Perception of the Athlete in Modern Society

As with all the paper topic categories involving different sorts of bodies, culture’s perception of the sports body has evolved over time, but not as much as one would think. When the Athenians started the Olympics several millenniums ago their ideal athlete was well built and muscular (so much so that participants in the games at that time performed naked so the crowd could admire their appearance as much as their ability to run, jump, etc…) which is not very different from what we picture the ideal athlete as today. Webster’s dictionary defines athlete as “Any one trained to contend in exercises requiring great physical agility and strength; one who has great activity and strength; a champion” which is a very vague definition when you look at the variety of different types of athletes we have in the U.S. Does a thin, toned Olympic champion such as Michael Phelps really share similarities with an offensive lineman in the National Football League? Throughout this essay I will be commenting on the variation of athletes in modern society, the steroid controversy, and how the United States in particular has a skewed perception of what an athlete should be. A recent major example of one of the most popular sports figures going down the abyss of the steroid scandal, among other gossip, is New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. Since A-Rod’s first season playing for Seattle he has been glorified as having the potential to be the greatest to ever play the game of baseball. He played precociously at such a young age in Seattle, hitting for power and average and playing the infield well. Rodriguez immediately became a public darling, drawing comparisons to all the greats in the game, and many anticipated him to break the all time home run record currently held my proven steroid user Barry Bonds. Rodriguez played so well and was so hyped up as a future hall of famer and possibly the greatest ever, what with his perfectly built muscular body, his wide smile and model looks, that he soon turned a page in his career that many of the best to play baseball in this modern age also do – he joined another team. Rodriguez earned a long list of sponsorships including Nike, Mercedes-Benz, and of course made the cover of the Wheaties cereal box along with appearing on countless magazines. Making more money for another team only made sense in the U.S.A where our sports have turned to businesses – yet very few Americans question the integrity of the athletes we love so much. Rodriguez broke the record for biggest contract ever by signing for 252 million dollars over 6 years for the Texas Rangers. The Rangers never made the postseason with A-Rod, but Rodriguez maintained his hall of fame form, winning an MVP award and a home run title. Rodriguez was later traded to the Yankees, playing on baseball’s biggest stage in New York where high expectations are standard. Before ever hearing the words steroid and Alex Rodriguez in the same sentence ever happened, A-Rod’s image was forever tarnished when the public found out that: “A former Manhattan madam who supplied Eliot Spitzer with hookers also counted Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez as a customer - and found him so charming she dated him herself for free, former employees of the call-girl agency tell the Daily News” (Rush, New York Daily News). Rodriguez’s image immediately turned negative, and from then on he would no longer receive the same admiration as a golden boy from the rest of the country that he had for the beginning of his career. A scandal involving Rodriguez rumoring that he cheated on his wife with pop star Madonna hasn’t helped his image either. The big question, now, has to pertain to how as a society we see our idols. Other celebrities such as actors and singers are probably more scrutinized for their each and every move by tabloids, but somehow this doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal then when an athlete wrongs us. Most of the country watches some sort of sporting event on a daily basis, we post bumper stickers of our favorite teams on our cars, we gather for dinner and drinks on Sundays for football or for big baseball or basketball games, and most importantly our children look up to these sports heroes – wearing their jerseys and imitating their styles of play in the backyard. When you hear that “Rodriguez's name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball's '03 survey testing, SI's sources say” (Roberts, Sports Illustrated) you can’t help but to wonder why we hold athletes in such high regard when almost three entire major league teams worth of players cheated six years ago. The biggest problem may be that Rodriguez was looked at as a player who in all likelihood wasn’t using performance enhancing drugs, which essentially means any player that we see as a sort of hero might in fact be cheating. Three of the top ten all time home run leaders (Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro) have been found guilty of steroid use, along with Roger Clemens who many regarded as the greatest pitcher of all time. America’s image of athletes has been completely skewed because America’s pastime, America’s own game (baseball being nicknamed America’s game) has nothing but negativity on its coattails. How can we really know what an athlete is supposed to be when the best cheat?
Rodriguez would later admit in an interview, speaking to ESPN’s Peter Gammons that “when I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure," the Bombers third baseman said in the riveting TV interview. "I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day" (Hutchinson, New York Daily News). That’s not an acceptable excuse, and there aren’t any acceptable excuses.
Although baseball players who take steroids are hardly criminals, one can certainly look at the Tough Guise documentary we watched in class as an example of what might inspire these athletes. Baseball lost some popularity in the early 90’s (in part because Michael Jordan was taking so much attention away) and because there was less homerun hitting, and lower scoring games (along with thin players who were better at stealing bases then hitting the ball out of the park) the MLB turned a blind eye to drug use in the sport, this drug use created bigger beefier men with too much testosterone and bad tempers – just like the men in Tough Guise. There is a lot of testosterone and toughness in both baseball and football when it isn’t necessitated in the sport necessarily. Football players are expected to be all man and tough, and baseball players became that through steroid use.
Another huge example of the media glorifying a new golden boy, 14 time gold medalist Michael Phelps, has recently also come under severe scrutiny for using marijuana. Let’s remember that this is the same Olympic athlete who was totally adored for his achievements, breaking the record for Olympic gold medals won all time and in a single Olympic games. Many said that “there isn't any question who the greatest athlete in the world is. He was on the top step of the medal stand after completion of his grueling Olympic performance, his hand over his heart as the Star-Spangled Banner filled the Water Cube” (Celizic, MSNBC) I personally rooted for Phelps wholeheartedly along with the rest of the country, but all of a sudden a picture of Phelps smoking marijuana from a pipe was released and the public backlash was horrendous. The “USA Swimming publicly reprimanded Phelps, who won eight medals at the Beijing Games, temporarily withdrawing its financial support to him and barring him from competition through early May. Phelps receives a monthly stipend of $1,750 from the organization. The national and world championships will be held in the summer” (Macur, New York Times). Phelps lost his sponsorship with Kellogg, which had him on its Wheaties cereal box sporting eight gold medals this past summer.
Phelps’ image and golden boy status have also faded, and he’s now seen as less godly. I don’t really care that he’s smoked marijuana, a lot of my friends do – and let’s remember that Phelps is college age. The shift in what parents will tell their kids about Michael Phelps has done a one eighty over the past month, and that’s not fair to Phelps in the least for he has only made a mistake that most kids his age do at least once. His image, and our perception has completely changed – which once again skews how we see our athlete idols. There’s hope though, because unlike Major League Baseball the National Basketball Association has a perfectly crafted testing system with much harsher penalties. In fact there has only been one player who has tested positive in the past ten years: Chris Andersen of the New Orleans Hornets, “Andersen is the first player kicked out because of drugs since Stanley Roberts in 1999. Players who test positive for steroids or performance enhancing drugs, masking agents and diuretics get a 10-game suspension (1st offense), a 25-game suspension (2nd offense), a one-year suspension (3rd offense) and disqualification (4th offense).Marijuana penalties are a $25,000 fine (2nd offense), a five-game suspension (3rd offense), a 10-game suspension (4th offense), and five additional games for each subsequent violation” (Staff, ESPN.com). This system should be imitated by all other competitive sports, maybe then there would be less identity conflict regarding the millionaire athletes who play in our country. In a country where a chubby golfer like Phil Mickelson and a five hundred pound offensive lineman can be mentioned in the same sentence as Michael Jordan or Joe Montana we may never have a solution to the identity conflict regarding what it means to be an athlete, but the cheating can certainly be brought down so that we may have more security as a country looking up to athletes as heroes. The chapter on male beauty work in Beauty Up shows how different we are in the States in comparison to Japan, because in Japan a linebacker or anyone overly muscular isn’t attractive at all – Japanese women like it if their men have similar qualities to women. The most popular sports in Japan are baseball (but Japanese players are all very thin and speedy), soccer (where bulk does not mean better), and their primary Olympic sport is diving (where thin sleekness is mandatory). This demonstrates the influence on Japanese men by their society and women, one which is very different from our athletes and men in general.
The American version of the athlete spans from thin and agile to heavy, stocky, and tough but what’s clear is that we aren’t quite sure as a society how we feel overall towards athletes. Many of them are role models – people we expect to act the right way and say the right things and when they decide not to we label them negatively and unfairly as if they weren’t human. Athletes are scrutinized on every level and although they may be rich they often times have the most to live up to on and off the field of play. The great American game of baseball has been closely monitored recently because of the steroid scandal, but baseball stadiums across America our still sold out despite the sport having to deal with heavy criticism and allegations on an almost daily basis. Other sports, such as basketball, serve as role models for success in keeping their players likeable and illegal enhancement free. The athlete, injected with drugs or not, is forever changing physically but also in perception in the eyes of the world because of how many variations of athletes there are, but also because as the world changes – so do its heroes and villains.