The Insanity of Greg Anderson

For most of us, choosing between testifying at a trial about things most people already know you did, and spending an indefinite amount of time behind bars, would be pretty simple. We'd tesfiy. But Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' disgraced former trainer and alleged provider of steroids, apparently would rather go to jail than testify against Bonds. According to ESPN, Anderson has once again refused to testify about Bonds' alleged steroid use, this time in Bonds' perjury trial that's scheduled to start in March. Mind you, Anderson has already spent a year in jail when he refused to testify in front of a grand jury investigating Bonds for steroid use a couple of years ago.

No one understands why Anderson won't testify: loyalty to Bonds? fear? insanity? Maybe he's afraid that once he testifies, the Feds will charge him with distribution of steroids. But it also seems crazy that the Feds wouldn't have offered Anderson a deal to avoid jailtime in exchange for testifying against the guy that the government really wants: Bonds.

For my money, I'd bet that all the steroids that Anderson dealt, and presumably did himself, have somehow warped his brain, shrinking it along with his cojones to the size of a pea. Or maybe he's just not afraid of prison because the steroids have made him so strong that he'd dominate any prison they threw him into.

It can't be that he's just saving the details for a future book deal, can it? That would be too cynical, too unbelievable...but then again, it'd sell millions.

Oh yeah...Happy New Year

Wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2009. And what a season/year it's shaping up to be for Philadelphia sports fans. The Phillies send the Mets home and win the World Series...and the Eagles are in the NFC championship game after defeating the hated NY Giants. Man, you couldn't write this!

Go Eagles!

Professional Sports and Race

Over the years I’ve had several conversations with different people about the prevalence of black athletes in professional sports. When Jeremy Wariner won the gold medal in Athens in the 400m, we were amazed that "a skinny white guy" could outrun everyone else. After all, a white man hadn't won the 400m sprints in something like 40 years.

I came across this interesting article in Slate magazine relating to this topic and thought I’d share. The guy acknowledges that, as far as entire populations go, black people are slightly more likely than whites and even more likely than Asians to have genes that indicate an abundance of the “fast twitch” muscles that are necessary in most sports. But that slight genetic predisposition does not explain the overwhelming presence of black athletes in, for example, the NBA, where around 80% of the athletes are black. There are other factors at work.

What those other factors might be is a bit beyond the scope of that article, but the question intrigues me. Certainly there’s the idea in poor, mostly minority cultures that the only way out is through sports. Not only will sports give you riches, but it will also give you fame. How could that not be appealing to a kid who goes to a school where there aren’t enough books in the classroom?

People will often look at the prevalence of minority players in professional sports as a sign that America is becoming increasingly colorblind. But the owners are white and the coaches are white. In fact, I’d bet that minorities are underrepresented in every service market related to the sports industry: agents; hospitality; marketing; vendors. We trip over ourselves to say how wonderful it is that we, a mostly white society, give young black players a chance at money and fame on the sports field, but at the same time the whole show is run almost exclusively by whites.

If a poor young black child has moderate football skills and moderate intelligence, what are his parents, coaches, and teachers going to tell him? “Work your ass off to be a better football player, son! It’s the only way that you’ll ever make it to college and then to the big time.”

What about a young white kid in the suburbs with moderate football skills and moderate intelligence? I guarantee you his parents, coaches, and teachers will say “You can keep playing football but you’d better hit the books hard, son! It’s the only way you’ll ever make it to college and onto a good career.”

Which position would you rather be in? If the black kid gets hurt or just isn’t good enough, what options does he have left? He’s neglected his education and probably can’t afford to go to college without a football scholarship. But if the white kid turns out to be terrible at football, he still might get into an Ivy League school and at the very least he’s got a solid educational background and can probably afford a decent local college.

In the end, who’s going to work harder to be a professional sports player? The young black kid, who has no other options; or the young white kid, who if he’s not quite good enough at football, can always just go to college anyway.

We’ve got to find a way to make the system work better.

Old Nike Commerical with Stephen Jackson and Shawn Merriman

This is one of my most favorite commercials of all time:

Philadelphia Fans

I know that there are those out there who will maintain until the last bit of earth is dropped on their coffins that there is nothing greater than being a sports fan in Philadelphia. They will point to Philly fans’ passion and our ever-willing enthusiasm to support perennial losers.

Philadelphia, they will say, is one of the few four-sport cities (Phillies, Eagles, Sixers, Flyers), and over the course of time each of those teams has had at least a moderate run of success. The Phillies won the World Series back in 1983, at the same time that the Sixers were winning championships. The Flyers won championships back in the 1970s, and the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl in 1980. You’ll notice that all of these dates are prior to my birth.

And if historical success is your guide, then Philadelphia’s 14 major championships don’t seem like such a bad tally. But then you look at the rest of the list, and you see that LA has 16, Boston 31, Toronto 37, New York 51. Are you kidding me? Freakin’ Toronto? http://www.nuttyaboutsports.com/cities-of-champions.shtml

Boston’s 31 championships seem particularly aggravating, coming as they do from a city whose population of 599,391 is less than half of Philadelphia’s 1.4 million. What does Boston have that Philadelphia doesn’t? Both are historic cities, and both played significant parts in the Revolution. Philadelphia was even the US Capital for a while!

For young fans, especially, Philadelphia is a terrible place to be. As mentioned earlier, no Philadelphia team has won a championship since the 1980s. The Flyers came pretty close in the 1990s, the Phillies lost the World Series in 1993 (and then didn’t make it back to the playoffs for 14 years), and both the Sixers and the Eagles lost championship games in the 2000s. So for anyone born in the 1980s, all we have ever known is losing. The closest I’ve come to savoring victory is seeing the Giants win this year’s Super Bowl (I had just moved to Brooklyn).

Let me try to list the major accomplishments of Philadelphia sports teams over the past 15 years or so, excluding our losses in title games:

--We booed and threw snowballs at Santa Claus.
--We cheered Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury.
--We threw batteries at J.D. Drew.
--Terrell Owens.
--The Eagles made it to 4 straight NFC Championship games, losing 3 of them.
--The Phillies, after a 14 year drought and after the Mets’ monumental collapse, finally made it to the playoffs in 2007 before being swept by the Rockies in 3 games in the first round.

“Come on,” the average Philly fan will say, “how awesome is it that we boo EVERYONE?!?!”

Not so awesome, I think. You wouldn't eat an OK-tasting meal at a restaurant and then throw it at the waitress’ face because it wasn’t the best you’ve ever had. Likewise, normal fans shouldn’t cheer a player who hits a home run in his first at bat and then boo him viciously when he strikes out during the next. And yet, this is what Philly fans do.

Taken as a whole, Philadelphia sports fans resemble an increasingly paranoid mental patient. On the good days, after a win, we love our sports teams and are sure that they will bring us happiness. On the bad days, after a loss, we hate the teams and wonder why we ever supported them in the first place.

These emotional swings don’t happen from season to season, and they don’t take place solely during the playoffs. They happen after every game during every season. If the Phillies beat the Mets sometime in April, we think “surely this year will be OUR year!!!” But if Donovan McNabb throws two interceptions in September, we should bench him, cut him, and bring in a free agent. Over and over, season after season.

It is not easy being a sports fan in Philadelphia. It sucks, really. Our teams always seem to be just this side of the winners’ circle. The fans, disillusioned and deluded past the point of rationality, are unaware of any role our behavior might play in our teams’ failures. We are not the greatest fans in all of sports. We are the most mentally unbalanced.