Mets' pitcher gets a hit (and run)

They say there really aren't any more criminals among the pro athlete population, than there are in regular life, but then why does it always seem like athletes are committing a higher percentage of crimes?

Whether it be the gun-lovin' antics of NFLers Adam (Please Don't Call Me Pacman) Jones, Tank Johnson, or even future Hall of Fame receiver Marvin Harrison, the wife-abusing exploits of NHLer Patrick Roy and MLB pitcher Brett Myers, the dog-abusing Michael Vick and of course the murder trials of Rae Carruth and O.J. Simpson, athletes are not helping their tainted image.

Now comes the bizarre story of Mets' reliever Ambiorix Burgos, who has been jailed in connection with a hit and run that killed two women in the pitcher's hometown of Nagua, in the Dominican Republic. The mother of one of the victim's - Angely Fana - claims Burgos purposely ran her daughter down in his Hummer, because she refused to date him!!!

Burgos's defense was that it was his cousin driving the car and not him. Uh, but wouldn't a decent human being have made whoever was driving stop to check on the people you just hit? What about at least calling it in to the police? People check on dogs they hit in the street, let alone other people. Burgos also waited more than a week after the accident to give that shady excuse, after he turned himself in to Dominican authorities, who had issued an arrest warrant for him.

He also told police people in Nagua were jealous of him being the only baseball player from there to have made it to the majors and that they tend to "exaggerate things" when it comes to him. Uh, like driving away from the scene of a crime and not reporting it for a week? Burgos might even be believable, if it wasn't for his pending court date in New York later this month for assault and harassment charges for allegedly throwing his girlfriend to the ground.

Having covered sports as a journalist for more than 12 years, Burgos is more the rule than the exception. The unreal way professional athletes are treated from the time they're seriously scouted, to when they start making the big dollars, it's no wonder they adopt an air of invincibility, that transcends the diamond. The same cockiness that helps them achieve great things on the field, also seems to propel them to live amorally off it. Burgos's tale and the ones I have detailed above are symptoms of a system that is intrinsically broken. Afterall athletes like Barry Bonds somehow avoid perjury charges when they lie at congressional hearings about not talking banned substances like steroids. This is not how it works in the real world, where Joe Sixpack, as Sarah Palin likes to call him, is charged and thrown in jail. There is no leniency in real life; murder is murder and real people get real time. There are exceptions of course, but by and large you or I will not get away with even a minor infraction. It's why we have the saying: You do the crime; you do the time.

This rarely applies to the world of professional sports, where only when athletes are driving the wrong way, have fallen asleep at the wheel at a stop light, or have crashed their cars while drunk or stoned are they arrested and charged. All we Regular Joes have to be is slightly over the limit to get charged with a DUI.

The lack of accountability in the youngest of athletes is alarming and will only get worse, if the leagues that fete and sign them as kids don't start changing themselves. In this way it IS society's fault. It always sounds dumb when someone blames society for their criminal behaviour, but in reality it's mostly true. We can't raise athletes to expect a certain lifestyle, kind of like how all gangsters want to be Scarface, and then tell them they should be better people when they fail. What we should be doing is showing kids that the life of a professional athlete comes with a greater responsibility to conduct oneself honourably. If all they see is money and how it insulates them from normal life and the responsibility that comes with it, they will never choose the right path.

Sports teaches so many great lessons, but these are lost in the professional ranks. That's why so many pro athletes talk about recapturing that love of the game. If we made big-league sports more like little-league sports maybe some of the people who play them would be less likely to live like thugs.