The Good Truth

Somebody needs to step up.

Somebody needs to wake up and become the leader, to speak the truth, to do the right thing, to expose the wrong.But in the world of sports, there is nobody.

There is nobody to say, “I don’t care that Tiger missed the cut.” There is nobody to say, “I don’t want to here about Jason Giambi going down to the minors.” There is nobody to say, “I don’t feel like hearing Steve Nash interviewed after a game 4 loss.”

Nobody.

And conversely, there is nobody to say, “How about that Amelie Mauresmo winning the Italia Masters Roma!” And conversely, there is nobody to say, “Man that Edgar Paucar really gutted it out this year to shatter the Beulah Park wins record.” And conversely, there is nobody to say, “I’m glad that Kenny Harris came out of a coma after a month.”

Nobody.

We focus on the negative, and the boring negative at that. We focus on what is wrong with society, what is wrong with sports, what is wrong with other people. And really, nobody cares!

But that is the problem.

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares enough to say, “Shut Up, will you?” Nope. Nobody cares enough to say, “Would you guys please move on to some gutty accomplishments?” No way. Nobody cares enough to do anything about this.

We care enough to complain. I hear it all the time. Hell, I DO it all the time.

Take my last article.

I wrote how much I hate ESPN. It’s nothing new. I’ve said it before. But out of god knows how many emails I’ve sent, NONE OF THEM ACTUALLY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE PROGRAM! NONE! It’s because I don’t care!

But I want to change.

I want to tell you all the truth. Not the bad truth, I do that all the time. No, I want to tell you the good truth.

Take Amelie Mauresmo. Given, she does look like she has done more steroids than a high school football kicker, but she has quietly accomplished some very unique things in the world of tennis.

For example, over the last two years, she has only failed to reach the Quarterfinals in two tournaments while only missing about two months due to injury. Over that same period, Serena has failed three times while missing substantial time and just this year alone Venus has gone out before the quarters three times. Only Lindsay Davenport has played a significant amount of tournaments and failed to reach the quarterfinals less times.

THAT is an accomplishment.

Additionally, she just won the Italia Masters Roma for the second consecutive year. Most amazingly, she has reached nine consecutive quarterfinals at Grand Slams in which she competed. Given, that is dwarfed by Serena’s sixteen, but it is still an amazing accomplishment considering nobody cares enough to know who she is.

But that is nothing compared to Edgar Paucar.

Not even people in the racing circles know who he is. Hell, I don’t really even know who he is.

But what I do know is that he shattered the modern Beulah Park record of 93 wins in a meet by winning 103 races, a staggering amount when you realize that second place was at 63 wins. Including three wins at other tracks, Paucar’s 106 wins rank fourth in the nation. But cbssportsline never mentioned him. God knows if Sportscenter could even spell his name correctly.

But for all his work, his horses have won a mere $562,946, of which he received only a fraction no more than 10% and most likely a decent bit less. By comparison, Stewart Elliott, last years bull crap ESPY winner, has won three times as much money, most likely receives 10% or something close to that, and has won less than half as many races.

Not just is Edgar Paucar dominating history without the respect of the sports world, he is doing it without the respect of his own fans.

But nobody cares enough to even know he is alive.

And then comes Kenny Harris.

Nobody really cared when he collapsed. Why should they? He goes to Valpo. Valpo was so late-90s.

And nobody cared that he was in a coma for a month, at times teetering on the line of life and death.

And then nobody really cared when on April 18 he came out of a coma.

But there was an opportunity to care. And it went unrealized.

Yes, there are privacy laws that would allow Kenny Harris’s whereabouts and condition to remain secret, but if anybody cared, a reporter would have tried to find out the entire story.

But nobody did.

Now I know that in five years, assuming all goes well, I will be watching Sportscenter and they will tell me the story, but why can’t they tell me now?

The world is so obsessed with steroids and losing and setbacks, that great feats and miracle recoveries are barely if even noteworthy.

But I’ve changed that. I now care. I will care.

And normally I would contradict myself in the final line, annul my assertion that I have changed. But I don’t want to.

So let me finish off with this fact. Of the eight headlines at ESPN.com, seven of them are negative or about steroids. The other news story is neither positive nor negative.

Well, that is the world.

But I now care.