There are certainly a lot of possible answers. Maybe it’s one’s past history, color of skin, personality or the way that they treat the media that writes about them. No matter what the reason, one thing is blatantly obvious in sports: double standards.
Seeing as the Major League baseball season and Barry Bonds pursuit of Hank Aaron’s hallowed homerun record just got under way, it seems appropriate to look into the way that people’s opinions on athletes and public figures seem to be based on who the person is and not the actions that the person is criticized for.
As many people are well aware, there is a great deal of controversy surrounding Bonds’ pursuit of the career homerun record, which he currently sits just 22 dingers short of. Many people are angered or, better yet, outraged at the fact that someone who may have allegedly taken steroids may become the holder of baseball’s most acclaimed record.
Though the evidence could lead someone to believe that Bonds had taken steroids, it seems to me that people are more angered about Bonds breaking the record because they dislike his personality and the way he presents himself rather than the fact that he may have massaged some HGH onto his biceps.
If people were so concerned with someone who may have taken steroids being at the top of a sport, then why does Jason Giambi still have his 2000 AL MVP award sitting on his shelf?
Giambi, unlike Bonds, admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs throughout his most productive seasons with the Oakland Athletics, including his MVP campaign in 2000. Now with the Yankees, not only has everyone seemed to forget about Giambi’s drug issues, but people are praising him for how he has bounced back from ‘adversity.’
With the obvious double standard on the way the media and the country have accepted Bonds and Giambi, there is still the question of ‘why?’.
It can become easier to figure this out when you can compare people of two totally different sports that appeal to people of completely different economic backgrounds.
In sports such as basketball, football and even baseball, many players from lower-income backgrounds have been widely scrutinized for staying with their friends that they grew up with.
For a Denver-related athlete, one can look at Nuggets all-star Allen Iverson, who throughout his career has had numerous troubles with the law.
In most of the cases for Iverson, he was an accomplice in an alleged crime that people traced to friends of his. After these incidents, the media berates Iverson for keeping his ‘troublesome’ friends with him and saying that he should break away and live a ‘quieter life.’
Now, this would seem to be good advice to most. But, how come when an athlete in another sport hires a former friend that happened to have just been released from a ten-year prison sentence, people suddenly talk about how great it is that he gave him another chance.
This example that I am talking about is PGA Tour veteran Mark Calcavecchia, who a month ago won a tournament with his longtime friend and longtime state penitentiary inmate caddying for him. Calcavecchia was praised for the way he gave his friend, who had been serving a ten-year sentence for dealing cocaine, a second chance in life.
Caddies on the PGA Tour generally make about 10 percent of their players earnings. So, that means that Calcavecchia’s caddy would have made nearly $100,000 in a weekend of work.
How do you think people would react if it was read that Iverson paid an ex-con friend 100K to be his trainer? My guess: not so well.
So why is it OK, for Giambi to have admittedly taken ‘roids, when people want Bonds’ head just because of allegations? Why is it fine for a white golfer to employ a coke-dealing ex-con when people want to suspend other athletes for just being friends with people that have criminal histories?
The answer could be race. It could be their past history, or maybe even the athlete’s personality in dealing with the media. What ever it is, it is apparent that these double standards certainly exist.
