One of my favorite lines in any sports movie came from “The Natural.” Roy Hobbs, the sweet-swinging lefty for the New York Knights, just reunited with his rolling-in-the-hay, high-school sweetheart and explains to her what went wrong in his life and how he ended up where he did.

Then, they have this exchange ...

Hobbs: I coulda been better. I coulda broke every record in the book.

Old girlfriend: And then?

Hobbs: And then? And then, when I walked down the street, people would've looked and they would've said, “There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was.”

It's a cool line, and it epitomizes one of the basic things we love about sports — the strive for greatness. I mean, isn't that what we all dreamed about when we threw a wiffle ball up to ourselves in the backyard? Isn't that why we spent hours muttering the fantasy play-by-play calls to ourselves as we lined up a putt on a practice green? Or counted down the shot clock — 3 ... 2 ... 1 — before hucking a hook shot in the driveway?

Every athlete has that fantasy — even if it's just for a mili-second — about being the greatest of all time, or at the very least, achieving something great. I mean, it's only natural: Sports are competitive, and if you're always striving to be better, you eventually let yourself dream that way.

I know I did as a kid, and I can guarantee you nearly all of the athletes we watch on TV had those thoughts at one point in their lives.

I'd also guarantee you that 99.9 percent of them don't think that way anymore.

Three quick examples: 1) The Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens trials; 2) Kobe Bryant's recent lip-reading slip up; and 3) the fact LeBron James is playing for the Miami Heat in these playoffs.

What do they all have in common? Well, it's three instances of athletes not caring what fans and media think of them. In turn, they're all prime examples of great athletes not truly caring about their legacies.

Bonds and Clemens would've been Hall of Famers before they juiced up. They took the risk, got caught, and now their respective legacies in baseball will forever have a black cloud hanging over them as hideous as the hair that sits atop Bud Selig's head.

While, Kobe has continuously shown a single-minded goal most fans respect (winning), his recent use of a homophobic slur on national TV demonstrates he might not be as image-conscious as he probably should be. I mean, there's no way you'd ever see Michael Jordan have that type of a public slipup, and that's the guy fans and media feel he's chasing down in career status.

And LeBron, well, we've been over this before: The guy willingly turned down the chance of ever becoming the greatest player of all time by teaming up with two other all stars.

Anyway, I'm not pointing this out to rag on these guys — or any other pro athletes for that matter.

It all comes down to a simple fact: The athletes are playing for their livelihood (i.e. paychecks); we all watch (and write about it) because we actually care what happens in the games.

I'd sell my soul for the Cubs to win the World Series, but I don't think Alfonso Soriano would sell his favorite couch for the same prize.

It's just a different mindset.

We care; they, for the most part, don't.

And, when they're walking down the street, they can just ignore what we say about them.

Sports editor Bryce Evans was destined to be the greatest badminton player of all-time until he came down with a nasty condition now known as “Shuttlecock Shoulder.”