For the love of the game
I’m a big fan of steroids.
The acne-enhancements are incredible. Who doesn’t want the hundreds of bulging white-heads on your back?
I’m all for the over-sizing and testicle-shrinking it does. You could look like Superman, or Barry Bonds. I mean, why not look like Barry Bonds? He is idolized for his breaking of Hank Aaron’s legendary home-run record. I wouldn’t mind gaining ample amounts of weight and muscle mass to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Granted, it would suck to decrease my chances of having children, or even to suffer from liver failure, but why not risk all of that for my 15-minutes of fame?
Come on, who wouldn’t want to be on steroids?
Not me, that’s for sure. I honestly can’t stand the use of steroids, but I do find it entertaining what it has done to the incredibly squeaky-clean reputation of professional athletics.
Sports writing normally isn’t my area of expertise, even though I thoroughly enjoy a good game, but after the Pete and Bonnie Axthelm Lecture given by Christine Brennan I changed my thoughts on it. In the lecture she discussed her loathing of steroids and baseball’s charming demise into cheating and ‘roids. She even went so far to say that we are the era of steroids, and “that 50 years from now [reporters] will call us a joke.” She is one of the leading adversaries to steroid use, and is definitely not afraid to voice her opinion.
I whole-heartedly agree with every word she said.
Warning, I’m stepping onto my soap box. I am incredibly disappointed at the professional athletes in this country and around the world. Athletes are commonly associated as being role models to youth. No one can say they didn’t grow up idolizing athletes like Michael Jordon. To be honest, athletes cannot escape being a role model just as much as Hollywood’s starlets can’t avoid the cover of a tabloid magazine. So face it athletes, you are role models, whether you like it or not.
To prove my point, Brennan gave a startling statistic of high school students. She mentioned that of the high school students surveyed four to six percent have tried steroids. This is compared to the Olympics where the steroid rate is less than half-a-percent. Brennan summed up the issue with kids perfectly.
“Kids need the penalties of cheating,” said Brennan. “Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds should both be hauled off [to jail]. Kids think it’s okay to use them because the athletes use them. We have a steroids epidemic on our hands.”
Part two of the steroids’ saga: why do we accept it?
My theory is that it is all for the love of the game. No one wants to listen to steroid talk while they are attempting to watch a game. I know I get annoyed when it’s on. That doesn’t change the way I think about steroids though. For most, the fantasy world of sports overshadows the sheer reality of the damage steroids cause. Sorry for soap box number two, but society needs a giant slap in the face to realize that the game isn’t as important as the people. Brennan described “the epidemic” as a matter of defective product.
“We flock to sports like we do defective products,” said Brennan. “Yet, we go to the car dealer the next day if our car is defective; we don’t do that with sports. We leave it as it is and watch it all the same.”
In the interest of being a journalist, not a fan, I would like to say that pop culture’s love of steroids is one thing that I do not approve of. If you’ve read my columns, you would know that I’m pretty easy and I don’t take offense to much. I say we fix this problem. Then again it is only my opinion, but it is the popular one.
Tags: Axthelm Lecture, Barry Bonds, Bonnie Axthelm, Children, Christine Brennan, Epidemic, Hank Aaron, Pete Axthelm, pop culture, Roger Clemens, Steroids, Superman
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