Sick of sports scandals
by Kristen Merrill

I don’t know about you all but as a sports fan, I am sick to death of hearing about professional athletes being caught up in scandals. Stripper scandals, money scandals, performance-enhancing drug scandals, the list goes on and on. Seems you can’t turn on ESPN or Fox Sports these days without hearing about who’s divorcing whom and how much money they’re demanding or who took some banned substances and for how long.

Along the way, there have been countless names dropped in relation to performance enhancers, steroids or HGH. Including some big ones. First it was Barry Bonds, which surprised only people living in sparsely populated parts of Antarctica with poor TV reception. Then it was Alex Rodriguez, which surprised a sight more people because of A-Rod’s assumed ascension to the home run throne. So much for a clean home run king.

Most recently, former Red Sox left fielder and current Dodger Manny Ramirez has been indicted in the court of public opinion for his use of banned substances. Sure, it’s not steroids or HGH but once the public gets so burned out on these matters, you’re splitting hairs in making that distinction. Additionally, Manny’s admission is more surprising because, frankly, we all figured he was barely aware where he was on any given day, let alone that there was something he could do to improve his performance that didn’t involve “male enhancement” and side-by-side outdoor bathtubs.

Every day it’s something new. And I, for one, am sick of it. Which is sort of a problem, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we care about these things as more than sideshows? Shouldn’t we respond to them in a distinct manner? As it is, we’re so inundated with this kind of news that we react to revelations that big-name sluggers are on the juice in the same way we do when we hear of a murder in some faraway town. “Hmmm, that sucks. That’s too bad.”

We’ve become very, very jaded. So much so that it takes something major to shake us out of our complacency. Why did this happen? We surely don’t care about sports or athletes any less. If anything, our 24-hour ESPNews coverage has us caring about these things more. After all, how can you claim a society is disinterested in sports if we can find out what Michael Phelps had for breakfast today? (And we breathlessly report our findings to anyone who will listen?)

And perhaps it’s because of this constant saturation that I shrug off these revelations and flip the channel to see Bret Michaels embarrassing himself and the good name of power ballads in the guise of winning the affection of some siliconed Barbie Doll. When we’re bombarded with BREAKING NEWS alerts every day, it becomes harder and harder to view each one with the appropriate amount of import.

So that leaves us with the question of the media, particularly the sports media, and its responsibility to the fans of athletes and professional sports. The nature of sports journalism has changed over the decades as has the nature of celebrity. That’s not a coincidence. Where once beat writers never committed to print tales of Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth’s alcoholism and womanizing - now the likes of Ed Werder and Selena Roberts can’t wait to share the latest scandal in Cowboys camp or A-Rod’s dalliances with a Toronto stripper. Where once reporters waxed poetic upon Mantle’s home run chase and Joe DiMaggio’s way with sick children, now the back page of the New York Post proudly splashes photos of an Olympian with a bong, gleefully claiming “The competition isn't the ONLY thing he’s been smoking!”

We live in strange times, people. Strange times indeed. The constant access to and desire for sports news has left the media with nothing to do other than turn negative on these athletes and report everything from their drink preferences to their car choices. We’re bombarded with the mundane and trivial. That’s not to say that news of drug abuse or banned substance use isn’t worthwhile. It affects the integrity of the game. We, as fans, should care about that. But that message tends to get lost among the Senate hearings and blog-friendly refrains of “bleeding through his designer pants” and “butt abscess.” We’re caught up in the sensationalism of it all to the detriment of the meat of the issue: namely, that our favorite athletes are degrading the sports we know and love. The sports they purport to love. Why do we stand for it?

Perhaps we need to demand more, not only from our athletes but also from the media that covers them. I am just as guilty as the next sportswriter of focusing on the trivial instead of the heart of the matter. And I admit: personally, I would much rather read some nonsense about the miniature Green Monster that Manny Ramirez commissioned for his son’s room than the how he took a banned substance and now his historic years in Boston are under suspicion. But I want to read about that because it’s the only thing to read about, not because the media is covering something up.

The solution, I think, is just to try harder. The media needs to try harder to give the proper weight to the stories that matter. And the athletes need to try harder to remember that they are role models. They have a greater level of accountability and responsibility than they perhaps bargained for. That’s the baggage that comes with all the zeroes at the end of those paychecks.

Kristen Merrill is a 2002 graduate of Emerson College. She lives in Brighton with resident feline Rocky Dave Roberts Markakat and several dust bunnies. Kristen is a freelance writer whose column appears every Friday at NESN.com (www2.nesn.com/author/kristenlm/). She also runs the popular sports blog “Basegirl” (www.basegirl.blogspot.com). She’s a sucker for Boston sports teams, straight tequila, and power ballads. Particularly Journey.