Kansas City tied it up last night, performing nearly perfectly and showing us the Giants did not and will not intimidate them. But there was one interesting element that made the game worthy of national news.

Relief pitcher Hunter Strickland behaved in a less-than-gentlemanly fashion over a double and a home run on his mound-time. He behaved like all these other athletes that are currently in trouble with the NFL. Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson: they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Google “athletes in trouble with the NFL”, and you get a whole page of pictures, the majority of whom are African-American. What’s the story here? I think it is likely a combination of performance-enhancing drugs (roid rage) and – in the case of the NFL – head trauma impacts. Look at the picture of these two Baltimore Ravens. Can you look like that just through exercise? I think not.

It would appear that American professional sports are having a huge impact on players, their families and the viewing audience psyche. Weekly headlines about domestic abuse, child abuse, suicide – the similarities to returning soldiers’ behavior can’t be missed. Are we condemning a whole generation of young men to violence, on their families and themselves – through the violence of making a living? It would certainly appear so.

A Focus on Violence by Returning G.I.’s

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and DAN FROSCH
Published: January 1, 2009
FORT CARSON, Colo. — For the past several years, as this Army installation in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains became a busy way station for soldiers cycling in and out of Iraq, the number of servicemen implicated in violent crimes has raised alarm.

What to do? Figure out the correlations and causations and find means of treatment and modification of the games. It’s too late for those already affected, both on the playing fields and in the theater of war. But it’s not too late to change the outcomes for those who haven’t yet succumbed. The first step is acknowledging the depth and breadth of the problem, and doing more about it than the lame statements of NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell.

Hunter Strickland’s behavior may peak the interest of the Baseball Commissioner’s office, as this was the second incident of him losing control just this month. But it likely won’t change the outcome of this series. I predict the SF Giants will take the next two games, both of which they will play at home. So with the last game hanging in the balance, the two teams will return to Kansas City and shoot it out. I’m hoping KC pulls it off, just as they did in the 7th game the last time they were in the Series in 1985. But that assumes Strickland doesn’t put a gun in his pocket, and shoot anybody that gets a hit off one of his pitches. Now that would make for a dramatic end to the series, in true reality show style. Not funny.