Baseball. I sucked at it as a kid, left it for soccer, which quickly left me isolated from the rest of Americana-loving peers (though I think I feel worse for my father, given soccer’s lack of popularity at the time, having to tell his friends his son played soccer had to be right up there with saying something like “The dolls and dresses are just a phase…”). But lest this turn into the rant of an outcast right off the bat, I moved on, and baseball and I came to terms.
Then the whole baseball-doping thing hit. I’m ashamed to say, I was psyched. After everyone maligned cycling for being the dope-ridden sport, those same people were going to have deal with the pain of knowing their own sports heroes were as tainted as mine. Their heroes were to be dragged across muck-covered headlines, abused by the masses and media and discharged into ignominy.. In my head it was going to be Festina for baseball, and I was ready for it.
But it flopped. There was some outrage, a headline here, a Congressional (!) hearing there, a catchy poster slogan or two and…yawn…more baseball? Baseball didn’t stop, money didn’t disappear, fans didn’t turn away in disgust. ‘How the hell did that happen,’ crossed my mind but then another cycling doping fiasco appeared, and thoughts of baseball quickly dissipated.
Then, more recently some New England notables – Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Ortiz – had their own little doping issues, and instead of disgust, once again folks were calm – fans were even excited for Ramirez to return after his 50 game suspension. Without any cycling/doping outrage (maybe a Spanish second-tier rider getting popped for CERA or something equally meaningless), I pondered over the difference. What makes Ramirez or Ortiz ‘roiding up to Thing-like proportions to win a World Series o.k. but Landis placing a testosterone patch on his nethers for Tour win disgraceful (location? Needle in butt, ok; patch on your grundle, no no?)?
After quite a bit of bickering, beer-swilling, shouting and even a book or two, I have settled on a conclusion: We, the American cycling public, are too well off for the good of the sport. As an odd number of recently published or resurfaced articles have pointed out, American cycling is a bourgeois sport, which provides the means for riders like Tom Danielson to go to Europe and discover amazing new illnesses which slow him even further..
It also means that cyclists in America tend to view cycling as a leisure sport for themselves – something to keep themselves from getting fat without all the extra strain of running. Hell, I’ll venture (sure ain’t gonna prove) that the vast majority of the middle class views sports in general as a nicety, a hobby, a something-to-do-after-work-to-avoid-my-life-wife-whatever. Whatever they see it as, one thing I very doubt they think of with sports is a way out. After all, unless you’re an angsty teen middle class life in America isn’t a bad deal. We (relatively correctly) don’t view cycling as a money sport, so when we hear of Mr. Dopey Italiano sticking needles in his ass to finish 50th in an un-televised semi-Classic, its offensive and absurd – why dope and stain what to us is a ‘beautiful spectacle’?
It’s American cycling fans’ own beliefs in the sanctity of the sport that leads to its media crucifixion. Perhaps it’s our own money, perhaps it’s that so many believe in St. Armstrong, immaculate Tours, or something else that I’m missing, but the overdone outrage that is directed at dopers in cycling lets the media circle and focus on all the wrong things. I say we take a page from the baseball fans. Doping is here. Punish it where we find it, but let it go once we do. This is not a perfect sport, and it won’t be while others depend on it for their livelihoods, to expect such purity will only lead to further dismay and disgust.
