The Needle and the Damage Done

2008 was supposed to be a new beginning.

As a baseball fan, I grew jaded and exhausted by the BALCO scandal, by the constant and nagging rumors of steroid and PED abuse. In August 2007, when Barry Bonds broke the career home run record with considerable scrutiny, I thought the wave had crested. The exodus of Bonds and Roger Clemens, the retirement of Sammy Sosa, and the establishment of harsher penalties all in one fell swoop, gave many the impression that baseball could get its act together. This was an embarrassing chapter in the history of the national pastime, and the healing process would slowly but surely begin. For a short while it seemed like progress was being made, that the strain between players, owners, and fans was gradually being alleviated. An era of freakish, suspicious power hitting would give way to a renaissance of fundamentals, of small ball and contact pitching. Suddenly, home runs grew scarce and "real" baseball was taking prominence. The game was detoxing itself, and to some degree cleansing its very soul.

In hindsight, 2008 was a red herring.

The Biogenesis scandal, while not as widespread as BALCO or the Mitchell Report, proved that the abuse of power-enhancing drugs was still active, it not necessarily rampant. The cheaters grew dumber and more clever at the same time. The scrutiny had a new face, trading the surly Bonds for the pretty-boy diva Alex Rodriguez. The cast of villains weren't aging American meatheads struggling to justify their bloated paychecks, but enigmatic young guns from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.

To some degree, I can understand why Jhonny Peralta, Nelson Cruz, Alberto Bastardo (what a fitting name) and everyone else caved into the temptation to cheat. Their homelands were one small notch above a third-world country, and for some of these boys an exceptional athletic prowess was their only way out. They could make the league minimum every year and have enough money saved to keep their families fed for the rest of their lives. Humble beginnings, however does not totally justify the fact that they still tainted the integrity of the game. They couldn't care less about the 1919 Black Sox or Pete Rose --and the ramifications of their wrongdoings-- because they've never heard of them.

As for Pretty Boy A-Rod, his ego and narcissism has reached dizzying new heights. He had the nerve to appeal a perfectly justified 210-game suspension (as I write this, he's still playing) and there is growing speculation and his "entourage" leaked names, including the already suspended Ryan Braun. Players like Skip Schumaker and Zack Greinke have made clear that they'd rather see Rodriguez banned for life, a daring moment of candor in the usually lockstep brotherhood of Major Leaguers. There's also nothing to indicate that the flames that A-Rod has fueled will be extinguished very soon.

I guess the cleansing of baseball's soul will have to wait a bit longer.

(415)

Don't Be a Menace to Chávez Ravine While Injecting Your Juice in the Hood

Manny Ramirez's 50-game suspension for taking a fertility drug is just another nail in the coffin. I neither loved nor hated Man-Ram, yet I'm still disappointed that another baseball superstar resorted to these desperate measures. Sadly, it's gotten to the point that I would not oppose issuing lifetime bans to anyone that tests positive. I'm just tossing that idea into the air; a one-and-done rule would have a more profound effect than missing two months' worth of games, especially from a financial and reputational standpoint.

I'm not sure if there's anything else I can say about this, but my ISU buddy --and fellow radio industry gadfly-- Kyle Anderson has a far stronger opinion on the topic. This is from a rant that he posted on Facebook last week titled "My love of (pro) sports is over":

"Between Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens, and on and on, where do baseball fans finally draw a line? It's okay to love a game. I'll ALWAYS love the game of baseball. If you knew me when I was younger, you know it was one of the few things that made me happy. And I'll always love it on a little league and high school level...

But if you consider yourself a MLB fan, where does the line stop? How can you just keep watching episode after episode of SportsCenter without taking off your tinted glasses and realizing that we haven't even hit the tip of the iceberg to this? There are 103 other players who tested positive in 2003. And they can't all be Neifi Perez. If you're a Cubs fan and they win the World Series this year, but then 5 years down the road you find out that Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, Rich Harden, and Alfonso Soriano were all juicing, would it be worth it? If you're a Cardinals fan my age and you realize that Albert Pujols led you to the only title of our lifetimes in 2006 while he was juicing, don't you at least get a sick feeling in your stomach?

So, to simplify it...fuck it. Fuck baseball, fuck the NFL, fuck the NBA, fuck 'em all. If they're not cheaters, they're money-hungry douchebags. Or, they're out cheating on their wives in every major league city (I had a friend tell me her sister slept with Greg Maddux when he was a Brave). Or they find another way to cheat the game by corking a bat or slapping a ball out of a player's hand sissy style."

Kyle might've given up, but I'm not there quite yet. There's still nothing quite like a day at the ballpark, and the cheaters will ultimately rot in hell. Plus, Zach Grienke has been a beast this year.

Other notes:

+ Speaking of steroids, what if you were ready to do another "I told you so" dance and virtually nobody showed up? Jose Canseco, you tell us.

+ This is the political cartoon of the year, hands down.

+ Congratulations to my old pal Joe Burry (aka Darth-Revan91) upon his graduation from high school on May 21st.

+ As a Chicagoan, I can't finish this blog without these two simple words:

GO HAWKS!!!

Gettin' Schooled

Am I shocked by Alex Rodriguez' confession to using steroids? Yes. Am I suprised? No. Yesterday's fess-up brings us to two sad conclusions: that virtually every above-average hitter in baseball between 1995 and 2005 used performance-enhancing drugs at some point in their career, and that Jose Canseco is a sage in spite of being a jealous, money-grubbing douchebag. My disappointment is tempered by my assumption that the other shoe was bound to drop, and the timing couldn't have been worse, considering that pitchers and catchers report at the end of the week. In the end, A-Rod put his public image first and admitted to something that Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens have refused to declare in spite of overwhelming evidence against them. To me Rodriguez is an anti-hero, the man who didn't do the right thing until it was almost too late, two parts noble and smarmy.

Meanwhile... last weekend I attended my first high school basketball game in seven years. I did this almost at the spur of the moment; last week, a fellow member of the Downers Grove North Class of 2003 sent me a Facebook invite to last Saturday's game, and I spent the next days debating whether or not to go. This old schoolmate of mine was the daughter of the former head football coach, and at halftime he was going to be inducted into our school's athletic hall of fame. With hours to spare I decided to go to the game, if only to see a few people that I haven't crossed paths with in almost six years. It was "pack the house" night, so I left early to find decent parking.

With extra time to kill and no interest whatsoever in watching the junior varsity game, I decided to wander around my old stomping grounds. It was almost pure chance that I stumbled across one of my old teachers grading papers in his classroom. We chatted for about 15-20 minutes, discussing current events and whatnot. I apologized if I was at any time smug and arrogant in class --which I was-- and he mostly shrugged it off. I was also flattered to discover that he kept my copy of our AP U.S. History textbook from six years ago. Considering that Downers North lost by 5, and I didn't see as many ex-classmates as I thought I would, running into an old teacher certainly made this experience worth the trip.