Newsday.com
John Jeansonne

9:35 PM EST, March 1, 2008

Now comes the real Houdini trick for fans: Escaping from the escape.

Because, however accurate sport's historical function as the avoidance of reality, the shackles of troublesome developments increasingly ensnare those seeking relief in the fantasy universe of fun-and-games.

In a jock worshipper's equivalent of waterboarding, the FBI probe of Roger Clemens closely follows the lawsuit filed against the New England Patriots for spying and the resignation of Indiana basketball coach Kelvin Sampson for breaking the same recruiting rules he had violated in his previous job. Just to cite the most obvious cases.

Not surprisingly, a fair amount of evidence exists that the spectating public prefers not to ponder these difficulties. During Clemens' appearance last week at the Houston Astros' spring training camp, fans shouted at reporters stalking Clemens to "Leave him alone" and groused, "You're ruining it for the fans."

Will Leitch, editor of the enormously popular sports Web site Deadspin.com, began his new book, "God Save the Fan," with the chapter titled, "Please God, No, Not Another Essay About Steroids." He argued that fans don't care whether players ingest illegal chemicals; only that their team wins. "Being a sports fan," Leitch wrote, "mostly involves blissful ignorance of the outside world, and that is just fine [his italics]. That is, after all, why we watch sports in the first place."

When the story broke last September of Patriots coach Bill Belichick's nefarious video work, Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, wrote in Time Magazine that Belichick would "make an excellent fan" precisely because Belichick "doesn't care about being fair to the other team; he doesn't even real.ly care about his own players. He just wants to win."

Could it be, then, that by voicing a preference to just get on with the games (and win them), the spectating public has gotten itself into this mess by signaling players, owners and commissioners that rules and federal law need not stand in the way of all-out competition -- thereby enabling these doping cat burglars?

"I don't believe that's the dominant message from people who admire sports," said ethicist Thomas Murray, president of the Hastings Center, whose resume includes past efforts fighting performance-enhancing drugs. "And, even if it is a significant number, they haven't thought through the consequences that, ultimately, sports will be dominated by maximum performance by whatever means at whatever costs.

"Then it will become exhibition. Circus. That's not sports."

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