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.

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.

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.