The search for integrity (True American Sporting Heroes) - Guardian

[corksean]

Sports hacks in the US are crying out for the i-word, says Steven Wells. They should look no further than the athletes who are brave enough to take on the American military.

Californian high school athlete Efrain Marrero confessed to his mother that he was taking steroids. Three and a half weeks later he shot himself in the head.

News of Efrain's suicide coincided with the start of a Congressional hearing into steroid use by professional baseball players. This followed the ignoble and widely broadcast spectacle of San Francisco Giants left-fielder Barry Bonds stubbornly refusing to answer questions about his own alleged steroid usage.

Baseball is once again in a tizz about anabolic steroids. As is athletics. And high-school football. Legless and savagely wizened ex-boxers are wheeled in front of terrified schoolkids and sagely nodding politicians as living examples of why gym-juice is a no-no.

Meanwhile the NHL ice hockey league has suspended its season as the result of a management lockout over money. And after an NBA game degenerated into full-on fist-fight between players and spectators (and a college coach was suspended for sending in a "goon" who broke another player's arm), basketball isn't exactly regarded as a bastion of Corinthian values either.

It's all about integrity. Apparently. Every sports hack in North America (and there are an awful lot of them) has written about the crisis facing baseball. Or hockey. Or basketball. Or football. Or sports in general. And every single one of them has reached for the i-word. The consensus being that there's not a lot of the stuff around.

Which is odd. Because in the last few years - ever since George Bush Jr, started rattling his sabre at Iraq - there have been some sterling examples of integrity in US sports.

Continued at http://sport.guardian.co.uk/americansports/comment/0,10160,1437274,00.html

[MikeG]

1. Go have another pint.

[pretzel4gore]

2. right!

oddly enough, it seems that except for a brazen few bushbot types, people actually respect guys like carlos delgato, who simply refuses to let the 'stupidest war ever' hide behind flag or anthem regardless of how beloved the flag/anthem might be...the 'war' trumps normality, and thank god for guys like delgato and the others mentioned in this piece, for pointing it out...
and it is so true! There is no lack of integrity in sports, but that's not really what hack sportsmen/women writers/pundits care about....