Our fallen idols

Sporting News, The, August 6, 2001 by Jay Mariotti

From here on, I will perceive Patrick Ewing not as a basketball warrior but as the fool who let two dancers perform oral sex on him while a dub owner watched with a flashlight. From here on, I will perceive Andruw Jones not as one of baseball's gifted stars but as the blockhead who had sexual intercourse with two dancers from the same club while the owner watched.

Never underestimate the stupidity of our athletes. Deluded by wealth and celebrity, many assume it's part of their privileged existence to receive comped sex in a strip joint. They never give the slightest thought to what might lurk behind the favors--say, an organized crime family that would love to place a high-profile sports figure in a compromising position to extort a variety of returned favors.

Such as? Oh, a large payment to make sure the wife and kids don't find out, not to mention the public or Madison Avenue's image-makers. If not that, then maybe help in fixing a game. There is no evidence yet of blackmail being a motive in the Gold Club case, which has exposed the sleazy lives of jockdom's rich and famous in an Atlanta courtroom. But knowing that prosecutors have linked the club to New York's Gambino crime family, antennae are up like never before. At stake is the integrity of sports and the moral vulnerabilities of millionaire athletes, issues that definitely should occupy fans' minds.

"What I tell players is that if you're going to be comped, what's happening is that someone has just started a scorebook on you" says Kevin Hallinan, security chief for Major League Baseball. "Certainly, what they are suggesting went on in the Gold Club is very, very unattractive to professional sports."

Consider the court proceedings a loud, urgent wake-up call for the lap-dance set. If the daily testimony makes for interesting reading, it also should remind athletes how easily they can lose idol status if their nocturnal misadventures sink too far into the gutter. To anybody even named in the Gold Club case, best of luck landing another major endorsement. Think Ewing is the least bit marketable? Think those mom-and-son soup commercials still work for Terrell Davis after dancer Jana Pelnis admitted under oath she was paid by the club to have sex with him? No laws have been broken, I know. Yet reputations are smudged by the day.

The Disneyfied side of sports wants to believe the Gold Club fiasco is an aberration. Yeah, and Bill Clinton never had sexual relations with that woman. If the sex lives and infidelities of athletes were chronicled in detail, The National Enquirer might be shocked. A fair percentage are known to frequent strip dubs, seeing these places as a world where they can have their fun in private. Well, boys, the secret is out.

"We have to do a better job at the league level of identifying places like this and warning players against it," says NBA commissioner David Stern, whose league has taken another hit in this affair.

Not that the Atlanta developments constitute a news flash about sex in pro sports. Any time, any place, athletes have their choice of flesh pleasures. The only difference between now and 10 years ago, when Magic Johnson's HIV admission shook the world, is that they faithfully wear their condoms. Athletes have one-night stands. Athletes have mistresses. Athletes take phone numbers passed from stadium ushers and call cell phones after games. Athletes walk through hotel lobbies and are followed into elevators by groupies. It takes a good man to resist the temptations. How many do?

It might be argued an athlete's sex life is none of our business. But it certainly is when the debris affects our trust in sports and role models. Try explaining to your 10-year-old what Jones meant when he testified he walked into a room and saw two women "doing lesbian action." Try explaining what Ewing meant when he said, "The girls danced, started fondling me. I got aroused." Try justifying to yourself how the mob, traditionally immersed in the illegal gambling trade, might be dangerously close to the athletes on whom we rely for honest sport.

You can't. You just hope people learn to keep their pants on.

Jay Mariotti is the host of a show for Sporting News Radio and is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Listen to his show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Eastern). To find an affiliate near you, e-mail affiliates@sportingnews.com, or listen live online at www.sportingnews.com.