Fallen Heros

If you haven't herd, Lance Armstrong has been ban for life from professional cycling and his seven Tour de France tiles vacated.  Although I was never a fan of Lance or cycling, it makes me think of all of our sports heroes that have fallen from grace. Sports heroes are the most exposed, respected, admired, immortalized and etched into our lives from childhood. So when they fall from grace, it takes a part  a of us with them.
Drugs, battery, murder, or scandal, for a lot of us its emotionally disappointing and destructing to our sport psyche.

 In earlier times, names like DiMaggio and Gehrig stood for goodness and  honesty, a standard of American sportsmanship. Today, names like Canseco, Manley, Henderson and now Armstrong are forever linked to cheating, dishonesty and a dark spot that will never be erased. Yes, there are still good sports heroes today that will be forever left on our pedestals, but the tragic ending to our most beloved heroes leaves us devastated with little hope, for we tend look to our sports heroes in bad times within our complex world.

I have written the following  poem about our fallen heroes.

    Tainted Heroes
    by Wayne Adam

Where have all the heroes gone?
Like those within our youth
The ones we admired,
From which we sought the truth,

Righteous deeds,
Compassion,
We praised in ink and song
Erected on the pedestal—
Gods that walked alone

Were they all illusions?
Just some fantasy
Or does youth wane to wisdom—
Thus reality

Tarnish stains the purity,
Deceit destroys the soul
One by one they’ve fallen—
Bloody pieces on the floor

Immortality reverts to sin,
Veracity yields to lies,
Heroes of our making—
Human traits survive

Are they just reflections of what we want to be?
We bear their cross of failure—
Mass liability

Men are men
Who sweat and toil with human frailty,
They live and die with dignity—
Not immortality

From innocence to worldliness,
The measure we have gained,
Today there are no heroes—
We are what remain