WITH every bust — Manny Ramirez, the latest — the “I’m sick and tired of these stories” response grows closer to sounding like, “Who cares anymore?” We’re reaching the point of diminished concern; a new salad dressing is close to making exciting news.
We’re all sick and tired of these stories, but we’d better continue to care. How will we otherwise feed, clothe and house those who can’t adjust, those unfortunate souls with integrity?
A 2007 Duke University study found that 75 percent of high school students admit to cheating on academics. Some of those in the 25 percent “honest” category didn’t cheat because they didn’t care enough about school to cheat; they lacked the motivation to succeed, the slackers.
The Los Angeles-based non-profit Josephson Institute of Ethics — not far from Mannywood — found that cheating among high school students is a good risk: Only 2 percent are caught and only half of those are punished.
Perhaps that has something to do with the reduced outrage over the revelation of a pro athlete’s PED use, the shift toward, “So what?” resignation and rationalization. “They all did it/do it, so what’s the big deal? Lighten up.”
And as fans wear down from these stories as they become “sick and tired of reading/hearing this stuff” — those who do the exposing and then the woe-is-us post-scripting become the scorned.
After all: “With that kind of money at stake, who wouldn’t? Just let ’em play ball; who cares what they choose to put in their bodies? How many homers did Babe Ruth hit with a hangover? Gaylord Perry threw spitters; that’s not cheating? Why are steroids different than stealing signs?”
So the integrity of the game, the integrity of a huge business, the integrity of Bud Selig and Donald Fehr for allowing baseball’s integrity to be traded, even-up, for even more money, runs the risk of becoming less of a moral issue even with an ostensible drug deterrent policy.
If it’s all about money, Ramirez, at age 36 and at the corner of Risk and Reward, signed for $45 million over two years. Does he strike you as the kind who worries about his reputation, the kind who cares what you think of him?
If those foolish enough to have played clean, to have been put at a financial and athletic disadvantage because they valued their integrity and long-term health or feared being caught, well, maybe there were fewer such souls and more like those high schoolers who don’t cheat because they just don’t care hard enough.
And while both Selig and Fehr now choose to identify themselves as fire jumpers who leapt in the moment they smelled smoke, they were the two most responsible for letting all players know, starting almost 20 years ago, that like those high school studies showed, the rewards for cheating made the risks not worth considering.
Who wanted to drug test a goose that laid golden eggs by the dozen, six for Selig’s team, six for Fehr’s? Selig? Fehr? Nah, they were shamed into it.
And Ramirez? Leave it to that knucklehead to be the first superstar to show up on the wrong side of the time line.
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That lead announcers Howie Rose and Gary Cohen now regularly identify and scold minimalist play from the Mets is appreciated among those who appreciate truth-telling from the team-appointed. Of course, such play is hard to ignore or excuse. But it still doesn’t answer why it persists.
Why do the Mets, through several managers, after two straight just-miss seasons and after countless learn-their-lesson episodes, remain disinclined to run to first, slide into bases, back up outfielders, force opponents to make hurried throws?
Is there no one in charge — Jerry Manuel, Omar Minaya, Jeff or Fred Wilpon — to demand better? The Mets charge $200 for a so-so seat to a game and their players can’t run to first?
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Mike Francesa‘s best moments are when he speaks free from personal stake, sans his inflated sense of us-big-shots-gotta-stick-together. That’s why his take Tuesday about Roger Clemens — “We don’t want him to go to jail; we just want him to go away” — was brilliant.
Mark Cuban is starting to give wealthy, attention-starved, TV camera-hog jerks a bad name . . . With the Braves and Mets both wearing dark jerseys and light pants Wednesday, it looked as if MLB’s marketing departments had a head-on.
Roger Goodell does a pretty good Selig impersonation. The Giants and Jets are pricing tens of thousands of second- and third-generation ticket holders out of their seats and/or out of new PSL Stadium, and Goodell boasts to ESPN Radio that in bad times, “24 of our 32 teams did not increase ticket prices.” Hooray!
