The parody newspaper The Onion recently put out a 2007 Year-in-Review sports edition. The top headline was “Barry Bonds Home-Run Scandal Somehow Becomes Feel-Good Sports Story Of Year”

Here is the lead sentence: “Although Barry Bonds remained the target of criticism over his possible–some say almost certain–use of performance-enhancing substances, the fact that Bonds has not been implicated in dogfighting, nightclub shoots, gambling, or murdering his family has transformed his controversial pursuit of the all-time home-run record into the feel-good sports story of the summer.”

Indeed the sports world was filled with stories that belong more to the police blotter than to the box score. Last year wasn’t the first time this has happened but it seems that the stories grow uglier and more violent each year. Each year, there are more arrests and unfortunately more deaths, from St. Louis Cardinals pitcher John Hancock who got himself killed in a DUI incident, to wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed his wife, 7-year-old son and then himself, to Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor, who was killed during a home-invasion robbery.

Sports are reflecting the greater and greater coarsening of society. And the Federal Government, in its zealous expenditure of taxpayer resources to get Bonds on something, is our biggest example of misplaced priorities.

ByrnesBlogger1

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