There was a point in time where the national pastime ceased being a game and became a business. Just where that great divide took place is difficult to pinpoint, but one thing is for sure our game has been poisoned. In this case the poison takes many forms, from performance enhancing drugs, to fame and riches being more important than World Series Titles. Whatever, the venom, the true baseball fan has no choice but to drink the elixir and look back to the day when heart and grit were more important than flair and marketability, and wonder why the contemporary athlete has forgotten those years.
In the race to become bigger, faster, and stronger, today's player will take any advantage they can to achieve greatness; but at what cost? Is breaking a hallowed record worth serving jail time for lying about the manner in which it was broken? Is trying to get into the Hall of Fame worth being kept out, not because of the stats, but because of what was injected to attain them? The most fascinating thing is that the players willing to take the chance are generally the ones that need to take the risk the least.
Roger Clemens was considered by many to be one of the greatest pitchers of our time, and that man has been reduced to nothing more than a steroid user and an adulterer. The former has everything to do with the legacy he leaves on the field, whereas the latter is something that is the business of no one but Roger, his wife and the parties involved. It should not be breaking news that a ball player was unfaithful, it has nothing to do with the controversy he finds himself mired in.
We do however, live in a media rich world, in which the goal of most news angles is to discredit, disprove, and defame.
It is nothing more than a shame, that when our children witness the fluidity of a home run, we must question the power behind it while they are awed. Baseball is a shell of what it once was when players traveled all day, only to play a double header the next. The purity of the game is gone; washed away by money, greed, and big business. It is a wholesomeness that will forever be seen only in the videos of the great players of yesteryear; when it was a game!
In the race to become bigger, faster, and stronger, today's player will take any advantage they can to achieve greatness; but at what cost? Is breaking a hallowed record worth serving jail time for lying about the manner in which it was broken? Is trying to get into the Hall of Fame worth being kept out, not because of the stats, but because of what was injected to attain them? The most fascinating thing is that the players willing to take the chance are generally the ones that need to take the risk the least.
Roger Clemens was considered by many to be one of the greatest pitchers of our time, and that man has been reduced to nothing more than a steroid user and an adulterer. The former has everything to do with the legacy he leaves on the field, whereas the latter is something that is the business of no one but Roger, his wife and the parties involved. It should not be breaking news that a ball player was unfaithful, it has nothing to do with the controversy he finds himself mired in.
We do however, live in a media rich world, in which the goal of most news angles is to discredit, disprove, and defame.
It is nothing more than a shame, that when our children witness the fluidity of a home run, we must question the power behind it while they are awed. Baseball is a shell of what it once was when players traveled all day, only to play a double header the next. The purity of the game is gone; washed away by money, greed, and big business. It is a wholesomeness that will forever be seen only in the videos of the great players of yesteryear; when it was a game!
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