What do you believe?

Because most sports fans truly don't understand it, I must tell you, the reader, that Sports Illustrated is a magazine that is behind the times in terms of information. It is no longer a way to obtain real knowledge and really never was. It is at best, a magazine that helps teen aged boys on punishment build memories they never got to see through pictures. It's baseball coverage seems to be fully devoted to exposing steroid users in Major League Baseball. In 2002 Rick Reilly became dedicated to exposing and embarrassing Sammy Sosa as a user for Sports Illustrated, and now Selena Roberts is dedicated to doing the same to Alex Rodriguez. Sports Illustrated wants every single player who might be great to experience judgment in the court of public opinion unlike any athlete ever will. It is a publication that aside from being geared to children who don't really watch sports, is also geared toward the sports enthusiast of the middle of the last century, men of baseball and horse racing. Men who are stern in the idea that their heroes are majestic but real enough to touch, and just like them. It is a truly backward way to see sports, and Sports Illustrated feeds that for those men. What is worse is that these men are spread throughout the country. Our lawmakers read Sports Illustrated and so do team owners and general managers. It is the last bit of sensationalized sports that touches men who are serious about sports and it needs real restraint so that itnever again is allowed to impact the public's viewpoint on sports.

With that explained, I don't care if Alex Rodriguez or anyone but Jose Canseco took steroids. I think that Canseco never understood that the idea behind using steroids is to become better, and not to simply hit home runs and make money, but to be the best. Players like Alex Rodriguez, whether they took steroids or not, are not simply looking for more money as Canseco was, they are looking to excel in ways that no other players have, and that mentality, for many years, enhanced the game. I admire athletes who are dedicated to perfection. As an artist, my only admiration is in persons who want the most from their craft, shattering prior understandings. Lebron James is one of those athletes. If a player took steroids to better entertain me, then I understand. He wanted to train and work harder. That is the side of sports that Sports Illustrated doesn't show to the pot-bellied men sagging around the OTB-the side that trains and works harder and really works harder than any of us at our jobs. They don't want anyone to truly connect with sports and they'd rather sell a dream of mystical, magical baseball to baseball fans that can be thrown to hell at any time by those naughty, naughty cheaters.

If you've got a brain, and you're a sports fan, then you watch games and you go to them, and you follow teams properly, and you don't read Sports Illustrated.

note:

Sports Illustrated published the above picture...