You think Major League Baseball is suffering under a cloud of
steroid-tinted scandal? Just hop on a bike anywhere near Paris and shout the
name, “Floyd Landis!” The latest doping saga to hit the Tour de France — one
that appears will cost the American Landis his 2006 championship — is beyond
the scope of anything baseball fans might imagine. (Consider if baseball
players were tested — randomly and regularly — right up through and during
the World Series. Then after a game-winning homer is hit in Game 7, the hero
tests positive for a steroid the very next week!) How does this sport, so
extraordinarily popular in Europe, regain its integrity?
It should start by
following the money: sponsors. Entities like Phonak (which sponsored
Landis’s team this year), the Discovery Channel, even the U.S. Postal
Service (the latter two each sponsored Lance Armstrong during his seven-year
reign in France) simply must take the condition of their cyclists as
seriously as they do the gains they achieve through their “product
placement” in the greatest bike race on earth. When the sponsors incorporate
their own methods of testing, or at least establish a
one-strike-and-you’re-out policy for cheats, the cyclists will have much
more to lose by dancing on the edge of substance abuse. And if the sponsors
aren’t willing to step up? Cycling’s powers that be should include those
sponsors in the bans they’re so willing to hand out to an athlete when a
sample comes up positive.
I had a chat with University of Memphis football coach Tommy West last
month, and the most striking impression I came away with is that he is
simply not worried. Not about the loss of DeAngelo Williams, not about the
question marks at his quarterback position, not about the loss of some
standout defensive players from a year ago. Entering his sixth season in
charge of the Tiger program, West seems to have the energy of a first-year
coach, his perspective significantly impacted by the bypass surgery he
underwent last February. “It made me stop and appreciate more,” said West.
“It made me realize how much I really do enjoy doing what I’m doing. I
really like being where I am.”
I also interviewed John McEnroe about his upcoming visit to Memphis
(October 4-8) for the Stanford Championships at The Racquet Club. When I
asked McEnroe who would have won a match in their prime between Pete Sampras
and Roger Federer, McEnroe claimed the two greats would have different
advantages on different surfaces, and that their contrasting styles would
leave a series of matches fairly even. When I followed with a hypothetical
between McEnroe himself and either Sampras or Federer, the seven-time Grand
Slam champ humbly said he might win “two or three out of ten” against the
sport’s two most recent titans.
The Redbirds are having their worst season in nine years in Memphis.
But
their parent club is in a tight race for the National League Central title.
Am I the only reader of our beloved daily paper turned off by the
overwhelming coverage of college football in respect to baseball’s
late-summer drama? Do we need 1,500 words on UCF coach George O’Leary when
it’s 102 degrees outside?
I saw six rather eloquent speeches in Canton’s Fawcett Stadium on
August
5th, as the latest class was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Highlights were the sentiments of Troy Aikman (a Hall of Famer before his
40th birthday!), John Madden (he believes the busts talk to each other after
the Hall closes each night), and Reggie White’s widow, Sara (who mentioned
how happy the Whites’ two years in Memphis were, a time when the couple
welcomed their son, Jeremy, into the world). But I think my favorite remark
was a simple, but heartfelt request from Rayfield Wright (the great Dallas
offensive lineman of the Seventies): “Parents, teach your children well.
Remember, you are the windows through which your children see this world.”
