Baseball collectively pats itself on the back tonight in one of my favorite summer-time traditions, the All-Star game. There’s something about the mid-season break game that always pulls me in every year, even when there’s not even one token Cub in the line-up.

No matter what ups and downs the game experiences, the All-Star game is like a box of purist Tide making everything seem to smell a little better until you put the shirt on again and step outside.

You can’t help but enjoy the game because it’s just pure sporting fun. It is a tradition that was designed to benefit and please fans, and even if they were to change the color of the balls to hunter safety orange and start allowing andro-pumping sluggers to use high-powered aluminum bats, I’d watch with the same fascination I had when I was barely old enough to figure out how to even turn on the TV.

It seems the All-Star game’s timing is nothing less than impeccable, especially for an Iowa State sports fan. I think a lot of Cyclone fans need a good shot of athletic purity right now.

With the events of the last few weeks behind us, the only bright side is things can’t get much worse, barring a nasty incident involving Tony Rampton and the president of his fan club.

First we’ve got the point guard that was supposed to be our great hope in Hilton next year, Travis Spivey, getting arrested for sexually assaulting two underage runaway girls.

Talk about a class act. Sexual assault is one thing, sexually assaulting little girls is yet another thing, but sexually assaulting juvenile runaways is just inexcusable.

I could look the other way when we’re just talking about punching the poor sap working the drunk shift at Hardee’s or peeing on trees — that’s the kind of run-of-the-mill delinquency you can expect from any cross-section of college students. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, though, and I suspect that line is drawn way on the other side of statutory rape.

The worst thing is Spivey fessed up to having sex with the 15-year-old but denies he ever touched the 17-year-old. So the one who is legal he didn’t want any part of, but when it came to the jailbait, Spivey was calling for seconds. This is a man who clearly should have not have waived his right to an attorney.

I’ve got a feeling Spivey is really going to be a hit playing prison ball.

Then there’s the incident involving Damien Groce and Jerome Heavens. I would like to know what went on in Friley Hall last Tuesday because looking in from the outside is quite confusing.

First Groce supposedly beat up a freshman in computer engineering. Then DPS wasn’t sure if he did or not. Then by the next day the charges are dropped on Groce and pinned on Heavens instead.

Why all the confusion here? This should not be that difficult to figure out. Reports from DPS said that further interviews the day after the incident seemed to point the investigation suddenly in a new direction.

Well, that’s a shock. It seems like cases involving ISU athletes always seem to play out so clean and orderly.

Then to top it all off, Darcy Anderson was playing professional hockey on the side while the Cyclones stormed to national championship last March. This is the real shocker of the group, of course.

It really hurts to see a guy like Coach Al Murdoch, who did everything in getting the American College Hockey Association on its feet but drive the Zamboni, get involved in a scandal that requires ACHA sanctions. However, rules are rules and I find it very difficult to believe that the ISU coaching staff was completely oblivious to Anderson’s dark pro hockey past.

All in all, it’s quite a depressing line-up of screw-ups and public embarrassments.

In an interview last Wednesday, I asked Tom Kroeschell, the athletic department’s media director, if he thought recent incidents would hurt the reputation of the ISU athletic department. He declined to comment, but the next day a letter from Kroeschell was in my mailbox.

In it Kroeschell listed nearly 20 student-athletes who volunteered their time to worthy causes ranging from the Special Olympics to reading programs for elementary students. He pointed out the fact that these individuals would never get the attention received by their counterparts who like to urinate on sidewalks and rape 15-year-old girls.

He’s right, of course. Unfortunately, good news is very rarely news at all. No one cares if a nameless softball player reads to second graders every other Tuesday. It’s a nice gesture, and volunteerism is always a noble effort, but an organization is only as strong as its weakest link, no matter how much community service it does.

The trend developing with ISU student-athletes may not being affecting our reputation yet, but if it continues, the public won’t stand for it.

Unfortunately for Iowa State, the All-Star game only comes on once a year.

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David Roepke is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Aurora. He is head news editor of the Daily and the proud owner of a four-inch effenheimer.