Three weeks ago, everything was different for Tiger Woods. That’s not that long ago. Twenty-one days ago, he was a billionaire who changed the game of golf forever and did it as a pillar of society.

He was John Galt … if John Galt had infidelity issues. Which, I guess would make him Henry Reardon. Either way, he was better than us.

Some might cringe at the suggestion that anyone is better than anyone else. Don’t cringe. It’s unbecoming. Your face looks vaguely reptilian when you scrunch it up like that. Relax your muscles and realize that we encouraged Woods to be better than us. It’s what he was selling, and seeing as how he’s a billionaire, I’d say we were happy to buy it.

Tiger Woods, in reality, isn’t worse than the other athletes with front page scandals. Kobe Bryant may or may not have raped someone (he definitely fooled around). Mike Tyson had his fair share of lady-problems. Michael Jordan is a gambling addict. Pete Rose too.  Charles Barkley drives recklessly with lady friends. Ray Lewis and O.J. Simpson have both been suspected of murder. Manny Pacquiao has cheated on his wife at least once and is under scrutiny for having recently done it again. Andre Agassi wore a wig. Plaxico Burress wore sweatpants in public. Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Milli-Vanilla … they all lipsynched their songs. That’s pretty bad, no?

Tiger Woods? All he did was treat his wife like Tony Soprano treated Carmela. And that show was on HBO for eight years! People loved it. So why has it only taken three weeks for Woods to go from pillar to pariah? He’s still great at golf, right? Why is everyone leaving? Where’s everyone going? And why?

Tiger Woods sold himself – not his skill – to the public. His ability to hit a golf ball with power and accuracy is why we cared to examine Woods further, sure, but he made his fortune from the public measuring ourselves against him. And just as one can only measure something accurately if it is shorter than the measuring stick, so too was it true that Tiger Woods had to be better than all of us in order to see how we stacked up.

People get upset if you lie about the skills you have. They’ll drop you forever if you lie about the kind of person you are.

No one ever believed Bryant was perfect. He was always cunning and a teensy bit cold. A hard worker, always. But a good man? I dunno. Probably not. Because he never seemed like he cared to be liked. He cared to be respected. Same thing with Jordan or Armstrong. They never wrapped their personal lives in with their profession. The media tried (they always try), but fans know the difference between the media connecting the dots and the athlete doing it for them.

Woods carved out a place for himself in the public eye as a family man and a son who’d learned the lessons taught to him by a loving family and heckuva father. The media didn’t connect those dots. His advertisers did. They packaged it, sent it out and if you were one of the millions who bought it, then this has been a nasty three weeks for you too. Not as bad as Tiger, but still bad. Bad because his connection with his family, the institute of marriage and the lessons handed down through generations of fathers was something that many of us aspire to. Hell, it’s something that many of us achieve. Just like Tiger Woods. I can’t hit a golf ball more than 250 yards, I haven’t been able to dunk in five years and I’m scared of a 97 mph fastball, but I can raise a family. I can learn from my parents and be a real man.

Just like Tiger Woods.

Unless I can’t, just like Tiger Woods. Unless it’s as impossible as sinking a 40-foot putt. Because if John Galt isn’t perfect, then true brilliance must be a myth. And if this ruler isn’t accurate, what does that say about everything I’ve measured with it?

But I promised you a silver lining, didn’t I? A bright side to what has shaken more lives than any athlete should be able.

The bright side here is that Tiger Woods was, and to some, is, a man among men. Someone who meant more than just golf. Maybe by tearing him down, people will learn to stop building guys like him up so high. The word I’m looking for here is skepticism. But a more deeply-rooted skepticism than before.

Those who never found room for sports in their lives will continue to scoff. Let ‘em. Nothing to be done about them. Those who looked to athletes and the games they played as something that could save them … well, they still can, they’re just going to have to be careful now. More aware. Less accepting. So next time, we’ll all pause before selecting our heroes. We’ll pause to decide if we even want to select a hero.

It’s not that the public will slay potential superstars from developing, it’s that we’ll be paying attention to their development. It’ll be a defensive tactic. A way to protect ourselves from more falsehoods. We won’t get fooled again. Greatness on the playing field will always be awarded with accolades. Bet on it.  It’s how we think about these men and women once the exit the playing field that needs to change, because that’s what hurts us.

Had we been told 15 years ago that Tiger Woods was a) going to be the most miraculous golfer of this or, perhaps, any other generation and b) he will demonstroubly cheat on his wife for years with multiple people, how would it have affected the way we look at Tiger Woods today?

Could it be much worse than how things have played out these last three weeks?

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Photos courtesy of Flickr

Here’s a recap of the weirdest o

Monday Lions WR scratches himself up on his golf cart – hilarity and shame ensue.  Football
Tuesday Maxim Magazine brought the funny when they “hacked” into David Ortiz’s Gmail account. Baseball
Wednesday Why did ESPN ban Twitter? ‘Cause it’s unmarketable, dummy. Sports Broadcasting
Thursday No 9-year-old would ever be on the NBA’s radar … would he? Basketball
Friday Nothing is as funny or sad as this little league catcher watching the same kid hit five homers in one game. Baseball
Saturday Dorm Golf: The best way for engineering students to make mom proud, poly-sci students to make mom angry. Golf
Sunday At this point, will people even remember that Favre used to be good? Football
Eighth Day These sporting robots are almost as fast and efficient as Dwyane Wade.

Remember when Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in January 1974 and eventually helped the terrorist organization rob the Hibernia Bank several months later? Or when Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero avoided doing jail time by aggressively and enthusiastically informing the FBI of the activities of the Soprano organization? Clinton pardoned one and Paulie Walnuts helped whack the other. 

Jose Canseco falls somewhere in the middle.
Undeniably, one of baseball’s least sympathetic characters is trying to become an ambassador of baseball’s Steroid Era. In an ESPN Philadelphia radio interview from Thursday, Canseco was summoned from whatever madcap reality in which he normally operates to discuss the newest bulletpoints added to the growing list of steroid issues. Like saying “Beetlejuice!” three times, Canseco heard 1. “Steroids” 2. “David Ortiz” and 3. “Manny Ramirez” and appeared unsolicitedly.

So what is it this time?

As a guest on the Mike Missanelli show, Canseco discussed, among other things, the necessity for Major League Baseball to have sought out his council on how to deal with the players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.

Here’s a snippet:

What baseball should have done in the past is consulted with me. I would have resolved this issue from a long time ago, but [the league is] very stubborn. They blackballed me to get me out of the game. They don’t want to talk to me, they don’t want to listen to me. They’re extremely stubborn. In the past they’ve gotten away with everything. My doors are open to speak with Major League Baseball and the Player’s Association on how to get this subject matter put behind us and move forward. I think a lot of players are getting really bad advice from their attorneys, from their consultants and … it’s just, really, really bad.

“Put behind us?” He says all of this as if the league and the Player’s Association are somehow disallowing Canseco from doing his job of moderating the acceptance of steroids in baseball. He’s like a pastry chef wondering why all his customers are so fat. But there he is, desperate to help the league that, by his own admission, blackballed him, threw him out and locked the door.

The best thing that happened to Canseco after his 2001 retirement was realizing that he was willing to publically discuss things MLB was not. Like it or not, Canseco is the most reliable source on steroid use available to the public. And like a child who finds something that entertains his parents, he’s beaten it into the ground until it becomes truly annoying.

We knew we were supposed to ignore the crazy guy on the bus babbling nosensensically, but we thought he said something interesting, so we engaged him for just a second. He didn’t say anything interesting and now we’re stuck in a conversation with him for another 11 stops. Major League Baseball was smart enough to never make eye contact with Canseco. All these years since his retirement, MLB just keeps working on the sudoku puzzle, hoping Canseco will exit the bus at the next stop.

He hasn’t really helped them, which is why they’ll never seek his council. He’s burned them twice. First by being the poster boy for cheating, then by telling the world how obvious it at was. The league will never let him burn it again by asking for help that it’s too late for him to give.

Canseco poo-pooing the attorneys and consultants of players under indictment is both humorous and sad, like a drunk who danced so much he wet his pants, because Canseco suggests that his advice would have worked out better.

Because lord knows when one thinks of Jose Canseco one thinks of rationality and reliability.

Just like Patty and Puss,’ Canseco has been bent and reshaped enough that he assumes he is someone other than who he is: an incredible slimeball. He wants to create situations in which steroids are looked upon passively, like Ty Cobb‘s anger and racism, as if it were a cute affectation from a bygone era. Because if he is successfully able to do that, then he’s got a chance at the Hall of Fame (don’t worry, he has no chance at the Hall of Fame). He’d perhaps have a cherished baseball post-career. And for that to happen, he believes he needs to insinuate himself back into the central point of one of baseball’s ugliest eras by railing against it.

But he was one of the largest players involved in creating it in the first place. Accepting anything from No-Way Jose would be igniting another fire that the league would be unable to extinguish.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via AP

That weary, displaced emotion is what I’ve been feeling about our president ever since the baseball All-Star Game. Something ain’t quite right. It’s unsettling. And it’s only getting worse.

I’m beginning to think that he isn’t really all that into sports.

On Monday, the WNBA champion Detroit Shock were the most recent in a long line of teams and athletes to visit the president’s house. During his speech to the team, Obama retold the story of his daughters watching him watching female basketball players on ESPN’s SportsCenter and how it taught his daughters that girls can be champions too.

There are three things wrong with this tale: 1) If Sasha and Malia were watching their father watching television, how can he be sure they weren’t learning a different lesson? Like “presidents can lazily watch sports highlight shows too.” 2) SportsCenter doesn’t cover anything but the Yankees and preseason football. They damn sure aren’t doing 45-second recaps of Shock games. 3) This weak recollection isn’t even new. It’s the same thing he told to the WNCAA Champion Connecticut Huskies.

If you’re going to regurgitate stories (something that almost everyone does), shouldn’t he come up with a better story to regurgitate?

But wait, it gets worse.

The NBA’s Shaquille O’Neal, in town to do some wrasslin‘, figured he was bigger than the Detroit Shock (Physically? Check. Egotistically? Check. Pop Culturally? Check.) so he tried to do a pop-in on the White House a few hours after the Shock left. It didn’t work and he was turned away by security, a site I would sell your first born to have seen. Alas, we can only assume that Obama, not unlike Jerry Seinfeld, like the pop-in.

NINA: (rolling eyes) This person does not believe in telephones, does she?
JERRY: She likes the pop-in. I’ve told her how I hate the pop-in.
(pointing to George) He likes the pop-in, too.
GEORGE: I just popped in now. I’m a big pop-in guy.
JERRY: Yeah.
GEORGE: How ’bout Kramer.
JERRY: HUGE pop-in guy!

- from “Seinfeld” Season 3, episode 21: The Letter

If Obama’s our first “basketball president,” why not let the Diesel in to take a look around the Roosevelt Room or something?

Perhaps I’m being unfair. The guy is busy … the guy is our PRESIDENT, for cryin’ out loud. He can’t love everything and lord knows women’s basketball can be unlovable. So is O’Neal come to think of it. So maybe Monday’s actions were all just a fluke. I mean, he wouldn’t seem so half-hearted when it comes to his teams, the White Sox and Bulls, right?

Ugh. Listen to the end of that link. Sox outfielder DeWaye Wise makes the biggest catch of his career, the biggest catch of the season and one of the biggest catches of all-time and the No. 1 White Sox fan in the country calls him DeWayne Weiss. This is almost as tragic as the Bob Costas interview from two weeks ago in which Obama calls Comiskey Park, the stadium in which his favorite team played for over a century – Cominsky Park.

Cominsky Park? You can’t say that. That’s like David Ortiz wearing a Yankee cap or a Bulls fan acting graciously toward the worst basketball player in the history of the NBA …

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via AP

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Is that Bill Laimbeer! Is Barack Obama shaking hands with the guy who spent five years elbowing Michael Jordan in the ribcage anytime he went near the basket?! You see? This is what I’m talking about. If Obama was truly a sports fan, more specifically a Chicago sports fan and most specifically a Chicago basketball sports fan, there’s just no way he wouldn’t have punched Bill Laimbeer in the face here. No way. Leader of the free world or not, a die-hard woulda given him five across the eyes. Look at his left hand in this picture. It’s slightly tense, ready to make a fist, like he knows what he should do with it.

Weak sauce, Barry.

Truth is, it’s unimportant to me (and many Americans) if Obama is uninterested in athletics. I need him to care about sports about as much as I need a new hole in the head. It’s the idea that he has (or we have) projected this basketball-playing, Southside-rooting, ESPY White House guest list listing character onto him and he’s played the part instead of being it.

Be the part, Prez or quit playin’.

Boston baseball fans will tell you they have a sixth sense about their brethren. They’ll tell you they have inside information of their beloved team and the players connected to it that is otherwise unavailable to those foreign to Red Sox Nation. They’ll tell you they patiently waited out David Ortiz‘s horrific spring slump without boos or jeers because they knew – they just knew – Papi would turn it around. Without telling you that they know more than you, Sawx fans will tell you they know more than you.

Don’t believe ‘em.

These formerly nasty and hardened baseball elitists are melting faster than Greenland’s glaciers. They’re softening up like campfire marshmallows and they’re doing it twice as quickly. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at the ovation Fenway Pahk gave their former Rookie of the Year, Nomar Garciaparra, in his return to the place he spent 8 1/2 years being the face of the franchise.

“Backwards ramoN” earned two batting titles in 1999 and 2000 for the Red Sox, hit .323 for the team and .377 at Fenway, the highest average in that park of any active player with at least 1,000 at-bats. And for that, on Monday night, the Boston faithful were faithful to something besides Boston. Garciaparra tapped his chest, tipped his cap and looked around the familiar field as Bostonians showered one of the most popular Red Sox in the last 20 years with a one-minute standing ovation.

But this is Boston. Short of New York and Philadelphia fans, are there any more brutal louts crashing the games these days? There didn’t used to be. And Garciaparra is different than Ortiz’s struggles. For starters, he’s still on the team. Garciaparra left town a villain, right?

Remember?

Two months after sending Garciaparra to the Cubs in 2004, the Red Sox won the franchise’s first World Series in 86 years. His former teammates voted to give him a World Series ring. Curt Schilling noted that if it were not for Nomar, the Sox may not have been in a position to win at all that year. At the time, the decision to give Garciaparra a ring felt like a parent deciding not to ground their child for missing curfew for no other reason that they’re just relieved the kid is home safe. It’s over. Let’s do all we can to put it behind us. Even just two months after his departure, No-mah’s history with Boston was being rewritten.

So let’s rewrite the rewritten parts and look at the end of Garciaparra’s run in Beantown:

• After initially agreeing on a four-year, $60 million deal, Garciaparra wanted an $8 million signing bonus that would bring the total value to a Derek Jeter-ish $17 million per year. The Red Sox weren’t feeling it.
• In the offseason prior to 2004, Boston tried to get Alex Rodriguez, who at the time still played the same position as Garciaparra. Ain’t nothin’ quite as maddening as the guy you’re dating eyeballin’ another woman.
• Stories were written claiming Garciaparra felt that throughout the 2003 season management instructed the grounds crew to rough up the dirt at shortstop so it would be tougher for him to make plays.
• Because of his impending marriage, he refused to shave his head with most of his teammates during the 2003 ALCS (this one seems reasonable, but it’s just another example of the erosion that went on between Nomar and Red Sox fans).
• During a 13-inning grudge match with the Yankees in July 2004 (weeks before he’d be traded to Chicago), Garciaparra poutingly sat on the bench while teammate Pokey Reese made a number of crackerjack plays in his place.

But there he was on Monday, almost five years later, decked in Oakland’s gold and green stepping out of the batter’s box to acknowledge a throng of fans acting as if he retired in July 2004 instead of being catapulted the hell out of town. I’d expect that nonsense in San Diego or Kansas City or any place else that has easygoing fans satisfied with just having ever had a good player, even for a fleeting moment. But Boston? This isn’t the Boston I know. Where were the “NoMore Garciaparra”  or “Mr. Mia Hamm” signs? Something … anything. A 60-second standing O? That’s soft. Wicked soft.

“They’re crazy fans,” Terry Francona, manager of the Red Sox said on Monday. “But they’re so wrapped up emotionally in their team and people that have been a part of their teams.”

Francona’s right – to a point. They’re appreciative of the “good guys” of Boston’s past. But by the time Garciaparra left, he wasn’t considered one. And he’s never been back since. With Garciaparra, nothing about his situation with Boston changed except time.

And apparently it’s precisely that which has softened up Red Sox Nation.

Go HERE for the video of Garciaparra’s return to Fenway.