Time Travel & Hypocrisy in Sports

How do we look at the past? Will we go backward through all sports stories and analyze the character of the athletes? Out with Babe Ruth, he drank during prohibition. Out with Ty Cobb, he was a miserable misanthrope and racist. Out with Pete Rose, he was… Well, okay we already threw him out at Coopers town for betting and lying.

As long as we’re looking at the past, lets get Jefferson off Mt. Rushmore for owning slaves, Franklin off the currency for being a womanizer and Lincoln for spending way more nights than absolutely necessary sleeping in the same bed with another man.

We should probably strike David from the Bible for sending his rival to his death in order to carry on an adulterous affair with the widow, and surely in today’s climate Republicans would question Jesus about keeping company with Publicans, prostitutes and tax collectors.

I have no problem with disciplining athletes who cheat from this day on. But going back to pick up what was missed and trying to change and judge the past is a fool’s errand. Baseball on every level was complicit in tolerating drug use and profiting by it. Revenues have never been higher. Trying to change the record book with a pointillist and pointless field of asteriks* is futile. The Olympics are already in the absurd position of wondering that now that they have stripped Marion Jones of her medals whether to award them to another athlete who was later found to have used drugs. Professional bicycle racing has already self-destructed by following past winners down the rabbit hole of retroactive justice.

Remember that Ali was stripped of his title and ability to earn a living during his prime years because of his refusal to serve in military. If he had gone to jail after due process, that would have been one thing. But he was stripped by boxing for reasons of social pressure.

The job of sports is sports. Barry Bonds may be a pain. Okay, no maybe. He is. He may be a cheat, but he cheated within the context of a culture, including ownership, that encouraged and rewarded such cheating. Frankly the bad guys here are Fehr of the union and Selig of the owners. They cannot cleanse their benign neglect and active hypocrisy by punishing scapegoats. Well, they can, but they shouldn’t.

* Interestingly, at least to me, there is no agreement on the plural of asterix. Asterixes is hated and asteriks awkward. Some drop the first e and go for astrix in singular. If we can't fix this, how will we ever find peace with the past?