Can there really be any surprise?
Since at LEAST the 80's and the savings and loans scandals it seems as if it's not what can be achieved, it what can be gotten away with.
But wait, what about the margin depravities which brought on the depression?
What about the Jay Gould's?
What about the 2nd Bank of the USA?
The South Seas Bubble?
Of course the reference to Willie Sutton merely points out that most cheating is inevitably the same.
For the money.
The MVP's are money.
The HR's are the money.
The 20-3 seasons are the money.
The bigger the money the more thieves will be attracted.
Rodriguez is a thief.
Tejada, thief
Giambi, Bonds, Kaminiti, Sosa, Clemens, Mcgwire, Palmiero, Canseco, and by the looks, Ivan Rodriguez, but who really knows if this is right or how many? And though it really hurts to admit it, even Andy Pettite, whose contrition seemed painfully sincere, but whose story that he only did it the way he did (twice?) was hard to credit.
All we can do is to expose these thieves and cheats whose weakness eliminates them from admiration of any sort, including for those talents they were gifted with, and move on.
So, I want to see the names of the 104 cheats and thieves.
TODAY.
And perhaps we had better have a modern Judge Landis, or baseball is liable to end up like hockey. Vaguely remembered as having been eliminated day by day from american thought by the behavior of its owners and players (in the NHL it was plain greed which resulted in the strike, and loss of an entire season, which killed hockey as a major sport)
While baseball is no longer played the way I did as a kid, in countless sunny spring and summer pickup games in parks and streets in the Bronx - who would pick up a bat at 8 or 9 then or now and imagine himself to be an injected, stat and truly bloated A Rod, Tejada, Giambi or Bonds, when they could place themselves in the mind and body of real heroes with real human weaknesses like Ruth , Gehrig, Yastremski, Williams, Kaline, Koufax, Drysdale, Yogi, and Marichal ..or the national history maker - Jackie Robinson, or the silent battles of a Hank Greenberg.
If our kids cannot have any but cheats and thieves as examples and we tolerate it, for our own pleasure of seeing the long arc over the Green Monster, or into the black at Yankee Stadium, what are we telling them?
Let's see the 104, and frankly, let's get rid of them. I have been a Yankee fan since I was 5 and watched them beat the Dodgers on TV - sneaking into a separate room during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with a great uncle to see the forbidden during the holy days, but now I can't stand these men who make tens of millions and CHEAT as well. They are MADOFF with arms and bats.
Maybe someone like a Jeter can retrieve something for the game with a ringing statement which values the sport and not the season.
You hear me Hank?
Where is our Kennesaw Mountain?
Since at LEAST the 80's and the savings and loans scandals it seems as if it's not what can be achieved, it what can be gotten away with.
But wait, what about the margin depravities which brought on the depression?
What about the Jay Gould's?
What about the 2nd Bank of the USA?
The South Seas Bubble?
Of course the reference to Willie Sutton merely points out that most cheating is inevitably the same.
For the money.
The MVP's are money.
The HR's are the money.
The 20-3 seasons are the money.
The bigger the money the more thieves will be attracted.
Rodriguez is a thief.
Tejada, thief
Giambi, Bonds, Kaminiti, Sosa, Clemens, Mcgwire, Palmiero, Canseco, and by the looks, Ivan Rodriguez, but who really knows if this is right or how many? And though it really hurts to admit it, even Andy Pettite, whose contrition seemed painfully sincere, but whose story that he only did it the way he did (twice?) was hard to credit.
All we can do is to expose these thieves and cheats whose weakness eliminates them from admiration of any sort, including for those talents they were gifted with, and move on.
So, I want to see the names of the 104 cheats and thieves.
TODAY.
And perhaps we had better have a modern Judge Landis, or baseball is liable to end up like hockey. Vaguely remembered as having been eliminated day by day from american thought by the behavior of its owners and players (in the NHL it was plain greed which resulted in the strike, and loss of an entire season, which killed hockey as a major sport)
While baseball is no longer played the way I did as a kid, in countless sunny spring and summer pickup games in parks and streets in the Bronx - who would pick up a bat at 8 or 9 then or now and imagine himself to be an injected, stat and truly bloated A Rod, Tejada, Giambi or Bonds, when they could place themselves in the mind and body of real heroes with real human weaknesses like Ruth , Gehrig, Yastremski, Williams, Kaline, Koufax, Drysdale, Yogi, and Marichal ..or the national history maker - Jackie Robinson, or the silent battles of a Hank Greenberg.
If our kids cannot have any but cheats and thieves as examples and we tolerate it, for our own pleasure of seeing the long arc over the Green Monster, or into the black at Yankee Stadium, what are we telling them?
Let's see the 104, and frankly, let's get rid of them. I have been a Yankee fan since I was 5 and watched them beat the Dodgers on TV - sneaking into a separate room during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with a great uncle to see the forbidden during the holy days, but now I can't stand these men who make tens of millions and CHEAT as well. They are MADOFF with arms and bats.
Maybe someone like a Jeter can retrieve something for the game with a ringing statement which values the sport and not the season.
You hear me Hank?
Where is our Kennesaw Mountain?
8 comments:
Epa,
The spirit of what you are saying in this piece is correct.
However, the inevitability of the advance of biotechnology renders your point moot.
If you think athletes are getting away with stuff now, just wait until real life bionics come into play. Just wait until stem cell/genetic engineering comes into play.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
I think this whole steroid scandal is a whole nation looking up it's own asshole. It's time to stop.
All the more reason to get rid of the lot. You are right as well (just think Sosa's corked bat exploding, you know, on that one day he coincidentally used it)
The press won't stop.
Too juicy.
Dump them all and let's get going
Dump the players or the press?
I'm more up for dumping the press on this issue.
The players who are the cheats and thieves.
They have to go, and we move on.
I'd rather watch Brett Gardner do it for real than A Rod, and then wonder about it
Epa,
How will you stop the next wave of biotech and body-enhancement?
I don't think there's a way to stop it.
This is the world we live in now. It's like trying to stop the railroad because trains run over cows.
Then let them LEGALIZE IT.
Let baseball just say...this is how it is.
Then I have no problem.
Well then, who's stupider, the players or the owners?
If you look at this purely from a Capitalistic pov, then it's the owners. They have guys hitting 70 HR's a year, business is up, and now they're doing this shit to the players.
All the players were trying to do was do as well as they could so they can win and make money.
But, I'm not purely a capitalist. I am not purely a technophile either. I see the physical problems with altering one's body and chemistry.
However, I also see the physical problems extreme sports athletes go through. We congratulate guys who get on snowboards and jump off cliffs.
They are making sacrifices for their sports. That's considered admirable.
Why is it not considered admirable for a baseball player to do the same thing.
The whole argument just doesn't make any sense.
And, the stupidest thing of all is that you can't hold back the river of technological progress. So, it's impossible to stop this. Because, it's only going to get simulatneously more subtle and all-pervasive.
There are rules for a reason.
"All the players were trying to do was do as well as they could so they can win and make money."
Why not have HS and collage age athletes use the same reasoning?
Better college scholarships, better colleges, better lives if not making the pros?
Why not use/sneak all sources (heads up net displays on your 'glasses')for info during a test? It's more reflective of real life, and people are just trying to get ahead to get better lives and win
Same reasoning, just trying to do as well ..
Owners get no sympathy from me.
In 1958 I could take a bus (alone) across town and sit in the right field bleachers at the stadium for $.35 for the bus and $.75 for the seat. Later it went up to $1.10 for the seat before we moved to Long Island in 1960.
Ultimately it's the people who decide.
If people will pay $500 a seat to watch a cheat and a thief, then that's that.
If superior performance is what it is ..regardless of all other factors, then sooner or later the MVP will be whoever can choose the best software company who will write the best driver for their bionic augmented hip muscles to turn thru a swing.
Hey, JUST PLAY IT ON THE Wii, then at least the population has a shot.
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