A Grisly End To A Grisly Year

Things are ugly out here as the hellish bloodbath known as 2007 winds to a close. And, who knows why? But it seems appropriate. Things started ugly this year, got uglier, and ended ugly. In a weird way, everything is as it should be. Now, I'm not into recapping so there won't be some kind of timeline of ugliness written out here, but it is truly shocking that I could react with such vitriol and angst to a year that brought me a very unlikely National League pennant. I guess that just shows how bad things have gotten.

This must be the part where we all kick back to watch Roger Clemens and his old meathead trainer duke it out in the press for several months about whether or not The Rocket got his ass injected with steroids and HGH. Hint: there is absolutely no precedent for pitchers that old to perform that well. Clemens also underwent a very similar body-mass transformation as everybody's favorite Whipping Boy, Barry Bonds, and his BFF Andy Pettitte had admitted to taking HGH in 2002. (Note: a snarky, bitchy admission is still an admission.) So, friends, I think the jury is pretty much IN on this one. The greatest pitcher of all-time has joined the greatest hitter of all-time as a circumstantially convicted juicer.

The question I guess I have is, so what? I do want to go to games next year and boo the shit out of everybody who's mentioned in the Mitchell Report, including Matt Herges and, what the hell, Glenallen Hill. But I have mentioned in this space that the steroid stuff doesn't really bother me in terms of on-the-field stuff. There was an extremely normal distribution of talent among the players who were named, so if anyone needs any proof that juicing doesn't make someone an immediate superstar, you can just ask Larry Bigbie or Ricky Bones. Admittedly, there is something weird and perverse and immensely distasteful in the idea that Major League clubhouses were central drug trafficking points. This universe where players are discreetly telling other players who to call, clubhouse attendants are stumbling upon vials of horse hormones and not telling anyone, and David Segui is, like, the kingpin coyote is very strange and difficult to completely wrap my head around. This is why I'll be booing the assholes. It is because they are shady, mafia-style criminals and not because they are cheaters. I couldn't care less about the innocence of the game, because that is a meaningless concept, but that doesn't mean the folks who are turning their lockers into criminal enterprises shouldn't be flogged publicly and regarded as traitors to the cause. They should, at least, get the Pete Rose treatment.

If this was soccer, it'd be entirely different. If a bunch of players from Juventus or AC Milan turned out be dealing drugs from the quiet of their clubhouse, I don't really think anyone would be that surprised. We expect corruption from Italian football, and we'd probably just be thankful that nobody got shot over this one. (Actually, if Berlusconi was involved, someone may well have gotten shot.) One of the charms of soccer is that you know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and nobody needs to get caught up in abstractions like "the innocence of the game" unless they mean it. If some Real Madrid or AC Milan players tells you he plays for the love of the game, you know he's lying and that's that.

Unfortunately, and you can see I've been blowing off bringing this up, the bad guys are winning more and more often. The dissolution of the Chelsea empire got stopped in its tracks when Didier Drogba started playing like himself. He's hurt now, and so is John Terry, so there's still a good chance for them to drop into midtable oblivion and at least that gives us something to hope for. I wouldn't really be happy if Man City beat them this season, since Man City also got bought out by some truly sinister forces, but I'd be thrilled if they finished behind Everton or something.

As for the mafiosos at AC Milan, they did drop one (ha-ha Dida!) to city-rivals Inter over the weekend in particularly humiliating fashion, but they also recently became the first European club to win the Club World Cup with a brutal victory over Argentine also-rans Boca Juniors. They're set for the only real good-guy/bad-guy slugfest in the knockout round of the Champions League, where they got drawn with Arsenal. A win for Milan would be a win for corruption and deceit and a very bad omen to start 2008.

And, of course, finally, Real Madrid came into Camp Nou like a well-oiled juggernaut and snuck away with an appalling, efficient, extremely effective victory against a better Barcelona team. Their defense was just disgustingly thorough in their dismantling of the attacks that the normally-beautiful Barcelona front line came with. Ronaldinho and Andres Iniesta were thrown around like plastic bags in a shitstorm and they must've thought they'd get the ball every time they threw their hands up in the air because that's what they were left with by the end of it.

Frank Rijkaard is likely to be the scapegoat for the whole mess, but that is wholly undeserved. Deco, who is a thug and a charlatan not fit to wear the Barcelona colors, spoke with glee about the possible appointment of Jose Mourinho, also a thug and a charlatan, but a sympathetic one after his glamor-free dismissal from Chelsea, as the new manager. Then he played like complete shit against Madrid in spite of being gifted a start from Rijkaard. Sounds like collusion? It does to me. I have finally come around to the credo that my best friend has been extolling since at least EURO 2002, and that is: Fuck Anderson Deco. That son of a bitch has got to go, regardless of what happens next.

A more likely scenario is Mourinho coming on board, selling Ronaldinho to AC Milan (who else??) and hedging his bets in the Champions League. This could be devastating, and it probably will be. When Edmilson said there were some black sheep in the Barca clubhouse, he should've just said there were some white sheep, because the whole lot of them save Messi, Eto'o and Marquez look a little lost to me right now. Xavi, especially, has lost almost all of my faith and will have to string together an unprecedented lot of performances to convince me he's useful as a player or a human being. Not that he's probably concerned with proving that to me, since he's probably counting his money or banging a supermodel right now, but fuck. There is a certain pride to playing for Barcelona that these cocksuckers just don't seem to have.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the Presidential Primaries are coming right around the corner. Listen up. Doomsday is coming. Start finding out how much EU and Japanese work permits cost, because you're going to want to be able to skip the Information Line when the time comes.

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.