Where have you Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

JACK
It seems that we are in a period where everything is coming down negative. I never thought of sports as a metaphor for life, but there are so many disillusioning events that I think we need to pause and wonder, not only at the symptom, but also at the root cause. I am also thinking of our young people who are so guided by celebrity, both in sports and in show business. I am thoroughly distressed by the news Michael Vick is allegedly involved in illegal dog fighting. And, as I write this, the home run is about to be broken by Barry Bonds, allegedly on steroids. And, just to be international, the Tour de France is under investigation for illegal drug use. An NBA referee is accused of gambling and helping to fix the score to make money. It’s a lot of smoke, but I think the real fire is the fact that perception is "It’s OK, if you aren’t caught." My training was always that it is wrong to do the wrong thing, regardless of the consequences. I am really interested to know, Hillary, what is your take on all of this?

HILLARY
There are a few issues tangled up in all of these stories. First, drugs in sports: I think that, while it may be an advantage, give the average person (or even the average Major League Baseball player) steroids, and they still aren’t going to hit like Barry Bonds. There is a natural talent here, whether that was increased by drugs, I think it’s on the bottom of my list of concerns – that goes for the Tour de France, too. Point shaving, and game fixing, is much more black and white. And, even more starkly clear is the line that Michael Vick and his cohorts allegedly crossed into a world of cruelty and sociopathy. But, how do we define ethics in America? The line is so personal, how do we as a country come to the agreement that this is unacceptable behavior, and what do we do with those people who cannot see that line?

JACK
You make an interesting point – where do you cross the line? So many of us are prizefight fans, and if you look at it realistically, we are cheering for one fighter to beat the hell out of the other guy. Now, there are events where they put the two fighters in a cage and there are no rules. When, and why, did we become so bloodthirsty? At least the two people who are fighting are doing so voluntarily, but putting two animals in the ring, where the ultimate conclusion is death, seems absolutely sadistic. The point that I make is that we have stretched the boundaries, and it’s really a question of how far do we go, and how it reflects on our civilization. I love competitive sports, but even when I watch a football game, I know that this impact of two 300-pound bodies crashing together can cause a lot of damage. So even in the sports that we condone, such a magnificent athlete like Mohammed Ali has been permanently damaged, and there are very few retired professional football players that move without pain.

HILLARY
There is clearly a competitive streak in the human species. It comes out in sports, in bake-offs, and in wars around the world. There are healthy ways to deal with this desire to beat out your neighbor (like basketball and tennis.) I think we came up with these activities in order to avoid more damaging forms of physical competition. That being said, I don’t understand where the competition is in dog fighting.

JACK
It’s the same competition as two thousand years ago when the Romans threw innocent people into the Coliseum to fight each other to the death, or to face the lions where their outcome was certain. I can just see the scorecard, Lions 10 – Humans 0. I’m really interested in the trend line, and I can best get the answer from your generation. We also revered our heroes. Joe DiMaggio was one of the greatest athletes of all time. He moved with an effortless grace, and he never bragged. There were scandals, but they were so rare that it wasn’t even a factor. The problem I have now is that there is so much that is illegal, and/or immoral, in sports today and I wonder how far the population has to go to get it’s thrills.

HILLARY
Jack, I think that the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is the cage fighting you referred to, is the closest that we’ve gotten to gladiators in a long while. Granted they are all volunteering, yet it is the satisfaction of the crowd that is the most distressing – Have we not evolved at all since Roman times? Is our dissatisfaction with the current state of the world brought on because we are removed from the masses that understand and enjoy this barbarousness? Maybe if we stopped thinking that we, as a species, are so enlightened and evolved, the world will start making a little more sense. Perhaps we are expecting too much from civilization at large. Maybe we are not yet far enough away from the days of the Coliseum.

JACK
So if we agree that this is a real problem, I would certainly like to hear the solution from others. Or, are they going to say, that we are over-reacting to a perfectly natural phenomenon? Or is it simply that the universal truth is that somebody is making money? And, if there is enough money in it, people will do it. It’s not a question a right or wrong, it’s really a question of how much?

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