Kleeman's Last Word

A Proper Swan Song for Sports Doping

It's time athletes and their doping excursions had a chit-chat--manu a manu, gloves off, a full-contact bloody brawl. Not the kind of the fist-fights these sports sluggers get into after furiously finding out their magic dope causes some nasty side-effects--neck warts and crusty rashes to be exact.
Who wants to take a million-dollar photo of a soupy-rash? Right. I'll have the Associated Press photogs over in an hour.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs has rocked more than just Barry Bonds and the sacred game of baseball. The made-for-the-history-books Tour de France victory by Floyd Landis this year could become nothing more than a shameful overuse of illegal medicine if he has a second positive test for high levels of testerone.
As spectators of the games that enthrall, we want to believe that our beloved athletes are innocent until proven guilty. But when Jose Conseco and even aging veteran slugger Sammy Sosa say publically, "oh yeah, I did that doping shit. It was fucking great," what are we to do?
It's time for Congress and the game-viewing public to quit quibbling over the issue and for these overpaid, arrogant athletes to accept a shred of personal responsibility.
Terrell Owens already needs more than $100, 000, 000 to "feed his family." Is it too much to ask for these irresponsible sports stars to own up to their athletic shortcomings?
Rome wasn't built in a day, but you'd have to wonder how much quicker the ancient city would have risen if all of the builders had been given Andro. Maybe if Victor Conte and his imploding company BALCO were around during the Roman Empire, they could have shown some charity and given these hard-working men that extra push.
But unlike Spinal Tap, maybe these amps shouldn't be going to 11. Maybe they should stay at 10, the way God intended it to be.
And before the big man gets dragged into this ridiculous conversation, let's remember The Bambino, Ozzie Virgil, Joe DiMaggio, Michael Jordan, Jerry Rice, even Pele--all athletes who accomplished beyond human feats without the aid of non-human chemicals.
The human body doesn't make Andro or the Kilo Steroid. We don't have a body organ that's designed to break these substances down like the Kreb Cycle in an Anabolic Reaction decomposes Amino Acids.
Why then is injecting your blood-stream with these muscle-jerking toxins suddenly more of a cultural phenomenon than plucking the white trash walls of the Britney/K-Fed disaster marriage?
Neither is looked upon with approval by the general public. Sports especially.

Even with an onslaught of public criticism about athletes' drug problems, somehow the Bonds's of the sports world believe that low-stooping, body-enhancement is A-OK as long as they're winning.

That is, after all, what has driven baseball fans back to ballparks in droves since the strike in the mid-90's. Drugged or not, fans want to see home runs. We'd rather see the ball fly out of the park by the hands of a cheater than an RBI chopped by an honest hitter. We're driven by the razzle-dazzle of scoring in all sports. The rocket-fast pedaling in cycling, the touchdown in football, a Dr. J-esque slam dunk, or a soccer ball kicked through the goalie's legs and into the net.
We feed on this fattening, superficial showboating and it's time we said--ENOUGHHHHHHH!

As if Athletes didn't already have enough reasons to keep themselves clean, maybe some extra pressure from spectactors will send the resounding message that winning at all costs, especially with a $1,000 drug injection is not only undesirable, it's petty and pitiful.

Now that sports commissioners, including the fabulously tepid Bud Selig have decided that doping is important enough to suspend superstar players for, athletics can begin to get back on the right track.

Now all we need is for Barry Bonds to peer out of his San Francisco apartment window and realize what a hypocritical, screw-up he is. That's the hard part.

It may seem like a daunting task to get million-dollar athletes to admit fraud and failure lies within them.
However, if they can knock a baseball 425 feet, they ought to be man enough to succumb to their doping wounds.

It's time for the guilty athletes to have that bloody fight. Only the true men will emerge victorious.

posted by Robert Kleeman @ 10:12 PM