"I believe baseball is a beautiful and exciting game, loved by millions--I among them--and I believe baseball an important, enduring American institution. It must assert and aspire to the highest principles--of integrity, of professionalism of performance, of fair play within its rules. It will come as no surprise that like any institution composed of human beings, this institution will not always fulfill its highest aspirations. I know of no worldly institution that does but this one, because it is so much a part of our history as a people, and because it has such a penchant on our national soul, has an obligation to the people for whom it is played to, its fans, and well-wishers to strive for excellence in all things to promote the highest ideals. I am told that I am an idealist. I hope so. I will continue to locate ideals I hold for myself and my country in the national game as well as in others of our national institutions." -- former Commissioner of MLB Bartlett Giamatti
Before people continue to demand criminal penalties against baseball players for "obstructing justice" rather than illegal use of steroids. Read on. But before that, I must say -- if Bud Selig is reading this -- Miguel Tejada should not be deported.
Selig is no better than Bernie Madoff; except his victims aren't dopey rich people, but the millions of innocent kids that have been robbed (literally and figuratively) by the promises of baseball ("larceny by false promise.")
If you ask me, the MLB no longer represents baseball -- just corporate buffoons playing shell-games between each other, and who pull strings to misuse the government to assasinate the careers of baseball players in order to extract steroids from the MLB so that owners would no longer have to pay the players that become beloved for juiced-stats, all to put an end to a monster that they gave life to. The players are just fools and tools that followed the money. The players though, may deserve derision but they do not belong in prison or to be deported.
Selig can change that rather than trivial records, and I will -- and I hope others -- continue to hold Selig's hand to the hot-plate until real changes are made. Be 'the good face' of baseball, rather than 'the goon face.' A real solution to the problem would be a true salary cap rather than a luxury tax and to adopt models similar to that of the NFL.
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Put Me in Coach, I'm Ready to Prosecute
The US Department of Justice should consider anti-trust investigations against Major League Baseball since 1996, with the motive being, the false-promises of homeruns, memorabilia and PAYING to see history in motion; all in order to restore the trust of the public that they had eviscerated with the 1994 strike.
There is clearly nothing sanctimonious about the MLB anymore, and should be treated like any other corrupt corporation. They don't care about legacies as they've claimed: Why else would the Yankees 'burn' down the house that Ruth built? Yankee Stadium should be designated by Congress as a national landmark and thus prevent the relocation of it.
After all, the Yankees justify the relocation of Yankee Stadium for their new stadium, because they need more money to pay the players. Yeah, the price-tags of which were inflated by the culture of juiced-stats created by the commissioner and owners. I mean, what other corporation in America would tolerate substance-abuse in the workplace (other than The Home Depot?) Not only have the owners and commissioner tolerated the abuse of substance in the workplace, they profit from it. Despicable.
And I would have thought more from Selig who helped establish the child abuse prevention network and serves on the board for businesses against drunk driving. He is also a trustee of the Boys and Girls Club, and was lauded by Senator Chris Dodd for doing so, when Selig officially became MLB Commissioner in 1998. Speech about Bud Selig.
They may or may not have known *specifically* which player used what if anything, and under which trainer -- they did however know that substance-abuse was a 'global' problem in their sport and did nothing to stop it, because they in fact, supported it and promoted it. Until of course the fans started to herald the juiced-players rather than the executives who knew the 'global' truth.
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How to Fix The Hall of Fame: Be The Good Face not The Goon Face
Face the facts, we're stuck with juiced stats. Stuck with players that epitomized the game transcendently by the abuse of substances. Here though is my simple solution to fix the cancer of juiced-stats.
Change the parameters of who gets inducted into the Hall of Fame. Rather than partition the players within the Hall for trivial stats, simply employ a more open view of who to induct in order to restore the true virtues of the game. Rather than only recognize those who dominated the game, recognize the people and communities that put those players in position to dominate.
By that I mean in all seriousness, recognize people that have dedidcated significant periods of time to the health of Little League Baseball, to High School Baseball and College Baseball, not just the players that dominated Major League Baseball. Plus, rather than induct individual juicers -- induct them collectively as the 'the BALCO bombers,' or something like that.
As of now, the Hall does not recognize the great sacrifices made by parents, community organizers (ahem) and teachers that ultimately put people like Barry Bonds in position to dominate the professional game. The truth however is, that sign of a healthy and vibrant community is the total success of local sports.
I would even consider international players and women's softball players for induction. If the Hall of Fame won't allow for changes, then just junk the juicers in a Hall of Shame. Seriously.
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Sympathy for The Juicers
Despite what Jerome Holtzman thinks, Bud Selig is the Worst Commissioner Ever! Not just in baseball, but in the cumulative history of prehistorical and historical world sports. Period. And it's not just because of some Rafael Palmeiro rookie cards that aren't worth the cheap labor they were packaged with.
And neither just because the record breaking home-run balls of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds that had been foolishly purchased by comic-book artist Todd McFarlane for millions -- are now only metaphysically and fittingly worth being in the yard of "the beast" from The Sandlot.
Clearly though, these juicers might stab their butts with steely syringes but they just can't kill the beast. They are all just prisoners here of their own device! Welcome to the Hotel California!
Here are the other reasons.
Now that people like Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Barry Bonds face prison time or deportation because they lied to Congress about steroid-use in March of 2005 (remember that date,) it begs the question: Why were they called before Congress to begin with?
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El Destructor de los Grandes Juegos (You Tell Me What Is)
Though I've been critical of athletes for steroid-abuse, the heart of my ire is mostly that they went along with corruption and deceit in pursuit of greed, rather than stand-up to that fray by speaking out. They can run-around with all the excuses in the world, but the reality is, they didn't have the *balls* to do the right thing. Funny thing is, Human Growth Hormones don't appear to do much in the way of human growth.
They didn't do so, because they knew they would have been shunned from the game and would have potentially lost everything they had; plus the Commissioner and Owners were peddling those drugs, regardless of the physical or moral health issues those drugs would have on the game and society. So who cares?
Sure, steroids have medicinal purposes (for people with breathing-problems) but another drug also had medicinal use once: heroin. Like Lou Reed, they commonly stuck a spike into their vein and didn't know where they were going in pursuit of money and baseball's kingdom known as the Hall of Fame.
They though would not abuse heroin and think it was okay, but apparently they will in effect steal the medication of those they probably picked on in school. Funny thing is, steroids might pump testosterone around the tailbones of the spineless, but they don't make men. Funny how, 'heroine' has become a dirty sounding word in society thanks to drug-abuse. So maybe steroid should be a dirty sounding word to.
In fact, there are greater heroes (or heroines) in sports in general than those dirtbags, people like Brandie Chastain or Jennie Finch that play the game regardless of whether they get praised or receive paychecks far more bloated than the skull of Barry Bonds. (Actually, softball was recently removed from the Olympic games.)
The purpose of the sport has always been to channel competition, angst and victory; not for gilded bums to show-off the affects of drug-abuse. After all, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
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Get Up, Stand Up For What's Right (Even If It Herniates Your Testicles)
It took a no-name to write a book called Juiced in which that writer would double-dip by profiting from running-up the stats in baseball, and then profiting from a book to expose everyone else who did.
We need more Roberto Clemente's and Sandy Koufax's and fewer dirtbags that profit from the truth about their deceit. I truly don't want to fathom the idea of the Hall of Fame becoming the Hotel California and an empire of dirt.
Dishonesty (cheating) becomes the mean (middle) of their legacies, so yes, I'm more than willing to arbitrarily impose that frame on their legacies. For they decided to base their careers on stats and so, I have no qualms about imposing the rules of statistics onto their hollow humanity.
That being that everything in their career is just in standard deviation of the mean -- dishonesty in pursuit of (ill-gotten) money. Should they get inducted into the Hall of Fame? My opinion is, only by extraordinary action do those players deserve consideration; otherwise, the answer is no. And the writers who induct players into the Hall of Fame should be the vanguard, rather than sit around and wait for bent facts from the Commissioner and Owners, and the reactionary mutterings of paycheck puppets. After all, it was a delivery boy for the New York Journal-American that is credited for *discovering* Sandy Koufax, not the scouts and combines of neo-yore. The journalists need to stop acting like defense attorneys in the court of public opinion, and more like prosecutors - in pursuit of the truth - in the court of public opinion.
Even though, Jason Giambi is currently the only baseball player to be treated for cancer that likely resulted from steroid-abuse: the deceit of steroids has become so malignant that it has only served to spread cancerous growths in the record books that Bud Selig needs to extract in order to restore the legacies of baseball. There is a cure for that type of cancer. However, Selig is too lost in his own ineptitude and complicity with Owners that he to does not have the *balls* to do the right thing. Selig, once a visionary, has now become knee-deep in the corruption of the shell-game between the players and Owners by being beholdent to the Owners. Rather than be a true independent voice. Selig now, wants to stand by and indirectly accusing his critics of hurting his feelings, when the reality is -- if you can't address significant problems as head of your organization, or if a problem spurns during your tenure, then it your obligation to fix the problems with extraordinary action. Rather than sit by and watch the river flow and hope that your rocks change the current.
"History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this." (guess who?)
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The Dingers of Summer
For all I care, the Steroid Era can become known as the Selig Era of Baseball as one facet in a dystopian New Gilded Age of Wall Street corruption and Web 2.0 co-option, but only radical action can save the game from the course it's on.
Otherwise, the game will slowly fade into the ether as a meaningless game in which buffoons hit a ball, scratch their shrunken nuts, and collect a paycheck because no one really cares how they do what they do. In redundancy, Selig needs to take extraordinary action to restore the humanity of the game.
After all, the only reason that Milwaukee has the Milwaukee Brewers is because of the small piece of humanity in the orginal owner, Bud Selig, who cherished a minor league team in Milwaukee as a youth named the Milwaukee Brewers.
So after the Braves left Boston and stopped in Milwaukee en route to their eventual home of Atlanta, Selig purchased the Seattle Pilots in 1970 (in bankruptcy court) and relocated that franchise to Milwaukee which of course, became the Milwaukee Brewers.
One day, a Senator from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone, and a Representative from Michigan, John Conyers, would sponsor legislation in 2001 to prevent those type of actions with the Fairness in Antitrust in National Sports (FANS) Act of 2001 and prevent the contraction of the Montreal Expos, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Oakland Athletics and Minnesota Twins.
The legislation, "seeks to make baseball subject to normal antitrust laws when seeking to move or eliminate franchises." http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/article/60906
ESPN Magazine's Peter Keating wrote contraction "is just another of the owners' misguided stabs at grabbing back cash they've been throwing at players" (ESPN MAGAZINE, 11/12 issue).
The Expos now reside in Washington DC as the Nationals, the A's and Twins have contended in the postseason, while Tampa Bay dropped the 'devil' and appeared in the World Series of 2008.
And Bud Selig has done nothing but look like a fool. In 2002 for ending the All Star game in a tie and having to clean-up the mess of steroids made by his office and the owners with the dystopian complicity of the ethically diminutive, who have now been forced to shoulder the blame with prison.
Perhaps, one day their rookie cards will be used as shivs because they aren't worth much more than that. I'm not sure that those cards would be a warm place with no memory of the bloated stats. But they once gazed upon the dingers of summer flashin.'
"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people." (guess who?)
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Their Sons are Doomed by their Own Invisible Hands
With that said, the real issue at hand is: Who created this cesspool in which the difference between an Average Pro and an Average Joe is a connection to a drug-dealer? In this ret-con universe created by Bud Selig, Cloudy Russo as a hotdog vendor could potentially be just as capable of playing pro-ball as the players on the field.
But as Jesse Jackson might say: Those players deserve derision, they don't deserve prison! For all in all, they are just another brick in the wall. And behind that brick wall: You can still hear the pleas from Fortunato to Montressor to the tune of Toby Keith, and like Fortunato, the Selig Era can't die with a cough for unintentional grievances.
As I've made fairly clear, the juicers deserve poetic justice in the court of public opinion as a means to compel true human growth. They do not however deserve to be locked-up for not knowing how to explain to Congress why they went along in a dystopian manner with what had been condoned by the Big Brothers of the Commissioner and the Owners, and in effect, be forced to carry the burden of executive incompetence.
"Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state." (guess who?)
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The Nature of Their Game
Why exactly did Congress call those players to testify and not drill the Owners and Commissioner and force them to expose the compromise of their integrity and face prison time for lying before Congress?
Hmm... could it be that the President of the United States in 2005 was, former owner of the Texas Rangers George W. Bush, who -- until the steroids controversies -- had looked like a buffoon because he had traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox in the early 1990s?
So maybe just maybe, the President of the United States was willing to pull strings and abuse the purpose of Congress and government to settle contract disputes (and personal grievances) for his buddies by exposing a bunch of neanderthals who would demand more money from owners via usage of drugs.
So maybe just maybe, the owners believed that the success of the juicers had just *trickled down* from the top, and could no longer bare to deal with agent regurgitation of, "show me the money," for players who they knew had not truly earned it. Their humanity must be better than your humanity. Paging Dr. Frankenstein! Code blue for egos, stat!
Even in 2005, I had a feeling of 'deja vu' while watching the coverage of the Steroid Hearings that March, and then made the abstract leap that it was reminiscent of the McCarthyism in the House on Un-American Activities against Communists in Hollywood back in the 1950s. Why?
Why were those players called before Congress? Perhaps, the Commissioner and Owners needed scapegoats for the mess they created, and those scapegoats now face prison for simply towing the company line and not knowing how to explain it before Congress, because they didn't realize that the choices they made to juice-up were just the creation of the creeps above them.
Congress was just a giant chess piece in a shell-game between the Owners and players over skyrocketing contracts.
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Why The Jury Should Nullify the Verdict Against Bonds (It's Alive! It's Alive!)
Perhaps, the Commissioner and Owners had come to the conclusion that steroids had run their course in baseball, and that contracts were becoming too pricey and a financial burden that could potentially lead to more revenue sharing that was needed to save those franchises that were nearly *eliminated* from the game in 2001 because George Mitchell had concluded that those teams could not *compete* with their finances. Those franchises had been saved only because Paul Wellstone and John Conyers had stepped in to prevent contraction in the political cloud of September 11, 2001 and eventually Enron.
"I don't think that any of us ever believed that the disparity, both in terms of payroll and gross revenue, would get to what it is so far," baseball commissioner Bud Selig, the former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. In other words, they got in over their heads with their facilitation of steroids, and thus wanted to end it.
After all, it was Alex Rodriguez who signed with the Texas Rangers (ahem) to the tune of 250 million in the year 2000, and Jason Giambi who signed with the New York Yankees to the tune of 120 million in 2001. And who could forget Scott Boras? O, Manny Ramirez where art thou?
And so, Selig and the Owners wanted to remove the steroids that they had promoted in order to bring down the price-tags in order to help those franchises survive within their monopoly and prevent further revenue sharing, because the more money they had to pay for a player, the more revenue that they had to share with a team like the Twins. The Minnesota Twins in fact had been in the black as a result of revenue sharing, yet the state of Minnesota was unwilling to finance a new stadium.
The only way to turn off the Manchurian Candidates from the juice was to expose them, and thus prevent contracts from continuing to skyrocket. They then were able to capitalize on the sublimated public hatred for Barry Bonds via steroids and altruism in defense of sport's records. Yeah, Bonds is an ethical dirtbag -- but so was Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter. Yet, neither of them belong or belonged in prison; thus, I hope that the jury is implored to nullify a verdict against Barry Bonds.
They had of course, former Senator George Mitchell to expose those players, who of course, had chaired a blue-ribbon committee in Congress which concluded that money was the only way to compete in baseball—those conclusions of course, were disproven by the Moneyball ways and The Unbearable Truth of Billy Beane.
The former front office employee of the Boston Red Sox, George Mitchell of course, *coincidentally* did not report steroid use by a player of the Boston Red Sox, except Mo Vaughn. And we all know how the management of the Boston Red Sox felt about him. Hmmm. Must have been Mitchell's reward for executing their witch-hunt to settle contract disputes. The other Owners got to burn the legacy of the book Moneyball in a way that would make George Orwell and Ray Bradbury wince.
Ironically, the failure of Billy Beane as a pro, and the simultaneous ascension of teammate and juicer Lenny Dykstra in the 1980s, is likely what turned on the light-bulb as to the benefits of steroids. After all, power can be acquired but contact cannot be taught. http://www.slate.com/id/2180070/
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." (guess who?)
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I Was So Much Older Then I'm Younger Than That Now
In all the time that Congress spent questioning baseball players about steroids in a witch-hunt, thanks to the connections that Selig had with President George W. Bush, in an effort to 'clean up' the game by exposing those who collected big paychecks from the Owners by juicing-up: the truth was ranted but never cogently so (at least, to my knowledge). That being, why should Congress waste time on contract disputes when there was a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a war on terror, and an inflated real-estate economy that would eventually bring down an economic house of cards made entirely from Queens of Spades?
More importantly though, the true victims of this shell-game of steroids (but who's running the shell game?) are not the baseball players, not the owners, not the baseball or sports fans, not even those who just collect crap in hopes that it will unlock the universe of their egos in a way that rhymes with the bleating animals from Pet Sounds.
I might argue against making money for injecting drugs in your butt, but some might assert that I'm doing nothing more than speaking out of my ass. Pish, posh!
The true victims were back in 2005, when the Congress and government in general, could have been preparing for, I dunno, natural disasters. Turned out, that deep down in Louisiana back in the summer of 2005 along the Gulf Coast: Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita would destroy the city of New Orleans. Instead, the country was forcibly more enamored (pro or con) earlier that year, by a shell-game and witch-hunt between owners and players over who gets to cash-in from shooting-up. I guess that as long as, "I get mine" is the sum and whole of the law, that will be the true legacy of the Selig Era.
Won't someone please tell me why Bush should not be in prison for wasting the public's time to settle contract disputes for his buddies to the ultimate detriment of the people who truly needed the government's assistance? Those are the questions in need of investigation, not questions about steroids.
I'm not saying that Bush should be tried for murder in the cases of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, but it is clear to me that his abuse of power to settle private contract disputes and personal grievances detracted from the valuable time and services of a government that was unable to diligently respond to the people of the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005.
After all that Bush has done and has been accused of doing, wouldn't it be great for him to go down for abusing power by wasting government time and money in order to help his buddies settle contract disputes and the personal grievances he must of had about his own ineptitude as owner of the Texas Rangers? Now that would be poetic justice.
--In Memoriam of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and Rita--
--In Memoriam of Senator Paul Wellstone and Family from Minnesota and the Others Aboard that Plane--
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Abstract References (used for or influenced opinions):
"1984"; Orwell, George; 1948
"Abstracts"; James, Bill; 1977
"Another Brick in the Wall, Prt 2”; Pink Floyd; The Wall; 1979
"Burning Down the House"; Byrnes, David; Talking Heads; Speaking in Tongues; 1983
"Cask of Amontillado, The"; Poe, Edgar Allan; 1846
"Centerfield"; Fogerty, John; Centerfield; 1984
"Chimes of Freedom"; Dylan, Bob; Another Side of Bob Dylan; 1964
"Communist Manifesto, The"; Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich; 1848
"Dollar Sign on the Muscle"; Kerrane, Kevin; U. of Nebraska; 1984
"Even Such is Time"; Raleigh, Sir Walter; 1618
"Get Up, Stand Up”; Marley, Bob; Tosh, Peter; 1973
"Hang on to Your Ego"; Wilson, Brian; Pet Sounds; 1966/1999
"Heroin"; Reed, Lou; The Velvet Underground; The Velvet Underground and Nico; 1967
"Homer at the Bat"; Swartzwelder, Jon; The Simpsons; 1992
"Hotel California”; The Eagles; Hotel California; 1976
"Hurt"; Reznor, Trent; Nine Inch Nails; Downward Spiral; 1994
"Fahrenheit 451"; Bradbury, Ray; 1953
"Fifteen Minutes of Fame"; Warhol, Andy; 1968
"Frankenstein"; Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft; 1891
"French Connection, The"; Tidyman, Ernest; 1971
"If—"; Kipling, Rudyard; 1895
"It's a Little Too Late”; Keith, Toby; CMT Video; 2006
"Jerry McGuire"; Crowe, Cameron; 1996
"Johnny B. Goode"; Berry, Chuck; 1958
"Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy"; Leavy, Jane; 2003
"Man of Constant Sorrow"; Unknown; O, Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack; 2000
"Manchurian Candidate, The"; Condon, Richard; Frankenheimer, John; 1962
"Me and Bobbie McGee"; Kristofferson, Kris; 1969
"Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game"; Lewis, Michael; 2003
"Mr. Greed"; Fogerty, John; Centerfield; 1984
"My Back Pages"; Dylan, Bob; Another Side of Bob Dylan; 1964
"Night Game, The"; Pinsky, Robert
"Nullification"; Law & Order; 1997
"Oedipus The King"; Sophocles; 429 BC
"Sandlot, The"; Evans, David; 1993
"Sanctuary"; Law & Order; 1994
"Shawshank Redemption, The"; King, Stephen; 1994
"Sympathy for The Devil”; The Rolling Stones; Beggars Banquet; 1968
"The Gilded Age: A Tail of Today"; Twain, Mark; Warner, Charles Dudley; 1873
"Three Men and a Comic Book;" Martin, Jeff; The Simpsons; 1991
"To an Athlete Dying Young"; Housman, A.E.; 1896
"Traffic"; Gagan, Stephen; Soderbergh, Steven; 2000
"Unbearable Lightness of Being, The"; Kundera, Milan; 1984
"Vanz Kant Danz"; Forgerty, John; Centerfield; 1984
"Wealth of Nations, The"; Smith, Adam; 1776
"White Rabbit"; Law & Order; 1994
"Worst Episode Ever"; Doyle, Larry; The Simpsons; 2001
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