Serena’s tantrum part of a disappointing trend

OK, Serena, here’s letting off a little steam back at you, from a kettle long boiling ...

Enough already with tennis brats and the thoughtless, disrespectful, ill-mannered monster-prodigies of other sports.

If you can’t behave then get a real job in the real world, and discover what pressure and disappointment are really about. Try living on $20,000 or $30,000 a year instead of $20-30 million — and making payments on a Chevy rather than writing a check for a Lambourghini.

Serena Williams, tennis star, has it made. Try selling tennis balls at Wal-Mart, girl. Or teaching school, cleaning hospital rooms or driving a trash truck — and feeling lucky to have such a job.

Serena’s tantrum the other day at the U.S. Tennis Open cost her the match in the semifinals. It also cost her a lot of respect and a lot of fans.

It just wasn’t her day. She trashed an expensive racket after losing the first set to Kim Clijsters. Then, on match point after the line judge called her for a foot-fault, Serena stomped toward the judge, screaming and cursing and threatening to shove a tennis ball down her throat.

The chair umpire correctly awarded a code-violation penalty point to Clijsters, giving her a 7-5 victory in the set. Clijsters won the first, 6-4.

Tennis stars are paid outrageous sums to play the game, not to bully and browbeat volunteer officials, judges, ball boys and ball girls.

Sadly, the paradigm for crabbiness was established in the sport’s golden decade of the 1970s by two of our greatest competitors — and biggest blockheads — Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe. “Mac” was by far the worst.

But these guys merely elevated incivility, they didn’t invent it.

Baseball managers kicking dirt on umpires, players going into the dugout and throwing the water-can onto the field, basketball players throwing punches at opponents and fans, football players kicking and shoving and brawling ...

This stuff has been going on for a long time and Serena Williams is merely following a long tradition.

It’s time to put an end to it. If there’s hope and change in government today, we ought to spread it around to the games we play — and pay good money to watch.

Start with the kids.

Teach and coach peewees that is isn’t cool to taunt opponents or to beat your chest like a gorilla when you score a touchdown, sink a free throw or smash a winning cross-court forehand volley.

And while we’re at it, how about a little respect for your game?

I’ve had it up to here with those psuedo “warrior” hairdos hanging out the back of football helmets. If you can’t prove you’re a Polynesian tribesman, get a haircut, clown.

I’m sick of the pajama-like baseball pants the major league players are wearing, And the chin whiskers they’re growing look like they belong on a Tibetan goat — and saturated with tobacco drippings, they probably smell worse.

Shave or file for unemployment, buster. And wear the uniform knickers, not PJs.

Why must athletes insist on making exhibitions of themselves with childish behavior in team sports? And why must we let them get away with it?

One of my best friends, former Arizona football coach Larry Smith, became head coach at Missouri in the mid-1990s and the first thing he did was rip players’ names off the back of their jerseys. “We’re a team, not a bunch of individuals,” Smitty said.

What’s wrong with a code of conduct for all of our sports? These magnificent athletes (whether they like it or not) are role models for our kids and grandkids.

We make these players rich and famous. Shouldn’t we expect them to conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen? And try to look like heroes instead of bums?

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.