'ROIDS RAGE

Dear Readers,
You really have to chuckle a little bit at the people who are in such a high dudgeon over the admission by Alex Roidruguez that he took performance-enhancing drugs for several years. It's not that I ever suspected he did, or just assumed that every sports figure these days 'juices', but it just strikes me as odd that we expect professional athletes to be so doggone pure.
Listening to sports-talk radio reveals the predictable reaction; people call up and go all moral about how these sports idols are heroes and role models to their children. Hello? Does anybody out there remember what it was like to be a kid? Sure, we all were fans of all sorts of stars, but I doubt if any of us -except the more obsessively disturbed of us - were modelling our lives after these people, we just liked some of the stuff they were doing in public, and had no idea whatsoever what they were like on their off days. I know that when I was a kid, I never looked to sports stars as role models. Truth is, back in my childhood, I was a Detroit Tigers fan, and that was back in the day when most players had to get part-time jobs in the off-season to help boost the family income. Quite often, they could be seen in the Detroit area selling men's suits and used cars in November, and I don't ever recall wanting to do any of that. What happens to us when we grow up, do we forget how knowing we were, how we used to snigger and laugh at the behavior of grown-ups? If it was true in my day, it must be quadruply so in the age of computer gaming, Facebook, music file-sharing and, most of all, the revealing silliness of most of the content at You Tube. No, the real disappointment, I suspect, comes from the romanticizing adults, who seem to be the ones using sports heroes as role models. I mean, what guy wouldn't want to be a famous zillionaire with a girl or three in every major-league city? When A-Roid gets caught cheating, adults suddenly get all righteous and moral and know that they would never stoop to anything like that, no sir.
I don't really think using performance-enhancing drugs is such a great idea, but I don't know what the pressures are to get an edge in professional sports, either. I just assume it's like, say, being a big shot on Wall Street, where you just keep doing what you can for maximum profit (illegal or not) until somebody catches you at it. How anyone could seriously be surprised that rich, greedy, spoiled people(such as modern-day athletes and bankers) would jump at the opportunity to get more, is beyond me, but at least dopers in sports aren't pocketing wads of public money. And I don't exactly buy the argument that school-age athletes will be badly influenced by hearing about their heroes with syringes in their butts, after all, where better for a kid to get drugs than from another kid. Let's face it, the most powerful role-models kids have are their peers. I know it was true for me.
In 1918, eight members of the Chicago White Sox took mob money to throw the World Series, so big-time cheating is no modern phenomenon. Major League Baseball came down on them like a ton of bricks when it was discovered, banning them all from the game for life. But Baseball not only survived, it grew into the multi-billion-dollar behemoth of today that attracts all sorts of curious characters willing to help athletes get an edge. Seems to me that one might be more surprised that Britney Spears went off the rails than A-Roid did what he did. Didn't she used to be on The Disney Channel? 'Nuff said.
The great thing about pro sports is that it's such wonderful escapism, its only 'problem' being that it's populated with real people, not computer-generated androids. They're subject to display the same strengths and weaknesses as anybody, and with such enormous temptations such as money and fame, who of us can say we wouldn't behave differently? This talk about 'role models' is understandable, but not very sound. Perhaps it's time we dropped this malarkey about sports heroes as examples for the way we should live. Cut them some slack, after all, they're just like you and me, just more talented in a certain way - and maybe more driven, too. So now, when I think back to that Detroit Tiger selling shoes in the off-season to get new coats for his children, maybe he was somebody I ought to have modelled myself after....nahh, I was just a kid!
Well, there's nothing purer than the sound of a kettle boiling, and that sound can only mean one thing! Somewhere, it's four o'clock, and time for a nice, pure cup of tea.