Thursday, December 13, 2007

Haters Beware: Now You Can't Just Look at Barry




Major League Baseball’s Mitchell Report, which blows the roof off steroid use, has as much scandal and intrigue as a novel by Karrine “Superhead” Stephens. For the non-geto fab inclined, Stephens wrote a book called “Confessions of a Video Vixen”, which exposed the dirty little secrets of many entertainers and celebrities with whom she’d “become acquainted”.

Apparently, “Superhead” has been “one-upped” by the Mitchell Report. Rather than the secret and forbidden pleasure being a sexy woman with brown skin, it is a slender syringe with clear fluid. The dirty little secret, otherwise known as steroids, is nothing short of a deal with the Devil, promising fame, riches, power and prominence in the halls of Major League Baseball. No sexual hormones, just human growth hormones. With both hormones being equally seductive.
Barry Bonds was, until today, one of the few individuals proven to have spent time with the mistress. But as I’ve mentioned all along, he wasn’t the only one hanging out in the brothel of performance enhancement. As a former coach, I saw many athletes exhibiting symptoms of “extra juice”: 40 year olds playing as if they were teenagers, former 90 pound weaklings showing up to camp looking like Sylvester Stallone, and guys hitting more homeruns in a season than they’d hit their entire career.

Of course, if you were to ask any of the 50 year old sports writers in America, all of whom were on the war path to paint Barry Bonds as the “unethical little black man” (something they do to at least 3 black athletes every single year), they would attribute the performances of Roger Clements and others as being the product of hard work and commitment. But not Barry Bonds, who was considered by some to be the only cheater in the entire sport, and thus deserved to have his records tainted with an asterisk.

Sorry homeboy, now it’s time to look in the mirror. Your heroes are every bit as fraudulent as the hair piece you wear to Sports Center interviews. Your noble commissioner is every bit as compliant as the Bishop who doesn’t report the horny Priest. All of baseball was guilty during the “Era of the Asterisk”, and your efforts to write off and villify whistle-blower Jose Conseco have been muted forever. Jose might be the only honest person in the entire sport.

Of course there won’t be any deep reflection or remorse on the part of the self-righteous sports writer. He will continue to pass judgment on black athletes and question our character. I recall hearing a disgusting display on Monday Night Football about Michael Vick being a criminal and Reggie Bush needing to be taught hard work by Saints quarterback Drew Brees. I remember Randy Moss and Terrell Owens being treated worse than criminals when the public decided they were not “good boys”. I recall one conversation after another on CNN where I was being asked why black athletes display such poor ethics.

It turns out that when it comes to values and ethics, many black athletes should be teaching the lessons, not taking them. Go ask yourselves about THAT.

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