By JACK KUHLENSCHMIDT Special to the Palisadian-Post Do you not miss the days of John Elway, Joe Montana, Sandy Koufax, Greg Maddux, Michael Jordan, and Larry Bird? The days when you did not have to worry about your favorite sports superstar being suspended for weeks for participating in a drive-by shooting. The days when athletes would let their statistics speak for themselves. Well, you might as well forget about those supertstars, because they are gone. In their place we see a new breed of high-profile athlete, the type that will be known as much for how they conduct themselves as for how they play the game. For a prime example in the world of sports today, you need look no further than players in the National Basketball Association. We are constantly subjected to the whining of overpaid superstars such as Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson and that is just plain annoying. Then there was that ugly scene in the Motor City earlier this season involving the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers. Pistons center Ben Wallace was fouled by Ron Artest and the situation quickly escalated into the worst nightmare the league could imagine’players going into the stands to attack hostile fans and fans storming the court to confront players. You can make the case that the incident was the fans’ fault, but the bottom line is that Wallace, Artest and the other players involved are paid millions of dollars to keep their fists to themselves. In baseball, we see ‘superstars’ paid over $100 million a year only to suffer through pretty-boy whiners like Alex rodriguez throwing hissy fits in the World Series. But Major League Baseball was made into the Major League of Babies when Francisco Rodriguez, a relief pitcher for the Texas Rangers, threw a chair at an Oakland Athletics fan who allegedly shouted racial slurs at him. The everyday man would have done the same and been fired, but Rodriguez was fined and let back in the game. The National Football League had stayed fairly clean until two weeks ago. Everyone enjoys watching a good touchdown dance, and Randy Moss can sometimes be humorous in his celebrations, but when he caught a clinching touchdown pass in the fourth quarter of the Minnesota Vikings’ NFC Divisional playoff game against the Green Bay Packers, things got ugly. After he scored, Moss walked up to the base of the goalpost and simulated dropping his pants and rubbing his rump against the pole. The point of this was to get back at Green Bay fans, who have been known to moon the visiting team’s bus as it exits the stadium. I agree that this was fairly funny, but what he said after he was fined $10,000 was across the line. I cannot repeat all of it, but he said something along the lines of ‘What’s $10,000 to a guy like me. If it’s only 10 grand I would go out there and…’ You can fill in the blanks. What Moss does not realize is that $10,000 is a lot of money to many of his fans. And those are the same fans that take pennies from under their couch to buy tickets for his game and the money that pays his out-of-this-solar system salary. Moss has done this kind of thing before (squirting an official with a water bottle, bumping a traffic officer with his car), and there is no one who can stop him. He is officially out of control. Players like Moss need to see the influence they have on youth all over America and they need to clean up their acts. You cannot be a hero and a villain, so professional teams need to toughen up on these players and make them respect the game and their fans. Editor’s Note: Jack Kuhlenschmidt is a 7th-grader at St. Matthew’s Parish School and is an avid sports fan.
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