Happy? Be sure not to tell

Marat Safin runs the gamut of emotions.\nAnybody who saw Safin beat Nicolas Kiefer in a fifth-set tiebreaker at the U.S. Open saw it all Tuesday.\nHe spiked his racket more than any touchdown-scoring National Football League player when he did something ill-advised. He pumped his fists after great shots. He dove all out to try to volley Kiefer's passing shots. He stuck the racket in his mouth. He tried to help a tough lob out with a bit of Carlton Fisk-like body English, feverishly waving his arms. He failed, but won the point with an overhead.\nAnd when Kiefer cramped up and hit the deck after falling behind 6-3 in the fifth-set tiebreaker, Safin called the trainer to help Kiefer up because after four and a half hours, he didn't want the match to end in an injury. It was a great show of compassion and sportsmanship.\nYou won't be hearing this mentioned much on "Pardon the Interruption," "The Sports Reporters" or your garden variety sports talk radio station. Instead you will hear about how Little League is getting out of hand after a 12-year-old kid from Harlem waved bye-bye to his home run and then did a move best described as a two-legged crab walk on his trot from third to home.\nAnd then you will hear that it is Sammy Sosa's fault. After all, Sammy does that hop when he hits a homer. And then he has the audacity to blow a kiss home to his mom watching the game in the Dominican Republic. The nerve.\nOnce more, the supposed moral police in sports, a.k.a. the media, knows all the answers. Once more, the media misidentifies displays of enthusiasm for displays of hotdogging. (And I'm not supposed to be upset that Rick Reilly makes $900,000 a year.)\nI actually heard a caller to a sports talk radio station in Chicago recently say that he doesn't understand why opposing pitchers don't throw at Barry Bonds "every time" he does a pirouette standing in the batter's box after hitting a home run. What the caller didn't know was that Bonds pirouetted once back in 1997 against the Dodgers, and that SportsCenter has run the highlight a mere 1,765 times, making it seem ritualistic.\nThe call typified the reasoning-goes-out-the-window rationale of most sports fans today. Bob Kemp once hosted one of the few excellent sports talk radio shows on Sporting News Radio. At the beginning of each show, Kemp would ask his callers to show some logic in whatever arguments they made. Kemp isn't in the business anymore.\nFor many baseball fans hypocrisy is a powerful tool. The spoiled crybaby ballplayers, they say, don't realize how good they have it. But pump your fist after a big hit or, for a pitcher, a big strikeout, and you are some sort of travesty to the game. One doesn't have to look hard to find an old ballplayer who said things were better back in their day.\nThe Little League World Series provided a chance for the media to once again blame the big leaguers for being bad role models. That 12-year-old kids might be stupid or immature never seems to get into the equation. Then, you will hear about how kids would rather play video games than go out to the playing fields.\nThese media types as well as many fans paint with such a broad brush. Yet the only two colors in their palette are black and white. There certainly is no gray.\nWhen Tiger Woods was caught uttering a few cuss words on camera after one of his rare bad shots on his way to a 15-shot win at the 2000 U.S. Open, many people were offended that Tiger would have such a sour tongue. As if you would be happy-go-lucky with all that money on the line, and Tiger should be held to an impossibly high standard.\nPeople once laughed at me when I suggested that there be a mandatory spike after every touchdown in the NFL. I like to see those people who like to say, "Act like you've been there before," squirm uncomfortably. After all, not everybody has been there before. And if they did make spiking after touchdowns mandatory, they couldn't possibly make the NFL more ridiculous than the salary cap or the Cincinnati Bengals have made it.\nSo why don't we as fans admit the truth? We like to be entertained. We like characters. We like our big-time professional athletes to be as excited to be there as we the ticket-buying fans are.\nLet the cynics who believe that sports, especially baseball at this point, need to shut down to achieve some sort of moral idealism whine.\nI just hope Marat Safin keeps a supply of extra rackets.