Bill Simmons, the head honcho over at Grantland, recently posted an intense article about the issue of performance-enhancing drugs and professional sports.  The same can be said for the reader response that Simmons posted a few days ago here.

What was most interesting for me was Simmons’ admission of a split in his perspective because of things that happened at the end of January: Something of a disconnect had emerged between my private conversations and the things I wrote for Grantland/ESPN. In essence, I had turned into two people. . . Sports Fan Me is candid, jaded, suspicious of everyone. Sports Fan Me repeatedly gets involved in arguments and e-mail chains centered on the question, “Do you think he’s cheating?” while ESPN Me sticks his head in the sand and doesn’t say anything. ESPN Me occasionally pushes narratives that he doesn’t totally believe in.

Anyone who mixes passion with employment runs the risk of an oddly-divided self.  I wasn’t expecting to find such a real-life example of casual-but-not alienation on a sports-and-culture site. I thought alienation was something I’d only read about in Nouwen and Walker Percy and the random psych book published in the 90s.  But it’s real, seeps into the least-expected places, does a weird kind of internal damage that many aren’t even aware of.  It’s definitely something worth talking about.  Until then, let’s hope alienation doesn’t lead to this: