By RAY DAY
Guest columnist
November 15, 2007 11:05 pm
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What has happened to the sporting world today? We, as kids, always had someone in sports that we sort of wanted to be like and to follow.
Lately, we have seen some of the sport figures emerging as a role model for all that is bad and not good.
Many of us born in the ’30s went through a time of strict discipline and we came out of it in great shape. We were taught the value of life and what we made of it. If you came from a strict family, chances are that it gave you a foundation on what you raised your own children by.
If you decided that you would make your own rules when you left home to start your own family, you still had the foundation to start from.
In my own family, each of us had the teachings of two wonderful people to emulate. They prepared us for the life ahead, and we were ready to go tackle whatever stood in our way. So was the importance of having someone like them to follow.
Of course, the things that they had to do in their young age prepared them so that they made us stronger to survive the things that might attempt to block us from achieving our goals. They are my role models. To be able to follow their pattern is a step in the right direction.
In today’s world we see the sports star leaving school early to pursue the high-dollar goal so that they are instant millionaires, and then as they play the game, they also have links to the pitfalls of a youngster still wet behind the ears, and there are drugs, parties, lies and killings going on in their lives.
Although that percentage of the bad to the good one is a small one, it still opens the door for those who choose to use them as role models to follow their example.
The youngsters of today have the choice of using their early training to get them where they want to be, or they can blindly decide to emulate the sports figure who has started to tarnish their own lives with tainted money and greed. It is a shame that this can happen in sports today.
We have a new home-run record holder who is still saying he didn’t, and the jury is still out on that.
In the NBA there are those crybabies who have the large contracts who not only show disrespect on the floor but also in the world outside. On the floor of the basketball court we see the players who, if they don’t get the ball so they can shoot 40 times a game, they go in to cry to the coach to trade him.
What ever happened to team concept? Why does a high-dollar crybaby get the chance to tarnish the credibility of a good team just so he can be that top dog on the floor? Things in the past 20 years have changed for the worse in the NBA, and you can see it getting worst each day.
In the game of football, where things can change in one minute as there are hard hits and the pace is a steady grind on the body, there are those who feel that they need to do the things that are against the rules so that they can be better and stronger and, once again, it is the big money that is the culprit. Big money brings greed and it opens the door of that youngster, still wet behind the ears, to venture out into the world of drugs, crime and whatever else is available to them.
Exceptional role models in sports today are plentiful, but it seems that the ones who are emulated are the ones who put a bad mark on sports today. Thank goodness, there are role models in other fields to catch the eyes of the young today.
And kids, in your Mom and Dad, you probably already have the role model to follow. Many times what you need is right there in front of you. And they have been there all along.
Ray “Uncle Ray” Day can be reached by e-mail at arermdrd@netusa1.1 or
uncleray@skyenet.net
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