In Junior High my friends and I invented a game we called “Tackle Basket Ball”. The name really says it all. As typical adolescent males our skill sets varied greatly, not many had the ball handling skills of a Pete Maravich and if one did we had to level the playing field. So we invented rules that did not require dribbling. But how do you take away a basketball that is carried down the lane rather than bounced off the floor? Tackling was the answer. Unlike football you cannot play tackle basketball in the grass and of course basketball is played in shorts. I have a few scars on my aged knees from where zealous tackling met with hard concrete.
After a few bloody knees and elbows we learned to refine the rules of our new favorite pastime in order to avoid serious injury and preserve our new sport. An injury event of any severity would have come to the attention of our ever watchful and careful parents who would have quickly ended our fun. We policed our own invented rules, meanness, cheating, attempts a hurting someone was met with name calling and sometimes fists. If necessary the owner of the ball would simply pick it up and go home, immediately ending any disagreement with pleas from all offending parties “oh come back, we will quit (insert offence here)…” There were certain individuals excluded from our friendship because of how they acted in our games.
Lance Armstrong is under investigation by a grand jury, the accusation is fraud. Did Lance Armstrong take funding from the Postal Service (his sponsor) and use that money to fund illegal doping? Fraud would presume an injured party. The only persons that could be hurt by his alleged cheating would be other competitors, the sport itself, and possibly the sponsor.
Cycling has its rules, It is very curious to me that competitors, teammates, and friends were not calling Lance Armstrong a cheater till now. Did the second place finisher of the Tour de France complain? Where was the name calling, the fists, and why didn’t. Landis and Hamilton, Armstrong’s former teammates who are now making the allegations, take their bikes and go home. Maybe because they were not caught doping till later.
I don’t know if Armstrong was cheating or not, only he and likely his fellow competitors do. But, it’s their game, their rules, their bikes. Let’s not make a federal case out of this. “He was doing it to..” sounds like what I told mom when I got home with blood running down my knee and explaining the rip in my shirt. That didn’t fly with her then, shouldn’t with us now.
Seriously! Has the postal service image been tarnished because of Lance Armstrong?
David
