They never banked on getting caught.
Never thought we’d all learn to spot the bad guys among the real ballplayers. That we would not see athletes who had become stronger but men who looked like teenaged acne sufferers, freaks with block heads and raging tempers and bloated statistics that did not make sense.
They thought that we were stupid and they were smart and that they would never get caught, as all cheaters do.
And now, what? We’re taking polls to see who will still vote Sammy Sosa into the Hall of Fame?
No. No. And again, no.
No matter his numbers or his raw skill or the magnitude of his career. No matter if he ever admits his sins, but especially because he has not.
We did not do this to Sammy Sosa.
Sosa, revealed in a New York Times report Tuesday to have tested positive in 2003 for performance-enhancing drugs, did this. And no one expressed surprise because as one name fell, and then another and then another, we became experts at detecting cheaters.
All we needed was the proof, and we have it now from a list of 104 players who failed urine tests six years ago that was supposed to determine whether drug-testing would be necessary. Well, it was. And now the “anonymous” list is leaking out one drip at a time.
It stinks for baseball, of course. For all the players who did not cheat and whose careers, like Frank Thomas’ and Harold Baines’, never drew the admiration and honor they should have. When Sosa and Mark McGwire were putting up their insane home run numbers in 1998, we actually bought into it and worse, lauded them for bringing fans back to baseball.
Shame on them
Shame on those of us who are talking about still considering them for baseball’s greatest honor; those of us who have suggested creating a special wing for cheaters in the Hall of Fame.
Could there be a stupider idea? Create a special place in the most sacred temple of the sport for those who have disgraced it the most?
Why do we put athletes into their sports’ Halls of Fame? To make sure they are never forgotten, that they are forever memorialized .
The cheaters do not deserve to be memorialized.
And there isn’t a chance we will ever forget them.
It does not matter if we blew it on bad guys decades ago. We’re smarter now. Smart enough to know all about performance-enhancing drugs. Smart enough to find out who is using them.
Too smart to blow it again. Read Melissa on ESPNChicago.com.
3 Responses to “Shame on Sosa, Shame on us”
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Melissa:
As a youngster growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, we argued about who was the better hitter, Ted Williams of the Red Sox or Stan Musial of the Cardinals. They were our heroes and we grew up the KNOWLEDGE that if we lived clean lives, ate right, worked hard and played by the rules, that we too could achieve greatness, as they had. They were our Role Models….and sports was the only place where true ability could reward us for our efforts.
Becoming another Ted Williams or another Stan Musial was NOT the point, because we had no false illusions…but the role model they provided was key to what America was all about.
The Sammy Sosa’s of the world deserve their shame…they deserve to be stripped of all their awards, their accolades, their titles and should, perhaps, even be sued for FRAUD…….fraud being defined as: An intentional misrepresentation of a present or past material fact which induces one to enter in to a contract, Plus damages.
The fraud was to give us false idols….the fraud was to take our valuable time from more wholesome directions, the fraud was to get us to actually pay for tickets to see them “play” America’s greatest game. THEIR GREATEST FRAUD was lying to the youth of America and to teach us that perhaps fraud, deceit, NOT playing by the rules and lying to us all, is another form of corruption.
I hold out no hope that professional sports will ever return to its glory years…and we had other idols….like Babe Ruth, or Mickey Mantle or the Cubs of 1945 (I actual saw one of the games at Wrigley field). There is also no hope in weeding out corruption in government, and the “corruption tax” is part of what is destroying…or perhaps HAS destroyed America……
One can only hope that real, print-based newspapers, survive and serve as perhaps the last bastion, along with independent writers such as you represent, who can serve the purposes you serve so well….to lead the charge against all that is wrong, all that is evil…all that needs correction.
Sammy Sosa’s name should be stricken from sports….he was a fraud, a liar and, more then he and his fellow drug-users will ever know, they have corrupted an entire generation of youth who believe that lies, deceit, falsehoods and not playing by the rules is really, the ONLY way to win!!
Melissa, I surely am no expert on human behavior or nature, but have the gut feeling that in 15-20 years the guilty ones voted into the Hall are going to be those who show contrition and boost their public image. But that’s just a gut feeling. My first reaction a few years ago was that all these guys would get in eventually, because as time goes along other players are going to exhibit worse behavior. Not sure that would be the case now, although if Ray Lewis goes into the NFL Hall, all bets are off.
Hear, hear, Melissa! Although not particularly a baseball fan, I do still somewhat pay attention to the sport in the papers and on ESPN. I agree wholeheartedly with all that you said.
But what makes me saddest about it all is all the kids who love the sport and who have been disillusioned with what their “heroes” have done. Innocence shattered like that is just plain sinful.