By Jay Van Hoosier
I, for one, am getting pretty sick and tired of listening to all those baseball “purists” out there screaming about the so called double standard that exists within the sports writing community when discussing the “national pastime,” more commonly called professional baseball, and the game of professional football. Their argument goes, to varying degrees, something like this. Sports writers are picking on baseball by focusing on the perceived rampant use of steroids. Pages and pages, blogs and more blogs, web pages and more web pages, their argument postulates, spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on the steroid use in their beloved game of baseball while ignoring the obvious amount of juicing that is going on in the game of rockem sockem football. Hell, just look at those guys on the offensive and defensive lines – how could they not be bloated on bovine growth serum???? while you pick on, for days and days, it seems on each baseball player’s steroid foilables. The coverage just seems to go on forever.
I will admit that sports writers do grab onto any baseball player who admits to the usage (or lying under oath about not using – you choose) of steroids and will drone on and on about it for weeks at a time – closely hanging onto any and every word and statement uttered by the player in question – just looking for a trip-up or a contradiction. With that being said, I will say unequivocally that there is no double standard in their coverage.
The reason is simple – ask yourself this question: Who is the face of professional baseball? Or maybe even a better question to ask would be, what position is the “glamour” position in major league baseball? You know, the position that represents the sport and what draws people to the ball parks. This is easy to answer for the sport of baseball – it’s the power hitter. Now, let’s switch to professional football, shall we? The corresponding position in football is – no surprises here – the quarterback. With that established, let’s do a little comparison of the two positions over the past couple of years. For baseball we have names like Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, ARod, Giambi etc…..I really could go for a little bit here so I’ll stop and go to the quarterback position in the NFL: Manning, Brady, Rothlesbuger, Favre, Aikman etc….again I’ll stop here since I would be able to go here a bit as well.
Do you see the difference? It is pretty glaring. What you have is a case where the most popular draws in one sport use the juice and the most popular draws in the other do not. Case closed. People are caught in each sport every year for taking steroids. The difference? The people who are being caught in baseball are the ones who should set an example about concepts like fair competition – not to mention who’s names go on the most jerseys bought by the fans. These are the players who kids look up to. Quite frankly, no one cares if it’s some 400 pound offensive tackle is so pumped up, his testicles will rot and fall of two years after he retires. Hell – this guy is getting paid to protect the players that people are looking up to in football – the quarterbacks.
All this tires me to no end anyway since baseball has not been the real national pastime for a while now. Wake up people - It’s professional football. The Super Bowl has been the most watched sporting (and television, for that matter) event for the past several years. The World Series would kill for just a fraction of the viewers.
So I am going to continue watching football every Sunday with a clean conscience – feeling happy that the players who are juiced in my favorite sport are protecting my favorite players while baseball wallows in the mire of tainted players and records with asterisks.
I will admit that sports writers do grab onto any baseball player who admits to the usage (or lying under oath about not using – you choose) of steroids and will drone on and on about it for weeks at a time – closely hanging onto any and every word and statement uttered by the player in question – just looking for a trip-up or a contradiction. With that being said, I will say unequivocally that there is no double standard in their coverage.
The reason is simple – ask yourself this question: Who is the face of professional baseball? Or maybe even a better question to ask would be, what position is the “glamour” position in major league baseball? You know, the position that represents the sport and what draws people to the ball parks. This is easy to answer for the sport of baseball – it’s the power hitter. Now, let’s switch to professional football, shall we? The corresponding position in football is – no surprises here – the quarterback. With that established, let’s do a little comparison of the two positions over the past couple of years. For baseball we have names like Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, ARod, Giambi etc…..I really could go for a little bit here so I’ll stop and go to the quarterback position in the NFL: Manning, Brady, Rothlesbuger, Favre, Aikman etc….again I’ll stop here since I would be able to go here a bit as well.
Do you see the difference? It is pretty glaring. What you have is a case where the most popular draws in one sport use the juice and the most popular draws in the other do not. Case closed. People are caught in each sport every year for taking steroids. The difference? The people who are being caught in baseball are the ones who should set an example about concepts like fair competition – not to mention who’s names go on the most jerseys bought by the fans. These are the players who kids look up to. Quite frankly, no one cares if it’s some 400 pound offensive tackle is so pumped up, his testicles will rot and fall of two years after he retires. Hell – this guy is getting paid to protect the players that people are looking up to in football – the quarterbacks.
All this tires me to no end anyway since baseball has not been the real national pastime for a while now. Wake up people - It’s professional football. The Super Bowl has been the most watched sporting (and television, for that matter) event for the past several years. The World Series would kill for just a fraction of the viewers.
So I am going to continue watching football every Sunday with a clean conscience – feeling happy that the players who are juiced in my favorite sport are protecting my favorite players while baseball wallows in the mire of tainted players and records with asterisks.
Good night, Harry Caray, wherever you are.
I could disagree more, but it'd be a stretch to say it. There is an unmistakeable double standard, and saying that the "glamour" of the drug abuser justifies it is a backhanded way of condoning it.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that Peyton Manning is squeaky clean - image wise - if his offensive linemaen are doing drugs to protect him? If he knows or suspects it, then he's shamed every bit as much as A-Rod or Barry Bonds. He's practically using himself, at least by proxy, and that's downright loathsome.
And as far as ratings are concerned, more people watch one Super Bowl than any one World Series game, but there are still millions and millions mores viewers over a 162 game baseball season than there are for a measely 16 game football season. There are hundreds of thousands more tickets sold by MLB than for NFL games, and baseball doesn't require the instant gratification or borderline bloodlust that football requires. Baseball is played worldwide, football is played in America (Canada can't even figure out the proper number of players).
Football is very popular in the United States. So were parachute pants at one time. Baseball is eternal. And yes, there is a double standard.
Jeff, instead of using the phrase measley 16 game schedule. I think it would be more appropriate to use interminable 162 game baseball schedule. You also seem to imply that instant gratification is a bad thing. That's what makes football great. Every game matters and there is none of that philosphical bs that intrudes baseball commentary.
ReplyDeleteAs to the steroid issue. Jay's satarical blog raises a good point. Baseball is being picked on by media and politicians because it's house does not seem to be in order when it comes steroids. A-rod ( one of the biggest stars in the sport on the most high profile team) has taken steroids. I have not seen any punishment handed down. Have I missed something? While over in the NFL, last year the league did its best to suspend several players who tested positive for having illegal performance enhancers in their blood. Two of those players were on a team in the playoff hunt. Saying that, I know the NFL is not perfect. Far from it. But they have at least an apperance of doing something. Baseball seems to just sit on its hands and do nothing. What it has done has been forced down its throat by a congress and the media.
I think football's popularity is partly due to the fact that American's have the mentality that bigger is better. Well - that's what my wife assures me of with a evil little smile. When you watch baseball - those guys look like anyone you would see in wal-mart. Football however taps into our "comic-book" upbringing where we see the larger-than life humanoids dressed in monster-sized suits performing feats of super-human proportion. We're literally watching monsters pulverize each other - and we love it. Baseball is slow-paced and difficult to keep the attention of the ipod-generation. And the guys look like normal people. But for a fleeting moment - Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire had us on the edge of our seats knocking them out of the park an indo the next county. And then setroid use made it into the news as fast as Canseco's nuts shrank tothe size of peas. And the world became outraged. It was as if the american mentality held up the major-league ball player to born-again Christian regulations, but totally ignored the Clysdale horses smacked up on the sauce in professional football. We assume their supposed to be huge monsters and we could care less.
ReplyDeleteI say let all of them - regardless of sport, take what they want and let them be. Hell - if it were not for asiphex, coffee, lithium, abilify, ritalin and xanex, I sure as hell would not be able to do my job.
As a Libertarian -- I am with Allen. Just as I say do away with seat belt and helmet laws for adults -- if these guys can inhance and as a result command a higher salary, then so be it. Of course, from an economic standpoint they would have to offset this by the possibility that public backlash will result in lower pay, as well as the health costs and potential for a coronary at age 35.
ReplyDeleteAs for the baseball vs. football, I think it is the instant gratification thing. I hate baseball because it is SLLLLOOOOWWWW. I love football, but would prefer to watch it at home (despite the vast improvement to live viewing afforded by LucasOil over the RCA Dome) because of the ability to TiVo through commercials, whereas at a live game, you have to sit through all of the commercial breaks AND you cannot skip back 10 seconds to see a great hit several times over.
Speaking of great hits, it also has something to do with the violence. Look at the news. Even with more non-contact sports like baseball and basketball, what do you see on the news: When someone gets nailed in the face with a line drive, pitch or elbow and they have blood streaming down their face. Football obviously has a bigger appeal. It is only human nature, going back through history. If they had Tivo, I am sure the Romans would have been skipping back 10 seconds to watch a and re-watch the moment a lion ripped into a gladiator's carotid.
And just for the record: As far as Euro-sports go, I would rather watch a boring game of baseball or a slow football game anyday stong cold sober than be forced to sit through a soccer game.
ReplyDelete