted use of performance-enhancers, Marc Rasbury, the sports editor for the New York Beacon asked for a piece about the player's mea culpa.

The reply to the request: How many words? I already want the baseball season to be over with.

Obviously, the 500-word piece was done and will be available in select newsstands this Thursday. The world awaits. Yet, not to get on the high horse (again), but America's kind of broke right now. If this is Rodriguez's or Major League Baseball's way of getting our minds off of the doldrums, they need to register for a Tony Robbins seminar immediately.

Yet, until then, it's wishful thinking. Unlike most of you, I sincerely believe that Rodriguez wants to get to spring training already as the rest of us, just so that we can enjoy the actual game.

That being said, we're going to hear about players' alleged use of steroids and PEDs (there is a difference between the two as you can infer from the links) until the end of time. However, the silence coming from the owners is especially damning. As written for the Beacon:

What has yet to happen on a grand scale is an admission of knowledge from the team owners themselves. They have been relatively silent on the issue, even though they are responsible for signing players, hiring team executives and promoting a game that is believed to be tainted. Tom Hicks, owner of the Rangers since 1998, said that he felt personally betrayed by Rodriguez’s admission. However, to think that Rodriguez took these drugs beyond Hicks’ eye is hard to believe, especially knowing that ten players from those Rangers teams have been linked to using enhancers, including Jose Canseco, Ivan Rodriguez and the late Ken Caminiti.

When a current owner steps up to the plate and discusses what he (or she, on behalf of the estate of former Cincinnati Reds owner, the 'lovely' Marge Schott) knew about what players did or did not do, then the potential for real teeth behind PED and steroids testing can truly become reality. As the Mitchell Report stated back in 2007, the always-looming macroeconomics, however, trumped one of the facets of the game's finances:

The onset of mandatory drug testing, the single most important step taken so far to combat the problem, was delayed for years by the opposition of the Players Association. However, there is validity to the assertion by the Players Association that, prior to 2002, the owners did not push hard for mandatory random drug testing because they were much more concerned about the serious economic issues facing baseball.

Personally, as crazy as this may sound, I couldn't care less. It's not because of any favoritism or even exhaustion of this entire drama, though the latter drives this train most of the way. It's because while it hasn't been said or proven with these players, it's not as if any of these athletes who have been linked to using these substances have turned into 'Steve Lattimer'... yet (WARNING: It may be from a movie, but I recognize how serious the subject matter is).



Say What?!?!: With this fiasco, Chris Brown (allegedly) deciding to beat on Rhianna and Bong-gate, can we enjoy something good in the sports and entertainment world this week?

Sunset

If there is a perfect moniker for the 2008 sports calendar, it is The Year of the Retirement.

It’s not as if all the professional athletes in the world had a convention somewhere to schedule their sunsets ahead of time, but there have been a few more farewell press conferences and phone calls than normal. It’s come to the point where Sports Illustrated’s website features a slideshow of the “twenty biggest retirements” thus far; those that have already happened and those that will start after the end of their seasons.

Some athletes who called it a career are without a doubt more recognizable than others. Some were newsworthy as they left fans scratching their heads. However, there are a few announcements that, for various reasons, have gone relatively unnoticed. Instead of ranking the importance or the overall careers of these athletes, tonight’s Scribe post looks into those various reasons that go outside of “it was just time”.


Dan Morgan and David Pollack: Most of the retirements that have been announced have been related to the National Football League. Yet, the circumstances of these goodbyes differ vastly from those of more famed retirees such as Steve McNair and Brett Favre. Both Morgan (top right; six seasons with Carolina) and Pollack (second right; three in Cincinnati) came to the League with a lot of promise, but debilitating injuries jeopardized their careers early.

Morgan, a hard-hitting linebacker who first made his name like many of the league’s best defensive players of the past three decades; in Football U, also known as the University of Miami. After being drafted with the eleventh pick by the Panthers, he started 11 games in 2001, helped solidify the league’s second best defense en route to the franchise’s lone Super Bowl appearance the following year and made the Pro Bowl in 2003. Yet, he only played 66 of Carolina’s 119 games (including all seven of the playoff games) in seven seasons. A series of concussions, an ankle injury and a partially torn Achilles tendon took their toll on him as he felt that he could not contribute to what is supposed to be a revamped New Orleans Saints defense in the upcoming season.

Pollack was a stud defensive end out of Georgia, collecting several major college football awards on his way to the NFL. In 2005, the Bengals selected him with the 17th pick in the first round and converted him to outside linebacker. He played fourteen games in his rookie season and despite just notching 28 tackles (22 solo), he picked up 4 ½ sacks for a team that found itself in the postseason for the first time in 15 years. Yet, in the first quarter of an early 2006 season game versus Cleveland, Pollack broke his sixth cervical vertebrae on a tackle. Though not paralyzed, he was unable to suit up again that year. His injury was initially considered career-threatening, but even with the improved prognosis in January 2007, he didn’t play that season either. Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said a few weeks ago that Pollack is going to retire, though the exact words have not been uttered by the player himself.

Football is a very high-risk, high-reward sport. It may have the country in a daze for twenty weekends a year, but for many of its players, it can cause a lifetime of pain. Morgan (29) and Pollack (26) would have been at both ends of an NFLer’s prime, but no matter how much their hearts wanted to get on the field, their bodies were unable to match that desire. Their retirements serve as another reminder for those of us who believe that it’s always about the Almighty Dollar in pro sports; no matter how much we are aware of the fortune and fame that come with success, the physical body doesn’t know how much money you make.


Maurice Greene: There seem to be more controversies than track and field competitions, if you are like me and rarely keep up with the sport outside of the Olympics. It’s as if every athlete is connected to some performance-enhancing drug ring and check fraud (notice the and, not or). What makes Greene stick out above names as Trevor Graham, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones or Tim Montgomery? It’s that until he officially retired in February, he avoided any questions of his professional integrity due to PEDs. Then in a New York Times article published in April, Greene responded to claims made by a former drug adviser that he used PEDs.

Greene had a longer career in track than many of the sport’s elite could manage. He notched two gold medals in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, along with a silver and bronze in 2004 (Athens). He held the world 100-meter record at 9.79 seconds back in 1999, a race he had dominated for two years going back to the 1997 World Championships. With the clouds hanging over the sport, his name may be more aligned with a $10,000 check that he wrote to this former adviser than his former records and medals.

When someone retires with a record of excellence, ideally, (s)he is not supposed to leave much doubt about the contributions made throughout her or his career. Yet, in the case of Greene – who has never failed a drug test, even if that leaves you skeptical – he left more questions than answers. With the Beijing Olympics on the horizon, this story may pick up some steam as the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) is seeking an explanation for his actions.

So why did he retire? His reason could be as legit as they come: in training for Beijing, he could not physically keep up due to injuries over the years. He wants to make room for new stars, he said in his farewell. For some, however, this recent news makes it hard to believe that Greene walked away for purely altruistic reasons.


Larry Allen: Another NFL retirement, this time with a player who set a high standard in his position in the way that many of the heralded quarterbacks and running backs did for many of the league’s current stars. Allen – considered by football people as the strongest player in the league’s 88-year history – retired after fourteen years in the league; having spent twelve with the Dallas Cowboys and his final two with San Francisco.

When kids growing up in the 1990s debated if Emmitt Smith or Barry Sanders was the better running back, the difference always lied with the superior offensive line Dallas possessed for nearly the entire decade. Allen’s brute strength and deceptive quickness blasted holes in the defensive line for Smith to run through. He made eleven (yeah, that’s right, eleven) Pro Bowls at three different offensive line positions: left guard, right guard and left tackle. He blocked for Hall-of-Famers and Pro Bowlers: running backs Smith and Frank Gore along with quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Drew Bledsoe. He won his lone Super Bowl ring in his second season with the ‘Boys and remained with the organization for twelve years.

Likely, he will join the other ten Cowboys who are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Since offensive linemen are typically low-key and still unsung, Allen didn’t get a pomp-and-circumstance press conference or video package on the sports channels. It was certainly the case for the perennial Oiler/Titan Bruce Matthews until he joined the Hall last year. The same will go for other all-time greats such as Jonathan Ogden and Orlando Pace.

Until Canton…

Forward (V)

Forgive my tone, but dammit, baseball! You can’t go away, can you?
I discussed with SPJ the other day; baseball is the lone sport where in its offseason, you constantly hear from and see everyone else but the athletes themselves. Whether is the hot stove moments after the final out of a team’s season, the winter meetings (one year, there was a sponsorship and logo for meetings, people!) or Valentine’s Day, baseball doesn’t give you the chance to miss it. Instead, media and league executives are always discussing a pressing issue or speculating trades or foaming at the mouth for another Red Sox/Yankees series (sorry). Outside of the NFL playoffs, the game’s politics overshadow all other non-football sports events. This isn’t always a good thing, but since performance-enhancers seem to come up more in conversation than I’d like, I might as well get this out of the way.

Baseball: Now what? Barry Bonds has been indicted; the Mitchell Report revealed a few names and two fatal drunk-driving accidents have hit the heart of the sport. Roger Clemens is going on a campaign to defend himself against a former trainer who provided his ex-client’s name to the said report. Scott Boras eclipsed the World Series and the Yankees were a public relations nightmare. The Red Sox are champions again while the Pirates are the minor-league organization of the year… I mean… nevermind. For a sport that seems to captivate the attention of a nation, it sure knows how to do it for the wrong reasons.

George Mitchell’s investigation gave the sport and fans the proverbial lump of coal for Christmas. Not that there were any punishments doled out or any legal precedents set against the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), but there was the tossing of players’ names like horseshoes. Though Mitchell and his committee made recommendations and Congress has decided to follow up with a hearing next week, baseball itself will have to act in order to move forward as it has desired to do for some time.

Now what?

Are more revelations going to come to light about PED use? Absolutely. Some of the named players have already come clean for reasons we may not know. Maybe they were afraid of the scrutiny that will follow them if they did not say “yes, I did”. Maybe they have an ace up their sleeves for more damaging evidence against players who could have done them wrong in the past. Maybe some folks may have a big ax to grind. Or just maybe, as the case was for one of the named former players, being named lifted a burden off of his shoulders.

Are league executives and owners going to add weight to these accusations? The players will be scapegoats and their images will be tarnished, whether guilty or innocent. However, the most responsible parties in this fiasco have been and continue to be the folks in suits and not uniforms. Commissioner Bud Selig touts increase in attendance gates every season in the post-strike era and that he should. There have been so many long-overdue additions that have made baseball intriguing to the masses (the wild card, interleague, international talents). Yet, the majority of teams play in games that mean little because they have no prospects of the playoffs. Owners need to make some sort of money and executives need to save their jobs because of a hot bat or two late in the season. Some of these folks had turned a blind eye because for a time at least, they were putting a few butts in the seats and giving some sort of hope in the future (as either a centerpiece or trading piece). This may cast some of the most respected figures in the game into the same light as those who have less-than-sterling backgrounds, but if this is done to the players, it should be done to those who decide their future in the game.

The true next step in this saga will be for more executives to come forward without a publicist-issued statement. The only executive of record to have admitted any sort of knowledge was San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers, who suspected that former NL MVP Ken Caminiti had been using steroids. Less than three years ago, Towers said that because of the financial windfall for the franchise - which included a World Series appearance in 1998 and the city’s approval of building PETCO Park – he kept quiet, knowing that the well would run dry. This admission only came after Caminiti died of a drug overdose-induced heart attack in The Bronx.

There’s got to be more than this.

Before revealing the report, Mitchell opened his press conference by discussing the potential impact of PED use on the young. The fears have been thrusted in front of the public for years now, but it took the death of a former player and the fall of records for baseball to address this issue. All the grandstanding Congressional hearings and hind-saving has yet to make the necessary headway. Either way, there’s unfortunately no end in sight. For baseball’s sake, you hope the old adage doesn’t come alive; it takes something to happen for people to learn.

Say What?!?!: Equal opportuntity stupidity. Only in America.

Muscle

While tonight was going to be the continuation of Forward, it's been a bit difficult to finish (halfway there) with a lunatic Steelers fan/Army man/brother-in-law jumping at every whistle. Plus, my niece is just too cute to ignore. And this Jacksonville/Pittsburgh game is too good to turn from.

I was wondering something, though.

American Gladiators makes a comeback tomorrow night on NBC. Along with the two-hour 'backdoor' pilot, Knight Rider (with a Ford Mustang, mind you) in February, it seems as if the Peacock wants us all to break out some Hammer-pants and Members' Only jackets for their trip down Memory Lane. Besides a personal dislike for most things related to the 1980s, one curiousity I have about the revamped AG is regarding the Gladiators themselves.

Nitro, Ice, Gemini and Turbo didn't look like you and me. In fact, they didn't look much like the professional athletes we would watch throughout the week (at least we thought). Their physiques were more like the WWF/E wrestlers you saw minutes before on their Superstars show; chisled, oiled up, extremely buff and eerily perfect. As rumors about baseball players using steroids came to light, you just knew that there was more to their workouts than lifting weights. Of course, we didn't think of the Gladiators or the wrestlers as athletes because they weren't playing the sports we knew and loved.

Fast forward to nearly twenty years after the debut of the original series and there is a completely different tone regarding athletic achievement now. Fair or not, there has been obvious witchhunting, speculation and legislative action, making performance enhancers the subject du jour in sports. I'm curious to know from you if you think that the reincarnation of Gladiators will do well in the current landscape. There is the desperation of network television to consider, but can we really watch the show without wondering?

Truth

News organizations that are supposed to report the news before editorializing - not saying that opinions are not to be shared - have made a mockery of not only the record-breaking home run from Barry Bonds, but of the front page. Historically, media begs for the buck, and it is hard to not try to sensationalize to sell a few papers or push for ratings. However, to point to this singular achievement as the greatest crime in sports is a bit much. How about barring non-whites to play for decades as a good start or game-fixing or better yet, public funding of stadiums that are underutilized? Maybe, just maybe Barry Bonds' record-breaking moment isn't the 9/11 of sports.

Bonds was not the first to be linked to performance-enhancers and most certainly won't be the last. However, what has only been mumbled by some and amplified by few is that owners and executives looked away from players who had been using. While saying that taking these enhancers is cheating is debateable - because it's easy for those of us who couldn't get beyond our own neighborhood little leagues to question those few who made these games a livelihood - one absolute truth is that the economic state of the game allowed for these 'travesties'.

This is a sport - God love the game, bury the business - that built itself upn the reserve clause that bounded a player's services to a team essentially for the duration of their careers unless a trade was agreed upon between owners. This is a sport that needed Branch Rickey to point out the economic windfall of integration and that in itself took twelve years to be fully accepted. This is a sport that didn't have a real playoff system until a strike knocked out the World Series and disillusioned many fans until the 1998 home run chase from Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. This is a sport that has managed to survive for decades with at least half of the teams out of contention for any form of the postseason by the end of April. Worst of all, this is a sport that believes that there is a problem with teams such as the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Angels and Dodgers opening their wallets to any player available while the Pirates, A's, Twins, Devil Rays, Marlins and until recently, the Brewers continue to cry about being unable to compete and unwilling to spend a little to make greater dividends in the long run - and feeding off of the revenue-sharing (read: welfare) of the spending teams while they're at it.

What does the economic structure of baseball have to do with a few syringes? Everything.

Owners, especially those who operated teams that had little to no chances to play in October, needed a reason to bring fans to the seats other than grooming their own players in the farm or making wise trades and free agent signings. Is there any way to explain how several teams had gone over a decade without playing meaningful games in August and September? Is there a way to explain how a team can win two championships and have firesales shortly after bringing home titles (Florida)? And has anyone decided to tell Billy Beane that Moneyball has lost its steam? You rarely hear of contending teams having players who have this controversy because winning has brought fans to the seats. Winning = more $, right? There is a cicrus-like admiration for the home run and since the days of one Babe Ruth all the way to today, it has been the game's most used marketing tool. Commercials aren't adorned with Edgar Renteria, Kevin Youklis and Russell Martin, but with Ryan Howard, David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. The next time someone nominates Todd Helton for MVP will be the first.

If the business of the game can somehow be corrected - ideally, this would include new ownership in many locales - then the dependence on the longball can be mitigated, hence the dependence on bulging arms will be cut down significantly. Then again, how many of us actually use our complete physical and mental being to make a living? There will be some degree of use by players, but to believe that this is the biggest problem facing the sport is very short-sighted. Use of enhancers is the symptom to a larger problem that has continued to be ignored because there are still a few cheapskates willing to pull down the sport as a whole.

By the way, there's some pretty good baseball going on if you care to look around. Believe me, you'll like it.

Say What?!?!: It is August, which means that football season is around the bend from The Big House to the New Big Sombrero. If you need a primer on why this season is going to be one of the all-time best, take a look at the offseason movement after the Colts won Super Bowl XLI.

From the Locker Room to the Board Room: This is a new tidbit I hope to add to every post. The business student/future ad man in me finds what goes on within league offices and team operations fascinating and hopefully, you will in some way as well. Here is your first dose.

Complicated

I have never been one to pull out the morality card, or at least try not to, but tragedy brings about questions that challenge our sense of right and wrong.

How do we explain the transgressions of others to children?

It always sounds hackneyed these days to hear "for the sake of the children", "to protect our youth" or "set an example for our young ones". It's politician-speak that has become sports-speak thanks to Major League Baseball's continued probe about performance-enhancers and the personal fouls of NFL players. While proof is limited at best, baseball players are no longer automatic role models because of this steroids cloud. It has been decades since football players have been viewed as model citizens, but with the recent conduct policy enacted by Commissioner Roger Goddell, the gladiators of the gridiron will have even more to prove before having guest spots on Sesame Street.

So what is happening now throughout the wrestling community is something all too familiar to the sports nation, though no one would care to admit it.

Whether you consider wrestling/'rasslin serious entertainment or mindless programming is irrelevant as there are many fans, including myself, who live in both worlds with the knowledge of what's sports and sports entertainment. Both worlds share the greatest common denominator; television brings these men and woman to our lives in a manner that the musical note nor the written word can. For decades, we have been able to watch with our own eyes the growth and decline of these athletes. Unlike music, which ideally reflects the human condition, televised sports bring about instant identification with its viewers based on the fact that body language speaks volumes. Unlike words, which can be erased to one's liking, televised sports (even with some scripting) shows how unpredictable the human body can truly be. We are amazed by what these athletes do and in hopes of determining who they are as people, we speculate on their off-field personas based on quotes, reports and heresay.

And so the murder-suicide of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and young son, have struck the minds and hearts of the wrestling community more than any other passing in recent memory, let alone ever. He had called the company shortly before the Vengeance pay-per-view Sunday in Houston, citing a "family emergency" in his suburban Atlanta home. Just a couple of hours before what was to be a special three-hour edition of RAW, AP reports circulated about the deaths of the Benoits, scrapping all plans of the evening's show (and possibly its controversial storyline of "Mr. McMahon's" death). It wasn't until later in the evening in which it was announced that this would be a murder-suicide investigation.

Benoit was an admired performer by peers, fans and wrestling media alike, something that is rare in any form of entertainment. Even rarer than his wide cast of admirers was hearing the words "that match sucked!" The consumnate professional who worked up the ladder, it took the native Canadian nearly twenty years to attain headliner status, winning the World Heavyweight title at Wrestlemania 20 in 2004. It's been widely reflected that he was an extremely private individual, but even with this apparent "aloofness", he was well-liked and loved. If this story sounds familiar to the non-wrestling fans, it should.

Part of this story has a scent of the Kobe Bryant sexual assault allegations in 2003. Much of this may sound like Ray Lewis in 2000 when he was tried for double murder (technically obstruction of justice). With the exception of suicide, Rae Carruth's name could creep up in comparison. Maurice Clarrett, Carlton Dotson (below-top), Mike Danton (below-bottom), Adam "Pacman" Jones... These are a few the most extreme situations just since the turn of the century. A select few involve high-profile players who have won not only the respect of their fans, peers and media within their sport, but have won championships at the highest level. They became more than players, but ambassadors of the sport they play. Yet, at the second the darkest clouds hang over these athletes, their images are tarnished, if not destroyed. The same has now happened to this wrestler.

What makes this situation unique, even in the now-familiar 24-hour news cycle, is that wrestling is considered low-brow in the spectrum of athletics. The judgments, even prior to the conclusion that Benoit killed his wife and son before taking his own life, have ranged from the plausible to the confusing to the downright stupid. Because it's wrestling, this couldn't be a general case of athlete-gone-bad, where because of the celebrity and favor, the attacks go directly to the offender. Instead, the first words that have come out of people's mouths are "roid rage" and "who cares? It's wrestling!"

First and foremost, there is no way to condone or even sympathize what Benoit had done. It is beyond sickening and cowardly.

Secondly, while surprising to all concerned, something as this proves that there was much more at play than just the simple and ludicrous label as 'roid rage'. In general society, do we look to blame barbituates and empty bottles of Hennessey when we hear of a murder-suicide? Not immediately, if at all in many cases. The crime is beyond senseless, but why cannot it be as simple as Benoit being a bad guy? It was easy to cast aspersions on Bryant, even as his image was not helped by his bickering with Shaquille O'Neal and the Lakers. It was easy to lay into Lewis when he was arrested, just as it has been the joke-of-the-day to speak about Adam Jones or Terry "Tank" Johnson. The men were held accountable, nothing else.

Finally, no matter how snobbish all of us become about something we love, it is unfair, irresponsible and pathetic to take pot-shots at the wrestling industry because of these events. If this was done to any other form of sport and/or entertainment, then sports would be the carnival show wrestling is, arguably worse. Just based on what we have learned about sports figures and industries in the last twenty years, none of the major sports would exist as they do today. We'd blame steroids, alcohol and industry politics for every time a player gets caught up in the law or 'baby momma drama' instead of him or her. Even worse is the perception that athletes are more likely to commit crimes than the rest of us. Here's some proof that view should be shattered.

All of this goes back to the opening question: how do you explain this to a child? Still forming the basics of right and wrong, children see what we see, but with little experience, understanding and pessimism that adults and teenagers have. How do we explain that there are many athletes, musicians, actors, writers (including journalists), etc. are flawed, even as they know right from wrong? When do we explain? Millions of children and adults watch wrestling and have those televised images of action imprinted. Their images are harder to forget than our own because wrongs are no more than don't hit, don't curse and don't put that there. Benoit's crime and the general reactions are not part of the grey area we discover as we age, but how we explain this to the admiring youth is not as black-and-white as we think.

Ask those who still respect some of these athletes.