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Sports facing credible threat
If allegations against ref Tim Donaghy are true… If the new cycling doping allegations are true… If the allegations against Barry Bonds are true… If it's all a fraud, why should we watch?

Rick Morrissey

In the wake of the news

6:27 AM CDT, July 25, 2007

We love our sports. We are a nation that cares deeply about our games, our teams and our athletes, sometimes more than we should. Sometimes a lot more than we should. But we care. It's generally a good thing.

Why we care is a broad topic involving escape, tribalism, passed-down family loyalties, vicariousness, the thrill of competition and the pleasure of watching human beings strive for athletic excellence. It helps explain the body paint in the stands.

But there is something about sports that sets it apart from most other forms of entertainment. It's real. Or at least it's supposed to be real. If it isn't, then a home run in baseball might as well be treated the same as an Inverted Atomic Drop in pro wrestling.

We hold this truth to be self-evident: that when we watch a sporting event we expect the sweat and the emotion to be real. We expect the blood to contain red blood cells, not red food coloring. You might not know the outcome of a Harry Potter movie going in, but walking out you know that, as stunning as it might have been, someone's death from a backfired spell wasn't real. It was the product of the author's wonderful imagination.

This is an especially painful time for anyone who cares about sports. We are being asked to consider a very unpleasant question: What's real anymore?

We have a baseball player whose pursuit of a hallowed home-run record is being dogged by talk he used steroids. We have a former NBA referee who is said to have bet on games he officiated, as well as some he didn't, and passed along information to acquaintances who bet on those games. We have one of the stars of the Tour de France testing positive for a banned blood transfusion.

At a news conference Tuesday, NBA Commissioner David Stern sounded like a man who was deposition-ready.

"I'm very clear that it is my current understanding that this is one isolated referee and that if that understanding changes tomorrow, I will so inform everybody," he said.

Remember when "Let's play two" was considered a good quote?

Stern said the NBA has no indication that referee Tim Donaghy fixed games. The word "fixed" makes executives in all sports shudder. It should. But if the gambling allegations are true, then at the very least there's a chance the outcome of some games Donaghy worked were affected.

If this doesn't bother you, then you have given up. Your heart has stopped beating.

The Tour de France isn't America's favorite sporting event, but we certainly can relate to the recent story line. The latest development is that Alexandre Vinokourov, who won two recent stages, allegedly manipulated his blood to help him get through the grueling race. After he tested positive, his entire team pulled out of the Tour and police sealed off the team's hotel for evidence. It's CSI: France. See how blurry the lines are between reality and TV fiction?

Closer to home, San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds is closing in on Hank Aaron's career home-run record. Much of the coverage has centered on the fact that Bonds started looking like a cartoonish bodybuilder in 2001, when he hit 73 homers, and that he hasn't stopped flexing or sneering since.

There are a surprising number of people who prefer to skip the entire debate of whether Bonds has used a syringe in his pursuit of the record. They want the movie to end with Bonds' hitting the longest home-run ball they have seen. They don't care whether he used steroids, human growth hormone or spinach. It's why they're willing to spend so much money on a ticket. Just give them the dinger.

It brings us back to our sticky question of what is real. At a time when someone can walk out of a doctor's office with larger breasts, a smaller nose, less cellulite and fewer wrinkles (and presumably a new boyfriend), what is real? When it soon might be possible to cure diseases through genetic engineering, why are chemically enhanced muscles so bad?

If a reality show is supposed to be real, what else can be considered real? Someone who takes an amphetamine to stay alert during a baseball game? Someone who uses HGH to get stronger?

Perhaps. But it's also very real that excessive steroid use can lead to heart disease and cancer. Those with their heads in the sand say it's the athlete's decision what goes in his body. The realists among us argue that the growing percentage of high school athletes using steroids are emulating the stars without full knowledge of the dangers involved.

As long as there has been a round object around, even if it was made of stone, there has been cheating. That's another self-evident truth. And cheating is everywhere. One of the giants of golf, Gary Player, says that some of the touring pros are using steroids. What if the gentlemen in the gentlemen's game are frauds? There was a lot of complaining when Player made his accusation at the recent British Open. There also was a lot of complaining among baseball players when steroid allegations in their game first arose. And look where we are now.

Maybe we have been living in a fantasy world all along. Maybe we're looking for purity when it's extinct.

Maybe the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we want real. Some of the evidence suggests we don't.

We knew it wasn't going to end well for the ship in "Titanic." We didn't know the Bears were going to take on water the way they did in the Super Bowl. That's real drama.

Isn't it?

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I thought it was an interesting article that I 've thought myselft since the Bonds issue came up a few years ago. I've noticed I don't really care as much for sports anymore, except ironically, football.

you cant compare bonds and donaghy. bond was cheating b/c he's being competitive. donaghy was chetting b/c he was a degenerate gambler. although i agree w/ the "hallowed homerun record" comment.

There has probably been some form of cheating in sports for ages. It's just different depending on the times. People will ALWAYS look for a competitive advantage when it comes to competition. People generally get discovered, and then ridiculed at some point. Like sosa and al McGuire, they are barely even relevant anymore. Sosa is almost worthless now. I don't see a huge problem with it all. Just step up drug testing or devise some new way to check for it. Also, with the guy coming out in golf and saying all that shit, he's probably just trying to bring some attention to golf. Why would he say "YEAH people do it, but I can't say anything". I don't see it as some HUGE problem, because it's just getting alot of media coverage now. Who really knows how much different it is now compared to the "old days".

It's really just you Yankees and the cycling freaks.

I'm not giving up yet. I think there have been cheaters since the genesis of organized sports, but it's just harder to hide nowadays. I do think that football, for example, was a purer game 60 years ago, but I still enjoy the NFL of the present.

who cares? though while they are it they should cheat a little for my team....

but seriously, there always has been someone looking for the inside edge on everyone else. If there ever was an inside edge in gambling, being the ref would surely be it.

if you aint cheatin you aint tryin

Good thing you said 60, because I was ready to pull Hornung and Karras out as examples of non-purity.

wait, are you saying Hourning and Karras were cheaters?

nope, doesn't bother me. The ref thing appears to be isolated and the steroids thing goes both ways...guys are doing it and playing against other guys that are doing it. I have limited my time spending watching sports down to football and baseball anyway with an occasional interest in basketball, though the knicks improving oculd change that

Not cheaters, per se, but involved with gambling on the sport they played.

there is always going to be cheaters in sports ... there always has been and always will be , its like sterotyping race or relgion or whatever though, you cant judge an ENTIRE league on one degenrate gambler, or one steriod monkey, let's face it steriods doesn't TEACH you how to hit a baseball, that's a skill not everyone has, you cant learn it .. it may well help you get an extra 30-40 feet on it but its a sticky argument with bonds especially considering its all speculation, i mean its plainly obvious but no one can prove anything... as for donaghy i belive stern called him an "isolated, rogue" hopefully its true ....

anywyas point being there will always be controversy in sports ... whats that pitchers name who admitted to using the spitball?? the one who is in hall of fame ??? hows he different than bonds ??? does it make you want to condemn however many hundreds or thousands of atheletes who havent done anything wrong ??

i stopped reading after that

I stopped at "there is".

if i stopped watching sports there would be countless hours of my life that i wouldn't know what to do with.

The revelation that NBA officiating is crooked isn't exactly a shocker, I might actually like the sport more now that Stern is finally going to have to eat some shit over it.

why ???

cuz im playing devils advocate ????

the orginal poster asked "should we care about sports anymore with all this fraud ??" im asking if you should make villians out of everyone in sports for a few bad apples ???? whats wrong with that ??tell me ???

NBA...MLB...cycling. Three things I don't give a shit about in the first place!

I think Gary Bettman's feeling pretty good about himself right about now...