Government and Sports
This is a little off the typical issues that are discussed here. Forgive me if I shouldn’t bring the issue up, it is just that I have tried to post my thoughts else where (espn—yahoo sports) to no avail.
But does any find it annoying that some in our gov’t spend time messing with the sports issue of today.
Marion Jones is sentenced to prison because she took steroids? How does that work? I know that she lied under oath…but come on…she gets PRISON. How many drunks go home and beat their women and spend a night in jail then they do it again (pick any other crime).
What is the connection between MLB and our gov’t? Why should/would our gov’t even think about getting involved in BASEBALL. Isn’t there bigger issues to work on (education, war, immigrant issues, taxes). Why would we want this to happen?
What business is it of the gov’ts to get involved in the steroid issues? MLB can fine players or punish them…but JAIL TIME…whatever.
I have been thinking about this for a long time and the most recent issue (Sen. Arlen Specter wanting to attack the NFL because of ‘Spygate’) really made my water bubble. Before Spygate, nobody would had known Senator Arlen Specter…I think he is just trying to make a name for himself.
Am I the only one who thinks like this or do these things bother you too?
Casey
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Comments
Casey - good point. I don’t think we think about these little issues. I mean - I watch it or read about it in the news but - I never stop to think -
What is the connection between MLB and our gov’t? Why should/would our gov’t even think about getting involved in BASEBALL. Isn’t there bigger issues to work on (education, war, immigrant issues, taxes). Why would we want this to happen?
You make a good point. the MLB should take care of this business… not government. The same for Marion Jones.
I’ll ask a few people at work tomorrow…
David,
I am not a lawyer, so feel free to point out something if I am messing the point.
“Isn’t major league sports subject to anti-trust laws?”
My answer is 100% yes…
But…
Anti-Trust Laws (as for what I have found) are not connected with steroids. Anti-Trust Laws focus on Monopoly issues, Merger Issues, Fixed Pricing, Market Power, Collusion, Bidding fairness, and the Misuse of Patents and Copyrights.
I do not see how Steroids or spygate has anything to do with Anti-Trust Laws.
casey
I am not sure if the anti-trust argument will work here. However, the use of steroids in baseball is nonetheless an injustice, and one that baseball (the commissioner, management, owners, coaches, players, and fans) has proven, time and time again, to want to ignore by sticking its head in the sand. The government is trying to do what baseball could not (or would not) do. I applaud the idea of the Mitchell Report (although it is probably not going to do that much good in ridding baseball of steroids), and I also applaud the senators who see something seriously wrong with cheating in professional sports.
We elect our congressmen to represent our voice in the public arena. The steroid era is a travesty in the history of baseball. Claiming the government has no business in dealing with the cheating in professional baseball is like arguing the government had no business in investigating the quiz show scandals in the 1950s.
Are there more important things than baseball? Absolutely. But where there is an injustice that the government is actually trying to remedy, well, I most support that.
Daivd,
After researching more into your question…MLB is exempt from the anti-trust laws (MLB has been since 1922).
But Anti-Trust laws that I have seen, only effect the relocating of a team…which has nothing to do with the steroids issue.
casey
Travis,
Thanks for your input. I really admire your comment and I believe there is much wisdom in what you are saying.
I guess I have a question for you that I am still wrestling with. You call these things an injustice…how so?
How is steroids an injustice? They are not ill-legal (meaning–the gov’t doesn’t consider them a drug like pot, crack, or white powder).
Steroids, even so it is stupid for one to use, is not gov’t sanctioned illegal. It is like smoking in a business that does not allow smoking. Smoking is dumb…and businesses can allow or not allow smoking…and can set punishments…but I don’t see how the gov’t can.
Many of the players that did steroids did them before the MLB came out and made a N0-Policy act for steroids. They can’t be held liable for something they did in the past that wasn’t rule until the present.
If the gov’t should oversee the steroid issue in MLB (NBA-NFL-Track and Field) shouldn’t they also oversee steroids in Wrestling (ECW-WWE)?
Since 2000, I think a total of 8 deaths have occurred in WWE because of steroids. How is the gov’t working on these cases?
Travis, I want to amen your comments about supporting the Gov’t in overseeing injustice (and I want to do that too). I just wrestle with the issue of steroids…how is that really an injustice?
Casey
Travis,
I’d argue that it has no business in regulating or overseeing neither the quiz shows nor anything in current sports. Fix some real injustice for a change.
Honzo,
I think by a “real injustice” you mean an injustice you find paramount to what has happened in baseball. I do realize that the steroid use in baseball is not going to strike in moral chords in the hearts of non-baseball fans, and I also realize that what I am saying is going to fall on deaf ears here at masstheology. Nevertheless, I love the game of baseball. I love everything about it, from the smell of the grass to arguing why the on-base+slugging percentage statistic is infintely more discriptive of a player’s hitting than batting average.
America needs baseball. As James Earl Jones so eloquently said in “Field of Dreams”:
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.”
Casey,
Thank you for your comments, they are very appreciated. I think that steriod use is an injustice because the use of steriods is predicated on lies. Here are amazing atheletes, ones that we praise for achieving some form of human excellence. And this excellence is a good thing, whether it be found in the jump shot of Jordan, the swing of Ted Williams, or the forehand of Roger Federer. In this way sports is an aestetic event, for it excubes poetry and beauty. (For example, during the Superbowl, the play of the game was made when Eli Manning miraculously excaped an invenitable sack, only to through to ball to David Tyree who made one of the best cathces I have ever seen in football. I knew, watching that play, that what I had seen was sublime. I even had to leave the room in disbelief.)
So, when a player cheats and uses steroids, his excellence is not a real excellence, but simply a superficial mockery of what is good in sports. It is insulting that Barry Bonds holds the home run record. It insults in intelligence of the fans and the integrity of the game. Steriods is wrong much in the same way plagerism is wrong. It takes something that is fake, and decieves others into thinking that it is real and good.
The only way I can personally justify government involvement with sports in the matters of drugs and enhancements comes down to the sheer influence athletes possess. The way they act, the things they drink, the clothes they wear…kids imitate that nigh religiously. “With great power comes great responsibility”…and the influence athletes possess is incredibly powerful.
That being the case, I still have personal qualms with such government involvement…it’s definitely overreaching the purpose of government IMO, especially when one takes that whole “Constitution” thing into account. It seems that the Constitution lost it’s canonical status in American civil religion quite some time ago.
I think the anti-trust exemptions have a lot to do with why the government is entitled to nose in on these leagues. These sports basically have government permission to be a giant monopoly, and reap the benefits thereof. If the leagues are not adequately policing themselves (I’m looking at you MLB), then they are abusing the trust (oooo, double entendre) that the government has put in them. What good would it do to revoke anti-trust exemptions after all these years? I’m not sure but I don’t think it would make much of a difference given the enormous success of the leagues. The only other option is government intervention, for good or bad.
Travis,
I get that you love the game of baseball and hate what has happened in the sport. I am not suggesting that there be no remedy to the situation, only that I find no warrant for government action. By “real injustice” I mean an injustice worthy of government action and suggest that there are much more pressing matters than drug use by athletes that warrant our governments’ time and money. But, I guess it concerns that which is is most sacred in America - entertainment.
Honzo,
I believe that your last line of your post epitomizes the problem with your view of the government’s involvement in the steriod use in baseball: over simplification. Baseball (and I speak of baseball only) is not merely a form of entertainment, at least to millions and millions of people. It is just a game, but it is still more than a game. Its transcendent. Why? Tradition, history, culture, relevancy, etc. I am not here to really offer an apologetic for the greatnesss of baseball though. I just think that trivializing that which is not trivial is just not really fair. It’s easy to circumvent the issue by putting baseball in the simple category of entertainment, thereby taking some of the superficialities of American culture (which I agree, are very much present) and calling something that it is not. Baseball is not superficial. Walt Whitman was wise enough call baseball during its early years as the “hurrah game of the Republic.”
(Caveat: Baseball is as of now and in my opinion in a different category as a sport with respect to other sports. This is not to say that baseball is more popular than other sports, for the NFL and Nascar outsell baseball events easily. Perhaps the football and basketball will some day reach this mythological level that baseball has.)
Travis,
Even if baseball has achieved this mythical status in the lives of a large segment of the population, you still need to argue for more - namely why the government should have the power and more importantly, the prerogative regulate / punish on this issue.
Let’s assume that Christianity has reached this same level of mythological status and that people were perverting what many thought were the proper doctrines and practices. Should the government step in and regulate Christian practice and belief? I’d say the answer is no just as it should be with baseball.
So, the point in favor of this is that the government needs to preserve the civil religion of the state? The integrity of the Imperial Cult is in question, and federal involvement has become necessary? With that established, I suppose the real question here is: Why should we (as Christians) care about the state religion and it’s myths?
“Then I heard a voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues’”
i agree. but i think it just goes to show how completely our society has bought into the cult of personality.
imagine how good education could be if educators made even half the MLB league minimum (which i believe is $300,000).