In the Coliseum

We're wasting our moral outrage people.
My dear wife always groans whenever my morning Sportscenter viewing includes whatever scandal is currently rocking the world of fun and games.  Today it is Alex Rodriguez and the Biogenesis "scandal" that has led to some fairly prominent baseball players being suspended for the rest of the season.  Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'm increasingly asking myself: "who cares?"  I mean isn't there enough real tragedy in the world?  Do we really need to spend so much energy trying to catch guys who cheat at a game?  Think about it: there have been congressional hearings and a major federal trial over if and when some guy injected something into Roger Clemens behind.  The nation stood transfixed as Lance Armstrong finally admitted to Oprah that, Yes indeed, he was every bit as much of a doper as just about every other cyclist from of the last 40 years.
Every once in a while our gladiators get themselves in real trouble, Michael Vick, Aaron Hernandez, Rae Carruth, Plaxico Burress and a host of others spring to mind, but this fixation we have with performance enhancing drugs (PEDS) is really getting old.
These are grown men, professional athletes, who probably fully understand the risks and are willing to roll the dice.  Why in the world did congress ever get involved in this mess?  Shouldn't they be trying to stop human trafficking, fight poverty, or just get some basic government accomplished?  Don't they have better things to worry about than Roger Clemen's nether regions?
The outrage expressed by the sporting community is maudlin indeed and I can't help but feel it's also somewhat disingenuous.  I remember the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and all the swooning about history being made and how it brought baseball back from the brink of irrelevance after an acrimonious labor dispute between the millionaire players and the billionaire owners.  And now those same hacks are wringing their hands about asterisks and how it all seems tainted.
Does it surprise anyone that people cheat?
Did you ever play Monopoly as a kid?
If the answer is yes, you almost certainly cheated, or made up rules as you went along, or had crooked side deals and usurious practices in place.
Why then, does it shock and offend us to find out that people who are so driven, so focused on becoming the best, that they finally make it to the highest level of sport, are willing to take it a little over the top?
Because we want heroes really bad.
Because we need supermen and superwomen.
We want to look at something and say, "Wow!"
Because we are idolaters in our hearts.
We don't even hide it anymore, we say that we idolize our star athletes, we "enshrine" them in Halls of Fame.  And when we find out that they're not worthy of our worship, it hurts a little... to some it hurts a lot.
Nobody likes to have their heroes fall, that's why David cut off Goliath's head and paraded it around and the Philistines ran away.
That's where idolatry puts you: in danger of having everything come crumbling down.
Sports are modern idolatry.  We devote ourselves to them wholeheartedly, we sacrifice our health, our leisure and sometimes our children on the altar of fun and games, and we find, as with all false gods, they end up betraying us.  They betray us because, for all their strutting and claims to greatness, they are little more than empty amusements.  They betray us because the heroes they parade before us do not often have the moral fiber to accompany their physical prowess.  They betray us because they were intended to be fun and we take them far too seriously.  They betray us because we are willing to sink our time and treasure into their coffers and because we expect them to carry our hopes and dreams, but they can't.
Because they're just games.
Because they're played by just men (and women).
Because winning is not the only thing, it's not even that important, but it's something that our sinful nature craves like nothing else.