Fehr and Loathing

The point is - at least, I think the point is that if everyone was doing it, it doesn't give an advantage and maybe doesn't count as cheating. In fact, if everyone's doing it but you, you ought to do it to if you wanna stay a big league ballplayer. At least that's the Alex Rodriguez defense. It would have been a better one for Wally Joyner or Marvin Benard, but what the hell? It's what he's running with, and some folks seem to be buying it. It's obviously not about the actual, measurable amount that players improved by using steroids that matters. I've mentioned it here before, but what I find most unsettling about the whole PED shitfest is that MLB locker rooms were made into criminal enterprises. It's like the whole of fucking baseball was the White Sox locker room in 1919. Players juicing, players injecting other players, trainers selling it and peddling it, owners and managers either looking the other way (if they're telling the truth) or encouraging it (in the much more likely event then they're lying.) The worst of the lot was the unholy tandem of Don Fehr and Gene Orza, the snarling, yelping Orthus guarding the herd of superman would-be ballplayers.

Those two half-witted bastards pulled off the neat trick of simultaneously giving the players unfair advantages when the testing was taking place, and then completely fucking them afterwards. It's much too stupid-looking for there to have been serious malice involved, but I guess that is probably worse. Both of them ought to have been strung up on the ivy at Wrigley Field while Milton Bradley and Derek Lee pelt them repeatedly with line drives. Then they should be left there for the duration of the season, subsisting on whatever dribbles of Old Style and mustard dropping from some fat and wasted Bleacher Bum they can manage to catch on their tongues. New ground rule: any ball that hits either of those horrible morons is a home run if its in flight and a double if it bounces off the field first. I recognize that this might give the Cubs an advantage, something I would be loath to do under most circumstances, but most outfield walls don't have an easy punishment available. Fuck 'em.

It's really hard to blame individual players, as I see it. I agree that Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez are a nasty lot of people, none of who you'd want to have around your children or even close friends. But, and I hate to hop on the god-awful loosy-goosy excuse of Rodriguez's, it rings true that if everyone was doing it, then what the hell, why not? Just like Willie Mays and greenies. Big bowl of 'em in the clubhouse. Fuck it, they're gonna keep me awake, they're gonna make me heal faster, they're gonna make me hit more home runs, they're gonna extend my career and by extension make me millions of dollars, fuck it. I'm doing it. It's also really, really hard to blame the Paul Byrds and Andy Pettittes who were tying to get their injuries to heal faster. For Christ's sake, who the fuck wouldn't? Basically, as long as there were no consequences from baseball (another thing Orthus foamed at the mouth to prevent) for using, why the hell not? It was in everyone's best interest, career-wise, to do it. (Aside: not in their best interest for their lives outside of their careers, of course, which Ken Caminiti could tell us all about were it not for his miserable blow-and-juice filled body giving up on the whole goddamn thing when he was 41. As it is, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds have got to consider that their life of parasailing and occasionally making a couple hundred grand at card-shows is probably completely fucked, so even though they both lived longer than that unlikely soothsayer Caminiti, their lives are on balance much worse for having taken steroids.) So the moral outrage, which I think is completely appropriate, is misdirected. 

It's those bastards making the rules that fucked this up. The best way to clean up baseball will be the immediate implication of my Ivy-plan. Donald Rumsfeld could run the fucking thing. He's not doing anything.

Brief Detour in which Baseball Strategy is Discussed

There have many weird trends this season. Some, like hitting the pitcher 8th, are kind of quirky and negligably important. Others, such as shattering maple bats, seem dangerous and of critical (but non-baseball related) import. One trend, having really good hitters sacrifice bunt, is so mind-numbingly fucking stupid that I have no idea why all the managers who have employed it have not been taken out and shot for the better of society.

Most recent example: Top of the 6th inning, and the Rockies have a 1-run lead over the Pirates. They are out of the playoffs, probably, but on a hot streak in a weak division. Last night, they took an early lead and completely blew it. Tonight, they had a 4-0 lead that the Bucs had cut to 4-3 by the time of this event.There were runners on first and second with no outs. This is a situation where they can be expected to score 1.573 runs in an average inning. Even better, Chris Iannetta is up and he is hitting .281/.383/.536 coming into the game. Nevermind how good those numbers are for a catcher, those are good numbers for anybody. He is a very good hitter. The pitcher's spot is up next, but Seth Smith (who is hitting .226/.293/.377 in a small sample size) has stepped up to replace the pitcher in the on deck circle. Chris Iannetta sacrifice fucking bunts the runners over to second and third, thereby decreasing the run expectancy to 1.467 runs. Still good! Except Troy Tulowitzki made a fuck stupid baserunning play on a Seth Smith ground ball and was tagged out between second and third. So, first and third with two outs brings us to a Willy Taveras groundout and 0 runs scored in the inning.

Post-script: In the bottom of the inning, the Pirates took the lead and are now up 5-4. The Rockies deserve to lose this game. And! Clint Hurdle deserves not to have a job. This is exactly the dumb shit he does all the time and, let's face it, the honeymoon is over. It's part of a maddening trend, though, and that asshole Dusty Baker started it.

A Cynical Era

We are living in a cynical era. Nobody believes in hope anymore, or the American dream, except old people. I wonder, has it always been only old people who believe in the American dream? Is the whole thing based on nostalgia? Is the idea of a bushy-eyed 18-year-old being sent off by his extended family to fight in some extremely just war because he believes in the Stars and Stripes Forever a myth? Was there ever such a thing as food rationing, fireside chats with the President, 4th of July parades and stickball in the street? Obviously life was never like Leave It To Beaver but was it, at least, ever like The Sandlot? Or are these things just lies and bizarre fantasies passed down from generation to generation? I'm tempted to believe that since the 80's are now being propped up as a time of great goodwill and apple pie and so on rather than a time of gas gouging and Noriega and giant multinational corporations sucking the life out that fireside chat bullshit. I talk like this, and I'm a capitalist! I (heart) Giant Multinational Corportations and I loath Fireside Chats, but I still act with angst about the 80's. As I said, we live in a cynical era.

I spoke earlier about Jerry Rubin, though, and Didier Drogba. So there must be some line in the sand that I draw regarding greed. I think $$$ is super-duper and I applaud the pursuit of it, but there is something disgusting and perverse about ex or current revolutionaries parading around with their wallets bulging. I can't put my finger on it, but I can say quite surely that Che Guevara was a lot more Rockefeller than Zapata, and if that wasn't true when the butcher was alive, it is certainly true now. Felicitaciones, Castro, you pig. You've managed to profit wildly on the idea that $$$ is evil. Lived the American Dream, in that sense. But why is Castro or Che a great hero and someone like George Steinbrenner or Roman Abramovich is a great villain? Or that Thai slaughter fiend who bought Man City this year? He's a bad guy, I'm pretty sure. If the Mullahs in the Taliban had come with a load of cash and bought up Coventry City, would we as a people have allowed that? In the name of tolerance and open-mindedness? Even if they'd made the players wear veils? And would that be okay? I wonder.

The question of capitalism v. socialism, especially as it pertains to sports, is a curious and interesting one. One of the only things you could legitimately claim improved under Castro's regime is the performance of Cuba in international athletic competition. Their baseball team is as good as any in the world, including the US and Japan, and they regularly pump out boxers and swimmers and runners that sweep up at the Olympics and Pan American Games and so on. Cynics would point to how well Soviet athletes performed as compared to their Russian counterparts and say, well, every athlete in Cuba is an amateur so it's not really a level playing field. The Cubans would say it dilutes the purity of sport if athletes are performing for lust and avarice rather than the Love Of The Game. And, as much as our Democratic sensibilities are offended by this, we kind of agree, don't we? As a people? We yearn for the days (which, incidentally, never happened) when people played solely because they love the game and not because it was possible to make loads of cash. We look at greed-heads like Alex Rodriguez and Kobe Bryant and we hate them and say they destroy the innocence we're trying to recapture by following their games. We loath the Yankees and Chelsea for buying championships. We mourn the collapse of Shoeless Joe (who was playing in that love-of-the-game era, but nevermind that) and Pete Rose to the powers of personal gain, and especially its influence when your alternative is chivalry.

According to the company line, there would never be a Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose in Cuban baseball because there's no opportunity for Profit. In reality, Livan and Orlando Hernandez and Jose Contreras are Cuba's Pete Rose. Because, you see, what our innocence means to them is almost absolutely nothing. And it shouldn't. It shouldn't mean anything to El Duque if I am offended by his desire to make his living while he lives. Because the truth is, love of the game or no, El Duque was confronted with a clear choice. Continue to live in Cuba, play for the love of the game, viva la revolución, blah blah blah and also die on a filthy, poverty-stricken island with no hope for making a better life for his family. Or, he could abandon mantras and abstractions like "innocence" and "purity" and opt for some of the real comforts of life by becoming a multi-millionaire almost instantly. Realize, the professional life of an athlete is cruelly short. And his own life is much more important than your idea of purity. So, this is why I always support Cuban refugee athletes. I think they're doing the Right Thing.

However, this doesn't excuse the likes of Drogba and I'm sure my reasoning is intellectually unsound. If someone in the inner city, say, brings it on themselves to get an education and starts a business or something, we applaud it. If the same person makes the same $$$ in gangs or crime syndicates, then they're a shame and a Bad Person. To me, signing with Chelsea even if you didn't want to (as Drogba claims to have done in a recent interview, even saying he hoped he failed his physical so the deal wouldn't go through) is about the same as hustling to feed your family. So, hell, we can be pro-$$$ and anti-corruption, can't we?

This was well too scattered to be a proper essay on the subject and well too organized to belong here. I'll do better next time! Suerte.

Baseball & Politics, for Real This Time

Okay. Now that evil Rangers have been dispatched into the wilderness by the mighty goodness of Barcelona, we can get back on track. And that is, as promised, some thoughts on baseball and politics.

The big news, obviously, is steroids steroids steroids but let's be clear that none of that shit matters. Athletes have been taking drugs since there have been athletes and any self-righteous old-timer who thinks he did it the right way because he didn't inject HGH in his ass between series when he was, instead, hopped up on amphetamines to get by on those awful, cruel day games right after night games is as delusional as he is hypocritical. And, I'm not saying I'm talking about Hank Aaron, but who else could it be? At least Willie Mays, maybe the biggest speedfreak this side of Abby Hoffman, has the balls to stand by Barry Bonds, swollen head and all, while he shatters the record of the aforementioned Hammerin' Hank. If anything, I'd say, these old players might have the right to be disappointed that their drugs weren't as potent or useful as the ones Bonds, Giambi, et al have been ingesting. But any kind of moral outrage is obscenely hollow and short-sighted. These people are Liars or, worse, Naive. Someone should do something.

The real weirdness in the whole steroid thing is that humans are willing to risk everything for something as arbitrary as the home run record. If someone had found copious amounts of horse growth chemicals swimming around the coked-out skull of Ken Caminiti's carcass and said to themselves, "This would definitely be an appropriate price to pay to win the 1996 NL MVP," then I would have to disagree. But there are loads of folks who evidently do think that the lesson from Mark McGwire is less "It is a bad thing to embarrass yourself and your family in front of Congress" and more "Man, wasn't 1998 awesome?!" The Mitchell Investigation is about to name names, and there will be 11 current free agents on the list. No word on whether that includes Mike Cameron, who is already suspended for the first 25 games of next year for abusing some banned substances, or at least not knowing how to use a Whizzinator. We can run down the list of people who've actually been busted for steroids and think that they were all pretty likely targets. Troy Glaus? Obvious. McGwire, Canseco, et al, very obvious. But what about Wally Joyner and Lenny Dykstra and Jorge Piedra and Marvin Benard and Bobby Estalella? I think those are pretty good counterpoints, myself, but what the hell? The world needs a good witch hunt now and again, and since commies are all eradicated and all the Terrorists are being swung up on hooks and beaten like piñatas at Gitmo and Siberia or wherever, who better than Major League Baseball players? Do you hear that, Julio Lugo? We're coming for you, and we're pissed!

The freakshow of the primary candidates for the Presidential Election is another reasonable topic, although I'm a little worried I have nothing to say about them. The Republicans have sent out a whole host of folks who sounded like good candidates in 2004, but this is karmic revenge for selling their souls and probably asses to Karl Rove and BushCo for the last 8 years. You could have Big Bird and Mr. Rogers run on a platform of "Smile, everybody!" and they'd still lose if they ran as Republicans. Even if they promised to make Gandhi the Sec. of State and Orville Redenbacher the Sec. of Yummy. They're doomed.

Well, they should be. The Democrats aren't as good as they look, and if that's not a thought that sums up the Democratic party as a whole, I don't know what is. Clinton is a weird, fiendish matriarch, like an old schoolmaster out of a Dickens novel, only with a little bit better haircut. She said in a debate that Washington lobbyists represent ordinary Americans, and this was a good hint that she's been eating too many mushrooms out of the Capitol's staffer stash or, I fear, maybe she is just very very stupid. She doesn't seem too stupid, though, does she?, so mushrooms is the only logical conclusion. Nevertheless, a bunch of howling idiots support her candidacy, maybe because they're anxious to have a little more estrogen on the evening news. Ah, who the fuck am I kidding? No one watches the evening news. And Hillary would add about as much estrogen to the party as Bill did. To her credit, though, that's far more than has been emitted from Corazón Aquino, Margaret Thatcher, Andrea Merkel, et al. So, good luck with that. After she and Obama (possibly a decent man?), the crowd gets thin. Any liberal who's all pumped about the field of candidates this year would do well to remind himself that Joe Biden is the one that makes the most sense in the debates and then would do well to downgrade the tequila and rum he drinks to things a little more like rubbing alcohol in both flavor and lethal tendencies.

What freaks. The best possible scenario is a Clinton/Giuliani match-up where Bloomberg runs as an independent and Ron Paul carries his internet support to get his 5% for matching funds in 2012, even though it won't matter by then because nobody will win a majority, it will go to congress, who will fight it out for several years before turning it over to the Supreme Court. Then it will get ugly. I suspect Nancy Pelosi will take Clarence Thomas and Anton Scalia hostage and torture them in her horrible basement dungeon every night until they swear under oath that the Constitution is a living, breathing document. Just as they emerge, though, they'll all be killed in a hail of gunfire by a resurgent Tom DeLay, who will then install a grotesque and grisly Dick Cheney, since wounded heavily in the chariot races that Sitting President Charlton Heston instituted on the Mall (reflecting pool paved over and made a kind of luxury box for Mel Gibson and a raving mob of anti-semites to bet wildly and shout "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" whenever a Jewish rider or even a circumcised horse runs by) as Emperor For Life. No, of course, I am not wishing Dick Cheney to be instituted as Emperor For Life but it'd be a hell of a lot more fun than what's going to happen, a stupid frontrunner election that comes down to who wins Ohio or, worse, New Mexico.

In closing, Vegas seems to be offering stupid odds on the NBA Championship this year. Hint: a 7 game series is a hell of a lot more fluky than an 82 game season. So, even if San Antonio and Phoenix are the most likely to win it all, and surely the most likely to win the Western Conference, if you can get good odds on decent teams from the Eastern Conference, take them. Figure the 7th best team in the Eastern Conference is more likely to make the Finals than the 3rd best team in the Western Conference since the West is so top heavy. And you can get Washington at 80-1 right now. You're welcome in advance.