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Is A-Rod Any Worse Than LeBron and Favre?

Lately, it seems like our sports heroes have all turned into villains. Witness how quickly we turned on LeBron.  Look at how impatient we are with Favre. And, most recently, look at the non-reaction to A-Rod’s 600th homer.

Three of today’s biggest stars are all in the national spotlight – extending well beyond just the sports world – for the way they’re treated, viewed and villainized. In each case, fans will argue that the athletes deserve their shakes. But the question really is whether the backlash has become so brutal, so apparently one-sided, that we must take a step back to reevaluate our lofty expectations of our favorite players.

On consecutive days this week, big news happened that led to an outpouring of negativity and derision. On Tuesday, after rumors circulated that Favre was hanging his cleats up for good, sports writers dug into him for his annual dramatics.

Soon, it turned into a game of “who’s worst of them all?” How’s Favre’s selfishness stack up against that of LeBron? The Wall Street Journal’s Allen Barra considers how A-Rod’s situation differs from LeBron’s:

Fans here have made LeBron James the most despised player in pro basketball because he passed up an opportunity to play here. Yet many revile Mr. Rodriguez for making the opposite decision…Alex Rodriguez is booed in every major league ballpark because he is a symbol of the biggest bullies in baseball.

In that way, A-Rod was fortunate enough to hit his milestone at Yankee Stadium. Otherwise, it might have been “just another awkward baseball moment,” says Wayne Scanlan in the Ottawa Citizen. But even so, reports are conflicted about whether Yankee fans cared enough.

Some reports say that they barely saluted A-Rod for what he’d accomplished. It was almost an obligatory moment for them to highlight and celebrate, not something that they would cherish and remember. According to others, however, A-Rod “received open-armed offerings of Yankee Stadium love.” Only A-Rod can be so polarizing that his reception and reaction is debated at such length.

The explanation for this type of disparity and the sides that have been drawn may come down to indifference, argues Jake Simpson in The Atlantic. “[N]umerical benchmarks in baseball have been rendered virtually meaningless by the steroid era. And A-Rod is as much to blame for that as anyone.” That’s why we’re “so confused” and are overcome with a sense of “relief” that the chase is over.

We seek that same relief from the Favre saga. We’re tired of following the on again, off again drama that we associate with Bristol and Levi. Favre’s held out on the Vikings in much the same way – as did LeBron, on a grander scale, when he held the entire league waiting on him.

Relief’s not an emotion that we’re comfortable with in sports. We’re used to our players, teams, and seasons coming back into focus at their appropriate times of the year. But when our most beloved players take advantage of a free agency situation or a possible retirement in order to stay relevant, it both tarnishes their reputations and upsets the expected state of sports.

Those who take performance-enhancing drugs achieve the same result even more severely. It’s hard for us to move on because, while we recognize the same faces in front of us,  everything continues to feel off-kilter for a very long time afterward. That relief we adjust to is, in a sense, our coming to terms with the fact that things will never really return to how they were before.

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