Wow...
I'd heard the reports this weekend that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003, but I assumed that we would get very standard responses from MLB, Yankees, Alex Rodriguez, the union, and everybody else that "the tests were anonymous, and we will not confirm or deny anything".
But today, Alex Rodriguez came out and admitted to having taken banned substance from 2001-2003.
I am absolutely impressed that he's come out and said this.
Wow...
5 comments:
drugs are drugs
legal
illegal
whatever
professional sports (including big time college sports) are dumb
dregs of society
misplaced over attention
sport obsession is way worse for us than 3 years of steroids
As someone who coaches in one of the three most high profile college sports (well, fourth if you count spring football), it kind of hurts to be characterized as "dumb dregs of society." I hate to break that news to my kids.
I'm not sure what it is that makes professional and big time college sports dumb. It's a form of entertainment, and in my opinion is much the same as making music or being a part of any other form of art or entertainment. People who are talented make it to the elite levels and people pay to see them do what they are good at doing. Jimi Hendrix did acid, among countless other things I'm sure and that in no way changes my opinion of him and his talents. While players are using these drugs to excel their game, its become almost a necessity in order to keep up with everyone else in the league. The bottom line is that I think it is a little ridiculous to belittle sports as a whole because of these incidents.
The institutions that stole sports are the dregs not the committed athletes or coaches.
I coached girls sports for many years too and in many ways females and sports and males in sports are two different worlds (in good ways in my opinion) so in my rant i could have just made it a male thing...
Still the American obsession with sports as a business, as entertainment, as gainful employment, as a role modeling outlet, as it's own 24 hour a day channel, as anything more than a game- a game to be played for fun, exercise, and brotherhood is pathetic.
Our country (and the world) would be better off without those strange, crooked, reality shaping, money grubbing institutions entertaining us into a lazy and inexcusable coma.
But saving long established failed institutions that make money for a few while keeping the masses happy to be buying things (cable, season tickets, $10 beers) is what we do so well no matter the idiocy produced.
So I don't expect, despite the faux outrage from the media (that needs sports much more than the people REALLY do), much to change.
Dude, Lakes...let the anger go...I'll agree that we - as an entire society pay too much money and attention to pro (and probably the big-ticket college) sports...that being said, I don't care whether any professional athlete took steroids because it's all ofr entertainment purposes anyway.
And I enjoy the heck out of a lot of sporting events - certainly college and high school basketball more than any other but with pro tennis in my top handful. Pro basketball, baseball, and football are much further down for me. I enjoy playing rotisserie more than I do actually watching any of those games except maybe the NBA finals.
Well written, Murravener. It's entertainment, and the fact that it's impure matters no more to me than that Professional Wrestling is fixed.
Lakes - certainly, very little will change because the money-making machine is far too entrenched to encourage significant change. But so what? Conditions will change in every major sport as rules are tweaked, preparation regimes evolve, equipment changes. It's life, and at no time was the sport ever pure. It just was the sport.
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