Don’t Throw Him Under the Bus
Professional athletes are not role models; Charles Barkley said it best. We should not look to them for guides to proper behavior. We should not let our children emulate them. Professional athletes seem to have it all. They are in perfect shape, they dress stylishly, drive the best cars, and are usually visibly happy. But, there are a few places where professional athletes can learn from the common man, culpability and respect.
Athletes compete in a cutthroat world. If a player comes to a game unprepared, they are quickly exploited by their opposition. The largest components of one athlete dominating an opponent is believing that they can dominate them and forcing the adversary to believe that they up against an unbeatable foe. Professional sports players have to have and exert an infallible sense of self in order to compete with the best players in the world daily. Sports necessitate this type of belief and the corresponding ego-centric behaviors, but normal life does not. Josh Hamilton and Derrick Mason have not learned this lesson. Both players were under a great deal of stress when they made their comments. Hamilton broke his shoulder bone on a play that his coach suggested and Mason is in the middle of a player strike directly pitting him against Goodell and the owners, but there is a proper way to handle situations and neither of the professional athletes acted even marginally professional.
“I listened to my third-base coach. ” “That’s a little too aggressive. The whole time I was watching the play I was listening. ‘Nobody’s at home, nobody’s at home.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I don’ t want to do this. Something’s gong to happen.’ But I listened to my coach. And how do you avoid a tag the best? By going in headfirst and get out of the way and get in there. That’s what I did.”
Josh Hamilton, the league MVP and the leader of the Texas Rangers broke his shoulder on that play causing him to miss 6-10 weeks of play. He is the best hitter in the franchise and one of the best in Major League Baseball. On the second game of a long baseball season, it may have been a little advantageous to push your best player, who has had a few injury problem over the last two seasons, into a tight base running situation. But, the third-base coaches job is to read the situation and make a call. He did that and it did not work. Coach Anderson is not completely at fault for this injury.
First of all, Josh are you the great Nostradamus? How did you know that something was going to happen? Do not blame someone else for something that you did, especially if they have minimal fault in your injury. Your coaches have tried numerous times to get you to slide feet first to insure that you do not get hurt. You slid headfirst. Secondly, your hesitation to run, could have been the difference between making it home cleanly and having to make a play. The coaches are authority figures and have more game experience than you and a unique perspective of each play. You should not have thrown him under the bus when you made a bone-headed play at the plate. You could have taken the tag, instead of trying to make a fruitless play. Finally, even if your coach was absolutely wrong, in front of a camera and news reporters is not the right forum to make that statement. That type of talk is not for the cameras, and it says more about your immaturity than it says about Anderson’s “mistake”. Grownups deal with the situation at hand regardless of how difficult it appears. Children blame somebody else. As a leader of the Ranger’s locker room, more is expected from you.
“He needs to stop crying about blood tests and HGH. He needs to try to get a deal done. He’s on this crusade about HGH, but he needs to be on a crusade about getting these owners together and trying to work out a deal. to me, he’s a joke, because every time I look, he’s talking about performance enhancements instead of talking about trying to figure out a way to make sure football is played in August.”
Derrick Mason is a 14 year veteran and the player representative for the Baltimore Ravens in league negotiations. How do get elected into that position without a better filter? You are the chosen leader of the Ravens. The position that you hold reflects your teammates trust in you and should incite a certain amount of grace and composure under duress. Name-calling and pointing fingers is not an option for you, even when your salary is uncertain. Secondly, what are you hiding that makes you so opposed to blood testing? It is year 14, and you have not seemed to slow down. You were still one of your teams top receivers even with the addition of younger, faster talent. Know-how only goes so far. And why do you not understand that the league does not care about doping? It cares about its money. A league that is perceived as dirty could lose money. Look at baseball.
Regardless of your opinions about your situation, you deal with it as it happens, and you do not blame other people for it. Life happens to regular people and happens to professional athletes too.