Life's Persistent Questions

A different standard?

You have heard me blabber over Curt Schillings' ankle last month. So it's only nature that you can count on me, or rather, me directing you to ESPN for acutal pictures of the bloody ankle.

Gruelsome, isn't it? And that's before he push off on it while rotating his upper torso and right shoulder at such velocity to generate enough force to make a baseball go 80-90 mph, again and again for nearly 100 times. Remove the suture. Put it back five days later, and do it again. thank god for the invention of socks, so the ankle was covered during the two games.

However the question in my head is: do we hold our athletes to a different standard? Beside the controversy over drug use, I'm talking about privacy over medical information. Sports fans often lament that a team physician is being "secretive", not telling us about the exact injury and status to a star player's (insert body parts here), for reasons as lame as "well, I need to know if he will play and start him on my FANTASY TEAM." This is at the same time when I'm concern about whether genomic sequencing will one day be used against me by the insurance company. Sure world-class athletes are celebrities to certain extent, but does that give us the right to be kept up to the mintue of their health status?

posted by hedgehog @ 5:08 PM