In America, everybody loves a comeback. But these days, high profile returns come with a lot of road rash.
Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers
has been accused by Major League Baseball of taking
performance-enhancing drugs, and is getting a massive 50-game suspension. He says he's innocent; some physician seemingly gave him something not right. In any event, he'll be back by
July.
If Ramirez was a professional cyclist riding in Europe -- under more or less the same drug testing -- it would be much worse. He'd be banned for two years. Sure there's an
appeal process there as well. But he would not be allowed to ride unless his name was cleared. Typically this ends prospective comebacks -- if not careers.
All in all, Major League
Baseball has the easiest drug policy of almost any sport. It loves comebacks. Los Angeles Dodgers' TV outlets would like a nice return as well.
There will be other comebacks. Ben Bernanke,
the Federal Reserve chairman, expects the economy
will have a comeback by year's end. TV advertising sellers will hang their
hats on this, believing this news will help them convince marketers to spend normally in the upfront advertising marketplace that will start in a few weeks.
News Corp. chairman Rupert
Murdoch says "The worst is over" -- and recently, media stocks as a group made some impressive price gains. Is the comeback for real?
Surely Ramirez would say otherwise -- that this
is this beginning of the end. Big-name players like Clemens, McGwire, Bonds, Rodriguez, Giambi, and others may have had a little extra help in their careers -- but none have been suspended.
We love comebacks because we love to see people and companies rising from adversity. It makes for a good story. But more bad TV and sports stuff is out there. We have
memories of how our 401Ks -- and baseball players -- used to perform. Will all of that still sell
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?
Even more than loving comebacks, we detest the realities of painful, slow struggle. (Except those pious witch-hunters taking twisted pride scapegoating athletes.)
BTW: not one global financial body suggests any such 'comeback' is probable until 2010-2011. None. Hope and hype are merely useful drugs to keep us from sinking.
"Sensations" sell; real-life drugery's hell (and won't play on TV). Don't show us dull, painful monotony -- show us the golden glory.
A new future? Uncertain. The romanticized past? Fixed, editable and replayable as myths, rosier than it ever was, better, more glorious, more "pure".
Better, enhancing drugs? They allow longer, harder seasons and extended performance. TV, sports and the world need these now - and people who want a future, with new myths for a new age. Anyone who wants sports, athletes and teams to return to some imagined "pure" past needs to go back and live in their parents' basement -- leave them alone, let them be.
Unless of course they can transform into something new....and improved...