Baseball and Steroids
Brooks Kirchheimer
Clarion sports editor
The worst of the three has to be Major League Baseball. Not only have more players been suspected to have taken steroids this season, but it is a cheating scandal that has been ongoing for the last few years. A scandal that has definitely changed the sport and made many people wonder if their hero is cheating. It has gone from America’s pastime to America’s drug time. With not only professional athlete’s taking the performance enhancing drugs, but also many high school and college athlete’s.
The main reason this is the worst of the three sports, is because the man who now owns one of baseball’s most treasured records is linked to steroids. You all know Barry Bond’s and most around the sport hate him and as well they should.
He is at the forefront of this scandal. He just surpassed Hank Aaron to become the all-time home-run leader in baseball and will always have an asterisk next to his name in the record book.
Sure he probably didn’t have steroids in his body for every homerun, but definitely for many of them and cheating is cheating.
The cheating and steroid use in baseball is so bad they had to hire a former U. S. Sen. George Mitchell to lead the investigation. An investigation that includes not just one person or team like in the NBA and NFL. The MLB problem includes numerous athletes from the unknown minor league player to the super star. It is a cheating scandal that will be ongoing for many years to come and from now on will always be a question surfacing in the sport.
Basketball and Betting
Bryce Evans
Clarion editor-in-chief
blem in baseball. The idea that “America’s past time” has been tainted by rub-on cream and pill-popping is bad enough to make even Pete Rose embarrassed.
However, unfortunately for everyone who follows sports, this is not even close to the worst cheating scandal this past year.
NBA official Tim Donaghy bet on games that he refereed. I repeat that: NBA official Tim Donaghy bet on games that he refereed.
At no time in sports has a league’s credibility been challenged more than that of the NBA right now. If it were not for the slew of athletes (i.e. Michael Vick, “Pacman” Jones, Gary Matthews, Jr., etc.) and coaches (i.e. Bill Belichick ) behaving badly this year, people would be talking about the Donaghy case as one of the biggest controversies in the past half-century of sports.
The fact that a person officiating potentially fixed games ruins any credibility of a game that he refereed. Whether it was to allow the team he bet on to cover a spread, or to ensure that a favored team on makes no difference.
If an outcome to a NBA game has been decided before the opening tip, the game is tainted. The game becomes pointless, meaningless and, ultimately, not a competition. The NBA becomes simply a show for entertainment, not for skill and talent.
Fixing a game takes away everything that is good and true about sports. This display of deception not only leaves a league in disarray but leaves us as fans feeling cheated.
