Prospering While Cheating

Yes, I was one of those who cheered when Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France. Even way back then, I heard the voices in the background shouting, "Cheater!" Consequently, I cheered a little quieter. It was a great story, if you could block out all those questions about drugs and blood doping and all those things that boiled down to the same sentiment: "Cheater!" All that stuff about cancer survivor and American succeeding on a world stage was tempered by that refrain. "Cheater!"
Shoeless Joe Jackson, who holds the third highest batting batting average in baseball history, was banned from the game. "Say it ain't so, Joe." Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's record for hits by a single player, but "Charlie Hustle" won't be getting into the Hall of Fame anytime soon because he bet on baseball, and a whole lot of other things. The University of Colorado football team still celebrates their shared National Championship, even though they needed five downs to beat Missouri on their way to their Orange Bowl victory over Notre Dame.
On any given day, the sports page reads a little like True Crime: This guy's drunk, that guy's hitting his wife, another one is drinking while driving and hitting his wife. In the course of one week, the Bay Area lost two of their baseball stars to fifty game suspensions for using performance enhancing drugs. To be clear, the players were the ones taking testosterone, whether or not the whole Bay Area was taking hormones is their own private business.
And in the background, Roger Clemens is pitching for the Sugarland Skeeters. And Lance Armstrong was in a bike race. Until cheating becomes a sanctioned event in the Olympics, I guess I'll just continue to cheer*.