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In case you haven’t heard yet, Chase Utley was placed on the DL after Thursday’s game with a broken hand. Utley wasn’t just the best player on this team. He was making a case for MVP of the entire league. The loss of Utley has serious ramifications for the Phils in everything they are going to do for the rest of the year.

Details are still coming in about the injury. It happened when Chase was hit by a pitch directly on his right hand. He did stay in the game, but then again so did Donovan McNabb after he broke his ankle. There is very little encouraging news to report.

Tomorrow, we should all have more details about the injury, and so there will be a Philscast Special on what is potentially the single worst thing that could have possibly happened to this team. Of course, it’s also possible that Utley won’t need surgery and could be back sooner than expected. But Phillies fans know better than that, don’t we? Stay tuned.

I’ve always had a theory that sports would get so big one day that they would collapse in on themselves. It’s almost like a sports apocalypse. But the leagues themselves are such powerful businesses. The NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball; these are big time players in almost everything they touch. There’s the tickets. There’s the TV contracts. There’s the jerseys, the hats, and the concession sales. If you don’t think professional sports have as much influence as some small governments, you’re crazy.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Sports have gotten too big. They went from something we did as a diversion to something we take as seriously as work and marriage. Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely one of those people. If the Phillies play a really terrible game, I’m upset about it for at least a day. But in a way, it’s better. I’d rather be upset about the Phillies than be upset about something I can’t just laugh off.

So life went on like this for a little while; sports being too big and athletes getting special treatment. OJ was acquitted, and Kobe’s charges never really went anywhere. Athletes get away with drug charges and gun charges. They beat up strippers, they cheat on their wives, and they are generally involved in one good scandal every year.

That’s not to say that all athletes are bad guys, because they’re not. And that’s not to say that all of the ones arrested, including Kobe, are guilty. We’ll never really know. But you can’t deny that athletes have always been above the law.

Until now.

Three of the four major sports leagues are in the middle of major scandals. The sports apocalypse is coming upon us like the rise of the machines. And the thing that strikes me about all of this is that not one of the stories seems to be bigger than the others. They are sharing the front page, not bumping each other off of it.

In the NBA, the scandal is probably the most serious. The Tim Donaghy scandal has the potential to set the NBA back 10 years if not more. When Pete Rose bet on baseball, at least he was only a manager. At worst, he still put a team on the field and let them decide what happened. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t despise anyone in sports more than I despise Pete Rose. But it’s not as bad as what Donaghy allegedly did. Referees in basketball can affect the outcome of the game more than in any other sport. They can let players play, or they can call every bit of contact. They can literally take a player out of the game if they want. It’s dangerous, and nothing messes with the integrity of a sport quite as much as this.

In the NFL, the scandal is serious, too, but at least it’s off the field. Michael Vick is a bad guy. There’s not even much debate about that. The result of his trial will tell us just how bad of a guy he is, but there’s still not much doubt. The only reason you do what he allegedly did to a dog is because you enjoy it, plain and simple. That’s pretty sick. But if you read the indictment, you can see that they are going to charge Vick with the whole truckload. The special treatment in both these cases seems to be over.

That’s where scandal number three comes in. Steroids in baseball is nothing new to fans, but the fact is that Barry Bonds is about to break the most sacred record in the game. And he’s going to do it. There’s no denying that. Except Bud Selig seemed pretty content to pretend it wasn’t even going on. He was walking through life like Cornelius Fudge pretending Voldemort wasn’t really back. Or perhaps the better analogy for Bud is that he was hoping this thing would just end in a tie.

I don’t pretend to know if Bonds is guilty of juicing or not, but the evidence seems pretty strong. But the fact is that this record is going to be broken, and that means the commissioner of baseball should be there for it. If Bonds is a cheater, he isn’t nearly as bad as Donaghy. He’s simply one of a bunch of guys who took steroids. And if Bonds is a jerk, he can’t be nearly as big of a jerk as Michael Vick. He’s just another big-headed (pun fully intended) athlete who thinks he’s more important than he is. His offenses are nothing compared to the other two.

So there’s no reason Bud Selig shouldn’t be there when Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s record. Nobody is going to think any less of him for it, and he has to admit that Bonds isn’t all that bad by comparison. It only took him 15 years, but Bud finally got one right.

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Announcing the Philscast Podcast

by Philscast - posted Thursday, July 5th, 2007

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