The Harder They Fall
Aug 29th, 2012 by Kimberly
Sometimes, my birthday causes me anxiety. Usually in the years that bring round numbers. Once in a while, just because. This year, however, I was actually looking forward to it. Several friends had promised to take me out for dinner on Sunday and my best friend had booked Monday, the bona fide b-day, for a treatment at some place called Happy Feet. Yes, I was convinced it would be a good couple of days.
Perhaps that was my mistake.
My birthday fell on Monday of last week. The cold hit the previous Friday afternoon. I made it to my birthday dinner Sunday night with the help of two ibuprofen and a decongestant. My actual birthday was spent at home in front of the TV with a dinner hand-microwaved by the chefs at my neighborhood drive-thru. Woohoo.
Melky Cabrera in happier days
A few days beforehand, Melky Cabrera tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and received a fifty-game suspension from my beloved San Francisco Giants. Three days after I hit the big 4-3, Lance Armstrong gave up the battle against the US Anti-Doping Agency, the group insisting that he achieved his seven Tour de France cycling wins by using a blood-boosting hormone.
It’s also been unusually hot and humid here in sunny L.A., and I don’t have air conditioning. At least this month is almost over. For no good reason, I hold out hope that things will look up in September.
No, I don’t believe that all these things relate to my birthday. (Not that I haven’t tried thinking it, but I can find no causal relationship, no matter how far I extrapolate the data…and I’ve taken it out about as far as Jupiter.) Once in a while bad things just happen, and this month several of them decided to happen in succession.
Mr. Cabrera got caught in a routine screening and immediately confessed. It made me sad, because I love the Giants, and this year’s baseball season has seen his career and his stats take off. Now we know why. The day I heard, I groused loud and long about egos getting in the way of the game. “These guys are so used to being the best player in the room, they’ve gotten spoiled. Someone is always going to come along who’s better.” I can’t remember everything exactly, but I think I added something about the rest of us having to learn this lesson in elementary school, when we got picked last for the team. (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.) My friend Aundria shook her head. The sad thing, she told me, was that most of them probably had all the skills they needed to compete without the drugs. It was just their own hyper-competitiveness that made them reach for anything they thought would give them an edge. The benefit of it was probably more psychological than physical. She should know – she was married to an athlete. (They’re still married, but he left professional sports and became a pastor. He didn’t have any doping scandals that I know of. They might have steroids in the house now, to treat Aundria’s asthma, but I don’t think that counts. Just to be on the safe side, though, don’t tell anybody.) My mind spiraled off in thought about what makes people need victory and fame so desperately that they will cheat to get it, even though there are so many screenings set up now they will probably get caught, sooner or later.
Lance Armstrong, who will probably continue to live strong
Then, while sniffling my way through my birthday week, I heard about Lance Armstrong’s announcement. This episode of Drug Busters had a different spin. The news came out he would stop fighting the charges, and that according to the US records, Greg LeMond is now the only American to have won the Tour de France. But he never admitted to use of any chemical enhancements. In fact, he still vehemently denies it. (This link is from ESPN. You can find lots of others with a quick Google search.) Rumors of doping have plagued Mr. Armstrong since 1999. He’s fought them tenaciously for thirteen years but finally decided that enough was enough, and said he wouldn’t fight anymore. The USADA treats this as an admission of guilt. Technically, it isn’t, but it’s hard to stop people from making the assumption. Another ESPN article, with opinions from ten different sports writers, gives interesting insight into the case. Most of them seem to think he did take something, at some point, based on an everyone’s-doing-it-so-he-couldn’t-have-won-without-it sort of logic. Worthy of note, however, is a point in Shaun Assael’s contribution to the piece:
The folks at the USADA are doing a victory lap right now. But this case is a mixed bag for them. I’ve covered the agency since it was created a decade ago and watched it play an important role in the BALCO case by stripping athletes after they got convicted by federal prosecutors.
But this case is fundamentally — and troublingly — different: Here, the USADA leapt into action after the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles refused to bring charges.
Mr. Armstrong has not called me to make any personal confessions, so I will leave the point of his guilt or innocence to others. What strikes me, though, is the possibility that the USADA might be shooting itself in the foot here. Ponder this for a moment: if you’re a professional athlete, and you see someone pursued for doping charges for thirteen years, could you start to wonder if you might as well cheat?
My officemates waffled on Mr. Armstrong. Some thought he hadn’t cheated, and was the victim of a vendetta. (For good cause or no, someone certainly seemed to have it in for the guy.) Some thought he had, but didn’t think it was worth thirteen years of bother. (As one put it, “The next thirty guys were cheating, too. Who are they going to give it to, the thirty-first to cross the finish line?”) The media questions whether the Livestrong charity will survive. I’m guessing it will. Overall, the feeling seemed to be that whatever the truth, Mr. Armstrong has done enough good with his fame to outweigh any bad he did to get there.
Why do we screen for performance-enhancing drugs? At the end of the day, it’s about the message they send. Not the message of fairness – we permit lots of unfairness in sports. If Lance Armstrong’s crew came up with a lighter, faster bike for him to ride, or shoes that gripped the pedals better, or a more streamlined bike helmet, no one would complain, as long as the item was on the market for general sale. Never mind the astronomical pricetag. If you couldn’t afford it, that would be your bad luck. (One thing you can say for steroids – everyone seems to have equal access. Sigh.)
No, the real issue here is health. Steroids and their brethren take a toll on the human body. “Sacrifice your body for wealth and fame” is not a message we want to pass to high school and college athletes. This does seem to send an equally depressing message, though: do something remarkable in sports, and we will all assume you had chemical help, no matter what you or your blood tests for the next thirteen years say.
We as a society enjoy putting people on pedestals, and much like Lucy and her football, we enjoy pulling them away at crucial moments. We would probably be better off remembering that everyone, no matter what the social status, is only human, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
For now, I’m going to give myself a break from sports for a couple of days – at least until September. Meanwhile, I am going to regain my birthday buzz by nagging my friend to reschedule the foot massage appointment. Athletes may disappoint, but Happy Feet is the closest thing there is to guaranteed bliss.
Kimberly has found the solution, as always, in feline behavior. Cats will let you down at some point, usually by throwing up at inopportune moments, but they won’t care what you think about it.
‘Some people say’ (Fox News journalism at its best) that the Olympics are talking about banning the KT-tape all of the athletes were ‘sporting’ this year. Why? Because it enhances their performances by eliminating pain and/or protecting from injury. It looks like we’re all waiting for that one superstar who is better than everyone else directly from the womb.
We can’t be sure why people make the decisions they do, and much of the time our many “idols” are criticized unduly. I’m never a fan of poking around some celebrity’s personal life; I don’t care to read about who they’re with, where they were seen, or about their DUI’s — even the use of drugs for that matter. But most of these idols are actors or musicians. For them (or CEO’s or Wall Street mucky-mucks for that matter) to do drugs only stands to diminish their ability to maintain their success. The reverse is true in these sports cases, which I think does give the public and the government reason to poke around. I’m not a sports fan, but I have respected Lance Armstrong for all he’s lived through. I guess I have to give him benefit of the doubt on this one. Plus, there comes a point at which anyone would say, “Enough is enough. I know the truth, but you can’t let this go. Believe what you wish.” Let’s hope that’s the Lance we have come to know and respect. Well-written, as always, birthday girl!
So, I’m starting a betting pool… how long until they go after Greg LeMond? After all, he IS now the only American to win a Tour De France, he MUST have had help.
The Lance thing made me sad, too, Kim. The point about the top thirty or forty guys all doping , too and so now, who’s the winner is a fair one. I think all sports should be putting more effort into better testing and enforcement for the future, rather than trying rewrite the past even as the present is allowed to perpetuate the problem.
Hope you get to Happy Feet soon, sounds awesome. I mean, it’s in the name.
Thanks, all, and thanks for the birthday wishes! Much like all the drug testers wish they could do, I am insisting on a do-over.
Professional sports are beyond sane competitive. Just look at the money one can earn being the best of the best. Even 2nd or 3rd best of the best. That is enough incentive for many to try and get away with something. Nothing has been proven about Mr. Armstrong just that he is fed up with fighting the same fight and proving he did nothing wrong over and over. When there is proof then I will condemn him for cheating. I will still laud him for all the good he and his foundation have done. Nothing could take that away unless it is proven that all the people he helped were just a bunch of friends of his and it was a way to give them money. Would that even be so bad? Seriously, he has done a great deal of good and given many hope that did not have it before he created his foundation with the mission to help.
I do not believe the argument everyone else is doing to be a valid rationale. There are rules against it and not everyone is doing it. Not even ALL the top guys are doing it. There are some and the screening has become ubiquitous as well as statistical analysis of performance to predict when and if someone or a group is doing something out of the ordinary. It may or may not be related to drugs but a new training technique. One is allowed the other is not.
Life is not fair but we can make it fair in our daily lives in the way we approach life an the people we interact with everyday.
There needs to be a fundamental change in the way drugs are screened and prosecuted in sports. Let’s assume for a moment that Lance gets convicted at some point in the near future, and nobody doubts it anymore. He’s got fame, probably plenty of money, and is a household name. He got the ecstasy of winning that all sports addicts seek. Taking away his trophies “on paper” accomplishes nothing. Even the USADA is not coming out of this looking like a peach. They look like maniacs who chased a ghost for over a decade and have nothing worthwhile to show for it. It won’t even be a blip on the radar that might make high school and college kids reconsider their actions.
Now Melky Cabrera’s case, on the other hand, is perfect. He did something stupid, he was caught, he is being punished. We’ve got to reach a point where if the case can’t be this cut and dry, it needs to be dropped. Let future generations put up the asterisks if they must, but the constant hounding without progress, year after year, has got to stop. Even if they’re guilty.
I think the cold has made you a tad maudlin, m’dear. (Is it better, I hope?) One should never let the actions of sports heros affect one’s life. This said by someone who is trying really hard to reconcile in her own mind the exorbitant amount of money her team has spent on potentially has-been athletes who don’t seem to be living up to their hype while the heart and soul of her team seems to want to beat himself all to hell to try winning. *sigh*
Cheer up. The cold shall (has) pass, Mr. Armstrong is still pretty damn popular with a slew of people who still believe in him and the Giants are probably going to win the division without the Milkman. Mr. Cain, Mr. Posey, Mr. Sandoval and Mr. Pagan seem determined to make it so.
I’ll blame the cold. (Almost gone, just the occasional annoying cough and sniffle.) And yes, taking any of this seriously is a mistake.
I agree with Geoff’s take – prosecute the ones you can prove now. Let the old stuff go. Sports is a very “what have you done for me lately” world anyway.