In a sport shrouded in scandal, who will rise above and become the symbol of baseball's current generation?

All I can hear right now is sprinkler heads watering the green grass, the pop of a baseball hitting a mitt, and the sound of a wooden bat cracking a ball in batting practice. Spring training has started, which means that the next season of our great pastime is just around the corner.

Unfortunately, the stories that surround our fabled sport are primarily negative. This era of Major League Baseball has been tainted by the so-called steroids epidemic that is supposedly running rampant in the sport. While I don’t doubt that many of our favorite players have been in some way involved with performance enhancing drugs, I believe that the current media circus is taking away from what we love. Do I think that the negative news has to come to an end, NO, but our media has to find something more than just the steroids problem to write about.

Baseball is starting to lose its title as America’s Pastime, because of the nature of the news that is being reported. We no longer have the fabled heroes of the past like Mickey Mantle, Joe D, and Stan Musial (to name a few). Is it because of the sportswriters, or is it simply the nature of our populace. The truth is negative news sells. This is true in every section of our society, politics, business, and especially sports. To be more forthright about the situation, baseball players are no longer seen as great outside of the game, we can no longer see our favorite players as “bigger than life” simply because of the fear that they were doping or they are criminals. What I am proposing is that we continue to publish these stories, but also there needs to be more of an emphasis on the great things that some of our baseball icons do, not just the bad.

In baseball’s earliest days we had protagonists and antagonists of the game. Babe Ruth was the quintessential heroic athlete of the time. He was the best player of his era (probably ever too) and the American public followed his every move outside of the game. I love to see the documentaries that show just how much of a celebrity Ruth was. Sure, he wasn’t the exact guy that you wanted your children to idolize, because of his vices outside of the game. He was more than likely an alcoholic, a glutton, and a womanizer. None of these traits are the most admirable, but I don’t believe any one at the time characterized him as a bad person. He was noted for his reckless drinking binges, but at the same time he was a well-known philanthropist. Babe was a celebrity on the field and off, but it wasn’t simply because of his tumultuous lifestyle.

Ruth’s antagonist at the time would certainly be Ty Cobb. Cobb was a player that everyone hated. He was one of the greatest ever, but he was a dirty player and a dirty person. I doubt there were any positive things said about Cobb outside of his play on the field. He was the player everyone wanted to hate and everyone wanted to love Babe Ruth. We don’t have any stories like that today.

In a different era Stan Musial was a player that you didn’t hear much about off the field, Mickey Mantle was definitely the man that takes that title. But Musial’s exploits didn’t go unnoticed. Musial’s career statistics show that he was one of the greatest to ever play the game. He’s also recognized as one of the best sportsman to play, he won “Sports Illustrated’s” sportsman of the year award in 1957. He never argued a call and never complained. Former MLB Commissioner Ford Frick said about Musial, “Here stands baseball’s perfect warrior. Here stands baseball’s perfect knight.” There are numerous stories about Stan Musial’s ideals, personality, and just his honest hard-working spirit that the players of today should take note of. He has never been thrown out of a game. When his numbers started to decline as he got older, he asked Cardinals management for a pay cut. In 1951 he went as far to help an opposing player, Chuck Conners, of the rival Chicago Cubs, with his swing. This is the type of man, hero, that we as a people need to start noting and writing about.

In hearing these great stories of past heroes, who do we, as sports fans, believe should be anointed as our great generational hero? Considering his current circumstances it is surely not Alex Rodriguez. Albert Pujols has been noted for his generosity with charity and there is no argument that he plays the game the right way. But, with the steroids situation, almost everyone out there is probably skeptical about his history with PED’s. I firmly believe that he is clean, but there will always be skepticism. Media and common fans alike have a guilty until proven innocent attitude when it comes to players with great hitting numbers, especially home runs. That leaves out power hitters like Pujols and Ryan Howard, so who can be our hero? One player that immediately comes to mind for me is Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox. The youngster threw a no hitter last year and was dominant from the end of the season on. And he did all of this after recovering from cancerous lymphoma in 2006. He was awarded with the Tony Conigliaro award in 2007 for his amazing recovery. In my opinion a player like this, who overcomes adversity and does great things is the type of player that needs to be talked about more often than the scandals that run through the media. Jon Lester is not a hero on the level of Babe Ruth, but he is the type of player that our media and fans need to look at for inspiration. We don’t have a true knight in shining armor for our generation, but it is up to our media to find someone that can be a hero, then the people will ultimately follow. Who would your hero be?