Yesterday...When Your Team Was Your Team

Some of you are long enough in the tooth to remember when a player was drafted by the team he would likely spend all - or at least the bulk - of his career serving. Back then, you cheered for your "team," and you knew who they were. You knew their names and their numbers. You knew their strengths and their weaknesses. And you knew they were your team.

Not so anymore. It is a rare bird, the athlete who stays with the team that drafted him. It still happens, mostly with the player a team identifies as the face of its franchise. It especially still happens with such players in the NFL, but not so much in the NBA or MLB. Those entities have stronger player unions, so the carrot-dangling is more attractive, and the bidding more cutthroat. I mean, come on, if you are a truly elite baseball player, you know you are going to end up in New York, Boston, or LA eventually, right?

I realize that as I fly through my midlife crises (yes, they are plural), I am apt to suffer from some Good Ol' Days Syndrome. Nostalgia is bound to set in, and I will view the past with my perfect-fitting, rose-colored glasses. But it was better then, wasn't it? It was better when most of the players on your team stayed on your team. You weren't just cheering for laundry and locale...you had heroes.

Nowadays, if you are, oh, let's say, a Cowboys' fan, for instance, you have to hate Terrell Owens when he plays for the Niners and desecrates the Star, but then love him when he dons the Star and decimates the rest of the league. If he is playing for the enemy, his over-the-top celebrations are annoying and self-serving. But if he is scoring those TDs for the 'Boys, well, we're just having fun, right? What's wrong with a little in-yo'-face celebration, anyway, huh? Grow up! Take it like a man, ya big crybaby!

It is dizzying the way our loyalties and logic change with every new wind that blows a player from here to there or there to here. Every year, we are cheering for a new set of players, but presumably, the same "team." How do I know they are my team? Look at the color scheme and the logo.

Ah well, the good ol' days are gone forever. But, hey, the good new days have brought us the Internet and Blogging...

Hm. Now that I think about it, there might be a little irony in my using today's technology to pine for yesterday.

Being Barry Bonds

What if you broke the most hallowed record in all of sports...and almost everyone was angry at you for doing it? What if you became the Fall Guy for a generation of drug abusers? What if you were arguably your generation's best in the sport you played, but had very little chance of making the Hall of Fame?What if you were Barry Bonds?

I know, you wouldn't be. You're too squeaky clean, too honorable, to committed to the integrity of your industry. You never cheated. Not on your taxes. Not on your wife. You never stepped outside the lines of propriety in order to get ahead. You never looked for that angle, however immoral or illegal, to give yourself a leg up on your competition.

Plenty have. Plenty have paid for it, too. They got their pink slip or their prison jumper for their troubles. So, you don't feel sorry for Barry Bonds. The guy could have been the least bit likeable and maybe this would never have happened. He could have stayed clean...or at least come clean when he was interrogated under oath. Jason Giambi did. He took his lumps for it, too. But he won't face prison time. Barry may.

I am in no way defending Barry Bonds. I'm not. But I refuse to celebrate the indictment of the man who is the face of a problem much greater than himself. He wasn't alone in his cheating. He wasn't the only one shooting up so he could bulk up. He was just the only one who did it while assaulting a hallowed record.

I imagine it isn't much fun, being Barry Bonds. I doubt it was a great deal of fun even when he was smashing the record-setting tater. Probably wasn't any fun when his achievement was mocked and an asterisk burned into the historic ball he hit out of the park. It was even less fun when he was served notice that a grand jury had indicted him.Being Barry Bonds has to be a pretty lonely feeling. But somebody had to be Barry. Somebody had to bring this house of cards tumbling down. Who knows where it will end? How many will be forced to own their mistakes, their duplicity, their cheating, their law-breaking?

Maybe...just maybe, this turns the tide. Or, maybe it at least stems the tide. Perhaps, at long last, the playing fields will be level again, and the athletes who do it the right way will have a crying chance. Maybe the madness will end...and we can all return to believing in Santa Claus, happy endings, and the integrity of professional sports.

If so, I will celebrate that.

But I will not celebrate the fall of Barry Bonds. Self-destruction is not a pretty thing. It isn't fun...or funny. It's just...sad.

Pete's Rose-Colored Glasses

Some folks just don't get it. They think all you have to do to receive forgiveness, absolution, a second chance is change your story. Change your story, people change their minds about you, that changes your public image, and voila! All is well. That is how the deluded minds of the chronically deceptive work.

So, Pete Rose, the man everybody loves to hate, the evil baseball devil himself, tells Dan Patrick that he bet "every night" on the Cincinnatti Reds. John Dowd, the investigator who toppled the former baseball great's house of cards responded to Rose's latest confession:

"He did not always bet to win. And when he didn't bet on the Reds, he sent a
signal to the bookmakers to bet to lose.
"I have no idea what he's doing.
Who knows, this guy? He spends almost 15 years calling me a liar, then writes a
sorry-ass book that admits what's in my report. Now the report is right. Well,
glad to hear it."

Hey, Pete, public perception is fluid and not always accurate. It is also impossible to control. It may be manipulated, but no one can absolutely guarantee that today's hero won't be tomorrow's goat. That is why the focus of the guilty should be introspective. Look inside yourself. See what is wrong in your attitude, actions, and words...and make a conscious effort to change. Maybe people see the change, public opinion turns in your favor, and you regain the respect you lost. Or...maybe not. But at least you have made yourself a better you...and you can live with that. Can't you?

That Dowd dude is too close to the fire anyway. Forgiveness isn't likely to ever be forthcoming from him. He has been too "wounded," too "offended." Who cares? No one will ever have universal appeal. No one.

The older I get and the more things I find I have to regret and change, the less inclined I am to believe in the whole concept of human forgiveness anyway. That old saying, "to err is human; to forgive is divine," is more than a little accurate. I don't think we mere claypots have it in us to truly forgive. Some little part of us will always hold onto the offence. We will keep the information stored for later. We expect to someday say, "Aha! I knew it! You are a dirty rotten bastard!"

It's the Pharisee syndrome. "Hey, look at how good I am compared to ol' so-and-so."
Maybe that is the only real service Pete Rose will ever be able to offer the world now: the chance for us to look at how overtly corrupt he is and feel better about ourselves.

Jaded? A little. But pretty dead-on. So, the point here is this: Rose should forget about trying to weasel his way back into the good graces of the baseball gods (aka, the fans and media), and focus on himself. If he looks himself in the mirror and likes what he sees, he will have to settle for that. The rest is out of his control anyway.

There was a 1981 TV movie that starred Mickey Rooney as a mentally challenged man named Bill. I will never forget the sincere earnestness in his voice when he said, "I just want to be a regular good man." Why is it that the Pete Roses of the world aspire to be famous, wealthy, loved, accepted, but miss the whole point of just being human?

Pete, baby, You don't have to always be right. But always be real...and willing to change what needs changing.

That's really all anyone can ask.