Recently in MLB Category
Breaking over the weekend, thanks to Selena Roberts and David Epstein of SI: Yankees star Alex Rodriguez -- and 103 other MLB players! -- tested positive for steroids in 2003. Given what we already knew about the sea of performance-enhancers in baseball, this isn't really a huge surprise, and as I said of Barry Bonds, I'm not even sure juicing should be deemed a mortal sin anyway. Still, as pro-athletes go, A-Rod is almost as easy to dislike as Kobe, so I'll fess up to a bit of schadenfreude in this case.
That feeling also extends to the rending of garments now happening among the "Baseball is America's game!" crowd in the wake of the A-Rod revelation. This notion that baseball has some special place in our hearts -- a "unique paragon of American culture," as Jayson Stark effusively puts it in this example -- is a sentiment I've never shared and don't particularly agree with. (Besides, the sport survived the 1919 Black Sox. It'll survive the juice.) And, in my pantheon of annoying sports fans, the baseball purists are right up there next to the bandwagon jumpers. Take me out to the Ball Game...but please don't sit me next to the stats obsessives or self-appointed diamond historians.
While Philadelphians wait one more day (they hope) to end their 25-year losing streak, basketball-inclined sports fans such as myself are now focused on Beantown, where the 2008-09 NBA season tips off tonight on TNT. (And, hey, with zero games played in the season, this newest iteration of new-look Knicks are tied for best record in the league!)
Seriously, tho, while I expect another, ahem, "rebuilding" year in New York despite the best efforts of Walsh and D'Antoni, it'll be good to have the NBA back in town -- and Kenny, EJ, and Charles back in the studio. Particularly now with Mad Men in mothballs again, Inside the NBA is probably my favorite show on television...even if they don't deign to show the Knicks this year.
"'I'll be a kid in a candy store,' Artest said. 'I'll be a kid in a store with a lot of candy. I'm going to dance with the stars.'" T-Mac, Yao, and the Houston Rockets try to keep pace in a loaded West by trading for talented head case Ron Artest. (They gave up aging vet Bobby Jackson, new pick Donte Greene, a 2009 first-rounder, and cash.) Interesting...that's a pretty solid trade for Houston. It's not Boston's Big 3, but even in a crowded conference Artest should be enough defensive help to finally get 'em out of the first round. And so far he's saying all the right things.
Also, I don't really follow baseball until, I dunno, mid-October, but this even made my radar. The inimitable Manny Ramirez is gone from the BoSox. He's now a Dodger (and, the Grant Hill of the MLB, Ken Griffey is now on the White Sox.) Alrighty then.
"'Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades -- commissioners, club officials, the players' association and players -- shares to some extent the responsibility for the steroids era,' Mitchell said in summation of his 20-month investigation. 'There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on.'" Former Senator (and go-to commission guy) George Mitchell's report on Steroids in Baseball is released. And, while outing a number of star players as users (including Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, Eric Gagne, David Justice, John Rocker, Gary Sheffield, and Mo Vaughn), Mitchell instead argues for change and collective responsibility rather than the initiation of a witchhunt. It does seem obvious, based on the list of names, that steroids were rife throughout the sport and can't be limited to any one clubhouse (although there sure are a lot of Yankees named, aren't there?) Well, here's hoping they find a way to clean it all up. For my part, and as I've said several times now, major league baseball ranks somewhere down near hockey and golf in the list of sports I enjoy watching and following. Give me the NBA, or even the MLS, any day of the week (and the NFL twice on Sunday.)
It's official: Notorious slugger and obvious juicer Barry Bonds passes Hammerin' Hank Aaron as the all-time home run leader. Ho-hum. To be honest, I still haven't figured out how I come down on the Bonds steroid thing (partly because I am at best only a casual fan of baseball, and thus don't really care all that much. As I said here, I'd rather watch basketball, soccer, or football on any given night than I would MLB, even before the league gave us Dubya. Take that, George Will.) But, regarding Bonds: On one hand, he seems like a jerk, and it's painfully obvious he's a user. On the other, the Baseball Hall of Fame is filled with unlikable people, many people in pro baseball are clearly using, a case could be made against other kinds of enhancements (contacts, for example), and I highly doubt I could hit 756 home runs even if I were ingesting three times the steroids Bonds did. So, it's a wash.
(Like I needed to another reason to think less of A-Rod.) By way of my friend Mark, here's an interesting list of campaign contributions made by sports figures since 1978. Some of the bigger Democratic donors include Hank Aaron, Andre Agassi, Michael Jordan, Robert Kraft, Alonzo Mourning, Bud Selig, Dean Smith, and David Stern. As for athletes buttressing the GOP, they include several football (Troy Aikman, Bobby Bowden, Mike Ditka, Peyton Manning, Roger Staubach) and racing (Mario Andretti, Brian and Bill France, Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett, Richard Petty) stars, along with Jerome Bettis, Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone, Lute Olson, Rafael Palmeiro, A-Rod, and Marge Schott.
"So, what do you do when you find out your effervescent childhood hero is a violent, potentially evil man? You can repudiate him, forgive him, or try to compartmentalize and love the ballplayer while deploring his actions." Friend, colleague, and baseball fanatic Jeremy Derfner remembers Kirby Puckett for Slate.
On the day after the untimely death of Kirby Puckett, Sports Illustrated publishes a devastating case against Barry Bonds, chronic steroid user. Not a huge surprise, of course, but sad nonetheless.
"Who knew? We all knew: the trainers who looked the other way as they were treating a whole new class of injuries; the players who saw teammates inject themselves but kept the clubhouse code of silence; the journalists who 'buried the lead' and told jokes among themselves about the newly muscled; the GMs who wittingly acquired players on steroids; and, yes, owners and players, who openly applauded the home run boom and moved at glacial speed to address the problem that fueled the explosion." ESPN Magazine surveys the ascent of baseball's Steroid Era.
A hearty congrats to the Chicago White Sox on sweeping the Astros last night and reversing their own curse (but no more throwing games, ok?) Between this and the Red Sox last year, one has to wonder: Will next year be all about the Cubs?
