Sports And Drugs Essay Research Paper In

Sports And Drugs Essay, Research Paper

In twentieth-century America, sports became one of the most successful and exciting, but controversial cornerstones in American society. In the early years of the twentieth-century, America cheered both the players in professional baseball and the college football players at the nation s finest institutions of higher learning. As the game of baseball appealed to a greater number of Americans, its players became icons. They became role models for young children and topics of social discussion for Americans of all ages. Baseball built the foundation for what was to become a very profitable industry, the professional sports industry.

The sports industry has thus grown immensely over the years. In this industry, there have been winners and losers. The winners, the majority, have been those who worked hard on and off the field and devoted many hours of their time to better their image and their prospective league s image amongst the public. Twentieth-century sports were dominated by a number of great professional and amateur athletes, but more importantly they were run by a majority of sound personalities and quality people. The others, like some of today s athletes, come to the big time with their wallets full and some preconceived idea of what a sports hero should be they are handed $60 million contracts when they leave college. These are the losers, those who chose sports but chose a different path, the anti-role model path, and represent the downward slide or the backward shift in professional and amateur sports. This shift may come from misbehavior on or off the playing field, a lack of community involvement and or a lack of morals. These athletes do not promote the growth of sport, sportsmanship or the sense of teamwork. These athletes take a selfish approach to sport; they are only in the game for the money and themselves and not to make a difference. Neither the winner or the loser philosophy on sport was ever a prerequisite to entering professional sports, but like the 1997 Sportsman of the Year Mark McGwire said, you don t play sports thinking you are going to be a role model. You play because you are given talent. And the role model is something adopted. It comes with the job. The birth of professional baseball did not require role models, ball-club owners wanted good players, they wanted players that would draw fans and win games for their team so the organization would turn a profit-just like any other business. Just as owners did not expect players to become instant role models, players did not expect to either, just like McGwire said. In the early days, players were not necessarily their town s heroes or role model s; many players, just like many today, were average to below average students who occasionally got in trouble, but were generally just great athletes. It was the evolution of the industry that gave rise to sports figures as role models. Players did not look to become heroes, the media via radio, newspapers and later television helped create the sometimes-false illusion that these athletes were great people. The media expanded the players efforts on the field to a greater number of viewers and listeners than just the few that attended their games live, thus the role model became an evolution or modernization of the (twentieth-century) professional athlete.

Sports have given the average person the chance to elevate himself to levels beyond the fame, fortune and glamour of movie stars, government officials and wealthy business tycoons. They have given people who never had a chance to become scholars and academic achievers the chance to become wealthy as well as successful, respectful, role models for children of all ages. Sports have taken the poorest and unluckiest of individuals and given those individuals a second chance to start a new life and make a difference for someone else. Athletes like Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig and Jesse Owens in the 1920 s and 30 s; Joe Dimaggio, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson in the 1940 s, 50 s and 60 s were heroes for children in their day. Reporters from local and national papers and radio stations made these athletes out to be legends, men who made a living by playing a mindless game. As public icons, these players were living examples of what children wished to someday become. These children began to believe in these athletes, they began to see them as examples of what to be and what to aspire to be. They saw Babe Ruth as the greatest homerun hitter of all-time and imagined all great baseball players to be invincible. These professionals gave hope and encouragement to America s youth to become somebody somebody like Jackie Robinson, who opened the door to white-professional baseball for African-Americans across the country. Like yesterday s Robinson and Ruth, players of today like Mark McGwire and Cal Ripken, Jr. in baseball, Steve Young, Joe Montana and Kurt Warner in football, Grant Hill, Michael Jordan and David Robinson in basketball, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in hockey, Pete Sampras in tennis and Carl Lewis in track, etc. have built solid public images that enable children of today to identify with and look up to. These positive images have enabled these players to amass great wealth and thrive as people, philanthropists and athletes. These role models are those who give professional athletes a good name.

Those athletes who ha