Playing With Yourself: The Video

Hey guys, it's Tom Guarriello. You know, when I first started blogging a few years ago now, I was, you know, I would blog about just whatever came into my head. I've got a lot of things that interest me, and one of the things that's interested me my whole life has been sports. And so I started blogging about, you know, the relationship between sports and other things that are important in my life, psychology being one and, you know, social trends being another. And over the years that I've been blogging, I've written a series of blogs that I called Playing with Yourself. Smartass that I am. But Playing with yourself in this context did not mean what it sometimes means, but meant instead that when you become a, a celebrity, and in particular when you become a celebrity in sports, you don't actually leave yourself, the person that you have been all of your life, behind. In fact, you have to be yourself in the sports situation. So that was kind of the, the, the premise of the blogs that I wrote about playing with yourself. So now, um, today, as I do sometimes, I'd like to show you the New York Times. And here we have today's New York Times sports section. And as you can see here The, um, there are some interesting headlines in today's New York Times sports section. The big article, the major article, is an article called "A Somber Stern Surveys the Damage to His League." Now, this is about a major scandal in the National Basketball Association about an official who has been gambling on basketball games and gambling on basketball games in which he was the referee. Not a good thing. Kind of erodes the credibility, if you will. Sort of hurts the credibility of the sport. So here we have basketball going through a major, major problem with gambling. Now we have just a little bit of a picture down here. You see this little picture down here? That little picture down there, the headline to that little picture is Falcons had penalty in mind. Now that article is about another of the recent sports developments of the week, and that is Michael Vick, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, um, having been indicted in a federal indictment for dog fighting. Raising dogs that fight, transporting dogs that fight, uh, breeding dogs for fighting, being involved in killing dogs if they don't fight well. A big, big, big problem for the NFL and of course for Michael Vick. So that's two things. Oh, down here at the bottom of the page We have Tour is hit with another blow as favorite fails a drug test. So now we have the Tour de France, cycling, great sport, tremendous, uh, athleticism. As we know, bicycle racing has been at the center of doping, blood doping, all kinds of performance-enhancing drugs being used in cycling for years and years and years and years. And now the Tour de France, which is the premier event in cycling, threatened tremendously. Does it have any credibility anymore? I don't think so. That's just, you know, that's just the head, that's just the front page. Then you turn the page a little more and you see, um, oh, here's one: Chemist links drug to Bonds and Sheffield. So now we have the steroid controversy in baseball. Barry Bonds, of course, is about to break Henry Aaron's all-time home run records, and there's a huge cloud, of course, hanging over Barry Bonds because Barry Bonds is alleged to have used steroids to boost his physical ability. So, so here we've got 4 examples of of how the social pressures and the social problems that we have all around us have now encroached on sports. Sports used to be a bastion of a respite from problems. You didn't have to worry. You could watch a game. You wouldn't have to worry about anything. Let me go watch the game. I just want to watch the game. Leave me alone. I don't want to have to worry about crime. I don't want to have to worry about this. I don't want to have to worry about Iraq. I just wanna watch the game. Well, we can't even watch the game anymore. There is no place to hide anymore in our culture from what we've done to ourselves, which is, I think, to place such an enormous, enormous stress on winning, on performing, on being the best, on On and on and on and on, elevating to these levels that now officials gamble on basketball games because they have to be stars and win money. Tour de France riders have to blood dope because they have to win and they have to, God forbid you finish third in the Tour de France. Michael Vick has to win at dog fighting part of some kind of bizarre rap subculture, dog fighting, whatever sort of thing. And Barry Bonds— so, uh, there is no respite. No matter where you go, you play with yourself when you get there. So take it easy, and I'll see you again soon. Bye.