A Damn Shame

I woke up Thursday morning, maybe around 7:45, to ESPN2's "Mike & Mike in the Morning". I've been watching that show semi-faithfully since I was a senior in high school when it came on ESPNews and here I am, a 20 yr. old young lady and still a fan. But anyhoo, the only reason I woke up to it was because I heard Mike Greenberg, one of the show's hosts, screaming passionately about something that was bothering him. "It's not our business to know about the guy's personal life! What he and his wife do should be private!" And then I saw the headline at the bottom of the screen: A-Rod makes it interesting north of the border it said, or something along those lines. Being half-asleep, I wasn't really paying attention to the headline and I mistook "north of the border" to be New York, ha. But I soon woke all the way up once I realized what they were talking about. A-Rod was supposedly seen at a strip club in Toronto during the Yankees' series against the Blue Jays this past week, and he's also been seen on the town with the female more than twice. And of course, the New York Post or Daily News or one of those major New York papers was the first to report it on the cover of Thursday morning's issue with a headline of "Stray-Rod: Alex hits strip club with mystery blonde". Being the nosy person that I am, I immediately jumped out of bed and got on my computer, eager to see what the hell was going on with that. I don't know what drove me to do that. I suppose the fact that I'm a die-hard Red Sox fan and the accused plays for the Yankees was a huge contributing factor in my wanting to investigate it more. Either way, I looked at it. I know New York scrutinizes the star athletes associated with that state's teams and whatnot, but why does it matter? Why does it matter that Paul LoDuca cheated on his wife with someone way younger than he? Why does it matter that A-Rod is supposedly cheating on his wife now? Why does it matter if David Wright is homosexual or not? This whole thing is based on the public's need to know, right to know, and want to know. These three aforementioned questions are definitely based on the latter. Like Greenberg was saying, it's clearly not our business to be concerned about who's bangin' who, who's doing what drugs, who's doing this that and the other. As far as baseball (and other sports) are concerned, the only thing we, as fans, should be worried about is whether or not our team won that day, whether or not our favorite player performed up to standards. Like the late great Branch Rickey Sr. once said: "A...box score is a democratic thing. It only tells you how good of a player you were on that particular day". And while it's always interesting to get the latest gossip on the superstar players, that's the last thing that we should be worried about. My curiosity can always be satiated another time, like after the season ends. The only thing I care about right now is the Red Sox keeping their double-digit lead in the AL East!