Good role models are hard to come by these days. Athletes, politicians, grade school teachers and even evangelical preachers are making more and more headlines for their ranks being filled with pimps, thugs, drug-abusers, alcoholic wife-beaters, common criminals and folks of any other socially deviant persuasion you can think of. Is a whole generation bound to be doomed because of this? Was Charles Barkley right when in a 1993 TV commercial he tried to inform America that parents should be the true role models for their children, rather than those in the limelight? Maybe, but at least it makes for interesting reading.

So what if George W. Bush had a healthy appetite for cheap whiskey and Grade A Colombian cocaine, and his predecessor had an extreme fondness of women who just happened not to be his wife and was known to smoke a joint or two? (But never really inhaled, of course). Or that your 12-year-old son might someday learn more from his English teacher in the bedroom than in the classroom or possibly even date your own pastor? Is it really important that Barry Bonds’ ‘breakfast of champions’ consists of steroids, amphetamines, Gatorade and the essential Wheaties?

It happens; we all have vices, some just more damaging than others.

Just in the past month, three of the most prominent athletes in each of Americas’ major sports – football, baseball and basketball – have come under scrutiny for alleged or proven transgressions.

Carmelo Anthony, team captain of the U.S. basketball team and the Denver Nuggets, is coming off a recent 15-game suspension for a punch thrown in a wild brawl that occurred at Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks.

Michael Vick, quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons and one of the highest paid players in the NFL, was stopped at a Miami airport for carrying a container with a false bottom that allegedly had a “pungent aroma closely associated with marijuana,” according to the police report.

Barry Bonds, poised to break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record and also the Guinness Book of World Records’ honor for largest hat size, was reported to have tested positive for amphetamines during last season, and promptly blamed it on teammate Mark Sweeney. This all could have been avoided had Bonds watched the “Stop Snitching” DVD featuring ruthless Baltimore drug-dealers threatening violence against police informants, in which Anthony himself made a cameo appearance.

But bad boys in American sports are a time honored tradition. Baseball great Ty Cobb stabbed a man for intervening in a fight. Wilt Chamberlain, one of the NBA’s all-time best statistically, was even better with the ladies, claiming in his second autobiography to have slept with nearly 20,000 different women. And former OSU quarterback Art Schlichter single-handedly put his bookie in the same tax bracket as Bill Gates. These are just a few examples of bad boys in sports, but there are many more out there, and one in particular whose story needs to be told.

Dock Ellis, a former major league pitcher, might be the most unheralded bad boy of all-time, and deservedly so. On May 1, 1974, Ellis attempted to bean every single batter in the Cincinnati Reds’ lineup, in an effort to exact revenge for a loss in a play-off series with the same team the year before. After successfully hitting the first three and walking the fourth, he was pulled after throwing two consecutive pitches at the head of Johnny Bench. He is also credited for beaning Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson in the face, in retaliation for hitting a home run off him in the 1971 All-Star game. Ellis’ most un-role model like moment came in a 1970 game against the San Diego Padres, in which he was the first known MLB pitcher to throw a no-hitter on LSD.

A no-hitter is an impressive feat under any circumstances, possibly more impressive than Wilt Chamberlain becoming committed to celibacy or George Bush reading an entire book, cover to cover, but to pitch a no-hitter on acid might be one of the rarest feats in history. Not likely something you want your children dreaming about, though.

Which is why Barkley might have been right; you should shield your children from sports, politics, school, church and especially my column.

Dustin Ensinger is a senior in journalism and political science. Any pungent aromas can be confirmed or denied at [email protected].