What’s Going on Here?!

Posted by Andrew_Cox

Written by: Howard Cox

Okay, let’s check today’s blotter. The sports scene has been more than a little tense lately, sort of like the best episodes of the old Hill Street Blues, crammed with felonius assaults, sexual assaults, murderous assaults, indignities and incivilities without number, visited not by the designated dregs of society, but by icons of our sports culture.

To recap: we have the murder of the pregnant girl friend of pro footballer Rae Carruth; the suspicion of another pro, Ray Lewis, in two murders; the clubbing of a pro hockey player which resulted in a fracture of the clubee’s skull; rape charges involving a 17-year old levied against Green Bay Packer Mark Chmura; multiple charges of physical assault, one documented on video tape, levied against Indiana University basketball coach, Bobby Knight, plus assorted deaths in auto accidents, some of which, predictably, involved liquor and/or drugs; all of which, not surprisingly, involved immature, bordering on juvenile, judgment.

What’s going on here?
Well, nothing really new, to begin with. What we have is a sports culture cresting atop an exponential growth fueled by the demand for programming, or content, as it is now known, by the broadcast and cable television industry. The mushrooming explosion of sports on TV has resulted in untold riches to the deliverers, as they are now called, and to the owners, who feed their outsize egos by showcasing a sports team as the jewel of their conglomerate holdings. And because there are more jobs than there are players who can adequately fill them, player salaries run very high. More than high salaries, players are often coveted at early ages, some say just past puberty, and rules are ignored or waived.

And when athletes live outside the rules, there should be little wonder when social aberrations occur.

It has been ever thus, which, to some, may come as news. To wit: the mysterious disappearance of Ed Delahanty, a baseball legend in his time, from a train crossing the Niagra River just above the Falls, one night in 1897; the admission of murder, even the boasting of it, by Ty Cobb, a baseball icon in the first quarter of the last century; the connection of Roaring 20’s heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey’s name to a murder in a Colorado gold field; the infamous Black Sox Scandal following the 1919 World Series; and the total lack of social inhibitions by the man credited with saving baseball in the aftermath of the Black Sox fiasco, the one and only Babe Ruth. Babe’s off the field didoes were treated with awe, just like his amazing home runs. The social disease Ruth contracted was treated with silence. Because of the temper of the time, Bill Tilden, the great international tennis champion, kept his sexual preferences in the closet.
The reality is that, starting with ancient Greek Oympians, through young David, who, although badly outweighed, showed a pretty good arm and pinpoint control, to the gladiators who are depicted in the current movie, athletes have always be given special treatment. The same public that pays dearly to see athletes in action on the field, usually gives them a free pass for their actions off it.

This piece started with a reference to an old TV show, Hill Street Blues. It’ll end with a quote from one of its best characters, Sgt. Phil Esterhaus. Phil always ended his briefings with, “Oh, yeah. Remember: let’s be careful out there!” Good advice for cops. For athletes, too.