"Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz busted for using performance-enhancing drugs. Michael Phelps caught on film with a bong. Plaxico Burress released by the New York Giants and headed to prison after an accidental shooting incident and several other run-ins with the law. Another season, another list of sports figures putting their bodies, reputations, and lives at risk - despite full awareness of 24-hour media scrutiny and a long-running history of sordid cautionary tales from which to learn." "In this wide-ranging and deep-seeking investigation, psychologist Stanley H. Teitelbaum asks why elite athletes take enormous risks with their lives and careers. From sex and drugs to violence, gambling, and wholesale conspiracies, scandals are everywhere in sports. Each of these problems is its own issue, and every case is separate, but taken as a whole this criminal pathology is indicative of a widespread problem with athletes and responsibility." "Teitelbaum analyzes and diagnoses this culturally resonant set of problems with an honest, critical eye, looking at everything from baseball's steroid abusers to gambling scandals in the NBA to the steady stream of athletes arrested for domestic violence to the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and wrestler Chris Benoit. A concluding chapter takes sports commissioners and others to task for hiding behind a facade of ignorance and duplicitous naivete in attempting to cover up or defuse brewing scandals."--Jacket.