The Accountable Voice of Authenticity

Time and time again, when an athlete makes a mistake, and then in response stands up and takes responsibility for that mistake, people forgive and eventually forget.

Steve Howe was suspended seven times by Major League Baseball for alcohol and cocaine abuse, but kept gaining forgiveness because after each transgression, he was, indeed sorry. The the reality is that addictions are a sickness — not easy to beat — and very sadly Howe’s addictions kept him coming back for more but he was forgiven over, and over, and over again.

During the past two weeks the sports world has seen its share of contrition, as well as defiance, and history will judge how each episode is treated.

Let’s start with Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who along with Albert Pujols, is perhaps the best hitter in baseball over the past decade. Manny of course tested positive for a drug used for either a female fertility drug called HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), and this is unique because HCG has no use to a male pro athlete with two exceptions: he’s trying to get pregnant (possible), or, he’s a steroid user trying to get his body’s testosterone production moving after cycling off steroids (more probable).

So Manny got busted, and what did he do? He said he made a mistake and that he was sorry. A novel concept in some circles today.

“Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy,” said a statement from Ramirez, more than likely written by agent Scott Boras and the Dodgers. “Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility….I want to apologize to Mr. McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, Mr. Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization, and to the Dodger fans. L.A. is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I’m sorry about this whole situation.”

The result: even though many sports fans outside of blind Dodgers fans assume Manny’s a steroid user, the situation has pretty much gone away.

Then came a situation featuring Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, a guy most non-Mavericks fans love to hate.  ###MORE###

You’ve probably heard the deal. The Mavs were burned by an NBA-acknowledged officiating mistake and lost to the Denver Nuggets 106-105.  Cuban was smoking hot mad and got into a shouting match with Lydia Moore, the mother of Nuggets player Kenyon Martin.

According to Cuban, a fan called the Nuggets “thugs,” and he looked at Moore and said, “That includes your son.” Martin’s agent told The Denver Post that Cuban said, “Your son is a punk.”  But at that point, it didn’t matter. The damage was done and Martin was upset.

On Monday, Martin said he’d take care of things himself. He’s a baaaaaaaad man.  So how did Cuban react? Wisely, so to avoid bodily harm and more probably just to make the situation go away, on the Dallas Mavericks blog on Tuesday he wrote a post apologizing for his behavior.

“It doesn’t matter why I said it,” he wrote while most probably wearing one of his trademarked not-so-good-looking t-shirts. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Now, the reality is that this has gotten out of hand…So at this point I would like to apologize to you and your mom KMart for my comment. I should have not said anything and I was wrong. Hopefully you will accept the apology and we can move on.”

Boom! Welcome to accountability my friends. Better yet, at least for Cuban, the story was done for the most part by the Midnight ESPN SportsCenter on Tuesday night.

Finally, a look at the other way to approach accountability through the mind and mouth of Roger Clemens.

With the book “American Icon” coming out Tuesday, the Rocket figured he go on “Mike & Mike In the Morning” on ESPN Radio. If you are the last person on earth who hasn’t head this, you can catch the whole deal here. And in spite of the fact that the federal government supposedly has a syringe with his DNA on it, Clemens simply repeated what he’s said before: I didn’t do it, Andy Pettitte misremembered, it’s all garbage, yada, yada, yada.

The reality is that Clemens has not had his day in court, so sports fans shouldn’t convict him … yet. But it certainly doesn’t look good, and despite working with a crisis management team he’s not doing a very good job of demonstrating in any way that he respects the game nor is he a contrite man who will allow the wheels of justice to exonerate him. He’s just focused on telling America that he is steadfast in defending himself and that he won’t bend — no way no how.

Here’s the thing with our three cases — Manny, Cuban, and Rocket.  Think about today’s media consumer. This includes sports geeks, soccer moms, dwarfs, and corporate executives. We are all looking for authentic voices. We want the real story, the unvarnished truth.

That’s why when people search for information, they now bypass the team or corporate Websites and instead look for random virtual voices on blogs and social Websites which might provide an objective take about a company, a restaurant, an athlete, teams, an issue, whatever.

It’s why Amazon.com realized that it sells product more briskly when there are at least 12 customer reviews.

Clearly, there is arguably no more seemingly authentic behavior today than being accountable, and it’s why Manny will return relatively unscathed around the All-Star break, why we won’t be mentioning the Cuban/KMart scuffle by the weekend, and why there’s a good chance that the greatest pitcher of a generation will not make the Major League Baseball Hall-of-Fame.

Carry on.