Anyway, I got drunk one night, and woke up in the hospital with a .29 BAC.
Was drinking straight from the bottle, seeing if I could keep up with my buddy. I think I actually won, until the hospital bill arrived.

I guess what happened was that I didn’t realize how much alcohol was already in my stomach, while I was still taking gulps from the bottle. Then it became easy to drink, and tasted like water. The last thing I remember was walking around having a great time, but being amazed how drunk I was. I even remember telling somebody, “I can’t believe how drunk I am, I’ve never been this drunk, hahahaha”. Luckily somebody found me in a pool of vomit with eyes glazed back and was brave enough to dial 911. They say that I was trying to fight the ambulance guys who and was spitting on them and had to be restrained. Anyway, I don’t think it was the pot that got the pitcher killed, it was that last pitcher of beer. But that’s just little old me.

Now can we talk about drinking and driving?

For the Post, though, it’s time to put a happy spin on the whole sad episode. The first sentence of the article: “It didn’t matter Thursday [in Tupelo Mississippi] how Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock died tragically Sunday morning or the prospective reasons why.”

Let’s move ne, now! Nothing to see here . . .  Time to play ball!

If we were presented with that long list, we would note the many guys who drink too much, dabble with drugs, gleefully engage in conspicuous consumption, cheat on their spouses and turn their backs on their poorer friends of old.

Professional athletes are people who are well-protected by a compliant law-enforcement system and a media racket that uses these guys to sell lots and lots (and lots) of advertising. In their sterilized form, these guys are a precious commodity. See this post for the lopsided nature of sports coverage—in many local newspapers and newscasts, sports gets as much (or more) coverage than all “serious” news combined. Why so much fuss over these guys? The proximate explanation is that huge amounts of money are at stake. Huge amounts of money and time. Money and time that often should be spent attending to real-life pressing matters.

With all of that PR supporting their sanitized and glamorized images, is it surprising that we have such an unrealistic image of pro athletes? They are repeatedly given a free ride. They are glamorized by the press as part of an unspoken quid pro quo. When they show up for a staged photo-op at the children’s hospital cancer ward, they are followed by a dozen beaming people holding television cameras and newspaper cameras. On those occasions when they stop to help someone with a flat tire, they are compared to Mother Teresa. When we see a pro athlete in a restaurant or the airport, we get all giddy. Whenever a pro athlete genuinely lives a life of constant selfless altruism (as was the case of Kurt Warner), the media falls all over itself trying to generate new accolades for him.

We want our athletes to be little gods, playing one of God’s favorite pastimes. We want to adore them. We dream that we could be one of them, or at least that our kids will someday join their ranks. How else to explain that soooo many parents emphasize a “sport” called t-ball for their six-year olds, a game that involves almost no exercise at all?

The public is thus part of this conspiracy of make-believe. We can’t bear the thought that someone someday might break the spell and remind us that all of these guys are fallible human beings. We don’t like to think the truth: that many pro athletes are people you’d never want your daughters to date. Some of them are people you wouldn’t ever want in your house.

But those athletes “are” the people they are carefully orchestrated to be. They smack balls (or throw balls through hoops), they run fast, they knock each other over. We clap and scream our approval. We hand over $6 for a beer. But never tell a golfing fan “This is an awful lot of attention for a guy whose talent is merely tapping a little ball in a hole.” Don’t break the spell. Don’t wake the people up from their cozy little dreams that what those athletes are doing on the field matters in a big way.

The ultimate explanation for this protection racket is that pro athletes are the centerpieces for social bonding and status seeking by the fans. How many times have you heard a fan bragging that he or she got “good seats for the big game”? How many times have you heard jubilant fans exclaiming “we won!,” as though the fans accomplished anything at all? For more on ultimate explanations, see Jason Rayl’s post, “Super Bull.”

The bottom line is that our corporate sponsors can’t “afford” for our sports celebrities to look bad. It’s literally too expensive. The fans don’t like it because it jolts them back into the real world. They’d rather remain in that land of snooze where it’s the most important thing in the world that a ball lands fair rather than foul.

Well, it’s too bad that Josh Hancock was driving “foul” a few nights ago rather than “fair.” That mistake cost him his life. Now we shall see whether the fans learn anything from this incident, or whether they quickly return to their corporate-sponsored dreamland.

When I say the bartender was not at “fault”, I meant in the legal sense. In fact, I presume his heart is heavier now, and he will be more proactive about saving his customers lives by taking keys away.

Of course, personal responsibility needs to play a role. Sure, someone knackered out of their mind can’t judge whether they can judge or not, but that very same person could have made the decision to give a friend their keys or simply not drink as much a few hours before. If only Mr. Hancock had formed a plan to accompany his desire to get hammered, by having someone else drive him, or commit to calling a cab, or anything other than driving himself, really. But he didn’t. And he does deserve culpability for that.