A-Rod and the Wicked Witch of the East?

Yep, that right there would be a picture of Madonna and one of her workers kids in none other than New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez's box seats at a June 22 Yankee game.

Now, at first glance, that doesn't mean that the possibly soon-to-be-divorced tranny lookalike pop diva and baseball's most gay best player are carrying on a sinful relationship. No, they just might be friends, because Latin-American-Dominican (what is he again?) ballplayers in their 30s definitely hang out with aging pop stars all the time. Plus, Madonna's married to that Guy Ritchie fellow and A-Rod is married to the mother of his two children, one of whom was just born back in April (the second, not the first).

Apparently, A-Rod has been sneaking over to Madonna's Central Park West apartment, and leaving "as late as midnight." (The horror!) There's also rumors that A-Rod attended a concert of Madonna's back in April and the boys over at Deadspin have gotten a tip that Madonnarod have been sneaking off on private jets together. No word on whether this affected A-Rod's decision to blow off the home run derby that's part of the very last All Star game ever at old Yankee Stadium, but I'd bet that it did, since those Brits can be callous and cold and A-Rod definitely isn't winning over many fans with this latest move.

I really, really, really hope this blows up and involves all kind of shenanigans because it will make July go by a whole lot faster.

(Ed. Note: By "apparently," we mean that it is most likely definitely and/or possibly true. And yes, I know that Madonna is American, but have you heard her talk lately? She's rockin' the fake British accent, you know.)

The Woman's Perspective: The Personal Lives of Athletes

(Ed note: It's finally here! After promoting the fact that we'd be having a woman writing things from time to time for what has seemed like days now, it's actually happening. So enjoy!)

After reading Edwin's post regarding the personal lives of athletes, I just wanted to add my two cents about the other people to blame in this situation: the women. Both the wives/girlfriends and the cleat-chasers. As a rehabbed cleat-chaser myself, I have an understanding (sort of) of what these women's lives are like. I'm not saying it's wrong or right, but men today currently deem a woman's "hotness" to be her most valued attribute. Anna Kournikova and Jennie Finch are not household names because they are exceptional athletes. Erin Andrews is not a favorite sideline reporter because of her astounding knowledge of the game. Because of this, and I know it seems a bit counterintuitive, women's self-esteem has taken a hit. Women literally throw themselves at professional athletes for a chance to live the "dream." And it's not only the bimbos with no other real way to support themselves. I'm talking about intelligent, college-educated women shedding their dignity (and their clothes) to party with a slobbering Kyle Orton. Really? Are you that desperate to think that if you sleep with him, he'll give you a Bentley in the morning? Ladies, most of you have much more to offer society than that. Go use that engineering degree and find a man who loves you for more than your giant implants.

And as for the wives....First of all, you know what you're getting into. As Chris Rock once said, "A man is only as faithful as his options." (See above) And unless you've known him since high school, you were likely one of the girls at the hot tub party that happened to get "lucky" or "pregnant." What makes you think he won't do it again? I would say that it's partly your fault that you're not giving him what he needs at home, but professional athletes are on the road so much, that that's really not fair. I will say, though, that it's your fault for letting him get away with it. Over and over and over again. Shaunie O'Neal finally got wise. Vanessa Bryant should probably do the same. Are you so enamored with the lifestyle that you will let a man mistreat you that way? I'm sorry, but a big ole' diamond can't fix everything. The solution: Don't sign a pre-nup. And keep your man in line. Go all Jackie Christie on his ass! The woman is batshit crazy, but clearly, she is on to something.

On the Personal Lives of Athletes

I have to say that through the years, my interest in the personal lives of athletes has been an up-and-down affair. There have been periods of time where virtually any information about a famous athlete's personal life would interest me, only to be followed by periods of utter disinterest. As I've gotten older, the periods of fascination have been outpaced by the periods of not caring, but not to the point where I've stopped paying attention. What more concerns me now is when an alleged occurence has something to do with breaking the law. Then I care, because I consider lawbreaking to be a bit more newsworthy than whether someone is having an affair on his wife or drinking with young girls at a pool party.

I say that as a lead-in to this whole business surrounding Kobe Bryant supposedly, allegedly, perhaps, maybe, could be, might be, etc., etc., etc., cheating on his wife with a Laker Girl. A Laker Girl that just so happens to have the same first name as his wife. You know how all of this got started? A dirty site called The Dirty posted a "story" about a Laker girl named Vanessa leaving the Laker Girl team right before the playoffs and how a source of theirs told them the reason she left was because the Lakers were looking to cover the whole thing up.

What the fuck?

Not a week goes by and an actual mainstream, top-level site posts about it: Deadspin. Their timeline accurately depicts how a story with no substantial proof whatsoever can somehow find legs and run its way around the Internet to the browser windows and inboxes of the masses.

The question is, why are we fascinated? Why do we care? A.J. Daulerio over at Deadspin claims that this is news because of Kobe's past affair in Colorado and his subsequent painful, public apology. But is it? Is it really? Nobody seemed to care when Wilt Chamberlain was fucking every woman he saw 40 years ago. I guess it is news if the weather is, say, sunny and in the 80s 47 days in a row. You've still got to report the weather, right? Even if it's the same every day? So I guess he might have a point there, that a repeated, unsurprising occurence deserves mention, but then again, I don't think that your local newscast would spend so much time reporting on that mundane, same-every-day weather.

Instead of reporting what athletes do on the court, increasingly the focus has shifted to what they do off of it. Is it shocking that Pacman Jones "made it rain" at a strip club? That Matt Leinart had a party that involved BEER and GIRLS? That Charles Barkley gambles? That Alex Rodriguez was seen with a woman who was not his wife? I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

These people aren't role models. They just aren't. We think we know them because we craft their personalities for them while we root for them. We like to think that Marvin Harrison is a stand up guy and perfect humanitarian because he fits our mold of what we think that person is; the fact that he owns a bar and gets into fights outside of it and then his gun is used to shoot at someone never enters the picture and then shocks us when we hear about it.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know these people any better than we know the person that delivers our mail. Peyton Manning could be a psychotic choking rapist for all we know. While I think that Albert Pujols is a god amongst men, a living, walking, breathing saint in this world, he may turn out to be the worst person ever. We just don't know.

I should have known better when everything came crashing down for me, when Magic Johnson announced to the world that he was HIV positive. Magic Johnson? AIDS? What? He cheated on his wife? Say it ain't so! Not a beloved athlete!

The personal lives of athletes shouldn't shock us at all. Athletes are normal, regular people who just happen to be ridiculously gifted at a particular skill set that is enormously overvalued by society. Kobe Bryant may be the best basketball player on earth, but he's just a regular human being in every other way. Given the same amount of idol worship, money and fame, I don't know what kind of person I would be. I can guarantee you that I would not be the person I am now because I just don't think it would be possible. In fact, I think it's probably almost impossible to grow up in that kind of spotlight and be anywhere near what you or I would consider "normal."

I'd probably have an overinflated ego and enough arrogance to fill the Staples Center. I'd probably walk into every room thinking that everyone in there needed to do whatever I wished simply because of who I was. I imagine that that's the kind of life a lot of these athletes lead. I don't see how it makes sense to be shocked or even merely surprised that an athlete's personal life isn't going like we think it should. They live in a completely different world than 95% of regular society, and as such, they're going to act and talk differently than we do. It's just the way it is.

Maybe John Dvorak over at Fox News was on to something with his article yesterday that talked about how the Internet was basically making us all dumber by the minute. While I don't agree with everything in the article, the following section was apropo with regard to this whole Kobe mess:

These people eat up information from the Internet and they believe everything they read. They pass along gossip as fact. They fall for every hoax under the sun (especially the very old ones).

You wonder when some Nigerian e-mail scammer is going to fleece them. I have no idea what is going to happen when it dawns on this crowd that they are useless boneheads.

Very well said, in my opinion. As a useless bonehead, I'll be doing my best to focus my attention elsewhere from now on.

Deadspin: The Dirty Kobe Bryant Business
Fox News: Dvorak: The Internet Is Making Us Dumber