The Josh Hancock Legacy

I know, I know. I have prommised to be more bloggy. Unlike my regular job where I just let my ramblings spew forth and pay the consequences later, here I have the ability to edit myself.

Part of the blogging is that it's a free-flowing exchange of thoughts and ideas. While they flow, I've got about half of 800 posts saved on the computer waiting for me to go back, seeking the proper level of perfection. It's a function of procrastination. Anyway, I'm hoping to make 7 posts in 7 days this week (Including 2 or 3 "other people's mail" entries. The first 2 of the week deal with the month old story of Josh Hancock, since we have had a little time to gain perspective on it.

There’s been some kind of social uprising since the death of Josh Hancock. It’s now bad for baseball teams to make alcohol available in the locker room.

When baseball players wrap up a day’s work, it’s later than when you or I get off work. By providing it for the players, it saves them from having to go out to drinking establishments where they are more apt to find trouble. I’ve been there, you’ve been there. Rarely do good things happen at bars. Baseball players are at a greater risk than you or I. In fact, baseball players at bars put YOU at a greater risk.

Then we go back to the old ad campaign - Friends know when to say when. Is a baseball player more likely to jump into a car while inebriated when surrounded by general hangers-on and enablers, or around members of a team to whom he feels some obligation? I’d state it’s more likely that a player is prevented from injuring himself or others under the influence if he partook at the office instead of a strip joint or, I don‘t know, a party cruise.

If a baseball club allows beer to be served, does that state some kind of endorsement to imbibe by the club? Perhaps, but it’s no stronger of an endorsement than, say, playing in Miller Field or Busch Stadium.

What happened to Hancock is sad. For his teammates, for his family. Tragic is what happened when another St. Louis athlete got behind the wheel of a car after drinking. Leonard Little killed an innocent woman. Leonard Little had not been in the Rams locker room prior to committing vehicular manslaughter.
Drunken driving is an epidemic in our society, there’s no doubt. I just don’t think that banning alcohol in a clubhouse is doing anything to stem the tide. Yet people find the need to praise baseball for taking a proactive stand (even though it’s reactive, and misguidedly so), when really all they are doing is encouraging more players to do what Josh Hancock did - go out to an uncontrolled environment and have a few drinks.

Oh, I almost forgot the real motivation for baseball’s teams to stop making alcohol available: It saves them from being liable when someone like Josh Hancock goes out and kills himself. Oops, did they not mention that?