ESPN NBA

Thom Loverro of the famously conservative Washington Times had a strong reaction to the Lonny Baxter arrest:

Raise the white flag over every stadium, ballpark and arena. Raise it any place games are played, games that are supposed to bring us joy and satisfaction.



It's over. The good guys lost. The bad guys won.



The battle for simple human decency is a lost cause in the world of sports. Fans now must decide if they can live with that.



When an athlete is arrested after shots are fired near the White House, it is time to surrender.



When a sports figure drives around wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying semiautomatic handguns and assault rifles, it is time to retreat or give up.



And duck so you don't get hit by stray bullets.

He runs through a lot of recent arrest, including Maurice Clarett, Brett Myers, and several of the Cincinnati Bengals. Then he concludes like this:

No baseball team should let anyone like Myers pick up a ball again. No football team should give Robinson a third or fourth chance. Those athletes should find another profession, one that does force on fans the moral dilemma of whether to cheer on players awaiting their latest court date.



That, however, is never going to happen.



Teams use the guise of compassion, of giving second chances as a means to avoid taking a stand. They can do so because the public can't possibly muster enough outrage to have an impact on the business of sports.



There are those who say that sports is no different from any other walk of life. There are good and bad doctors, good and bad lawyers, not-so-bad and bad sportswriters.



Those worlds, they say, are no different from the one in which athletes live.



This is the argument of people with dollar-store moral compasses.



I doubt hospital administrators or newspaper editors go to bed at night wondering if one day they will wake up to find one of their employees charged with murder.



I'll bet, though, it is a nightmare coaches and others in positions of supposed responsibility in sports have on a regular basis.