I have been struck in recent years by the extent to which modern parents can no longer assume that athletes will provide suitable role models for their children. We live in an age where it is often hard to differentiate between the appearance and lifestyles of "gangsta-rap" thugs and the college and professional athletes our children see on television. There are few Chip Hiltons on the scene these days.

Chip who?  I suspect that not many modern readers will recognize the name Chip Hilton. That was not the case when I was a boy in the 1950s. Back then, if you walked into the juvenile book section of any department store, you would be likely to find rows of Chip Hilton books — written by legendary basketball coach Clair Bee — on the shelves alongside the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series. Chip Hilton was the epitome of the All-American boy, the star baseball, basketball and football player for the fictitious Valley Falls High School team.

Chip was as much a part of my boyhood as radio characters such as the Lone Ranger and Straight Arrow. He hit baskets at the buzzer, homeruns in the last of the ninth, and long touchdown passes in the closing minutes of the game. On top of that, he was brave (the books always featured a harrowing fist fight with one or more teenage hoods), loyal to his friends (the unforgettable Soapy Smith, Speed Morris and Biggy Cohen), a champion of the underdog, chaste, uncompromisingly virtuous, church-going, unpretentious, a straight-A student. One came from reading the stories fully believing that in the United States a boy who played fair, worked hard and listened to his parents could grow up to be as strong and good and decent — and as admired — as Chip Hilton.

I am not letting nostalgia get the best of me. I can remember clearly how the image of Chip Hilton helped me in my early teens, as I looked around at the various paths a young man could follow. There was no mistaking that the "bad boys," who modeled themselves after the characters played by James Dean and Marlon Brando, had an appeal. They were liked by many of the girls and feared by the boys. I saw some of my classmates go to great lengths to be like them, often ending up in a cycle of drugs and crime. But whenever I found myself being drawn into that orbit, I quickly withdrew. It was not Chip Hilton's world.

I am not exaggerating. I am not the only one who reacted to the books in this manner. If you go to the Chip Hilton website (localtoolbox.com/chiphilton), and click on the section marked "testimonials" on the left side of the page, you will find famous coaches, reporters, and other public figures reminiscing about the positive impact of the books on their character development. One Olympic coach talks about how he often approaches difficult moral decisions in his life by asking himself, "What would Chip Hilton do?" You will also find on the website reprints of the Chip Hilton books, updated for modern readers, published under the direction of Clair Bee's daughter.

I checked on amazon.com to see how the books are selling. The news is not that good. The sales figures are far from impressive. This raises a classic "chicken or the egg" question: Is Chip Hilton no longer attractive to young readers because young readers have dramatically different tastes these days? Or do young readers have dramatically different tastes these days because they are no longer being provided with positive role models such as Chip Hilton?

That is a hard question to answer, but there is no question that something has changed. Consider the results of the Josephson Institute of Ethics survey entitled "What Are Your Children Learning? The Impact of High School Sports on the Values and Ethics of High School Athletes." The study summarizes the responses of 5,275 high school athletes to a written survey administered in 2005 and 2006. The results? The All-American boy seems to be a dying breed. Young athletes are influenced by their sports experiences, but not in the way you would want.

"The bad news," the study reports, "is that many coaches — particularly in the high profile sports of boys' basketball, baseball and football — are teaching kids how to cheat and cut corners. In addition, far too many boys and girls engage in other dishonest, deceptive and dangerous practices without regard for the rules or traditional notions of fair play and sportsmanship."

Such as?

"Theft. Athletes are less likely than non-sports students to engage in theft — still, more than one in four male athletes (27%) admitted stealing from a store in the past 12 months compared with 32% of boys not involved in sports. The highest rate of theft reported was from male gymnasts (36%), football players (33%) and male basketball players (32%). One in five girl athletes (20%) engaged in theft compared to 23% for all high school girls.

"Cheating in school. High school students involved in sports cheat in school at a higher rate than their non-sport classmates. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the boys and girls participating in sports cheated on an exam in the past year in comparison to 60% of the total high school population.

"Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. Given the common view that steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are unhealthy as well as illegal, a disturbing number of male athletes (6.4%) admit to having used them in the past year (2% of females admitted using PEDs).

"Use of Alcohol. Despite strict rules in high school forbidding the use of alcohol, about half of athletes of both genders (49%) admitted to drinking alcohol in the past year. This is the same rate reported for non-athletes in the larger study of 35,000 students."

I know: we should not exaggerate the innocence of the teenage athletes of old. The teenage vices could be found among the athletes in the locker rooms of the past. But at least there was a Chip Hilton around to provide an alternative image back then.

Consider the following from Championship Ball. Chip has been on crutches for the entire winter because of a football injury, and is aching once again to don the jersey of a Valley Falls' varsity team. He walks to one of the windows in his house "through which the March sun was streaming. It was one of those balmy days in late winter when spring seemed just around the corner despite the piles of dirty snow that lined the sidewalk. From across the street came a rhythmic thump, a sound produced only by a baseball thudding into a catcher's mitt. Two kids were playing catch in a driveway across the street. Chip executed an imaginary tag on a runner sliding into home and charged for the door and the flight of steps that led to the sidewalk."

Anyone who remembers the old Chip Hilton books knows that there is more in the above passage than an evocation of the joys of baseball and spring. When I read it as a boy, it stirred the soul. Chip was charging into a world where a particularly American perspective on wholesomeness, gallantry and fair play was intertwined with the rituals of high school athletics, a world where it was good to be good.