Marks and Smarts: A Steroid Tangent

In pro wrestling and carnie lingo, a mark is a member of the paying public that's ready and willing to be duped, tricked, or if you are feeling charitable, entertained. A smart is someone in that crowd that's in on the routine, or part of the business.

We spend our time, as sports fans, ping-ponging between these two roles. The mark roots for the laundry, thinks that home field advantage is all about the rabid support we give our team, and is much more willing to listen to discussions about heart, character, and grit.

The smart watches for signs of betting conspiracies or league-wide directives, and while they may be harder to please, they're also much more likely to watch.

Both want to just be Fans, want to just be entertained and enthralled and waive their sense of disbelief for the duration of the entertainment.

Marks may become Smarts, but Smarts will never become Marks... at least not full-time. Smarts may become Marks over individual players (especially if the player in question is young and possessing of limitless potential), but they'll never go back to being Marks all the time.

Marks will always outnumber Smarts. And cheer louder, buy more merchandise, take more kids to the game, leave earlier, and be much more disturbed by steroid, HGH or any other enhancement.

And this, really, is the danger of roids and HGH, and why the glibertarian approach of saying that we should just let anyone do anything falls down. Not because it makes the record books meaningless, or because it adds a bloodsport / Colosseum aspect to all of our sports that's unseemly at best and inhuman at worst.

But because a sport that's playing to an audience of just Smarts is (a) small, (b) quiet, (c) meager, and (d) depressing. It's like a musician playing a gig to no one but other musicians, or bloggers only being read by other bloggers, or chefs cooking only for restaurant workers. It may seem like the way to finally get the idiots out of the conversation, and a welcome change to all of the pandering to the masses... but it's also not sustainable.

Marks are needed. And steroids kill them.