At least headline-writers get to have a good time
“A-Roid,” “A-Fraud,” it’s a tabloid field day around here. Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Times has a good (and more importantly, calm) piece about the revelations, and the last few days of coverage.
If you demonize and hyperbolize like Jayson Stark and all of the others each time a new name pops up, proclaiming each new PED transgression to be worst than the last and all of them worse than anything that came before? Well, then, you’re eventually going to have to give up on this game altogether, because you won’t have a recent baseball memory that isn’t terminally tainted. As I sit here today, no baseball memory of mine — 1998 home run race included — has been ruined by any PED-related revelations.
I don’t think Stark is all that egregious — having just read the Daily News‘s hysterical “DUMP HIM AND EAT HIS CONTRACT, DO IT TODAY” screed by Bill Madden at lunch, Stark seems quite tame by comparison — but generally, I agree. Not that you can’t get frustrated, or think steroid use is wrong and needs eradicating; I do, and I do. But the outrage reaches a pitch…I don’t know. I kind of love this story, paired with the “Torre’s a big jerkball for writing that book” story, because it’s a story about baseball. The Super Bowl’s over, it’s time for spring training…baseball! You have to get something from baseball besides angry.
And you have to keep some perspective. I agree with The Futility Infielder’s opinion that, whatever else you think of Jason Giambi, he handled a crappy situation as well as anyone could — and that we’ll have no such luck with the tone-deaf whiner Rodriguez, who still does not Get It. But the fact that Rodriguez is, in the main, a humorless douche whom nobody really likes, who tried to get the same competitive advantage that it seems nearly half the league tried to get, and fucked up and got caught, is not the worst scandal ever to plague the game. It’s happening in the New York tabloid wind tunnel, so it seems like it is, but it isn’t. Steroids in general isn’t, either. The worst scandal ever to plague the game is the color line. Let’s just take a minute and remember the name “Dixie Walker.”
…My point. It’s a big deal, and I’m not saying it isn’t, but if you really think baseball is too frail to survive this, I don’t think I understand why you even bother with the game at all.
Tags: Alex Rodriguez city living shut up tabloids
Preach!
This story’s not about Baseball. It’s about the hoisting by one’s own petard.
I’m loving the story, I will confess, because I view Rodriguez as a doucheweasel. I am happy to see yet another public confirmation that he is a liar and a cheat because schadenfreude is as sweet as chocolate. I’m a Yankee fan, for heaven’s sake, and I can’t stand the guy.
Play Ball!
I think the game could come out stronger for all of this if writers and people who love the game would actually talk about it with some perspective and try to figure out why juicing has become so common. And I say this as someone who thinks that athletes should take their role model status seriously and who thinks juicing stinks. How much I actually care is up for debate, because I don’t have your knowledge or passion for the game, but I def. care enough not to want baseball to go the way of histrionic pronouncements about the everlasting taint. (heeeeeheheh. Sorry, that just reads so dirty to me.)
If you love the game, you have to love it warts and all. When a wart pops up on your foot and annoys the hell out of you, you treat it. You don’t cut your damn foot off. The same goes here in my opinion.
I hope that in all the outrage over this it doesn’t get lost just how out of control, out of touch, and generally idiotic the MLB Player’s Union has become. Don Fehr & Gene Orza have bought into the hype about how powerful their union is and in doing so have totally blown it.
It seems pretty clear that Orza ran around telling players when they were being tested. there is no justification for that!
Fehr has been acting like all that matters is making sure the salaries keep escalating for the current players. Part of a union’s job is to ensure a safe work environment. At best he turned a blind eye to rampant drug use, at worst encouraged it. If I’m one of the clean players, I’d bury this guy for catering to the desires of the dirty guys, instead of acting to not just protect the salary scale but also to ensure the long-term health and safety of the players.
It’s a mess.
“if you really think baseball is too frail to survive this, I don’t think I understand why you even bother with the game at all.”
Yep and also BASEBALL!! Even with the insulting loss of our John Smoltz I am ready for the new season. All hail the spring training!
I am not a baseball fan and therefore feel I have no right to have an opinion on the matter. I DO have an opinion about the press and how they make every celebrity and sport headline seem HORRIFIC! and THE END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT! It’s ridiculous and stupid and so transparently about selling papers and gaining ratings as to lose all credibility on the matter.
The press sucks, is I guess what I’m saying.
I don’t have any opinions about this whole kerfuffle, but this weekend I saw someone on the subway reading a Spanish-language paper, and there was a sports headline that made reference to “A-steroides.” And I thought, You know, I’m not sure the pun really translates.
If people are going to clutch their pearls every time we find out about another player who’s used steroids, they’re going to need to get a lot more pearls.
Strangely enough, A-Rod just went a few steps better than Giambi by actually admitting his steroid use rather than unspecific “apologies.” Go figure.
I wonder if the unlikeable-douche types get more fingers pointed at them when they get caught in steroid investigations (or any other sort of scandal, I guess) — I remember reading some insightful comments about this idea involving Bonds, but I can’t find the post now. On the other hand, maybe the unlikeable guys, in keeping with their general unlikeability, are the ones more likely to insist that
1) they never took steroids
2) all their friends are lying
3) the steroids were for their wife
(even if I hadn’t hated Roger Clemens to begin with: ick)
and thus attract more negative attention, while the guys who generally seem decent/nice are the ones more likely to say “Yeah, I did that, I screwed up, sorry” and thus win back some support.
Rodriguez does seem to have copped to it pretty quickly. He’s got that going for him, at least.
Yeah, I think it pretty much comes down to the fact that people actually like Pettitte and Giambi, while Bonds, Clemens and Rodriguez are considered d-bags. Or, in Clemens’ case, hot liniment t-bags.
I guess people liked McGwire too, but his Congressional testimony was just too egregious (and was not as well-rounded a player HoF-wise anyway).
I’m watching tonight’s SportsCenter right now, and I wouldn’t mind some more insight into whether Selena Roberts is actually “stalking” Rodriguez.
I don’t know if anyone else watched this…I still feel like he could have been more forthright, and like “I didn’t know what I was taking” is horseshit, but I’m glad that he at least sat down with Gammons and tried to get himself correct.
I just read the Stark piece. I’ve really never been a stats geek. Although I was at Shea the night McGwire hit his 50 and 51 to break the Babe’s record for number of seasons with 50 or more HRs and found it pretty cool. I’m more into the unfolding of each game and each season. The narrative of baseball. (That’s something Jayson does really well, too, although he tends to cover baseball as stats geek with humor added. This kind of hard news/opinion thing is something he really doesn’t like to do. But it unfortunately has come with the territory a lot in the past ten years.)
Still, it would be nice to have some idea of what you are seeing. And knowing that in that year they were testing to see if there was a problem, about 14% of them tested positive, which is a lot less than Jose Canseco would lead you to expect but a lot more than I’d like.
I’m with Schilling, who says let us know everyone so that those who didn’t test positive don’t get painted with the same broad brush. But that won’t happen. Maybe can’t happen.
And until they can test for HgH, they’re all dirty until proven clean (which is impossible) anyway.
I’ll just watch and be glad that for only the second season in my life I’m a fan of the defending World Series Champions.
I think it’s more likely he didn’t really care what he was taking. They just told him it would help him and he went “ok!” He’s kind of a schmuck, but I’m not sure how disigneuous he really he. I think he’s just naturally kind of a putz.
I think a lot of people liked Clemens, or at least respected him, until recently. And then it was one douchebag story after another (the Mindy McCready thing still creeps me the hell out!) and it all unraveled for the Rocket.
I wish we could get the whole list. not because I wnat to trash the hell out of anyone, really. But it’d be easy to move past things. Right now, we know there’s still another 100 guys who tested positive, and while we suspect many, we don’t know about them. I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to turn the page on this mess until that list comes out or we’re sure they all retired…
Here’s what worries me. I’ve been a hardcore fan since I was a kid listening to Harry Kalas calls Phillies games on a Sony Walkman while balanced on my parents’ roof, the only place in my small PA town I could get good reception.
And yet, baseball seems to be getting incrementally less important to me every year, not because I’m horrified by the tales of steroid abuse and betrayal of public trust, whatever the hell that is, but because the Jayson Starks and New York Posts of the world find the scandals more interesting than the game, and I’m just not that interested. And the more I find the baseball world obsessed with this navel-gazing garbage, the less attention I pay.
I love the game. I would hope that the men playing it are honest, and if they’re not, I guess I’m glad someone’s on top of it, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to become a fan of a 20-year-long soap opera and pretend that it’s the same thing as being a fan of baseball.
@Sars- ESPN has come out pretty solidly behind Roberts. I’m hoping that this gets explained more in the coming weeks.
@The discussion at large- Really, the only good thing that could come out of this whole mess is for the people who were (and still are) in charge of baseball during the Steroid Era get the flaying they deserve. I’m looking at you, Selig, Fehr, and Orza.
For some entirely too boneheaded reason, the union thought it would be a good thing to keep that list of 104 players lying around. There’s a great piece by Jon Heyman on Sports Illustrated’s site; he contends that the union had the chance to give the Feds the names of only the BALCO-linked players from those 104, and the union balked. Now we see how well that worked out.
If I’m in the Bigs right now, I’m pretty pissed at the Union. You allow them to override the collective bargaining agreement to do a player-wide drug test. The whole time you’re promising it is anonymous. No one will ever know who the individuals are that tested positive. Oops.
At this point, do we even know whether they had multiple samples and were able to confirm positives? There’s really no way for anyone on that list to defend themselves or stop whomever is leaking the info since so many people have their hands on it now.
Way to look out for your union members Fehr.
There’s an archive of Jayson Stark’s work at ESPN. If you read it you’ll see that the overwhelming majority of his time is spent writing about the game as a game and playing with the oddball stats while giving a platform to the oddball people of the game to speak in something beyond the baseball cliche. But sometimes (during the lockout, the strike, and the steroid scandal) the news demands that he cover it. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t news just because we wish it would just go away. His feelings about this are genuine, not manufactured for effect. Of course, how each of us responds to it is up to us.
I’m on the same page as Chris. Don’t know much about baseball, and don’t have much opinion on A-Rod one way or the other. I do have an opinion on a professional reporter, during a NATIONWIDE TELEVISED PRESS CONFERENCE, asking THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES his opinion on a sports player’s steroid use. What the fuck? The economy is shit, we’re at war, etc., etc. and that’s what you ask? Who the hell let that guy in?
@f’rick: I agree. I really love baseball, and I still feel like that’s off point.
This has nothing to do with anything, really, but he was talking about how much he weighs at one point, and I’m always struck by how big he is. He’s not a guy who looks like he’s all that tall, but he is — six three, I think, 225. Jeter, roughly the same, but for some reason they don’t look that big on TV.
I will admit that I do like Alex and I always have. He wouldn’t be my first choice as a person I would be friends with or married to, but it didn’t matter to me because I thought he was an exceptional player.
I am disappointed this steroids news came however I cannot say I shocked. It a media frenzy with the mass hysteria that always surrounds Alex. Leave it to Alex to bump the news of Torre’s book.
However, I really wish all these baseball writes would just get over themselves. Do they really believe that baseball players from prior to the existence of steroid use wouldn’t have juiced up if they knew it would have helped them perform better. Especially when back in the day, players weren’t as well paid, were at the mercy of the owners for their contracts, and needed to work in the off season in order to supplement their incomes.
The Hall of Famers were not Saints. And Baseball is not the Holy Fucking Sacrament. As wonderful as the game is, in the end it is just a game.
Back in the days when Rodriguez was a Mariner, I was a fan (although I was/am a Yankee fan, I liked him as a player). I spent one summer weekend at Yankee Stadium, attending all three games in one of the Yankees v. Mariner home game series. You could pretty much guarantee that you’d see Rodriguez hit at least one homer each game, if not more.
Then came the time when he signed the contract with the Texas Rangers. The Rangers, who had been a losing team for some time. This was the guy who was supposedly dying for a World Series ring, signing on with a team that couldn’t win a Series if all the other teams in either league suddenly keeled over and died. And he did it so he could have the biggest, fattest contract in history.
I lost all respect for him then. I mean, sure, it’s normal to want to make the most you can in your career, and be at the top of your game (no pun intended). But after all the “for the love of the game” crap, it just seemed ridiculous. I can’t see Derek Jeter leaving the Yankees to make more money.
Then, to top it off, he bad mouths Jeter in an interview. Jeter, who was famously his best friend in baseball. (He also badmouthed Ken Griffey, Jr., while they were both with the Mariners, and naturally claimed that his words were taken out of context. Pattern, anyone?)
When signing with the Rangers turned out to be a huge mistake, Rodriguez turned tail, took off running and ended up with the Yankees.
Since then, he’s been caught with strippers, and worse, Madonna (forgive me, fans, I have loved her, but the woman is just scary these days), broken up his own marriage, become the most hated Yankee I can recall … and he still doesn’t have a World Series ring.
The steroid thing? Well, to be honest, I don’t think much of it. My understanding is that he took what he took before the stuff was investigated and banned. It was a dumb thing to do, but he wouldn’t be the first professional to take or try something that would give him an edge in his field. Also, there are 103 players on that list. He’s being targeted because he’s the “biggest star” on there. Okay, whatever. The world isn’t ending. Professional sports have had problems for years. Anyone with a brain knew that this guy wasn’t perfect, much less a potential Mensa member (come on! Madonna????? REALLY????).
He’s a baseball player. He ain’t the Messiah, he ain’t the President, he just another overpaid jock.
Amen, ferretrick. You could tell Obama was flabbergasted at the question…like, really? You’re going to ask me about that when the whole point of the conference is to talk about the nation’s economic problems? However, true to form, Obama really turned that question to his advantage, in talking about how he hopes it sends the message to children not to cheat; that in doing so you’re only harming yourself and your integrity. Funny how that also ties into the current economic crisis.
I dunno. I’m disappointed about his steroid use but not surprised. I almost think that if they truly *want* the players not to take steroids, there should be a no tolerance rule. One chance- test positive, you’re out. It really is too bad that in almost all sports there are people who feel so much pressure to shave that .001 second off their time and/or get to some record, that they have to mess up their bodies to do so. Long term steroid use can lead to a lot of health problems (also for any children they may have).
Only 4 more days until pitchers and catchers….
Argh- I meant Sports Illustrated, not ESPN. Damn.
>zoelouise says:
February 10, 2009 at 11:27 AM
Only 4 more days until pitchers and catchers….<
Yay! That’s the loudest comment I’ll remember today!
The Cubs reacquired Paul Bako…forget the regular season, start the WS on April 1!! Heh.
I just wanted to say, @ferretrick – ABSOFREAKINGLUTELY. The entire world is in an economic crisis, jobs are being lost all over the place, hell, CNN.com has an article about how ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS are LEAVING the US to go home because things are so bad here –
And you think it’s important to ask the President about steroids? Why not ask him what he thinks of Jessica Simpson’s weight gain, whether or not Angie and Jen will ever be BFFs or if Brad secretly misses Jen, and who the cutest “Gossip Girl” boy is? (It’s Chace. Beautiful, but flavorless. Still, easy on the eyes.)
Well put, Ferretrick, well put.
I think the only thing I care less about than A-Rod taking steroids is Michael Phelps smoking pots. (Oh noes! a 23-year-old smoking pot at a frat party! The horror!)
Or, as Beth so aptly put it: “If people are going to clutch their pearls every time we find out about another player who’s used steroids, they’re going to need to get a lot more pearls.”
Amen.
I’ve been thinking way too much about this for the past couple of days and find myself rather unexpectedly in the bunch that says:
The heroes of the game played in a sport in which many of their most gifted contemporaries couldn’t play against them because of race.
In the 70s and 80s the players were so hopped up on greenies they never slept.
In the 90s it was steroids.
In the 00s it’s HGH.
The game was never even, never pure, and the stats were never what they seemed to be.
But I still don’t like A-Rod. He’s just one of those Heinlein babies born without a soul. He doesn’t know who he is. He only knows what he wants others to believe he is.
Pitchers and catchers! Spring training! BASEBALL!!
::ahem:: Just had to put that out there. These are the only two months I like living in Florida.