Usually I’d take as much joy and pleasure as anyone in watching the dismantling of that smug look off of A-Rod’s face. Unfortunately for me today there lies out there a bigger question. Why is it just A-Rod taking the fall and is what he did so bad in the grand scheme of things? I mean the lying to cover it up is, but let’s just talk about the steroid issue.
A-Rod is taking a lot of heat, but he’s not alone. There are 104 names on that list. I want to know who they are. They all submitted samples that were to be used to determine how deeply the problem of steroids in baseball went. It wasn’t supposed to be for disciplinary reasons. Well considering how hard Alex is about to be /is currently being judged in the court of public opinion I want answers, not just from Alex, from the other 103 as well.
Since my faith that we could see the home run record be broken by someone not on drugs has ultimately been shattered, I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know if Albert Pujols is on that list. I’ve got to know if Ken Griffey Jr. ever tested positive. I want to see if I need to start turning a blind eye to the accomplishments of Manny Ramirez. Or at least reconsider how I frame him in the all time discussion, good or bad.
I can no longer sit back and defend the players I love based on the fact that I love them. I hated A-Rod the Yankee; I hated him because he was better than any player I had ever seen. I hated him for all the right reasons. He plays for the Yankees and he was unbelievably talented. But if you thought for one second I wasn’t going stand up and applaud when he broke the homerun record your fooling yourself. I sat in my chair one night and discussed with a friend of mine whether we thought Alex could get to 800 homeruns or not.
That’s right 800 pause and think about it for a minute. As it sits today Alex is at 553 homeruns. Oh and he is only 32 years old. So now the joy of both him surpassing a tainted 762 and the day of possibly hitting number 800 should be thrown into question. Then I started to wonder, who was “clean” and do I care?
Cause with the drugs Alex was better than anyone I’d ever seen. Then again isn’t that the case to be made for the previous record holder too? I mean we all know the case against Barry, lets talk Hank, let us just see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
But what’s makes the record legitimately Aaron’s? I mean didn’t he partake in performance enhancing drugs. On page 268 of his on his own autobiography, “I had the Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story” he admits to trying Greenies.
“The 500thhome run came against Mike McCormick of the Giants, which meant that Willie Mays was on the field at the time. Willie elected not to have his picture taken with me that day, saying it wasn’t appropriate for him to fraternize with a player whose team had just beaten the Giants. For years Willie had been king and I’m sure that he wasn’t crazy about me elbowing into his territory. Most fans and critics still considered Willie to be a better player than me. It seems like the only ones who took up my cause were my team mates. Guys like Uecker and Boyer used to argue with the visiting writers who didn’t think I belonged in the class with Mays. It made me feel a little awkward to sit by my locker and hear them going on like that, but don’t think I didn’t appreciate it. [new paragraph begins] Actually, the 1968 season wasn’t the best time to present my case. It was the first time since my rookie year that I didn’t drive in or score 100 runs. I was so frustrated that at one point I tried using a pep pill—a greenie—that one of my teammates gave me. When that thing took hold, I thought I was having a heart attack. It was a stupid thing to do…”
Now why in the world would I drag that up you ask? Well that goes hand in with some interesting information printed by Dr. Bennett Foddy, PH D. and holder of the Harold T. Shapiro Fellowship in Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. He makes a very compelling case for why Greenies would have been performance enhancing drugs.
“What this example shows is that baseball is a sport in which the usual set of performance enhancements is ill-suited to enhancing player’s number. The core skills of baseball- pitching, catching and hitting – are not best enhanced by drugs that make a player stronger or faster. The strongest player can still miss the ball or hit it straight up in the air.
In fact baseball – like golf, cricket, or archery – is a quintessentially brain-centered sport. The most important weapons any player has are in his brain: the speed of his reflexes, his spatial processing, his vision and his fine tuned muscle memory. In the case of baseball, only the ball needs to go faster, higher and longer.” Pg. 77-78, Your Brain on Cubs.
Then later on Foddy sites specific examples of the effects of amphetamines specifically on baseball players.
“Amphetamines produce little or no enhancement in reaction time but significantly reduce the effect of fatigue on a person’s ability to track a moving object such as a ball. Dextroamphetamine, an amphetamine variant this is popular as a recreational drug, improves decision-making and reduces impulsivity in healthy human beings, which would be an effective enhancement for batters that tended to swing at balls outside of the strike zone.” Pg. 79 Your Brain on Cubs.
So what if Hammerin’ Hank was getting better pitches to hit, not because of keen eye, but because he was drug enhanced? Is 755 really a legitimate number? Is that really the record?
This is just another witch hunt through the grand old game, if we are going to continue with this non-sense. I am sick of half truths and half information. We’ve all seen the game soiled enough. Can we just flush out all the non-sense so I don’t have to endure another Jose Canseco book?
I want to truth, Bud, WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH!! The game needs it, and its fan I need it, cause to be honest, I want to say I am comfortable with them all being cheaters, but I’m not.
***special thanks for Bennett Foddy for the quotes from Dan Gordon’s, “Your Brain on Cubs.”
No comments:
Post a Comment