Sacred 600?

Is A-Rod really about to hit number 600? Why does it feel so ho-hum?

I remember him as a wee lad, a skinny thing with an M's uniform and a genuine smile. I tore the cover off a Beckett Baseball Card Monthly with his face on it and hung it on my dorm wall in college. He's only a year older than I am, but he was playing Major League Baseball when I was still in high school.

I stopped liking him as a player after the things he said about Ken Griffey, Jr. when the Reds got him. I was even more disgusted at the outrageous sums of money he received when he went to Texas, but when he threw the fit about his contract with the Yankees - a contract HE signed - and demanded the contract be renegotiated despite the fact that he was the highest paid player in baseball, well, that made him become one of my least favorite players of all time.

I've written before how I really don't care about steroids, how they are just another technological advance that players didn't have back in the "good old days" and that it's a Nancy Reagan view of drugs that make steroid players evil in the eyes of society. I've written about how the "good old days" have never really existed, too, but that's not saying things haven't changed or that the business of baseball often drowns out the game itself. It's not just player salaries or greed. People criticize him but see nothing wrong with selling historic homerun balls for hundreds of thousands of dollars, average Joes and Janes who want to cash in on a bit of luck rather than just appreciating the game for what it is - a game. People complain about how expensive it is to go to a baseball game but they don't see that they don't need to buy concessions or souvenirs that will just sit on shelves.

The fact is, Alex Rodriguez wanted to be the best in the game, and he would do anything to get there, and that is just a product of the society we live in, where doing the right thing is only right when it doesn't come with a high dollar profit and enjoying life is a measure of how many possessions one has rather than the number of breaths he takes each day.

The number 600 feels cheapened, but I don't blame steroids. The mystique of the great game of baseball is vanishing, and that's not simply misguided nostalgia or a kids-these-days mentality. I don't know what it is. I'm struggling to understand time and space and the evolution of humanity, and baseball is a mere reflection of the rise and decline of an empire and the struggles of a society to overcome its flaws and wrongs. What? It is! From it being the first professional sport (evolution of capitalist entertainment industry) to its racial separation and subsequent integration (before the Civil Rights Movement began) to its becoming the corporate behemoth it is today, baseball is the story of America.

Someday I'll look back on the career of Alex Rodriguez, look at that long list of stats and just marvel at what he was able to accomplish. But he'll never achieve the mythical quality of those I never got to watch, probably because I got to see his entire career when I was old enough to appreciate it.

But I can't help feeling Ken Griffey, Jr. is already a mythical creature. And so is Bonds. Go figure.

Sinking the Mayflower

Something on baseball...something on baseball... You know, I believe I only have so many words to use a month, and I think I've used them all up. That and there's really nothing too exciting in baseball to write about. Sure there was the McGwire admission, which took ALL press attention from the Reds on the one day they should have been in the news. Can't you big markets give us small market folks just one day in the spotlight?

I've written before that I don't care about steroids, that Barry Bonds is my favorite non-Reds player ever, and that I think this whole "controversy" is largely just a bunch of that brand of moralizing horsey doodoo that is so typically American. Drugs Are Bad. War on Drugs. Mandatory Sentences. This Is Your Egg Brain. Everyone and his brother and sister and mother and father and neighbor and dog has weighed in on the subject, so I will say no more.

Except.

Comparisons of Rose to the Roid Boys are stupid, though I think Rose would have used had steroids been available back then, which brings me to another who-cares-about-roids point. People keep saying "The Steroid Era," but how many ballplayers of the past would have used if the drugs had been available to them? Yep. That weird thing we call nostalgia has purged all the evil from the past, and the HOFers are all saints. Except Ty Cobb. Everyone knows he was a jerk, thanks to Tommy Lee Jones.

The Roid Boys didn't murder anyone. They just wanted to be the best and they used the technology available to them to get there. Bud "National Disgrace" Selig let this happen because baseball needed something to bring it back from the strike. If anyone should be banned from baseball, it should be him. Did the Roid Boys cheat? Well, steroids weren't specifically banned in baseball. We know both hitters and pitchers did it. That's pretty much all we know, because we'll never get all of the names of the guilty. Was McGwire's apology one of those non-apologies? Maybe, but you could see he really did regret using. What's done is done. It is what it is. Time to move on.

So I guess this is my steroid post, or another of them anyway, and despite "not caring," I had to say something. Because McGwire belongs in the Hall. Bonds belongs in the Hall. Sosa belongs in the Hall. I enjoyed every minute of watching them play, even as my hatred for the Deadbirds and Chub$ was growing. I sat on the floor of my door room at Miami one September day in 1998, eyes one with the television screen, and nothing will ruin the way I felt watching that game, especially not some puritanical blabbering from the can-do-no-wrong self-righteous sports-writing generals of the nothing-but-sports crusader army who have an uncanny ability to lead the mouthbreathers to arms.

I guess I did have some words left.

Belichick is an ass, but Congress is worse

When I watch football, which I do on occasion, if only because there isn't anything else to do and I'm desperately trying to fill that heart-shaped hole the baseball off season leaves me, I constantly compare the action on the gridiron to the beautiful game on the old green diamond. Baseball has its assholes, I know. But never have I seen such a disgusting display of unsportsmanlike conduct as what happened with one second on the clock during the Superbowl. The fact that Bill Belichick walked over to the refs and made the Giants go out on the field for one more play, denying them of their instant celebration that comes with a championship, is utterly despicable. And the cheater didn't bother to congratulate the Giants during the post game interview.

I hope the NFL nails him for his cheating and he never sets foot on a football field again.

BUT... Congress has no place investigating his cheating, just like it has no place investigating steroids in baseball, anti-trust exemptions be damned. Don't we have a war we're losing and an economy that's on the brink of collapsing into recession? Where are the priorities of this country? Sports mean nothing. NOTHING.

This is the Church of Baseball, and a fiery inferno awaits the members of Congress who are wasting our tax money on such pettiness.


(Oh, and HA HA, Boston fans. HA!)



(Is it March 31 yet?)


(Has real* Opening Day ever been held in March?)

*Real Opening Day - the day the Reds play their first game.
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The Mitchell Report

I don't want to hear it. (Fingers in ears. Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala...)