The World Cup/ The Tour De France/ Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Sooooo.... they are related. I do not not know how as of yet but I will try and pull this together before we finish. The U.S. is out of the World Cup and we are on to the semi finals. My prediction of The Netherlands going all the way looks pretty good. (Go oranje). the Dutch are of course a deeply troubled country always laboring under the misapprehension that are part of Germany (a misapprehension maintained primarily by Germans) and the fact that a lot of people (me) get confused when we talk about Denmark, Holland, Belgium etcetera and wonder why they are all not part of Germany. If The Netherlands wins their semifinal then Germany will have a chance to possibly annex them in the finals. Breathing room. With three European teams in we must assume that the boys from Montevideo might not make the finals but it would be a sweet little lark to have the boys from Uruguay steal it all.

The Tour de France has started. Floyd Landis has reprised the role of a low rent Jose Conseco (can there be such a thing) and given about 2,000 interviews laying out in detail how dirty the sport is. The only thing we have learned about doping allegations thus far in all sports is that they are true. Every time. No matter who denies what. Mc Guire, Nolan Ryan, everyone who ever ran in the Olympics, Tiger Woods... all dopers. Probably the entire NHL: does too but i do not even think it is against the rules for them. But Landis filleted Lance and his team mates directly before the Tour and now the Tour has started and, well, frankly based on the number of crashes.... it appears they are all on drugs. So we assume Lance dopes and we assume he will get away with it. I know that I do not care about professional athletes doping. I am not sure why anyone does. People who hold view athletes as role models and encourage or even allow their children to do the same are very misguided and if little Johnny's world is going to fall in because a ball player (or bike rider) is juicing then Johnny has a lot more serious issues then we have tome to deal with today. By the way, despite all the Lance hoopla and his great team, I am predicting Contador does a back to back if he remains uninjured. No one can climb with him right now. If his team protects him, he wins.

That leaves us with irritable bowel and other gastro-intestinal maladies. i know of what I speak having been suffering now, post Wagenfeld Levine and never really recovering and now with my occurrence "presenting" again. They say that stress does not cause my problems but it does cause it to..."present". What a great word. i have lost 30 LBS. I would like to think I look better but I just look week and sick, which sucks. But my pants are falling off me which is kind of cool I guess. Do to my "condition" I am not absorbing vitamins B and D. Evidently I need them to hold weight. They have me one some drugs and so maybe that will help. Perhaps it will have the same effect as doping... or a Uruguayan hand-ball...or doping....or a bad crash in the Peloton.... and a little IRB will deliver me to full health. But probably not. perhaps it will help me "win".... but probably not. Perhaps it will just let me have a solid stool. I bet there are a lot of people who might consider that win.

By the way Netherlands advanced to the finals and that means....irritable bowel or no....I am a GENIUS!

Scandals In Sports?

So...whats up with sports and character...and drugs? I don’t know the answer and I do not mean to bemoan the obvious but...Jesus, Mary and Joseph. How did come epidemic? Has it always been epidemic? Have we been idiots to put all these guys on a pedestal for long like the Catholics did with their Priests...only to find that there are more cheaters then ever? I like to think that I am plenty cynical and don’t kid myself about people’s morality and character but once again...Jeez.

Barry Bonds. OK...he has been taking steroids for years and has bulked up not just his chest, arms and legs but...his neck and forhead. His naturally poor disposition has become almost homicidal over the last few years and even as he attains the record he is already become a sad freak whose record for right or wrong will be asterisked and disdained forever. It is very sad but still troubling because we don’t know what to do. Everyone knows that he ingested steroids in some form and bulked up unaturally. It is somewhat less clear to me whether or not it was “illegal” or even against the rules when he started but there is no question that it is now. One question though. Why is it so important that athletes do not artificially enhance themselves to increase performance? Why don’t we mind when an actress gets breast implants or liposuction, tummy tuck, hair implants...what is the difference? What indeed?

So what do we do? We let the guy get the record and wait till the end of the season and then the Commissioner offers him a chance to retire. If he does not he gets banned in the best interests of baseball. Along with that he announces serious drug testing and a zero tolerance policy which will cost us over time some of our best athletes. Teams and fans will be traumatized by the results but over time we will heal and so will the sport. As a public the best thing we could do would be to not talk about it and leave it alone.

The Tour de France. Jeeez! What happened here. We thought that with the Floyd Landis thing we had cleaned this thing up and were going to have a clean tour with clean results. What a nightmare... what a clown show. I am sure a lot of these guys are clean but once again we have no choice but to think that anyone who is succeeding is doping their blood, elevating testosterone or perhaps spending too much time with Vietmamese hookers. All can have the same result and all are equally frowned upon. This ended up in a nice battle on the last days of the tour since Rasmussen and Viokurov and well, so many others were then out. But what about them? I understand so little about drug testing but it seems like it is inexact science at best. Is it important that these guys dope? Is it demeaning that many of us assume that Lance was doping in some way? I don’t know. What do you do for the Tour? Same thing. Kick the bad guys out, strengthen your testing regime and for God sakes stop talking about it.

Tim Donaghy? NBA ref. Fixing games? Now this... this is a real nightmare. There was the Black Sox scandal. In 1994 there was that Northwester point shaving thing and the great City College of New York point shaving scandal but those all involved players. Boxers have taken falls but the dodginess of boxing is well known. But...but...but....we have always counted on the underpaid, very fallable refs to be on the up and up and if they werent it was just because they had lousy personalities, wanted to screw Bobby Knight or were just really and truly legally blind. The idea that one of the zebras was dealing for his own account really does undermine the game. Perhaps it is a wakeup call for everyone that that when you have a group of guys who everyone is counting on to perform, and so many dollars and so many personal and professional lives rely on the outcome that perhaps these guys should get some kind of compensation. Perhaps then we could think about doing the same for teachers.

That leaves us with Micheal Vick. Other then raping and killing someone’s child is there anything else he could of done to ruin his career quicker? No...there isn’t. We have become very accepting of DWI’s, drug arrests, gunplay in clubs, manslaughter related to the above, beaten girlfriends... the list goes on and on. I mean, after all, their athletes right. They get a pass. But not for this. I know, I know, innocent until proven guilty but... this guy is toast. This is an easy call as we can see because it has already been done. Pull his endoresments, ban him from participating in anything while he defends himself and let the law do what it will. He will not do any hard time but seriously...if I were him I would be seriously worried about someone shooting me. Other then his friends and family.... no one would mourn. Very sad. he always seemed like a nice guy.

So...the Diner reviewer believes that...as much as he loves sports... that we have truly, madly and deeply gone off the deep end in regard to athletics. We rely on these guys to distract us from the droll, hum drum and day to day. We live vicariously through them and give them monstrous salaries, possies, sex, drugs, women, no accountability and then we all act shocked when they do not behave like Wally Cleaver. Seriously, where the hell do we get off. these guys are nothing without our dollars and our unending tolerance and adoration. Perhaps it is time to reconsider where we find out heroes and show a little depth... or we can just go to the game, pay 20 bucks to park, 100 bucks for a ticket, 80 more for a jersey with their name on it, 6 bucks for a beer and 4 more for a hotdog so that this fabulous system can just keep on keeping on. I could be wrong.