I still
like to hold onto the naïveté that it is a gift to play in any professional
sport.
So many try, and so few make it. Those who do make it have a
responsibility, first to themselves and then to the fans that elevate them by
adulation, admiration and expectation.
Players
are only temporary holders of the sacred gift of gamesmanship and they must hold it
honorably as a Holy Grail for those who follow them.
Alex
Rodriguez failed in that honor as did dozens of other players and they have been diciplined to a point. It is also a failure of major league baseball
and all professional sports that tend to look the other way, especially when
dollars are at stake.
In
recent years professional sports players have been charged with murder,
assault, burglary, and weapons and drug possession. For them it is a litany of
lack. Lack of self esteem, lack of judgment, lack of character and lack of
respect for the institution of whatever sport they are playing and the game of
hard competition.
It may also be the Pandora's box of
plenty. Too much money, too soon, too young and not enough experience in the
hard, but honorable choices of life.
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