Free Republic

BACK IN 1997, when I was in my second year with the Cubs, I vividly recall watching batting practice when Mark McGwire stepped in the cage for the Cardinals. It was awesome. I saw how far the ball flew, and, like so many of us, I suspended disbelief. It was like watching a good horror movie, before we knew how wrong things could go. Over time, a cloud of doubt seeped into clubhouses. Suspicion about whether that teammate beating you out is playing fair. Records became mere placeholders. Every home run hit a little too far brought a hitter's integrity...

Every time I think American sports teams can’t get any dumber, they get dumber. Last month the Philadelphia Flyers took down the statue of a woman who raised hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the Nazis because of a satirical song she sang in the 1930’s and now the Chicago Cubs are banning a fan for flashing the okay hand gesture during a live broadcast. Really, I swear to God, this happened. It all started on May 7th when Chicago Cubs sideline reporter Doug Glanville gave a report and a fan behind him, whose face we can’t see, flashed...

Doug Glanville was the first-round Draft pick of the Cubs in 1991 and went on to have a nine-year Major League career that included stints with the Phillies, Rangers and Cubs. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an engineering degree. Since retiring, he's worked for ESPN and written for a variety of prestigious publications. Beginning next month, he'll be teaching a class on "Communication, Sports and Social Justice" at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication. Glanville, who is African-American, developed the concept for the course guided by his own experiences with racial profiling. Four years ago, he was shoveling...

In an athlete’s environment, money can be its own pollutant; you can become desensitized to the significance of what it can buy. Typically, if a person spends hundreds of dollars on arrangements to pass time with someone, that someone would be important in his life. But when you have extensive financial resources, it’s easy to send similar signals to people who are meaningful only for a moment. Even worse, you might only concern yourself with what it means to you. As the money flows in, so do the toys — cars, clothes, bling — and once in the stratosphere, a...

Filed at 8:08 p.m. ET ROSEMONT, Ill. (AP) -- The executive board of the baseball players' union failed to set a strike date Monday but will ask major leaguers for the authority to call the sport's ninth work stoppage since 1972. Members of the union's executive board, meeting on the day before the All-Star game, left a hotel near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport saying they will go back to their teammates. Philadelphia outfielder Doug Glanville said that because of the uncertain position, it was wise to ``prepare for the worst.'' After the expiration of the previous labor deal Nov. 7,...