2/13/09

Can't Anyone Here Run This Game?!

Hmmmm... Is it me or is Bud (The $18 Million Dollar Man) Selig getting that Bush-in-the-headlights look? Eerie, isn't it?

Alex, Go to Your Room! Bud (Light) Selig's response to the Alex Rodriguez debacle: "What Alex did was wrong and he will have to live with the damage he has done to his name and reputation." Thank you, Ward Cleaver.

Cutting to the Chase: Everyone - and I mean everyone - connected with Major League Baseball is guilty. Players, agents, teams, management, owners, the players union, and especially the stars of this travesty - the Three Stooges of baseball, "Commissioner" Bud Selig and players union heads Donald Fehr and Gene Orza. Fehr fought tooth-and-nail against steroid testing and Selig was completely half-assed in his attempts to rid the game of it, but everyone unofficially decided to sweep steroids under the rug after the '94-95 strike so they can regain their popularity through home runs and the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase and it worked - until the whole thing came crashing down like the World Trade Center. They all sold their souls to performing enhancing drugs and now the entire industry is paying the price, and will continue to pay for generations to come, perhaps forever, because now even the players who didn't cheat will be considered guilty by asscociation. And remember, human growth hormone doesn't even have a test...at least not one that Fehr will allow.

Hey, Wanna Buy a Bridge? Alex Rodriguez's apology was as effective as his post-season hitting prowess. Obviously he had more interest in his tan than his sincerity (What the hell was with that Orangina look, anyway?). Memo to the rest of you cheaters: Don't even bother to apologize. As I've said before, players (and people in general) only apologize after they get caught and this is blinding evidence to it. Rodriguez juiced, he lied about it, he got nailed, his career is tarnished and he deserves all the derision heading his way, in spite of the extenuating circumstances (more on that later). Like Mark McGwire, Rodriguez is truly a fraud (Right, Joe?) They all knew the legal and health risks, but they didn't give a damn, and thanks to HGH, they still don't. They know they can get away with it because baseball, much like politicians, has this incredibly arrogant attitude that it doesn't have to operate under the same laws that the rest of society does. The best remedy for that is for the government to rip baseball of it's anti-trust exemption. That would be a good Skin Bracer-like slap in the face that baseball desperately needs.

Well, I Can Dream, Can't I? How profound a statement would it be if the Yankees decided to void Rodriguez's contract? There may not be a legal way for them to do it because his steroid use took place (allegedly) while he played for the Texas Rangers, but who can believe anybody now? If the Yankees had the stones and ethical motivation to drop him, it would give them credibility beyond the call for doing something nobody else seems to be interested in doing: protecting the integrity of the game. It's not unprecedented. In September of 1920 the Chicago White Sox were in a tight pennant race with the Cleveland Indians when the truth came out about seven Chicago players agreeing to throw the 1919 World Series, a group which included their two best players: Shoeless Joe Jackson (a career .356 hitter) and three-time 20-game winner Eddie Cicotte. Nevertheless, owner Charles Comiskey immediately suspended the players, thus wrecking his team's pennant chances. They finished two games out, but Comiskey stood on a vitally important principle (Those seven players were subsequently found guilty and barred from Major League Baseball for life). If the Yankees took this golden opportunity to invest in the game itself by booting Rodriguez, even the most bloodthirsty Yankee hater would have no choice but to applaud. Unfortunately, gambling has been deemed a far worse violation to the game's integrity than cheating is (Right, Pete?). Not anymore, it isn't.

Counterpoint: Somebody would sign Rodriguez. "He can help us," is always the mantra - that being a euphemism for tolerance and acceptance of PEDs and that's a direct result of Major League Baseball's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It's a tricky road because if the Yankees jettison Rodriguez and the other teams stick up for the game by not picking him up (even if the Yankees released him and ate his contract - hell, they can afford it), the players union would cry collusion and technically they'd be right. But the line has to be drawn somewhere and it better be drawn soon. In the meantime, four of the greatest players of their generation, Rodriguez, McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens (who were all great without steroids), will likely never get into the Hall of Fame and two of them could wind up in prison. Future civilizations may find out more about the Great American Pastime than we want them to (Hot dogs, apple pie, baseball and...The Clear?).

Winning: It's Not Just a Game, It's an Addiction! When there's so much money at stake, a franchise in any sport signing a player in spite of his sordid history - be it legal or chemical - is driven by the same symptom that fuels gambling addiction: Even the most remote possibility of winning is worth any risk. It's the saddest possible commentary on organized sports in every level - from performance enhancing drugs in the pros to repeat offenders on the police blotter, to colleges and high schools floating grades for talented but financially and/or academically poor athletes, all the way down to those Little League parents and their mentally challenged method of yelling and carrying on from the stands as if they had a wager on the game itself and embarrassing everyone around them, not to mention humiliating their kid on the field.

The Flip Side: The leaking of Rodriguez's name may wind up being a criminal act because the drug tests were supposed to be taken, not for punishment, but for finding out how bad the steroid problem was. A "Survey Test" is the name they gave it. After the testing agreement between MLB and the players union was struck, union associate general counsel Gene Orza allegedly informed players about the impending tests beforehand to give them a chance to get the drugs out of their systems before testing day. That cowardly act didn't help 104 players. But it gets worse. The agreement stated that the records were supposed to have been disposed of forthwith but MLB and the players union botched the play and the feds got a subpoena to get the test results for the BALCO case before they could be destroyed. Now that Rodriguez's name has been leaked by the media, what of the other 103 players? Many people are calling for their names to be released. Donald Fehr replied, "Whatever rights individual players had under those agreements have to be respected." In all fairness, that doesn't do Rodriguez any good, does it? Whether Fehr realizes it or not, "those agreements" have been violated anyway because now they're all at the mercy of the media. How well are they are sleeping knowing they could wake up tomorrow morning and be outed?

All the Crap That's Fit to Stink: The media showed it's usual selfish lack of respect for anything and anyone but themselves and got hold of some info that they shouldn't have gotten (Knowing how underhanded the media can be, how they did it is probably another sordid affair). They whine, "It's newsworthy! We must report it." Yes, it's newsworthy, but considering that this was confidential information that was acquired as a result of an act of irresponsibility that will certainly have legal ramifications, the media should show at least some responsibility of it's own by helping to adhere to the ethics involved in this particular case, specifically, the respect for the players' privacy the agreement guaranteed, illegal steroids or not. The media's job is to report the news, not create it. But in this venue they and professional sports feed off each other while playing the same game: Sell the product and rake in the dough no matter what. Damn the ethics, full speed ahead. And they succeed because there are enough gullible people out there who eat it up by reading the papers, watching and listening to the mindless sports-talk clowns and root, root, root for the home team regardless of how it's done. There are no innocent bystanders - not even the fans. In spite of the economy, baseball is swimming in money, attendance is good, memorabilia sales are through the roof, and new ballparks keep popping up like weeds. The general outlook of fans is to boo and verbally abuse the living hell out of a steroid user, but if he's on your team, you don't mind (Exhibit A: Barry Bonds was adored in San Francisco).

Olde School: Maybe I'm an old-fashioned idiot, but I've gotten to the point where I'll generally try to fish out the basics. Just give me the ballgame, the boxscore and a recap and I'm fine. You can keep the peripherals and the controversy. A trade rumor, a good story is nice. I don't ignore the important things but I don't obsess over them. But now it feels like the walls are closing in. Look at all the garbage on the headline list: Steroids, lawsuits, arrests, reports of a former player that may have AIDS. That gets top billing over Spring Training, which, by the way, has officially started. Oh, you didn't know? Pitchers and catchers are reporting.

Don't Let This Happen to You: The deaths of Lyle Alzado and Ken Caminiti obviously wasn't enough of a convincer of how dangerous PEDs are. The only way something is ever going to get done is if a player drops dead right there on the field in the middle of a game and the autopsy shows that some kind of PED contributed to his death. Then, and only then will sincere regret and the thought of actually doing the right things cross the minds of everyone (us being such a disaster-oriented species). That's precisely what happened in Cincinnati on Opening Day in 1996 when home plate umpire John McSherry collapsed and died on the field. Only then did baseball "spring into action" and institute a program designed to make sure umpires stayed in better shape, which had been a lingering problem up to that point. McSherry's onfield death is what it took to get something done and it will be the same way again with PEDs. Until then, sleep on this all you cheaters: You could be the one being pulled off the field in a box and all the fans sitting in the stands and watching on national TV will be eyewitnesses - and the media will still have the last laugh. But it's not funny. Sadly, nobody has the last laugh on the media. At least not yet.

Nyahh, Nyahh!! I can almost hear Jose Canseco laughing his @$$ off through all this. Should everyone thank that idiotic, selfish, back-stabbing, opportunistic phony for blowing the whistle or should they beat him up? I say, thank him...then beat him up.

Walk Towards the Light: One thing that seems to be going unnoticed is that only the players are getting punished. What about Selig? How about Fehr, Orza and all 30 teams that allowed this to ferment over the last 20 years? None of them are being called out on the carpet. Selig says Alex Rodriguez has "shamed the game." Look in the mirror and say that, Bud. As the above photos dictate, you're credibility is at George Bush level and dropping like a safe. If Major League Baseball has any interest in regaining what's left of it's good name, then every single last one of them - Selig, league officials, labor, management, agents, - all of them - should get together and organize a publicity campaign leading off with apologies across the board and make it as relentless as an election campaign (After all, the mindset of pro sports and politicians is virtually indistinguishable, now). Full page ads, TV commercials, billboards, outfield walls, the Internet, every way possible. Convince us. Or at least try to convince us. Do something legit. Don't wait for somebody to die on the field, because as long as there's no policy against HGH, it's inevitable. Come clean now and stay clean, and then maybe, just maybe, we can all finally move on.

....maybe.

No comments: