Thursday, September 16, 2010

I'm really disappointed in Jeter


I grabbed this pic from Sportsline, so you could say I was just doing my job. Does it matter? It's my job to have a pic with my article, right? It doesn't matter if I actually spent the time or money taking it myself. Right? Wrong. I cheated. I took a shortcut.

Derek Jeter said in this article that he was just doing his job. As a professional athlete, a celebrity, and because he has been around cameras a long time, he knew that the instant replay would be shown immediately after he was allegedly hit. Yet, he did it anyway. He let little kids with still impressionable minds see that it is okay to cheat because cheaters get rewarded.

So he did it for the benefit of getting on base and giving his team an advantage. This competitive advantage is why athletes use performance enhancing drugs, which is against policy because it is cheating. To me, there is absolutely no difference in what he did and what steroid-using athletes do. In fact, what he did is worse. At least the drug users keep it a secret and deny it even before Congress.

If athletes, who are already worth millions of dollars think it is okay to cheat, how can we convince our kids and the majority of the population who are not athletes and millionnaires, that cheating is wrong? How do we convince them to work hard for what they want if they think these athletes got wealthy and maintained it by cheating?

The headline to the link I attached asked this question, "Is Derek Jeter a cheat?" You damn right he is, and I lost a lot of respect for him last night. I have always thought that he was the one athlete who had most consistently been a role model for others. However, to continue to carry on the act the way he did while knowing that cameras had captured the ball hitting the bat and that kids were watching, only proves that he is the kind of person that would look another in eyes and lie to them. We already have enough millionaires like that in the world.

Baseball players are the most fragile people you will ever see. They will spend 15 days on the DL after stubbing a toe on a bag or getting a blister on their finger. If that ball had hit him as hard as he wanted people to believe, he would be out of the lineup the rest of season. More evidence.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Saturday Upsets....

South Carolina over Georgia
Florida State over Oklahoma
Miami over Ohio State

What do you think?