"Blah, blah, blah...Cheater! Blah, blah, blah...Give back the awards! Blah, blah, blah...Give back the money! Blah, blah, blah...No Hall of Fame for you!" PEDs are the focus of several current articles related to the newest crop of Hall of Fame eligible baseball greats, a couple of NFL guys and both of the combatants in this weekend's mega fight.
As sports fans, we feel cheated when the athletes we cheer for aren't who we thought they were. We want the tape-measured home runs to be real. We like cheering for the player that nobody can catch other than the cameraman. Athletes are our heroes and we want our heroes to be invincible.
When we find out they're a lot like us - men and women who are just trying to make it - we get hurt. That hurt becomes anger and the anger becomes the outrageous disconnect we have between what's happening on the field and what happens in real-life. In our discontent, we forget the messages we are sending to the youngest among us. When an athlete breaks a seemingly unbreakable record or achieves some other enormous feat, we must be careful not to throw a bucket of cold water on an important principle - hard work.
Elite athletes work very hard. They have to lift, run, practice, watch hours of film and somehow find time to eat right. Many of us have a treadmill at home that doubles as a clothes hanger. More importantly, when we say this athlete or that athlete got to a certain point because of PEDs, we're telling our kids that hard work doesn't matter. We're telling them the only way to make it is to cheat.
Let's tell them about the real dangers of PEDs and the damage they can do to the human heart, liver, brain and reproductive system. I took weight training as a sophomore at Ladue High School and Phil Bruska was my teacher as well as our track and field coach. Coach Bruska had silver hair and had to be in his 50s then, but the man was stronger than all of us - by a mile. He could lift the stack on every machine, benched more and could do more pull-ups than any puberty-driven teenager in the class.
We asked him if steroids would make us strong. He said, "Boys, that stuff will mess you up. Let me put it this way. If you ever want to have kids of your own someday, you won't touch the garbage." We read him loud and clear. We as adults also have to be careful about who we accuse. There are athletes who have been labeled as cheaters who have never failed a test or even been investigated by their league. Saying whatever you want about anyone you want does everyone a disservice and sends a poor message to young people.
In the pursuit of righteousness, be careful not to become self-righteous. Performance-enhancing drugs can shorten careers and lives. Millions of dollars won't bring back a person's health or their reputation. Those are the lessons we need to teach the next generation. Remember, records are made to be broken. People are not. Until next time...
Be a Good Sport!
-Sol
0 comments:
Post a Comment