Thank you, baseball Hall of Fame, for hosting your induction ceremonies yesterday. Not only is it amazing to see two great ballplayers – Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. – earn their busts in Cooperstown, the timing couldn’t be better.
Because their induction is a break in the storm of scandals, arrests, indictments and steroid allegations that have been clogging the sports pages online and in newspapers all summer. A break to remember two great baseball players, guys that played in a generation filled with question marks but are without doubt legends, is much needed.
Michael Vick. Pacman Jones. Tim Donaghy. The Tour de France. Barry Bonds. If you want some fun, go search for Every Day Should Be Saturday’s Fulmer Cup, which keeps tabs on college football players behaving badly. Heck, there’s even been questions surrounding golf regarding steroid allegations this summer.
Seeing something positive is a novel change.
And Gwynn and Ripken deserve it. Gwynn, the talkative Padres right fielder, was one of the most consistent hitters in major league history. Remember back to the run-up to Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig’s “Iron Man” record of 2,130 consecutive games played. Just the season before, baseball was mired in controversy with the strike cutting the year short; that was also a season, coincidentally, that Gwynn finished with a .394 batting average, the highest in the majors in over fifty years. Seeing Ripken break Gehrig’s record the following year was the medicine the sport needed to bring fans back.
Now, their enshrinement in baseball nirvana is a good-news blip in a summer where a black cloud of controversy has loomed over so many sports.
Barry Bonds is just two home runs shy of being the new all-time home run leader, but did he do it without cheating? ESPN cuts away to show Bonds’ at-bats, baseball commissioner Bud Selig has been coy about what he’s going to do when Bonds breaks the record and the whirlwind around Bonds has regained strength. Clearly one of the polarizing figures in sports today, but for all the wrong reasons. That he is about to shatter what many consider to be the holiest of holy records and could be booed for it if it happens on the road is indicative of his divisiveness.
To his credit, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has made good on his promise to try and clean up the image of his sport, dropping the hammer on more than a few athletes: Tank Johnson has been cut by the Bears and Pacman Jones may join him in free agency shortly.
But those were small cases compared to Michael Vick. I don’t need to restate how horrible and disgusting the charges are, but can the NFL survive losing its second-highest-paid quarterback?
Jones might’ve been a first-round draft pick, but he’s not one of the marquee stars of the league. Vick is a franchise cornerstone, has been a Madden cover star, has a contract and a shoe from Nike. He is a superstar.
Let’s not forget about the NBA, either. I might be an NBA apologist in some senses, but the case involving Tim Donaghy is something I hope forces positive change from the league. I hope it’s just an isolated case involving one extremely troubled individual, but I don’t think we’ll know that until the federal indictments are handed down.
It doesn’t help the league’s long-standing stereotype that somebody is watching overhead pulling the strings, but what David Stern and the NBA have the chance to do is prove once and for all how incorrect that belief is.
Add to all this the wild and bizarre Tour de France, which saw stage winners and the tour’s leader pulled out of the race after testing positive for banned performance enhancers. The event, which rocketed in popularity thanks to Lance Armstrong, is now in a tailspin of public confidence. I can imagine some cycling fans have the same low level of shock from hearing about riders testing positive as many NBA fans had about a crooked referee – less “Oh god, what is happening?”, more “Oh god, which one now?”
Such a cynical attitude is what sports fans are left with from an era of athletes behaving badly and cheating to gain an edge, and a worldwide press ready to cover it.
I’m just thankful that, for one afternoon, two great baseball players free of allegations but with great playing legacies can steal the spotlight away.