Mark McCallum
5 November 2012
Eng 101: Kruger
1st draft
Idolizing athletes: Should kids do it

“Parents should be role models. Just because I can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids,” (Donna). This quote was made famous by former NBA player Charles Barkley in a commercial he had produced for Nike. Most people don’t take into account that athletes do not choose to go into their professional field expecting to be every little kids role model. They expect that just because they are professionals, they shouldn’t be doing anything wrong and they should be the ideal person. Most athletes however, manage to keep everything they do under wraps and stay out of trouble entailing the media or authorities. The question that has become very prevalent in the day and age where athletes are caught cheating or being arrested remains in the publics’ eye, whether or not their kids should be looking up to these athletes as role models. Baseball is really starting to crack down on their players using Performance Enhancing Drugs or PEDs. “Long before the innocence of the game was permanently stained by the filthy deception of steroids,” (Posnanski 554). That sums up how most baseball fans feel about where the sport has gone, at least the older ones. Parents who watched baseball in their time and now see baseball players as cheaters who don’t deserve all that they are getting because of how they go about it. The baseball they loved didn’t have steroids or sixty home runs in a season. Now what the sport has become is people who are cheating their way to the top and haven’t earned the right to be there like the players they used to love. The cheating seems to be everywhere now. “Sammy Sosa corking a bat, Johnny Damon using maple instead of ash bats, K-Rod putting resin on his cap, Pete Rose mixing Adderrall in with a cup of coffee, or Mark McGwire’s unbashed andro use,” (Moller 549). These were some of the biggest names in the sport at the time. Each and every one of them was trying to figure out what they could do to gain an upper hand on their opponent. However, that is something parents don’t necessarily like. Had Sosa’s bat never broken you would never know about the cork inside. But it did and the series of events that took place afterwards led people to think of him as a cheater. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez were all the same way. They were some of the biggest names in the sport and some of the most idolized athletes in the world. That is until they admitted to taking steroids and other PEDs. A-rod was thought of to be the best player in the league for many years before he had admitted to using steroids. And in essence, that is exactly what he wanted, to be the best. He felt like he could have gotten away with cheating a little bit to get the upper hand and felt like it was worth the risk. Now he is associated with steroids and will forever be looked down upon by parents who feel like that is wrong. “But don’t hate him because he is a cheater, in that sense he is just one of the gang,” (Moller 551)
Cheating in the MLB has been around for way to long to just start getting down on the guys now for doing what was done so many years ago and was perfectly okay. These parents have their valid points. Steroids are cheating and they bring cheating to a whole another level. But cheating has been around since the beginning of time if you truly think about it. Steroids are used to give the players an upper hand. That is the same reason we have technological advancement. Companies want the newest technology to sell to the customer and make the most money. Players want to be the best they can be at all costs to benefit their team. “Baseball was never innocent, America was never innocent, that innocence itself was never innocent,”(Posnanski 556). Cheating has always been a part of the game whether it is as major as steroids now or not it hasn’t changed. In the past, they had their ways around the system as well. No one just thought it was that big of a deal. Stealing signs has always been a part of baseball. Stealing signs consists of watching your opponent’s coach to try and get an upper hand so you know when they are going to bunt, steal, etc. People have openly admitted to stealing signs and in 1951 Leo Durocher used stealing signs to come back and win the pennant. Before the ages of steroids, players used to take amphetamines. Many players used these amphetamines to boost their personal play and overcome exhaustion. This is also their attempt to gain the upper hand. Very similar to why players use steroids. If players the players parents now idolized, were using amphetamines and stealing signs, only because steroids weren’t around how are the players now at fault. They are doing the same thing older players were doing except now it is more prevalent. The only true difference between then and now is back then they were an accepted part of the baseball culture, where as the MLB doesn’t want that same thing to happen with steroids. The major reason this question is being brought up is the morals of the athletes nowadays. People see how much drama athletes are involved with and it consists in every major sport, there aren’t any exceptions. It just so happens, that the major sports, are the ones most highlighted in the publics view. “We the public, place the best athletes on pedestals, gods on high,” (Moller 547). This can describe the situation to its fullest. Athletes are expected to be these greek gods who are assumed to be perfect in every way. This is why it becomes so hard to believe when athletes actually do mess up and it is so dramatic. The good things athletes do are never news worthy. If a professional football player raises money for charity nobody will ever hear about it unless they do some real research into the situation. Charles Woodson of the Green Bay Packers donated two million dollar to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, to help them along with the building of their brand new hospital. This was made newsworthy for just one day and only on ESPN, where someone who is not an avid sports follower would never know such a thing had occurred. Things like this happen every day amongst athletes. These are the types of athletes that kids should grow up loving. The ones who can go out and live a positive life both on and off the field. Most of them actually have charities, which they raise money for all year around but it isn’t publicized because it is not newsworthy. People want to hear about people messing up in the spotlight and although it is interesting to hear it doesn’t catch the attention of the people as much as “PENN STATE LOSES ALL WINS UNDER JOE PA.” This is why people have become nervous about who their kids grow up loving. With such little good information and so much negative it would be hard not to. “Raise your hand if you are guilty of things you have said or done. Mine is raised. But ordinary people aren’t in the spotlight,”(Alfano). While athletes may make mistakes here and there it has to be remembered that they are just as human as the fan watching the game. Everybody is going to make mistakes in their lifetime. It just depends on when the mistake is made and how severe the mistake is. Once the athletes make it, by society’s standards they can’t make a mistake. And if they do happen to make a mistake, society makes it very difficult to make up for it. On the contrary, there is also reason for the public eye to be skeptical of the athletes they follow. “We have to accept that being in the public eye does not qualify athletes, by default, to be good people,” (Shore). Just because an athlete is so popular it does not necessarily make him a good person. The thing is, America only sees what the athlete wants them to see. That is, until the mistake involves the law or media and his true colors show. When kids follow a player or pick their favorite, they only know what he does in the games. If a little boy is watching basketball and sees his favorite player score forty points, he knows that the player is good, and helps his team win. He could grow up idolizing this player just to find out that his favorite player brought a gun to the locker room. This was the situation with Washington Wizards point guard Gilbert Arenas. Being in Washington D.C. there were endless amounts of kids growing up wanting to be the next one to follow in his footsteps. He was the face of the franchise. One mistake and one misdemeanor later, his face was tarnished and parents wouldn’t want their children looking up to somebody who brought a gun to the NBA arena. A similar incident happened with Michael Vick in Atlanta. He was the new hope for Atlanta football and he was marketable. He was a people person and fans couldn’t help but like the guy. After five years in the league, he was convicted on dog fighting charges and his name will forever be associated with animal cruelty. Seeing headlines like these would make any parent cringe when they look down at their child running around outside throwing the football in a Vick jersey. It’s the things people do off the field or court that lead to tarnishing their name, legacy, and most of their entire fan base. Not only are athletes making poor decisions once they are in the league, some are making bad decisions before hand. Most basketball and baseball players opt out of scholarships and other opportunities to continue they’re schooling to have a chance at making it big. When it comes to fame, most of the time people don’t necessarily have to worry about their actions. “Sports figures however are basically the only ones being asked to be role models,”(Alfano). It is all over the news when celebrities such as actors or actress mess up but for that purpose only. They are famous and messed up. When an athlete messes up and makes a mistake, it is assumed that there are millions of kids looking up to him/her and how could they disappoint their fans like that. Athletes are under a presumption that they are supposed to be these great people that everyone should want to be like when they did nothing to accept such a feat. “A team can thus come to represent the aspirations of an entire region or people,”(Why Does 482). This is how some players can get if they have a big enough impact on the team. The star player can represent a whole community and every team has at least their one. Prime example would be Derek Jeter for all of the Yankee fans. If anything happened to him where his image shifted all of New York would shut down in devastation and disgust, depending on which side of New York it is. The question that really needs to be asked before a parent allows their child to idolize a professional athlete, is will the athlete be idolized as an athlete, or as a person. If children are running around idolizing athletes for the people that they are it could end up going either way. “If you idolize athletes, you don’t really want to know the truth about them. Real humans make for false idols,” (Kiszla). They may have made a great choice and the athlete turns out to be like Charles Woodson who not only is a good player but also makes positive contributions to the community around him. Or he may idolize a player like Michael Vick, who is good on the field but off the field makes bad decisions that eventually caught up to him. As a parent, all there is to do is be prepared for the worst although it may never come. Athletes are ordinary people with extraordinary talents. That doesn’t mean they won’t slip up, but it also means that kids shouldn’t strive to be in their shoes one day.

Works Cited
Alfano, Peter. "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Idolize Sports Figures." Bleacher Report. Bleacher Report, 12 2012. Web. 12 Nov 2012. <http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1143405-mamas-dont-let-your-babies-grow-up-to-idolize-sports-figures>.
Donna, Lori. "The Way to Provide Good Role Models." . Arizona State University. Web. 12 Nov 2012. <http://www.public.asu.edu/~jvanasu/vcai/donna/index.html>.
Graff, Gerald. They Say/ I Say:The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 2nd ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &Company, 2012. Print.
Kiszla, Mark. "Let the Lance Armstrong Saga be a Lesson in Hero Worship." Denver Post. The Denver Post, 26 2012. Web. 12 Nov 2012. <http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_21401776>.
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Posnanski, Joe. "Cheating and CHEATING." They Say/ I Say:The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. (2012): 553-559. Print.
Sheed, Wilfrid. "Why Sports Matter." They Say/ I Say:The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. (2012): 489-511. Print.
Shore, Jach. "Should Athletes Be Role Models." Bleacher Report. Bleacher Report, 02 2012. Web. 12 Nov 2012. <http://bleacherreport.com/articles/428437-should-athletes-be-role-models>.
“Why Does it Matter Who Wins the Big Game.” They Say/ I Say:The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. (2012): 481-483. Print.