Araton/NYT: In Dealing With Athletes, Playtime Is Over

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December 30, 2005
Sports of The Times
In Dealing With Athletes, Playtime Is Over

By HARVEY ARATON
THIS was not a good year in sports to be a radical or a renegade, and Johnny Damon's holiday haircut was the least of it.

In 2005, the pendulum of power swung away from sports labor unions to create a more stringent culture that, among other things, sat suspected sinners before Congress and suspended the insufferable.

At a steroid inquiry in Washington, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the feted home-run heroes of 1998, were paraded before lawmakers and the nation like surrep ious sheep.

In Philadelphia, the Eagles revoked the pass routes of Terrell Owens after too many rants.

In Indianapolis, the N.B.A.'s Pacers welcomed back the troubled star Ron Artest from last season's league-imposed ban only to confiscate his uniform and decide they would honor his since-recanted demand to be traded.

The American track stars Tim Montgomery and Chryste Gaines were disqualified from compe ion for two years for using performance-enhancing drugs, but their sentence was light compared with the eight-year verdict the International Tennis Federation imposed on the French Open runner-up, Mariano Puerta of Argentina.

The once-impregnable Major League Baseball Players Association buckled under political pressure to implement tougher drug penalties. The N.H.L. outlasted its players in a 2004-5 season-canceling lockout, scoring a labor victory so decisive that the union's longtime executive director, Bob Goodenow, was driven to resign.

In a player indignity that was more idiosyncratic, N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern imposed a dress code that forced Allen Iverson to take off his do-rag.

Not surprisingly, this pattern of anti-petulance had much to do with public opinion. Considering the global events of 2005, no wonder the now-jobless Latrell Sprewell was widely ridiculed for rejecting a $21 million offer by the Minnesota Timberwolves because, as Sprewell complained, he had to feed his family.

"Juxtaposed with natural disasters that people have suffered around the world, with the war in Iraq, people are more willing to ask, 'Why are these athletes doing these things? Why aren't they more grateful for what they have? Why do they need to cheat?' " Peter Roby, the director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said in a telephone interview. "In baseball's case, Congress gave it the leverage to take on the steroid problem, but teams and league officials have also sensed that people have had enough, and they have had to do something to reverse the trend."

Aren't great players above the rules because their teams can't win without them? Not necessarily, based on the much-scrutinized cases of Owens and Artest, whose imminent departure from Indiana in all likelihood will remove it from championship contention.

"I wouldn't call what was done in sitting down those players punitive as much as I would call it proactive," said Richard Lapchick, the director of the Ins ute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. "I think most of what we've seen has been an attempt by people who are concerned about sports to set an example."

Was it coincidence, then, or 2005 karma that the three major team-sport champions crowned this year were by reputation more about the group mission than glamour marketing?

While Owens plotted a nuclear renegotiation strategy with his radioactive agent, Drew Rosenhaus, after playing bravely in February's Super Bowl on a healing broken ankle, it was the Patriots who won their third le in four years by adhering to the organizational mantra that no one transcends Coach Bill Belichick's team.

While George Steinbrenner's $200 million Yankees crashed and burned in the first round of the baseball postseason, the White Sox, a team devoid of brand-name superstars, rolled into and through the World Series.

While the Lakers, the team Kobe Bryant desperately wanted for himself, failed to make the playoffs, the Spurs' linchpin, Tim Duncan, shared the ball with Manu Ginóbili and Tony Parker on his way to a third N.B.A. crown.

Even in tennis, where self-interest is the name of the game, the exceedingly mature Roger Federer won two more Grand Slam les and went 81-4. The more demure, introspective Williams sister, Venus, had the best women's moment when she beat Lindsay Davenport in a classic Wimbledon final.

This is not to slight little sister Serena, whose joie de vivre illuminated her sport before her attention drifted and her body rebelled. As fundamentally brilliant as Duncan is, a world of taciturn power forwards would be a pretty dull place, as would one legislated by Steinbrenner's 1950's vision of what a ballplayer should look like.

Given this year's union defeats or reluctant acquiescence in the face of outside pressures, there is little doubt that the pendulum swing was a cultural self-correction. But in a year when precedent was established to suspend athletes without a failed drug test, as in the Balco-related cases of Montgomery and Gaines, we should also recognize the possibility of the pendulum swinging too far. We should understand that the legal rhetoric of a union ideologue like Marvin Miller remains as essential to the performance-enhancement debate as the words of the World Anti-Doping Agency hardliner Pound.

Extreme cases are easy to legislate, to set punishment for. Rafael Palmeiro's steroid guilt may have been as indisputable as Owens's culpability in crushing the Eagles' Super Bowl spirit, but will we ever find out the absolute truth about Barry Bonds? Will we ever learn what this year's French newspaper allegations about Lance Armstrong were all about?

What we do know is that in 2005, the cultural ground shifted under our athletes' feet. If they don't watch themselves now, they may find themselves pedaling up a mountain, or along the edge of a cliff.

E-mail: [email protected]

• Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

[Bloodline666]

It's about time atheletes start being held accountable for their actions for the rest of their careers, and these players unions seriously need to realize that! It's become clear to me that the labor unions in sports want atheletes to go unpunished for their actions, regardless of the severity of them...or at least that's the image they're carrying in the face of the public eye. I can't believe it had to take the threat of Congressional legislation for the MLB's player's union to agree with Bud Selig's proposed anti-steroid policy. If the Player's union really gave a about the integrity of the game, they would've agreed to it right after it was proposed!

The NYT probably should've brought up the fact that the NBA's new collective bargaining agreement banned the practice of drafting players right out of High School. Just one of those details they might have brought up, but missed for whatever reason.

[TDMVPDPOY]

NBA union is anyway if its run by pass players or current players, its all about them first and money, they should have an independent firm or ppl come in to take over.

[Bloodline666]

The NHL's union is even more ! They cost the NHL a whole season for one of the stupidest reasons: THEY WANTED THE TEAMS WITH THE HUGEST POCKETS TO BUY OUT ALL THE EXPENSIVE FREE AGENTS, MAKING IT EASIER FOR THEM TO BUY STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONSHIPS! Simple solution to that problem (which they obviously did not want): SALARY CAP! The MLB needs one BADLY! And the NBA's salary cap is a joke! The New York Knicks are 150% over the so-called "salary cap!"