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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
Summer is quickly coming to a close, and most sports fans have turned their eyes to football as the preseason gets under way. But as the school buses arrive and the leaves begin to fall, we must reflect on the summer that left us sports fans in shock and awe.
Barry Bonds is the new career leader in home runs, and a lot of people aren't too happy. Even without the courts and the "I didn't take steroids knowingly" quotes, people don't normally change head sizes like waist sizes. He hasn't been convicted, so he is technically innocent, but most fans are too wary to be genuinely happy to see Bonds pass a class act like Hank Aaron. That said, I will gladly white out the asterisk in my personal record book when Bonds proves that he didn't cheat. Until then, Hank Aaron remains my home-run king, although Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez will be closing on the record in a few years, if he keeps at his current pace, solving the home-run king dilemma.
The cheating didn't stop at baseball this summer. The Tour de France, already waiting to see if 2006's winner was doping, was rocked after losing its leader, Michael Rasmussen, for missing two drug tests. Not only was Rasmussen winning at the time, but he was set to win the yellow jersey. That wasn't all. Favorite Alexandre Vinokourov, after enduring heartbreaking falls that ended his yellow jersey run, won a time trial and, later, a grueling mountain stage. His was the heartwarming story of the event, until the Kazakh rider was found to have doped just before his wins. By the end of the race, two teams had dropped out, and riders had staged a protest at the start of one stage. For a sport that lost its luster when American Lance Armstrong retired, these doping allegations are only pushing the world of cycling further into the depths of insignificance in the U.S.
Players weren't the only ones found cheating this summer. NBA referee Tim Donaghy was discovered betting on games he refereed and having fixed those games in his favor.
His game-fixing had been going on for a while, and although it wasn't on the scale of the Black Sox throwing the series in 1919, this new gambling problem is still serious for the NBA, as viewers are left to wonder if the refs' calls aren't just bad, but unethical.
The last big sports story of the summer didn't involve cheating, but Michael Vick's dog fighting indictment has rocked the sports world. With the media's coverage of dog fighting, we continuously see footage of mangled dogs and horrible implements for killing them if they lose a fight, which not only has sports fans in disbelief, but every human who is a dog-lover.
Even in our home town of Denver, a man was found standing outside a Nike Store, one of Vick's shoe lines and sponsors, protesting the Falcon quarterback by holding pictures of dead dogs found at his Virginia home.
Sports were shaken this summer, but there was a story that showed sports can still be wonderful. The Iraq soccer team winning the Asian cup may not mean too much halfway around the world in a soccer-lite country, but for a day it brought the divided country together.
It was one small light in the mess of the summer, but many fans are just ready to be done with the heat and on to a fresh season of football.
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