The other day, a friend of mine reminded me of an extremely well-written and thought-provoking article by Chuck Klosterman from when he wrote for ESPN Page 2. It turns out that he wrote two articles addressing the issue of steroids in sports. Reading them in their entireties is well worth your time. Instead of trying to recap them, I’ve linked them below. With all of the hysteria in regards to this A-Rod mess, it’s nice to remember that there can be thoughtful discussions of complex sports issues…
Tags: Chuck Klosterman, ESPN, Page 2, sports, steroids
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Doug Glanville, the former Phils outfielder, writes columns for the NY Times. They are excellent, I was thinking of putting up a couple myself since they seem to be the only tolerable mainstream journalism about ‘roids.
Understanding A-rod, 2/9/09:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09glanville.html
Ballplayers, the Press and the Truth, 2/19/09:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/opinion/20glanville.html
Thanks for digging up the Klosterman essays. He’s like Plato compared to Rick Reilly. One of his main points, at least in the second piece, is that the main difference between NFL players juicing, MLB players juicing, and everyone else in the world juicing in some form or another (The Beatles, stock traders,…), is that WE only care about some of them. Unfortunately, there’s no good, easy answer to why we care so much about some (MLB) and not so much about almost anyone else. I give Klosterman a lot of credit for stepping back and not moralizing on this question and letting us consider this complicated question for a few minutes.
Great links, Nerdtron. Doug Glanville is awesome as a writer. I really liked this quote from the 2/19 op-ed:
“If we really want to know who these players are, we’d embrace their lies as well as their truths, because their lies tell you just as much about them. They tell you what they are afraid of, what they would sacrifice themselves for, what demons they have not dealt with, what they are working on. These things have every bit to do with who they are as their .325 batting average from the year before.”
I think that if the sports media were actually interested in who the players or personalities really are, sports would be way more interesting. Instead, we get shallow analysis and knee-jerk controversy 24/7. I’m really glad we have this little blog to engage with these ideas a little. That, and the nerds.