Getting back to the pure game

My friend Johnny D'Mico called me the other day. Johnny doesn't call me often, but the weird thing is that he always calls when I'm thinking about the same thing he is; it's almost as if Johnny is tripping over the ideas sitting in my head.\nSo Johnny called, and he was really mad about sports figures. He told me there weren't any heroes in any major sports anymore, and all the guys were bums.\nI couldn't believe what I was hearing, so I asked, "What about Alex Rodriguez? He's a pretty good guy, and he's the best darn player in Major League Baseball."\nIf Johnny had been in the same room with me, I think he would have hit me. His voice rose to that strange level it always hits when he's angry. It's somewhere close to the pitch that only dogs can hear.\nHe started to scream at me in that dog-whistle tone, explaining that a guy who signs a contract close to the gross national product of Guam is not a good guy no matter what he does on the field.\nBut I said, "Well, wouldn't you take it if the team was willing to give it to you?"\nJohnny was not amused. I could hear him throwing things, and his tossing was not limited to inanimate objects. I thought I heard a dog go through a set of wind chimes.\nJohnny started to say that those guys were a huge part of the problem, too. He argued that if a guy like George W. Bush could own a team, then you knew there was a problem with the system.\nHe said players are getting too much money. He asked me when enough was going to be enough. He asked what the difference was between $100 million and $150 million.\nI told him the difference was exactly $50 million. Johnny was not amused.\nHe went on to say the whole sports world had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and it had trickled into every aspect of the spectrum. \nI asked him about sports journalists, and he said journalists were a different kind of problem.\nI realized I was part of the journalistic collective, so I asked how we were screwing things up.\nJohnny let out a sigh, as he usually does when he feels his listener is not really paying attention.\nHe told me journalists at this weekend's Super Bowl game are going to ask Ray Lewis about his time in court as much as they are going to ask about the team's excellent season.\nI asked Johnny what the big problem was with that. The Ray Lewis trial was big news.\nThen Johnny said he was just sick of sports journalists reporting like it's their civic duty. I asked him what he thought that meant, and he gave me this example.\nJohnny told me that if a famous sports figure is killed because a drunken driver hits him in a head-on collision, then he doesn't need to know that the sports figure wasn't wearing his seatbelt. Johnny said the seatbelt information was unnecessary in that case. And after all, sports figures have mothers, too. I pondered this and realized I had boxed Johnny into a corner. I said, "But Johnny, I thought you said all the guys were bums in the majors? So who cares how we report on them?"\nJohnny fell silent for a moment. My argument seemed to take out his case at the knees, and he had nothing to stand on.\nBut then Johnny seemed to serendipitously walk into a peaceful place. His voice came back to a normal pitch, and his speech slowed to a normal pace.\nHe said, "I just want everything to go back the way it used to be. I want to believe that guys play the game for the love of it, and there aren't contracts or arbitration. I just want the game to be pure again like when I was 10."\nThen Johnny let out a huge sigh and said the truest words I've ever heard him say: "You know, maybe the problem isn't really anything in the sports world. Maybe it's me, us. We grew up, and now we know the business side of the major leagues. I just wish we could go back. Go back to the driveway or the sandlot or the backyard. Where trees marked the end zones and chalk carved out the three-point line. The games were so simple back then. I just wish we could go back." \nIt was a strange moment for Johnny and me. We had nothing more to say because the unthinkable had happened.\nWe finally agreed on something.