Find out what it means to me

By FAITH MOLDAN

Bigfork Eagle

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Not just a song by Aretha Franklin, but something that's lacking in professional sports.

Athletes have no respect for their sport, their fans, their coaches, or even the work it takes to be a professional athlete. Lately, it seems this lack of respect has trickled down to other people in the sports world, including referees and officials.

I'd much rather read actual statistics and game coverage in the sports section, rather than articles about steroids, dog fighting and the other crap (**or should I use the word junk?**) that seems to have invaded something that used to be such pure fun and excitement to me in years past.

Maybe I was oblivious to the bad things in sports when I was younger, but it seems to be happening more and more nowadays. Sure there have been scandals and problems in the past. Do Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson ring a bell? And those are just a couple of baseball scandals from the past.

I've harped on good sportsmanship and the like before, so I may sound like a broken record, but it's such an important aspect of sports and life for that matter. How are people supposed to get through life and interact with other people properly if they can't even manage to do so competing and playing a game?

If I may quote another musical artist —B.B. King — the thrill is gone for far too many professional athletes. And with that thrill of playing a game they supposedly love, went their respect for it too. Professional athletes have lost site of the simple things. Good sportsmanship being one of them. You have to work hard, be a good sport and plain and simple love the game you play. Throw millions of dollars at someone and their vision gets a little blurry and they get off track. They forget how to be a good person and player.

There's no doubt in my mind that the athletes causing problems lately were once upon a time just like the campers at the Bigfork Hoop Camp I reported on last week or the high school football players I saw putting in some time on the practice field last week as well. They were there, in the heat and odd hours, working on perfecting their skills. They listened to their coaches. They want to win and succeed not to get a pay raise or extension on their contract, but to gain respect for themselves, their team and their community.

I guess maybe professional athletes should be more childlike. I don't mean that a linebacker for the Seahawks should be demure on the field, but maybe a little bit wide-eyed and appreciative of the fact that he gets to play a game for a living. Watching "The Rookie" the other night, I marveled at the scene when Jimmy Brooks enters the clubhouse of his minor league baseball team and says to a teammate, "Do you know what we get to do today? We get to play baseball."

That statement, what Jimmy Brooks said, was lost on one mother at a baseball game I covered this weekend. She forgot how to be a good sport and she didn't even play in the game. Maybe I'm wrong and it isn't the big money of professional sports that is making these major league athletes act so poorly on and off the field. Maybe they were never like the campers at the Bigfork Hoop Camp because they had parents like this woman in Kalispell. She showed a definite lack of respect for the Bigfork coach by openly insulting him to my face with a few words that are not suitable for print.

In the end, it's probably a combination of things that cause problems like the ones that have popped up recently. Almost like the grand old debate about nature versus nurture. I just hope that the good people involved in athletics continue to outnumber the bad ones. This world already has enough trouble to deal with.