What we hate (more than our team losing) is when those memories are stripped away because of information that comes out later.
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| I once kept these magazine covers because I admired these athletes. Now, I keep them for their horrible irony. |
Lance Armstrong.
Joe Paterno.
Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
I could rant on Te'o, but it's looking more like he's not the horrible liar we thought he was when the story broke.
Armstrong is the subject of my scorn. What a shame this is. He was an amazing story, and we all wanted it to be true. People in the cycling community told us he was doping. We didn't want to believe it. We called them jealous. Haters. Losers.
They were right, and it bums us out.
It's just like when McGwire and Sosa chased down 61. We wanted the record to fall. We didn't even want to know if they were cheating. We wanted the story to be true.
It wasn't, and that stinks.
The question people ask that I'm trying to answer is if all the good Lance Armstrong did through Livestrong is now erased or tainted. I don't think it's erased. Tainted maybe, but he did do some good while he was cheating his way into cycling history. Any cancer patient who has been helped in any way, even if it's just the simple inspiration to keep fighting, is still grateful for Lance Armstrong. We just can't respect him as an athlete anymore. It's just really tough to separate "athlete" and "inspirational person" because we love when they are one and the same.
We hate finding out that our heroes aren't perfect, especially when we learn they cheated to achieve their greatest feats. Perhaps that's a a reminder that we use the term "heroes" a little too loosely when talking about sports. We don't know these people as much as we wish we did.
Maybe the bigger picture is that we all hate admitting we were duped. We don't like being lied to, and we hate being told an awesome story only to find it wasn't true. I don't think anyone should apologize if they have happy memories of the 1998 home run chase or Penn State winning championships. We just have to accept that people we once looked up to aren't perfect, and (in some cases) are despicable.
Keep the memory. Let go of the athlete.
As I get older, I just cheer for athletes as athletes. I don't consider them role models or people I want to be like. They're not all bad obviously, but I really have no way of separating the good ones and the bad ones. I can pick out the good athletes from the bad athletes, though.
So, that's how I try to judge them now. I'll cheer for wins, curse the losses, salute them when they do charity work, but I won't idolize or worship athletes like I did when I was young. I just can't make the emotional attachments any more.
If these athletes are showing us anything in today's sports world, it's that if a story seems way too good to be true, it probably is.
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