After Atalanta

OK. OK. I lied. I bullied you into reading this post and expressed a mistruth. This post is indeed about Lance Armstrong. Judge me as you see fit. But it's not some moral diatribe about ethics and truth and sportsmanship, blah, blah, blah. I didn't have any sort of urge to comment on this story. I mean, come on, I study sport and gender. This is not surprising. I am somewhat bemused by my cyclist friends who are just so sad about the whole thing. And I have felt that my ardent cynicism has been completely validated this week. But the people who are still holding on because Lance has done so much for cancer...really? Because we need Lance to enlighten those last few people who aren't aware of cancer? Still wearing your Live Strong bracelets because you like the mantra? Go ahead. Sure a duplicitous man used his ill-gotten fame and spearheaded a charity/movement that raised money for cancer. It's not as if cancer charities are operating in especially transparent ways th...

Wish I had known about the trouble at Syracuse before I made my bracket picks! Oh well. I mean I knew about the assistant coach as sex predator issue. But not the steroids. And now the curious and ill-timed and unspecified suspension of the star forward? I didn't have them going all the way, anyway. And it doesn't seem that they will. Which team will take advantage of their weakened state??

Woo-hoo, look at me, up on the breaking news that Mark McGwire has admitted to taking steroids. Shocker. Seriously. But even in admitting his deep regret and wishing he had never ever taken steroids, the heartfeltness of it all remains suspect--to me, anyway. First of all is the naivete or the feigned naivete or the deliberate denial of the role and intent of his steroid use. He was injured so he wanted to take something to get better--he wasn't after strength!! So, yeah, definitely a substance (or substances) so suspect that it's illegal--that's what I would turn to to fix my injuries. And of course strength alone does not make a good hitter, McGwire still contends--it's all about the hand-eye coordination. Well, sure. But my guess is that everyone hitting in the major leagues has above average hand-eye coordination. What set him apart was STRENGTH . If he really believed that strength was not a huge factor in his successful hitting career he wouldn't be so underst...

Luckily I am not a member of Red Sox Nation currently overflowing with schadenfraude nor am a disillusioned fan of baseball with hopes for some return to a state of purity in the sport. So the Manny Ramirez revelation (on top of the A-Rod thing and the Mitchell Report) was not really a surprise--except for the utter stupidity of it. But what I was surprised by was the lack of jokes around the whole thing. Everyone is treating it with such utter seriousness. The man was taking fertility drugs! Fertility drugs! No, "he's due after playoffs?" no "he's been trying for so long" type riffs. Not even stuff about the drug's off-label use to restimulate testosterone after a round of steroids. When women take steroids there is no shortage of commentary about manliness, man hands, growing balls, etc. Let's not forget the still on-going jokes about the female Olympians of the 70s and 80s who competed for Iron Curtain countries and were doused--without their know...

I may have been one of the few to criticize Rusty Hardin, Roger Clemens's lawyer, for his remarks likening the allegations against the pitcher to the Duke lacrosse situation. But I am not the only one who finds the things that come out of his mouth inappropriate. Apparently Hardin has not made friends with some of the legislators doing the inquiry into the Mitchell Report because of public statements he made suggesting that if the lead investigator--the same guy who looked into the BALCO scandal--messed with Clemens he would be asking for trouble. Rep. Henry Waxman said that Hardin should be careful as he would not want to be accused of intimidating a federal officer trying to do his job. All the evidence may not be in regarding the extent of steroids in baseball, but there's a whole lot of testosterone flying around right now.