A-Rod was supposed to be the guy who saved baseball from the steroid era. When Barry Bonds was on his way to breaking the home run record, people were whispering (in some cases, not bothering to whisper) “The record will have that steroids monkey in its back until A-Rod breaks it. A-Rod may represent lots of what’s wrong with baseball, but at least he’s not juiced!” Now A-Rod is nearly all of what’s wrong with baseball (the only saving grace for him, in my eyes, is that he hustles). He was juiced. I disagree with Roy Oswalt when he says that all the guys who were juiced cheated him out of the game. I’m not convinced that steroids make you a better baseball player; they don’t increase your bat speed, they don’t help you read pitchers, they don’t help your reaction time, they don’t make you a smarter baserunner, they don’t remind you who you’re supposed to back up when the play is away from you in the field.
But they represent cheating and cheaters. They weren’t against the rules when a lot of guys took them, I know. But that doesn’t change the fact that not a single player ever would have said if asked publicly, “Yeah, I’m on steroids. So what?” Granted, many substances are illegal in the literal sense of being against the actual law as it applies to jail and courts and stuff, not just baseball, but I believe that no one would have admitted it anyway. If someone doesn’t admit something, it’s because they are afraid of the repercussions; you wouldn’t be afraid of repercussions if you weren’t doing anything wrong! All those guys knew what they were doing was wrong, whether technically against the rules of the game or not, and they did it anyway. Including A-Rod.
Steroids are against the spirit of the game. Baseball is about a perfect mix of practice and hard work and loving to toss a ball around in a park (well, except for DHs. I don’t know how you can enjoy baseball without ever putting a glove on). Baseball is guys who can throw curveballs and beat out hits, guys who are not physical specimens (see: Dustin Pedroia). Steroids make people into freakish physical specimens (see: any of the age-defying substance abusers; Bonds, Clemens, etc.). It’s the former that should be the heroes for kids in the sandlot, not the latter.
Steroids and other PEDs are now disallowed in baseball with a penalty of a 50 game suspension on your first offense, and I believe banishment on your third (I can’t verify that because I’m currently on an airplane). I think the first time you’re caught, and if the appeal that you should be allowed is not upheld, you are gone for life. Betting on baseball is considered one of the worst offenses you can commit against the game and the punishment for it is banishment for life. The steroid era is more than a serious black eye for the game of baseball – it has fundamentally changed the way we will forever look at a period of great players, all of whom are now under suspicion – and the punishment for those who are keeping it alive should be banishment for life.
As I mentioned, A-Rod was supposed to be the guy who made us forget about the statistics marred with asterisks and pulled us out of the juiced era, and he failed. Barack Obama was supposed to be the guy who made us forget about “politics as usual” and pull us out of the mess left behind by the last administration, and he is stumbling out of the gate. He closed Guantanamo without planning where all the detainees would go; perhaps a different camp with a different name, so the public will feel better. That’s for a future committee to decide, his people have said. I see – much like how we are going to pay for this stimulus bill and the various bailout bills will be figured out by future generations.
Why on earth did he pass the responsibility of writing the bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? I hope that it was because he was overwhelmed by suddenly being president and he was unprepared for coming up with the solution. That’s sound counterintuitive and is certainly not the dream we all had in mind when he was elected, but at least being overwhelmed is something that he can get over. Giving the House the bill as a way to make sure a very, very expensive spending spree was written without his name on it so that if it doesn’t work he can say “I didn’t do it!” is a bad sign, and is likely an MO that cannot be overcome. Making the honest mistake of gift-wrapping the bill for the House liberals can be learned from; using the House liberals as a measured ploy to shaft the conservatives is a firm step deeper into politics as usual.
Perhaps it’s the unfulfilled promise of success that has made it so much harder to accept the problems Obama has had in his first month. The 2008-9 Cardinals reached the Super Bowl and are considered a huge success even though they lost the big game; the 2007-8 Patriots went 18-0 before they lost the big game and are seen as a resounding failure. The 2008 Rays reached the World Series but lost and are considered a huge success; the 2008 Yankees missed the playoffs for the first time in over a decade and are considered a resounding failure. Maybe if John McCain had been elected and we were in a very similar mess, which is likely, people would be saying “Yup, here we go, we figured this would happen.” But John McCain wasn’t elected, Barack Obama was, so people are insisting that something wrong must be happening; we didn’t sign up for this, we were promised success! (To be fair, many, and I believe most, of these expectations were manufactured by the media and rabid, blind Obama supporters. I think his inaugural address was a clearer into his true feelings: that we have a long road ahead, and that we need to bear together, which I appreciate as being terribly realistic.) Some in the media, who are clearly experts in everything, have already deemed Obama’s
presidency a failure. His presidency, which is barely a month old, will last at the very least 4 years, barring a catastrophe, if memory from civics class serves. What are these people talking about?
That being said, I don’t know who is to blame for the extremely negative outlook being bandied about by everybody. I’m not even sure that anyone needs to be blamed; that just seems to be the American way, and who am I to condemn that? Let us please not forget that most of us, an astronomical proportion of us relative to those in other parts of the world, let alone in all of history, still have access to bread and milk and emergency medical care and the privilege of living in a country that, while it is plunging into a debt that it can’t afford, still affords us the freedoms and protections that it does, arguably the greatest and most plentiful in the history of mankind. Just consider that; it’s actually not that easy to wrap your head around without really thinking about it.
Not to mention, spring training is right around the corner.
