It’s coming from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Keith Olbermann on Countsown, and Bob Costas on who knows what. All these people are talking about Mark McGwire and his use of steroids.
They are mad that he used steroids and that he’s destroying their dream. But I don’t think their personal goal is to punish Mark McGwire or to even punish steroid users. They are fighting for their dream, that baseball is the fantasy that they want it to be, and that baseball players are heros. To them they are the last men in the world who are good, kind, and honest. Their point is that although Mark McGwire may be a real fallible human being, the rest of the baseball players are all angels sent directly from heaven to shower us with their glory.
These middle aged men are being put through one of the hardest things that a person can go through: coming to terms with something. I can relate. However, I have some great news, although I’m sure they don’t want to hear it. Nobody ever does, and when they do hear it, they don’t believe it. All the same, it’s true.
That is, there are no heros. The one who believes in the heros is much more likely to be the good guy.
The heroic baseball players that Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann dream of are not real, but the core attributes of those players can be brought to life in both Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann because they are actually interested in them. But they have to stop externalizing it before they can internalize it.
Professional baseball, like all sports, is about money and sex and extremes. There are no heros when it comes to money or sex, and there are no heros when it comes to extremes. The real heros are the guys that aren’t the best and don’t need to be the best. They know that the cost of being the best is neglecting the people around them and their own morals. They won’t do that for any price. Those are the guys Keith and Jon fantasize about, they just haven’t realized it yet.