04/19/24
March 15, 2005
The search for integrity : Here's the latest column from Steven Wells - I know we have a number fans amongst us. It's a bit different to his usual postings...
He makes some great points. It kills me that all the time that commentators on ESPN radio, and even reporters I usually respect like Jeff Blair of the Globe and Mail, keep telling me that the baseball steroid scandal doesn't matter. Why...? "Because the fans don't care." It rarely seems to cross their minds that perhaps one of the principal reasons some fans don't care about the steroids is because so-called "experts" are forever pushing the meme that the fans don't care, it becomes an echo-chamber and a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't want a witch-hunt and I don't like seeing mountains made from molehills. But I don't need commentators telling me what the fans think. Because I go to a lot of sporting events and spend a lot of social time with friends and family talking obsessively about sports, and can tell you that many fans DO care. That's beside the point. Commentators have enviable positions and receive nice salaries to cover sports, yet many of them are the laziest and most sullen sods imaginable. What they should be doing is evaluating issues from historic, ethical and cultural perspectives, provide some levity, fairness and balance, and hopefully illuminate the issues so that Joe Everyman might grasp them. Instead, we keep getting the old, ohh, they don't care, so let's marginalize everything as a "big deal about nothing." And I still have yet to hear Bud Selig and baseball 'roid apologists who dismiss asterisks and keep trotting ye olde line about "get over it, fans want to see homers," answer the obvious question: if that's all fans want, then why don't you simply lower the outfield fences and move them in 50 feet? I'm guessing their brains would explode. "No, no, we can't do that," they inist with moral authority, "that would make a mockery of baseball tradition, it belittles the statistical accomplishments of Ruth, Maris, Mantle..." Integrity, we hardly knew ye...
posted by the red terror at 04:53 PM on March 15, 2005
Good read. It collects a lot of the thoughts which I've had sporadically over the past couple of years. Thanks, pete.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 05:07 PM on March 15, 2005
Great article...
posted by StarFucker at 09:48 PM on March 15, 2005
[this is good]
posted by rodgerd at 03:03 AM on March 16, 2005
I noticed he specifically mentions Fox. I vaguely follow NASCAR. The Craftsman Truck series more than anything. (The guy are fucking nuts.) I gave up after the first two races of the year. A big part of that is during BOTH races they made a huge deal about the "troops in Iraq defending our freedom"... WTF? This is sports. Keep the politics and warmongering out of it. And shove your patriotism. I have NEVER understood the American obsession with their flag and all this nonsense at sporting events. As for steroids, it's criminal to see what Maris went through, only to have that 'roided up freak take his record. Sickening.
posted by Drood at 03:19 AM on March 16, 2005
The overt display of militarism that accompanies sporting events on American television is disturbing. Go through that "Devastator" archive -- last month was a very hostile commentary about how the Superbowl was turned into an erection for war.
posted by the red terror at 10:27 AM on March 16, 2005
An erection for war... THIS WAR NEEDS MORE VIAGRA!!
posted by StarFucker at 04:45 PM on March 16, 2005
Albuquerque Isotopes? Larcenous. Yes, I can't stand the current climate either. Actually, it's more the micro-brained rhetoric that I can't stand. Just astounding bullshit.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 07:48 AM on March 17, 2005
micro-brained rhetoric can i use that? pure gold, that.
posted by garfield at 09:08 AM on March 17, 2005
great post, Pete! too bad integrity isn't recognized in the present as it is hailed in the past.