Penalty Declined

When I was a young boy I dreamed of patrolling left-field at Fenway Park in the shadow of The Green Monster (or as we say in New England, The Green Monstah).

Not for the fame or the glory, mind you, but simply for the pure pleasure of playing baseball as a job.

To this day, even though I'm rapidly (far TOO rapidly) approaching 50 years of age, I still can't imagine anything better than getting paid to play baseball.

It goes without saying that I have a great respect for professional athletes, regardless of the sport. I respect the fact that they are the absolute best at what they do and their athletic ability is virtually unparalleled. When you consider how many people there are in this country and how few of them become professional athletes, the magnitude of the accomplishment becomes readily apparent.

That being said, the fact that somebody can hit a baseball 400 feet, throw a football 70 yards or slam-dunk a basketball does not bestow upon them the right to be an ass.

I am really tired of professional athletes who have the delusional attitude that their celebrity status offers them some sort of exemption from the rules of society.

Unfortunately the blame for their behavior has to be shared by us, the people who, by virtue of our worship, create the very monster that we despise.

Potential pro-athletes are coddled from the time they put on a high school uniform. They are given preferential treatment and brainwashed into thinking they are better than everybody else.

Naturally, for a 16-year-old kid who probably has nothing else in life working in his favor, this sort of adoration can be quite intoxicating and as we all know, intoxication clouds the judgment.

After a while, the intoxication morphs into an addiction and still their egos are stroked at every opportunity. By the time they reach college, they become convinced that they are members of an elite group, to which normal rules do not apply.

If they don't become a full-fledged train-wreck before finishing college, there is a good chance that they will fulfill that potential shortly after they sign a multi-million dollar professional contract.

Don't get me wrong, the majority of professional athletes live out their careers without ever stepping into the spotlight of infamy. Unfortunately there are far too many who can't seem to avoid it.

I've been a sports fan since the early sixties and I've watched the overall behavior of athletes go downhill faster than Bode Miller.

I don't know which is worse; How these people continuously raise the bar of moronic behavior - or how they are constantly given token slaps on the wrist simply because of who they are.

What would happen to you if you violated the company drug policy?

Professional athletes blatantly ignore the policies of their employers and are rarely, if ever, punished for it. Most professional sports' drug policies are nothing more than token attempts to convince the public that the behavior is not tolerated, when in fact it is, at best, ignored and at worst encouraged.

If John Q. Public receives a D.U.I. his life will be miserable for a long time, and that's assuming he doesn't mouth-off to, or strike the arresting officer.

Pro athletes are arrested for D.U.I. so often that it doesn't even make the news anymore, and there are documented cases of some of them striking the officer or even more unbelievably, brandishing a gun.

Yet, because of their celebrity status, they usually get away with a warning, or maybe a few hours of community service, after they sign a few footballs at the precinct, of course.

Even a partial list of documented offenses is mind-boggling; solicitation, indecent exposure, grand theft auto, sexual assault, attempted rape, rape of a minor, assault, domestic violence, hit and run, firearms violations, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and the grand-daddy of 'em all...murder.

Then there are some of the more "colorful" stories...like the former NFL player who struck an officer while resisting arrest for urinating on the dance floor of a nightclub.

Are you kidding me? What kind of degenerate thinks this is acceptable behavior?

Of course, the one that simply blows my mind is Michael Vick and his now infamous dog fighting operation.

Here's a guy who should have had the world on a shoestring. He was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and yet he felt the need to run an interstate dog-fighting ring. In my opinion, this is off-the-chart stupidity.

How much money could he have been making on the dog thing and could it possibly be worth the risk of losing the millions he made as a quarterback and the other millions he made in endorsement deals?

To add insult to injury, after serving his 21 months in federal prison, where he was most likely treated like royalty, he is right back in the NFL making more money in a month than I will make in the next three years - and the worst law I have ever broken was doing 52 mph on a 35 mph zone

According to Richard Lapchick, of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida..."What we've seen...is about 100 athletes a year, on average, arrested for violence against a woman and 75 for some form of recreational drugs."

Lapchick also says that the ratio of athletes being arrested vs. average citizens is approximately 3 to 1.

Considering what a small percentage of the population they are, this is especially disturbing.

One documented study actually claimed that many of the behavioral problems are related to the stress that is inherent with being a celebrity.

Another claims that many athletes, especially football and hockey players, are raised in an "atmosphere of violence and aggression" which could affect their decision making process.

I'm sorry - does this mean that because a guy can't understand the difference between hitting an opponent on the field and hitting his wife in the bedroom we should just look the other way?

We all have stress, we all have personal problems and many of us were raised in atmospheres that were less than perfect...yet we are all expected to abide by the rules of society.

Therein lies the root of the problem.

Our society has a decidedly unfair double-standard when it comes to the behavior of athletes and as long as there continues to be two sets of rules, athletes will continue to break them with impunity.

By not taking action to discourage these actions we are, in essence, encouraging them.

Perhaps the biggest crime is that for every athlete who acts like a monumental jack-ass, there are thousands of kids looking up to him.

It would seem to me that the longer we allow it to continue, the harder it will be to break the cycle.