Just for Sport

11:40 AM CST: I haven’t posted here in quite a while, and probably won’t be able to regularly until I’m done with this MSW, but what better time than the day the Mitchell Report comes out?  As information comes out, I will write about my reactions, updating this site periodically.  This should be a huge day for baseball. 

 
So far, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte have been leaked as names that will appear in the report.  I have a draft on this site that I never posted about how media and the fans are hypocritical because of their hatred of Barry Bonds and their apathy toward Roger Clemens.  I wonder if that will change at all.  As for Andy Pettitte…he’s always been attached to Roger at the hip, so should we really be surprised? 

An interesting storyline to watch will be the reactions of Hall of Fame voters.  If several big names are brought to light through this report, we may be finally forced to admit that the Steroid Era is just that, an era.  Does the fact that both big-name hitters and big-name pitchers are named mean that the playing field is more or less even?  Will voters shun an entire generation of players, or will they relent and vote in the best players from this era?  If that’s the case, will players like Mark McGwire see a surge in their voting percentages?

I expect the following names to be named: Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco, Gary Matthews, Jr., Jason Grimsley, and of course Clemens and Pettitte.  I’m worried, like most fans, that prominent members of my favorite teams will be named.  As a Rangers fan, that’s even more of a possibility.  Surely Canseco and Palmeiro will come up, but what about Juan Gonzalez, Alex Rodriguez, Ivan Rodriguez, or even local heroes like Rusty Greer?  I do know this: there are certain names that would be absolutely devastating for baseball.  I think the most devastating one would be Albert Pujols.  He plays in the Midwest, which most people assume is purer than the rest of the country, and he’s been held up as an example of a player who hits for power without artificial enhancement.  He’s also a community leader and gives credit to God for everything he does.  I cannot imagine a bigger shock than to find Pujols’ name on the list, and that’s pretty telling, because it wouldn’t be all that surprising.

More to come as more is revealed. 

12:14 PM: This whole thing is going to look really fishy if no Red Sox players are named, given Mitchell’s association with the team.  Colin Cowherd insinuated this morning that "one Red Sock" will be named, but I wonder how much he and other members of the media actually know.  Who could that Red Sock be?  David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Josh Beckett?  Certainly not Curt Schilling…right?  The more I think about this, the more I realize that we don’t know anything. 

12:21 PM: Just found this link - I’m sure this list will grow exponentially in the next few hours. 

12:29 PM: Be watching this page as well. 

12:45 PM: Apparently, Jose Canseco is present at the press conference.  He’s not a very shy guy, is he? 

12:55 PM: Paul Lo Duca, Fernando Vina, David Segui, Miguel Tejada, and Rondell White have been implicated.  Isn’t Lo Duca a free agent?  That’s going to hurt the bottom line a little.  I wonder how the Astros feel about Tejada, having just given up 5 players for him. 

12:58 PM: Mitchell just announced that the Report will be made available shortly on mlb.com.  I will post a link when I find it. 

1:00 PM: And here it is.  I will probably be doing more reading of this than listening to George Mitchell, although I will be keeping my ear open. 

1:03 PM: Mitchell just said that each of the 30 clubs have had players that have used steroids.  He also estimated that 5-7% of players have used.  If that’s true, and the Mitchell Report does indeed name 80 people, he’s at least 170 people short (give or take).

1:12 PM: Apparently, Giambi did not name names, and says he hasn’t used PED’s since the All Star Break. 

1:18 PM: Mitchell: "I urge the commissioner to foregoe imposing discipline on players for past violations of baseball’s rules on performance enhancing substances." 

1:22 PM: From the report: "I did not include in this report the names of three players to whom Radomski said
he sold performance enhancing substances: two of them because the players had retired from
Major League Baseball by the time of the alleged sales; and one of them because the player
admitted that he had purchased and possessed the substances but denied that he had used them
and his version of events was corroborated by other credible evidence."

1:23 PM: A very telling paragraph: "The players for whom evidence has been gathered of possession or use, or both, of illegal performance enhancing substances defy categorization. They include winners of Most
Valuable Player and Cy Young awards, members of All-Star teams and World Series rosters,
players whose tenures in the major leagues were long, and others whose tenures were brief. We
heard often about the pressure on marginal players to use performance enhancing substances
because they believed they needed to do so to keep up with the competition or because the
money was so much greater for those who could make the jump to the major leagues."

1:27 PM: Brian Roberts and Chuch Knoblauch: I did not really see those coming, although Roberts played with Miguel Tejada and Knoblauch on the Yankees.  It seems that a lot of these allegations are connected to five teams: the Giants, Yankees, Blue Jays, Orioles, and Rangers.

1:33 PM: More big names: David Justice, Mo Vaughn, and Eric Gagne.   

1:36 PM: Page 232 implicates two 1999 Chicago Cubs, but does not name them.  Sosa, anybody?

1:47 PM: Here is a list of players named in the report.  What this page doesn’t show is that there are several references, like the one listed above, to unnamed players, including a mysterious Player X.  I wonder if anybody has any theories about who this Player X might be.

2:02 PM: I’m going to stop until Bud Selig’s conference in an hour and a half.  I hope this wakes some people up.  The Player’s Association has been exposed for the evil organization that it is, and maybe they will be compelled to cooperate for a secondary report. 

1. Everybody has an agenda, including Barry himself, about Barry Bonds.

I usually have a Tuesday night class, so tonight was the first time I was able to catch “Bonds on Bonds.” I wasn’t impressed. There are two things you have to say when talking about this show: (1) like any controversial issue, everybody, myself included, has a preconceived notion about it. More on this below. (2) Barry Bonds has complete creative control over the project, which means that every single second, from Barry comparing himself to Mohammed Ali to Mark Grace sticking up for an old friend, has been through the spin cycle. It’s like the SportsCenter commercial where Dwyane Wade gets to edit his own highlights. “Can we add a couple more defenders in right here and make it look better?” I have to admit that I turned on the show expecting to be cynical because I have already convicted Bonds in my mind. The fact that he is trying to cover up and suck up to the media and the fans after years of being a jerk makes it that much worse. To some extent this isn’t fair. I have certainly made my share of missteps, and it would be completely justifiable for some people to get on a blog and rip into me. The difference is that I haven’t betrayed the trust of a nation. There’s a scene in “The Great Gatsby” where Jay Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway to Meyer Wolfsheim, the gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series. Carraway narrates the following reaction:

The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occured to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people - with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.
“He just saw the opportunity.”

I’m about two-thirds of the way through “Game of Shadows,” and though Fainawaru-Wada and Williams have a pile of hard, incriminating facts, it’s evident that there’s a touch of bias as well. There’s nothing wrong with that; we all have it. I guess I’m just trying to say that I’m not sure what to do about Barry Bonds just yet, but I am convinced that it’s important. I do know that you can’t trust “Bonds on Bonds” at face value though, and that’s my point at the moment.

2. The Houston Texans made the right choice by taking Mario Williams over Reggie Bush.

Tonight ESPN aired a draft wrap-up show, and the talking heads had Texans owner Bob McNair on to ask him some pointed questions. First of all, let me say that anybody who is aware of the media circus surrounding the NFL draft knows that any team that passed on Reggie Bush was begging to be crucified. (self-plug: I told you so.) That’s why I admire the pick of Mario Williams even more. McNair made three legitimate points about why they did what they did: (1) Last year, the Texans led at halftime 8 times (4 times going into the 4th quarter), and they lost every single one of those games. That’s not the offense’s fault; it’s the defense’s. They already have a 1,000 yard rusher in Domanick Davis; if Reggie even gets close to the hype and gets 1,500 it still wouldn’t have made a difference. The Texans need a playmaker on defense, not a guy who might be an upgrade over the one they already have. (2) The rest of the NFL has figured out that the way to beat Peyton Manning is to put pressure on him. Just ask the Steelers. The Texans have to play the Colts twice every year, and this pick gives them a legitimate chance to compete on the same field. (3) Barry Sanders only won one playoff game. To this day, the Detroit Lions continue to draft offense, and it hasn’t helped them yet. In the NFL, you have to be able to play on both sides of the ball. Ron Jaworski disputes this fact, but Jaworski has evidently forgotten two things: (1) he’s not dealing with his Arena team, where players play both ways, and (2) he has continually ripped the Indianapolis Colts for being all offense and no defense. For all of the talking heads, I have a prediction of my own: 2006 is the year that fans stop taking the “draft experts” seriously because Reggie Bush will be a big-time bust, and New Orleans will continue to be irrelevant.

3. Kobe Bryant is way over-hyped.

Today I sat around with some people and talked, in a positive manner, about Kobe Bryant. For those of you who know me and the people I associate with, this should be a surprise. I have never liked him, and it’s not just because he’s a veteran or has swagger. The main knock on Kobe has always been that he’s selfish. Whether or not you believe that he ran Shaq out of Los Angeles, it is an irrefutable fact that he hoists up way too many shots every game. Recently, however, he has been getting his teammates involved, which is an even bigger accomplishment when you consider his teammates. One of the talking heads on ESPN recently called him “the Mariano Rivera of basketball,” implying that he has an exceptional ability to close games. This is ironic if you consider that espn.com recently ran an article about clutch shooting. Much has been made of the Nike commercial where Michael Jordan states that he has let his teammates down 24 times. The fact is, Kobe has done the same thing many more times than that. In fact, with less than 24 seconds left and his team down by three points or less, Kobe has one of the lowest shooting percentages in the NBA. In a recent poll, 58.4% of fans said that Kobe had been the top performer of the first round of the playoffs. However, on the same page, there’s a link to a page that shows each player’s Player Efficiency Rating, or PER. PER is a statistic developed by John Hollinger to measure each player’s per-minute performance. 15.0 is supposed to be the standard average. For the 2004-05 season, Bryant finished a respectable 8th in PER with a 23.28. However, in this year’s playoffs, he is 39th with a 16.52, less than half of first-place Dirk Nowitzki’s 33.69. Supposed “slouch” teammate Lamar Odom is ranked 22nd with a 19.5. The only way the Lakers will continue to win is if Kobe continues the surprising trend of being a member of a team and doesn’t jack up 35 shots a game. Otherwise, the Los Angeles Kobes will lose to the team that plays in the Staples Center.

As a baseball fan, I have something at stake in this whole steroids thing. I’ve always felt that. For the last two or three years, it seems that every time I turn on the TV, somebody’s giving their take. I hate it. Stop talking about steroids, I’ll say, and talk about the games. I know I’m probably not alone in this. But all along the way, I’ve always known that something was at stake; I just didn’t know what.

That probably explains my recent intrigue about the subject. Whenever my friends and I get together and watch baseball, the topic always comes to Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco, and the rest of the alleged steroid users. Some of us are more consistent than others. I usually end up saying that all of those people need asterisks next to whatever records they have, or more preferably, that they be removed completely. My friend Jeremiah openly boos Canseco, but pledges his blind allegiance to Bonds based on the fact that A) he plays for the Giants, B) he had Lasik surgery, C) he was good before, so what does it matter?, and D) Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame, so obviously integrity doesn’t matter anyway. I would refute all four of these arguments, but I digress.

The point is that as a baseball fan, you have to deal with Barry Bonds (and all the other alleged steroid users) on some level. There are several reasons for this. One is that Bonds currently holds the single season home run record, which for a long time was widely considered the most sacred record in the American sports world, and certainly in baseball. He’s also, at this writing, 45 home runs from tying Hank Aaron for the career record. There’s always the Hall of Fame thing, but HOF voters will likely set a precedent in a year or two when Mark McGwire’s name comes up for consideration. Finally, how you deal with Barry Bonds will dictate how you deal with steroids on the whole. My friend Reno says we should require steroids use in baseball so that the entertainment value will be higher, but obviously this is a perversion. The appeal of baseball (and all sports) is that there are humans like you and me performing these acts of talent, skill, and strength.

On some level, you have to agree that the use of steroids is bad for baseball, and I think most people do. The variable is the response people have to their apparent abuse. Several sportswriters I have read want to take the easy way out and label certain years as “The Steroid Era.” That way, even if there’s no asterisk, fans and others will know that certain records are basically illegitimate because they were achieved during a certain time period, sort of how basketball has created its own set of records that coincide with “The Shot Clock Era.” I have several problems with this. My initial reaction is that such a moniker would take away from baseball what other sports don’t have: meaningful statistics and records. Baseball doesn’t need asterisks, real or understood. When Maris passed Ruth in ’61, there was a huge debate because Maris got to play in more games than Ruth did. The general consensus was that you have to have consistency in the record book. A record is a record is a record. That’s why attempts to label eras (e.g. “The Dead Ball Era,” etc.) has never really caught on with baseball fans, and it’s also why baseball has a reputation for being the only sport with meaningful records. The so-called Steroids Era threatens all of that. Not only does it threaten the unique-ness of the sport, it throws a blanket over all of the players that never did steroids, which is why you can’t go around calling all the records that took place in a certain time period illegitimate. The cases have to be treated individually. That’s what makes Bonds’ case so sticky. He has polarized people. There are those that believe the media is too hard on him, and there are those that believe he manipulates the media and cries foul against them to gain sympathy. He’s always been a jerk and treated baseball as a business rather than a game, which won’t gain any favor with baseball purists. The opinions on him are so wide and varied that it seems that 98% of what you hear about him is suspect. This is why I have decided to read the book, “Game of Shadows,” by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. Jeremiah told me without reading it that it’s trash because it’s written by journalists from the San Francisco Chronicle, which he believes to be notorious for ripping Bonds. I happen to hold investigative journalism in high regard, however, so I have to admit that I’m going to be more likely to believe what it says. As a matter of fact, I’d rather read a book written by reporters from San Francisco than from across the country. The fact remains that Bonds is a god to San Francisco fans, so it’s not like these guys have something to gain from their constituency by contrivances.

In any case, these are my pre-conceived notions that I have before reading the book. Hopefully reading it will help me gain more insight and a better idea of how to treat the entire situation. I will report back when I’m done.