This past week, Q-line asked: Which current sports debacle do you feel is the most damaging to our favorite pastimes? Here are your responses: “THE MOST DAMAGING OF THE POPUlar sports is football. Some of the players are outright thugs. Next comes baseball, followed by basketball. Ice hockey is the best of the lot so far. Come on boys, clean up your act: Stop disappointing your fans.”
“UPON HIRING, THE CHARACTER OF AN individual is often not taken into consideration when that person has the excellent capability of performing a task that needs to be done. During World War II, mob boss Lucky Luciano was released from jail to run the east coast shipping docks; the reason being that no one could run the docks as well as Lucky. Sports heroes are not hired due to their being a nice person and being of excellent moral character. Football quarterbacks are hired on their ability to run and pass a football. Baseball players are hired on their ability to field and swat a baseball. There is a human side to every person in every walk of life, and no one is perfect. As it was once said, “Ye who have not sinned, throw the first stone.” It is my understanding that no stones were thrown.”
“BARRY BONDS IS THE WORST OF THE three, because he is the one who is escaping any and all punishment. Donaghy and Vick are likely never to appear in their respective leagues again; Barry Bonds is going to the hall of fame and he now holds the most revered record in all of America’s professional sports.”
“ALL THESE SCANDALS ARE RUINING the sports whether it’s crooked referees in basketball or the drugs that Barry Bonds and all these other guys use. One thing they should do is ban all of these steroids; anybody caught using any of this stuff should be permanently banned. But the worst is that basketball player referee because referees are the ones who can change the outcome of the game by making a bad call, and if he’s in for the ganders they’re paying him off and it’s not going to be fair. At least with Barry Bonds everybody knows he’s on drugs.”
“I LIKE THE IDEA OF BARRY BONDS ON steroids. Think what all of us could accomplish with super-human powers like his. Michael Vick, instead of drowning or electrocuting those dogs -— he could have ripped them apart with his bare hands. And Tim Donaghy would have been able to use ESP to know who to bet on. But Barry Bonds is the best: Nothing is more satisfying to the sports donkeys than an athlete who uses his super-enhanced, x-ray vision to hit the ball and cheat the record. Why would any school kid settle for honesty and hard-earned ability?”
“WELL, THIS IS A NO-BRAINER. Obviously, Michael Vick’s transgression was the most egregious. Bonds’ and Donaghy’s were just about money. VIck’s treatment of these innocent animals is appalling. Any person that tortures and kills animals for entertainment is a sadist. He should be locked up in the psychiatric ward and given massive doses of psychoanalysis at the very least. Dreadful man.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 25, 2007. Read the original PDF.