Tim Marchman, putting the Benoit thing in perspective, vis a vis baseball and steroids:
"Baseball has to start doing a better job of educating the public about steroids, because no one else is going to do it. Right now, many people believe that steroids drove Benoit to strangle his own child — a belief so self-evidently simplistic and ridiculous that it allows WWE to point to its pathetic drug policy and ignore the real issues at play, which involve not only Benoit's own private demons, but a brutal, dehumanizing schedule, work that requires a level of physical punishment the body just can't handle, drug abuse as a near condition of employment, and a string of dozens and dozens of deaths about which no one has cared...This thing just keeps getting weirder and weirder- Greta Van Susteran's guest last night on Fox? Bret "Hitman" Hart, whom Greta had clearly never heard of prior to the interview. Plus: Wrestling fans vs. Nancy Grace! But you can't blame them, after Nancy suggested on the air that Benoit may have snapped because "he was demoted from the Four Horsemen to Raw." It's of a piece with Grace's usual MO of being simultaneously strident and vicious, even when she has no idea of which she speaks.Baseball has every right to unapologetically point out that no matter how deep the steroid crisis in the game is, it has only affected competition — something that's not the case in, say, bodybuilding, prowrestling, and even football, which have seen violence, suicide, mental illness and all sorts of early deaths connected to steroids"
And finally, Benoit's crimes would have certainly catapulted him to the top of Matt Taibbi's Sports Crime Leaderboard, but alas, the deceased are presumably excluded, and wrestling isn't a sport.