MCDONALD: Say it ain’t so

By TIM MCDONALD
Local Columnist

December 24, 2007 03:19 pm

— After the Black Sox Scandal of 1920s, a young fan seeing “Shoeless” Joe Jackson emerge from the courthouse, gave us the immortal line, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
We recently had a particularly difficult week in the world of sports. Honesty, integrity and authenticity completely flew out the window. The first blow was one of local interest involving the former University of Louisville and now former Atlanta Falcons football coach Bobby Petrino.
Apparently, his word is only good for about six hours before he goes back on it. He tells his boss, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, that he will be his coach and within that time accepts another job. He went through the same act of giving his word to the University of Louisville before departing for Atlanta and the professional ranks.
Then, the commission investigating steroid use in professional baseball led by former Senator George Mitchell released its report listing the names of eighty professional baseball players who have used steroids and human growth hormone.
Some of the biggest names in professional baseball were implicated including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco among others. What has the world come to when cheating has become acceptable to compete?
I remember as a little boy some of the most special times that I spent with my grandfather was watching professional baseball on television on Saturday afternoons. We would watch and listen to Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese call games of some of the best teams of the 1960’s.
Sitting with my grandfather in his big chair, we watched the New York Yankees and the home run competition between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in 1961. Ol’ Diz sang “The Wabash Cannonball,” read telegrams to “good ol’ boys,” and razed the language. Batters “swang.” Pitchers “throwed” the ball with “spart.” Runners returned to “their respectable bases.”
I remember Dean’s string tie, and Stetson — the whole rustic goods. An English teacher once wrote to him, complaining that he shouldn’t use the word “ain’t” on the air, as it was a bad example to children. On the air, Dean said, “A lot of folks who ain’t sayin’ ‘ain’t,’ ain’t eatin’. So, Teach, you learn ‘em English, and I’ll learn ‘em baseball."
"In the hinterlands it was incredible,” said CBS sports head Bill MacPhail. “Watching Dizzy Dean was an absolute religion.” Each Saturday and Sunday afternoon Middle America closed down.
Maybe at age 51 I am becoming nostalgic for that simpler and more innocent time of baseball. I realize now that the players of that time had their vices like womanizing, smoking and drinking. But whatever records they set were done without drug enhancements with the exception of a hangover.
That season of watching Maris and Mantle compete to beat Babe Ruth’s record was filled with tension every game they played toward the end of that season. It was tension based on honest competition and talent without enhancement of any chemical.
Forty years later when Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals were competing to break Roger Maris’ season home record that tension was revisited and in fact many credited the Sosa-McGwire home run chase in 1998 with “saving baseball,” by both bringing in new, younger fans and bringing back old fans soured by the 1994 baseball strike.
Although McGwire has never admitted to or been convicted of any steroid use, many of his accomplishments, particularly his historic home run surge late in his career, have come into question due to his connection to the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball.
In 1998, after an article written by Associated Press writer Steve Wilstein, McGwire admitted to taking androstenedione, an over-the-counter muscle enhancement product. While legal for use in MLB, it had been banned by the NFL and IOC.
The world of professional sports just does not interest me much anymore. I don’t know if it is the obscene salaries of the players or the drug scandals or the low class behavior of many of the athletes or even the dishonesty and lack of integrity of the coaches.
While college sports are not perfect any longer, NCAA violations and such, I can regain some of that innocence of my youth in watching college football. Probably the purest competition of all is the annual Army versus Navy football game. None of the individuals will go professional; they will go into the service of their country in the officer corps of the Army, Navy or Marines.
The college football ranks also has the best example of the loyalty of a coach in Penn State’s Joe Paterno. At age 80, Paterno is coaching his 58th season at Penn State as an assistant or head coach in 2007,, holding the record for any football coach at any university. The 2007, season marks Joe Paterno’s 42nd season pacing the sidelines as head coach.
Paterno’s loyalty is so strong with Penn State that he turned down an offer to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969, an offer he initially seriously considered. Except for the occasional retirement rumors, Paterno hasn’t seriously considered leaving since.
As adults we are to be examples to our children and young people that look up to us for guidance and modeling. When we make a mistake, we need to admit to it, make it right and move forward not wait for an investigation and an indictment to uncover the mistake.
When we say that we are going to honor a contract and stay with an employer that should be the honest word not a ruse while we negotiate a deal with someone else. Ethics and integrity have disappeared from the ranks of professional sports to be replaced by steely eyed avarice in search of the next deal.
There are professional athletes who are talented, wealthy and give back to the community. Such is LaDainian Tomlinson the San Diego Chargers superstar running back recently gave out Thanksgiving meals to 2,000 families and also provides college scholarships to seniors at his old high school, runs a charity golf tournament and hands out bikes and shoes to underprivileged children. “I think definitely what I do off the field [is more important],” Tomlinson says. “People may remember something I did on the field for a couple of days, maybe a week, but the things that I do and we do in the community is something that people remember for the rest of their lives,” he says.
Will baseball ever recover? Will professional sports in general recover from the negative behaviors? I don’t know. Records broken and set during the “steroid era” are forever tainted along with those that set them. Dizzy Deansaid “it ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.” And in his time it was backed up with talent.
Tim McDonald is an educator, lecturer and doctoral student. He can be reached at timothy.mcdonal@agsfaculty.indwes.edu

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