Don't hate baseball, hate others
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By Craig DeVrieze | Saturday, January 26, 2008 |
Bring me the head of Bud Selig.
That is all I ask in exchange for forgiving, if not forgetting, however many years of honest interest I have been cheated out of by the chemically enhanced national pastime.
Truth told, I am tired of the whole affair, weary of the lies, the empty promises, the transparent indignity, the parades before Congress and the millions of dollars blown, all resulting in the undressing of just a small fraction of the cheating rats who populate big-league baseball.
I am ready to move on because, frankly, I suspect there is no end to this mess and that no matter how deep we dig, way, way, way too many of the juiced-up cockroaches will stay hidden in the shadows.
Sorry. I just am beyond caring who is telling the truth in the he said/he sued farce that is The Roger Clemens Story.
(Although when/if Clemens’ vehement denials of steroid use are proven false, I propose he be shackled to the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium and Mike Piazza imported to throw broken baseball bats at him for as long as it takes Steve Trachsel and Livan Hernandez to throw nine innings.)
And, given the number of other players exposed by the Mitchell Report, and the nationwide shrug that essentially followed, I’m not entirely certain we don’t owe Barry Bonds some kind of extremely tepid and highly insincere apology for having focused so much national angst upon him during his epically bogus chase of the game’s most hallowed record.
(Although when/if Bonds is convicted of perjury for his preposterous I-thought-it-was-flaxseed-oil grand jury fiction, I’d suggest that, in lieu of a prison sentence, he be shackled to home plate at AT&T Park and every pitcher he ever took deep be allowed to throw fastballs at his over-padded elbow.)
See. I’m over my anger.
Truthfully, the Mitchell Report just wore me out, ultimate farce, that it was.
While I don’t doubt the former senator’s good intentions, the so-called exhaustive investigation yielded just a sum total of 89 names, most who had previously been exposed and many now out of the game.
That’s spitting in the ocean when the handful of players who have dared to speak on the subject say more than half the players in the game have been, are or were on the juice.
As for the unjuiced remainder, Mitchell got virtually no cooperation from them, which is surprising on the one hand, because these were the people most cheated by the cheats.
It also is not surprising in the least, since, like Mafia hoods, baseball players operate under a strict code of omerta, which, as in the Mafia, insists the low lifes protect the even lower lifes among them.
That adds up, too, because, while there are more than a few genuinely decent fellows in baseball locker rooms, it is my experience that the game has more rude, arrogant, under-educated and largely unlikeable louts per capita than any other sport.
Nonetheless, here’s where I’m at on big-league baseball and the scourge of steroids: Don’t hate the game. Hate the players.
And the owners. And the union leaders. And, especially, the insufferably smug, insultingly disingenous commissioner.
Lately, Selig has been playing the game-saving hero, the aggrieved and put-upon savior, when he clearly and happily presided over the biggest fraud ever inflicted on sports fans, knowingly welcoming inflated, chemically tainted home run totals because they helped baseball rebound from the crippling strike of 1994.
He then slow-played the search for a solution until BALCO, Jose Canseco and Congress forced his hand.
So, it is Selig’s sanctimony — not Bonds’ eclipsing of sport’s most notable record, not Clemens’ desperate campaign to prove he only is as marginally despicable as we thought pre-Mitchell Report — that is the hardest thing to take about this never-ending traipse through the mud.
Naturally then, Jerry Reinsdorf and chums gave him a three-year extension last week.
Hate ’em all, folks.
But remember, pitchers and catchers report in three weeks.
Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com
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