Don’t believe everything you read

I’m not generally in the habit of repeating pithy sayings, but one of Mark Twain’s came to mind in writing this month’s column: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

For cycling, such reports have been plentiful of late. In particular, a pair of articles in mid-May in the New York Times looked to pronounce cycling’s doping-related demise and use it as a cautionary tale for where baseball might be heading.

Although no one can dismiss the effect of doping scandals on pro cycling sponsorships, my oft-requested take on the articles was that they told less than the whole story, and I’m not sure that a doping-to-doping comparison is the best between cycling and baseball anyway.

In baseball, steroids have been a PR headache but it doesn’t appear that they are as much of a deal-breaker for fans as they are for sportswriters. As reported in another Times piece on the day of the first cycling article, baseball’s television ratings are up this year, and the league as a whole has set an all-time attendance record each of the last three years. Batter up, indeed.

In baseball, one could argue, the things that really piss off the fans are the huge salaries, rising ticket prices, $8 beers, etc. That outrage towards what people perceive as greedy players and owners might be a better analogy for cycling’s doping scandals; when the 1994 strike cancelled the World Series, people thought that fans’ frustrations would boil over and baseball would never recover. 13 years later, most fans barely remember that there was a strike at all.

Perhaps, then, cycling can infer from baseball’s tribulations that: a) maybe fans simply care less about doping and steroids than the media think they do, and b) maybe it’s too early to hit the panic button.

In a broader sense, the performance enhancing drug revelations in cycling and baseball are just two blips on the chaotic radar of global pro sports. After all, there have been doping suspensions in pretty much every sport from tennis to the NFL – where San Diego’s Shawn Merriman missed four games in 2006 after a positive steroid test and still went to the Pro Bowl.

And let’s not forget all the non-doping scandals, from NASCAR – where crew chiefs for several top drivers were suspended for cheating during qualifying for this year’s Daytona 500 – to Italian Serie A football – where the general manager of league champion Juventus was banned for at least five years for his role in a match-fixing scheme.

In the NBA, Stephen Jackson has epitomized the league’s reputation for antisocial behavior; he received a 30 game suspension in 2005 for brawling with fans and then was involved last year in a fight outside a strip club that ended with him getting hit by an SUV and firing off a few shots. But like every other Bay Area sports fan, I cheered like hell during Game 6 of the Golden State Warriors’ first-round upset of Dallas in the NBA playoffs, when that same Stephen Jackson scored 33 points while holding league MVP and nice guy Dirk Nowitzki to 8.

Right or wrong, professional sports are a permanent institution in our culture. They have a powerful grip on our psyches that’s not going to loosen any time soon. I’m not saying that cycling won’t – or shouldn’t – suffer from the doping issues, but the sport will be alright in the long run if it continues to put out a product that fans find appealing.