My Sick Mind

You can't use sports as a metaphor for life. I'm not sure if anyone has tried, but it seems to me like someone has. Sports is so far separated from life, that to compare anything you do to something a professional athlete does is just plain silly. Take, for example, the recent allegations that Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez was caught in a high-stakes poker game with some rather distasteful people. Major League Baseball said something about it, to the point that a real investigation was performed. What MLB fails to realize is that these guys have two vital ingredients that work toward odd behavior: Money and time. You pay these guys ridiculous sums of money - even the Major League minimum salary is close to a half million a year - and expect them to, what ... save it? They can't be on one side by paying the salaries that they pay and be on the other side by protesting what the guy does with the money. If you want people to behave, starve them financially...

"Wow! I never thought Dwight would go postal. It's always the person you least expect and I always thought Dwight would go postal." - Michael Scott , The Office (deleted scene from "Conflict Resolution") Sure, it's always the person you'd least expect, unless it's the most obvious one. In pro sports, the most obvious people are the ones who are the lowest-paid. Referees and umpires. Athletes make too much money to be worthwhile targets for gamblers who want to fix games. They can't pay them enough. Worse yet are referees with gambling problems, and Tim Donaghy is one of those. The last thing we heard about Tim was that he was getting death threats and was threatening to go to the FBI with names of other refs and/or players who may also be involved in the point-shaving effort. Expect Tim to be the next member of the Witness Protection Program. Meanwhile, the Commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell, has ordered Michael Vick no...