I know where your coming from, and I didn’t have time to fully explain everything earlier thanks to flight schedules. I think the Donaghy situation is the worst of the three because anything that affects the framework of the league, ie. the rules and those who uphold them, has the potential to be far worse than anything an individual player does. In the Supreme Court example, I was saying that illegal actions by those who uphold the constitution and rule on the other branches of government would be far worse than anything done by a senator (the players). Senators, like players, come and go, and they revolve around the foundations that have been in place since the beginning and allow the institution of whichever league persist.
Naturally, none of these cases, not steroids, not Vick and definitely not Donaghy, have been resolved. In Vick’s situation, the dog fighting really has nothing at all to do with the football being played, so that automatically puts it below steroids, but both issues damage the image of their respective leagues. But, as our Blazers have so thoroughly shown, images can be cleaned up, but it all starts with management. It would be much more difficult to contain the allegations against Donaghy if it is true and it all blows up. Of course Simmons is overreacting, but the entire nation, as a whole, overreacts to most anything that happens in our wonderful world of sports.
As a quick side note, people need to stop bitching about the gosh darned home run record. This is one thing that irks me the most about baseball, it’s dependency on numbers. It’s such a quantitative sport that it is often impossible for the casual fan to discern between “star” players without referencing their numbers. But that is a different story altogether — I remember when Michael came back I was worried about him retaining his hold on the all-time scoring average over Kareem, but looking back, the only thing I was worried about was being able to tell people twenty years from now that Michael was the greatest and there was a number to help prove it. The only thing these records do for us as sports fans is help us remember and retell the accomplishments of our heroes. Hank being passed does not affect his legacy, it only affects how we are able to talk about it in the future. Are Americans so insecure about their ability to find the proper words to describe a player to their kids that we must defend these numbers with such fire and hatred?
Time will tell with all of these stories — as we all show our inability to express any amount of true patience — but Donaghy could be the most damaging. Whether or not it should be doesn’t seem to matter anymore, the media and the public will make it matter. Nothing is ever an isolated case anymore. The Artest Brawl became a league wide “image problem” because nobody seemed willing to chalk it up to a pair of crazy ass players and one drunk fan. The same thing happens in baseball and does anyone bat an eyelash? There’s too many double and triple standards in big business sports nowadays, but for them to keep moving forward, each must maintain that much-ballyhooed integrity, and the Donaghy issue is threatening to damage that the most.
And I don’t want to hear anyone talking to me with the words steriods and integrity together anymore. Cheating has and always will be part of baseball. Barry, go on and break that record, and celebrate it afterwards, as he should.