Shame On You, Mariotti

The other day I was watching ESPN's "Around the Horn," as I always do around 5 pm, when the subject of Maurice Clarette, and his recent arrest for possession of loaded firearms, came up. The question posed by the host was whether or not Clarette should be given another chance, considering the bad decisions that he seems to be constantly making. The first two writers, as any decent human being would, answered that of course he should be given another chance, because, after all, the man is human and makes mistakes just like everyone else.

However, it was Jay Mariotti, writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, whose comments invoked an extreme emotional response in myself. To make a long story short, Mariotti basically said that Clarette has been given enough chances, he should be forgotten, left to rot in prison and then thrown out into the street like garbage when his sentence is up. Upon hearing his heartless words, I became teary-eyed to the point where I could barely see the television screen. Clarette's story caused me to immediately think of a childhood friend of mine by the name of Antoine, who, in my opinion, would have been the best youth soccer player in the United States, had he not fallen victim to the disease of alcoholism. For Antoine, it got to the point that instead of drinking water at halftime, he felt as if he could not perform without beer in his system. I watched him as his body slowly deteriorated, causing him to hunch over and appear as if he was 70 years old. He slept all day, and it goes without saying that the minute his lips touched alcohol, his soccer career was over. Last I heard, he checked himself into a clinic that he later ran away from and is now a father at the age of 21. My point is that Antoine was not a problem child, in fact, far from it. He made some bad choices and surrounded himself with the wrong people, period and end.

Is Maurice Clarette a bad person? No. His situation, as well as Antoine's, involves external circumstances beyond the individual's control. It appears that Clarette is clinically depressed, something which a mental evaluation ordered by the judge residing over his case will either prove or disprove. Clarette also came into contact with negative influences, mainly the Israeli Mob, who tempted him with a life of luxury that he was not ready for. Now that his NFL career is all but over, these individuals, who Clarette owes money to, understand that they will never be reimbursed, a realization that has prompted death threats, both by phone and mail. This also explains why Clarette was riding around with a bullet proof vest the night that he was arrested.

The sad fact is that the education system has failed these athletes, which is another topic for another time, and most of them do not have the intelligence level to make critical decisions for themselves. That said, where were Clarette's advisors at Ohio State? Why didn't they warn him that it would be a mistake to take the NFL to court and that it would be in his best interest to stay in school for another year? Was his agent clueless that the Israeli Mob had given Clarette a beach-front home in Malibu, rent free? It seems that athletes these days just dont have any kind of patience or common sense, and the people who they rely on to make decisions for them are just as incapable as they are. Take Adrian Peterson, running back at Oklahoma University, for example. He was recently spotted driving in a Lexus, one owned by the same dealership that cause the QB at Oklahoma to be dismissed from the team because the owner paid him for hours that he never worked. In a year, Peterson will most likley be a top-10 pick in the NFL draft. Is it so hard to wait one year, when he can buy five of those cars for himself? Does the owner of that dealership really think that it is a good idea to be setting up these athletes for possible explusion from the team, or does it not matter as long as they are kept happy and perform at a high level for his Alma mater? The only crime that Clarette ever commited was not surrounding himself with a group of people who would ultimately allow him to succeed. Is that reason to discard him? If I could, I would give Antoine a million chances because he has done nothing to deserve less. And let's put it this way, I would rather have Maurice Clarette than Terrell Owens on my team any day.

The bottom line is that Clarette entangled himself in a deadly web, and the more he struggled to get out, such as his attempt to rob a house with the goal of partially paying off his debt, the deeper he found himself. However, under no circumstance does that mean he should just be tossed to the side and considered insignificant. You should be ashamed of yourself, Mariotti. It embarrasses me to even consider you part of the human race, and knowing that there are others like you out there that would share your opinion on a subject such as this sickens me. I'm asking for all those who read this blog to send an email to the Sun-Times (Sun-Times.com) and demand that Mariotti be fired. There is no place in sports journalism, a field which I am currently pursuing, for people like him. Perhaps Ozzie Guillen, who I hate by the way, I think he is an embarassemnt to baseball but we'll get into that another time, was on to something when he called Mariotti what the English so casually refer to as a cigarette, or bundle of sticks...


Today's headlines...

• The White Sox split a four game series with the Detroit Tigers, leaving them exactly where they started: 5 1/2 games back. Paul Kornerko considers this series a victory for the Tigers and a failure for the Sox. Jon Garland continued his second-half resurgence.


• Bigger news for the South Siders is Jim Thome's injured hamstring, which is expected to sideline him for what is shaping up to be the biggest series of the year against the Twins. Given Thome's history of injuries, what I don't understand is how this didn't happen sooner.


• The Cubs homered four times, avoiding a four-game sweep against the Phillies. Dave Van Dyke says that Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Zambrano have made the second half of the season watchable, but wonders why it didn't happen sooner. With a 14-5 record, Zambrano is considered the front-runner for the NL Cy Young award.


• The Bears traded Lennie Friedman to the Cleveland Browns. Friedman played in one game for the Bears as a reserve. Do you really care?


• Team USA finished pool play with a perfect record of 5-0. They routed Senegal 103-58 in the final game, but looked less than unimpressive the day before against Italy, winning by only nine points. They were actually trailing by twelve at one point in that game. To think I woke up at 6:30 am to see that performance... Team USA plays Australia, a team with only one NBA player, Andrew Bogut, on Sunday. If everything unfolds as expected, they would take on Dirk Nowitzki's Germany in the elite eight and then Greece in the final four. Earning the top seed in their group allowed them the luxury of avoiding both Argentina and Spain until the finals.


• Former Bulls' point guard, Jay Williams, whose NBA career was abruptly interrupted by a devestating motorcyle accident, has apparently completed his rehab and is considering an offer from the New Jersey Nets.