[Vision2020] The Buried Story of the Steroid Scandal (Bob Schieffer)

[Paul Rumelhart]

I think we have this backwards.  We shouldn't try to clean up our ball 
players so that our kids can emulate them without problems, we should 
teach our kids not to hero-worship someone simply because they play a 
particular sport.

Oh, and if we could dismantle the multi-billion dollar sports industry 
and carve it back down to a group of die-hards that don't care about the 
money or the lifestyle or the perks because they just want to play the 
game itself, that would be great.  No million dollar contracts, you just 
get a salary that is on par with what a fireman or a policeman gets. 

As a replacement, we could always put billions into televising our fire 
and police services (for example), so that kids could hero-worship 
someone who risked their life to save someone else instead of someone 
who hits a little ball with a stick, no matter how well.

I'd also like a pony.

Paul

Tom Hansen wrote:
> >From Bob Schieffer's closing commentary on today's (December 16, 2007)
> edition of "Face the Nation" -
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The Buried Story of the Steroid Scandal
> By Bob Schieffer
>
> When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a ballplayer. 
>
> We didn't have coaches back then until we got to high school. We learned the
> game from each other and from copying the major leaguers. We copied
> everything from their swings to the way they walked. 
>
> Because they chewed tobacco, I chewed. It was part of the game. 
>
> My dream to be a ballplayer ended but it left me with a heavy addiction to
> nicotine. 
>
> Years ago, I finally beat it, but it was probably the reason I have a
> disease called ulcerative colitis, and almost certainly the cause for my
> bladder cancer decades later. 
>
> I still take drugs to control the colitis. Surgery got the cancer. 
>
> But I can only thank the stars there were no steroids in my younger days. 
>
> My baseball dream ended when I hurt my arm in high school and it finally
> gave out during my first year of college ball. 
>
> Had I known of a magic potion that would have made me stronger and kept the
> dream alive, I would have been no more hesitant to try it than I had been to
> chew tobacco. If my heroes had done it, that was all I needed to know. 
>
> The baseball stars got their names in the paper last week but we buried the
> lead to this story. Deep in the report it said hundreds of thousands of kids
> - kids who have the same dream I had - are putting their lives at risk using
> this stuff. 
>
> Who do we blame for that? Where are they getting it? How can their parents
> and even coaches NOT know? 
>
> That's where the follow-up stories should begin.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "If not us, who?
> If not now, when?"
>
> - Unknown
>
>
> =======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet, 
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
>                http://www.fsr.net                       
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
>