Sometimes there are articles I read which aren’t worthy of a full post but I still would like to talk about them on this blog. I can’t let even the smallest piece of bad journalism or journalism I disagree with go unnoticed. That’s un-American and should never happen. Hang on to your hats or any other article of clothing available because we are going all around sports for some random thoughts on topics that have interested me lately.
-I am sure a lot of you have seen Sammy Sosa’s Michael Jackson-esque skin transformation. It’s just classic and fantasticly awesome that his skin looks like it is slowly turning whiter. Why would anyone go out in public like that? Sosa claims the lights caused him to look whiter, which I don't believe at all. Of course I personally have never really liked Sammy Sosa for various reasons (yes, I realize I am probably the only person in the world who doesn't like Sosa), which I am going to list before I comment on the article:
1. I always hated how he ran out to right field at the beginning of the game for the Chicago Cubs. Yes, I know he pumped the Wrigley faithful up and I am sure millions of children were so inspired by his joy for the game while he sprinted out to right field that they immediately became involved in charities in their communities. I always found it to be a bit annoying because it just seemed so self-involved to me. He ran out there and I felt like it was less about him going to right field for the beginning of the game and more about him wanting to alert everyone in the crowd that he was currently appearing in right field and the time was right to cheer for him in a loud voice. Trot, skip or jog out to your position in right field, there is no need to draw more attention to your self by running. In a way it shows up his teammates in my mind. Of course from the stories I have heard about life in the Sosa-era Cubs clubhouse, he didn't give a crap about his teammates there either.
2. He cheated two ways. He corked his bat AND was a user of PEDs. Yes, I know a lot of people did it at the time and many still cheat. In fact, Robin Yount recently had one of his bats go on sale that was reportedly corked. So even the gritty, white, mullet wearing players were cheating before we all knew how bad the cheating really was. I am sure 50% of MLB was using what are now illegal PEDs or a corked bat at some point. My point is that I don’t know of a person who used a corked bat AND was found to have used PEDs…other than Sammy Sosa. I suspect Albert Belle, but he only has achieved half of this accomplishment so far. So that gives me permission to dislike Sosa for cheating in two different ways, so I will.
3. I just never liked Sammy Sosa. Sue me. He always annoyed me. I would worry about him reading what I have written here, but since in front of Congress when testifying about PED use in baseball he was having trouble speaking English, I will assume he isn’t so great at reading English either.
On to the article and the reasoning behind Sammy Sosa’s new whiter appearance:
Sammy Sosa says a cosmetic cream he uses to soften his skin is the reason for his lighter skin tone.
Is the purpose of this cosmetic cream to make a person’s skin look whiter over a period of time? I am not a huge buyer of skin creams but I have never heard of a skin cream that makes a person’s skin change four shades from light brown to ghost white. Maybe I just don’t know anyone who uses this cream. Though, from Sosa’s history with PEDs and any excuses he may make about how he didn’t know what he was using, is it safe to assume Sosa didn’t know what the cream would do to his face? He is like every other baseball player who gets handed ointments, creams or drugs and just immediately puts it into his system without thinking.
He looks creepy white. Look at the picture. He looks like Michael Jackson’s slightly overweight brother. I keep waiting to see the new white Sammy Sosa pop up out of a grey van and ask me if I want candy and then try to abduct me. Look at his hair color and the contrast to his face color. His hair looks like it used to be salt and pepper dark while his face was a light brown. Now that his face has gotten pale white, his hair has gone back to what looks to be a darker color. I don’t know, maybe it’s the light and how it is shining on him, but I find it funny his face skin color and hair keep changing colors inversely.
Sosa says he has been using the cream for a long time, and combined with bright TV lights, it made his face look whiter than it really is.
If we are being technical, he wasn’t really on television. He was in a line to have his picture taken. I know flashes can see through sheer black clothing on the red carpet, but I wasn’t aware that a lethal combination of skin cream and bright lights could cause someone’s skin to look whiter. As far as I know, this has never happened to any other celebrity or person on the red carpet.
Sosa says he is not trying to look like late pop star Michael Jackson and is not suffering from any skin illness.
Sammy Sosa wants to make it clear that he looks like a freak not because he idolized Michael Jackson and his look, nor is he sick because of any type of skin disease, but he looks like a freak because of his own doing. So if he knew he was going to the Latin Grammys (where the picture was taken) why didn’t he lay off the cream a little bit? I find it hard to believe this is the first time he has applied the cream and then gone out into public. How much of this cream exactly did he use? I can’t imagine just a little bit of the cream would cause him make this pale.
Sosa made his remarks on the Univision Spanish network. He declined to identify the cream.
Probably this is a good idea. You wouldn’t want sales to go through the roof when people who want to look like Michael Jackson find out they can expedite the process and skip all the surgery and skin whitening and just use a cream to bleach their skin.
-Hasheem Thabeet broke his jaw the other night in the Grizzlies game against the Trail Blazers. Thabeet was one of my favorite targets to mock for potentially being a bust in the NBA when I was talking about this last year’s NBA Draft. In fact I have given him a new nickname in honor of my feelings towards him. I will call him Hasheem “Thabust.” Very creative I know. The best part about how Thabeet broke his jaw is exactly how he broke his jaw. Was he going up for a rebound and took an elbow to the jaw, was he blocking a shot and got hit in the face or was he making a move to the basket in an attempt to score? Not exactly.
The 7-foot-3 center from UConn was injured late in the first quarter during a battle under the Memphis basket.
I wonder how the Grizzlies are going to manage to survive the next game or two when Thabust is unable to play? How will they manage to replace his 0.6 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 0.9 bpg, and 6 minutes per game? I know he is still young and hasn’t been playing basketball for that long, so we can't expect that much from him...but he plays for the Grizzlies. Even their fans know the team is hopeless. How does even a halfway competent big man not get 10-15 minutes per game just based on being tall and playing for Memphis? Just know that Thabust is already 22 years old and will be 23 years old by the end of the basketball year. It’s not like he is fresh out of high school or anything. I try really hard not to be critical of Thabust, but other than the fact he was tall and could block shots based on that fact, he never showed me that much in college that would make me think he can useful in the NBA.
I don’t dislike Thabust or anything, so I am willing to admit his 0.9 blocks per game isn’t too shabby and I don’t think he will ever have a hard time blocking shots in the NBA. He could probably block many just by accident. Of course Shawn Bradley didn’t have trouble blocking shots either and he has become a national punchline. I am still sticking to my claim that Hasheem Thabust was not even close to being worth the #2 pick in the draft and I know we haven’t had a lot to go on this year, but he is averaging very few minutes on a really crappy team. Let’s get to how Thabust broke his jaw:
Replays appeared to show Thabeet’s jaw colliding with forward Zach Randolph’s head.
Is Zach Randolph good for anything? If Thabust's jaw had gotten hit by any other part of Randolph he wouldn't have gotten hurt because the shock would have been absorbed by Randolph's doughy body. But now Randolph is injuring his own players with his head. So to recap, a fairly useless basketball player who has an enormous contract and zero motivation injured one of his teammates who was a highly drafted rookie struggling to earn minutes with a crappy team. This happened to the Grizzlies just a couple days after Allen Iverson decided that God did not want him to play for the Grizzlies anymore…just a few months after God announced to Iverson he should play for the Grizzlies. That God fellow sure does waffle a whole lot like Brett Favre. I wish he could make up his mind.
The conclusion we can draw is that the Grizzlies are still fucked.
-It’s free agent season in MLB, which means it is time for columnists to come out with lists of players who are good buys or bad buys. These lists have about as much relevance as a mock draft, yet we still read them and sportswriters still write them. Last time we heard from Bert Blyleven he was telling baseball players what it takes to succeed in the playoffs by bragging about all of his accomplishments in the postseason. Today, Bert Blyleven decides instead of making list, he is just going to list the pitchers who he thinks are good buys this offseason. I just want to warn everyone, Bert has not ever heard of a “contract year.”
Pitching undoubtedly will be a huge focus as teams look to shore up their staffs for 2010.
I don’t believe it. This may be the first time ever pitching has been actively searched for in free agency. Usually no one cares about pitching, which is why there have never been huge contracts given to pitchers who are free agents. Has there been an offseason in the past 10 years when pitching hasn't been a huge focus of teams?
I don’t think it’s a particularly strong market for pitching this winter.
No kidding. Take a look at this list and who do think is the second best pitcher behind John Lackey that is available through free agency? Could it be Rich Harden or Erik Bedard? The fact there is a legitimate debate answers the question.
Then what do you do in what is a thin pitching market? There are some interesting names out there with impressive track records: Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Erik Bedard, Rich Harden, Brad Penny and Randy Wolf among them.
Not a single one of those pitchers deserve anything more than a two year deal. Now that is a thin pitching market. Still there are a couple of guys I would take a chance on in that list and I think four of these guys should be on a Top 10 list ranking of available free agent pitchers. Three of the pitchers that Bert puts on his list I am not sure if I would put in the Top 10 at all...but he thinks they are the top pitchers in this year's free agent class.
But in my mind, there are some better options than all of those names. Here are my top four starters, with one reliever thrown into the mix.
Here are Bert Blyleven’s top 4 starters and one reliever. These are the guys who he believes are pitchers #1-5 in the free agent market, not pitchers who are diamonds in the rough, but the best pitchers available through free agency this year.
JOHN LACKEY
No one in their right mind would argue with this. Clearly, Lackey is the #1 starter in this free agent class.
JASON MARQUIS (31) 15-13, 4.04 ERA in 2009 with the Rockies
Marquis will certainly be an afterthought this offseason, but he is a solid, consistent pitcher who is only 31, and could be a good bargain as a free agent.
There is a chance he is an afterthought because he isn’t that good of a pitcher. Now I do have to admit he is consistent. He is consistently just average to below average. Let’s take a look at his numbers since 2005:
2005: 13-14 4.13 ERA 1.329 WHIP
2006: 14-16 6.02 ERA 1.523 WHIP
2007: 12-9 4.60 ERA 1.388 WHIP
2008: 11-9 4.53 ERA 1.449 WHIP
2009: 15-13 4.04 ERA 1.380 WHIP
He is consistent in that he will always be a consistent #4 or #5 starter in a contender’s rotation at the very best. He pitches innings but he has never been more than a league average pitcher and he probably will never be more than that. Is it a coincidence he had his best year as a pro in a contract year? Probably not. Please remember these are all his numbers in the National League. In the American League it is possible he has no value. (I know, I am being harsh today)
JOEL PINIERO (31) 15-12, 3.49 ERA in 2009 with the Cardinals
Piniero is an awful lot like Marquis. A guy proven to be a winner when healthy, a solid No. 2 or 3 starter for any team.
First off, Marquis is not a proven winner nor is he or Piniero a solid #2 or #3 starter when healthy. Piniero has had some injury problems but he also hasn’t been an incredibly effective starter when he was healthy. I know injuries can hurt a pitcher's effectiveness, but I still don't think he is a #2 or #3 starter in MLB. You can judge for yourself.
Piniero had a career year this year, which also happened to coincide with his contract year. Again, what a coincidence! Nothing against Piniero because if my favorite team signed him I wouldn't be upset, but I would be upset if he was the #2 or #3 starter for them. He thrived under Dave Duncan and without him I would be concerned he would regress.
And if you’re worried that he simply found magic under the guiding hand of Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan, remember that Piniero also had success in Seattle, going 14-7 with a 3.24 ERA in 2002, and 16-11 with a 3.78 ERA in 2003.
I don't really care he had two good seasons 6 and 7 seasons ago! His bad, injury filled seasons still number more than his healthy, productive seasons. That's not a good risk in my opinion. The fact he had two straight good seasons 6 and 7 years ago respectively shouldn't completely override the fact that Piniero hasn’t been completely healthy or effective for every season since then, excluding 2009 of course. Isn’t that the type of pitcher every team wants? A perennially injured, average starter? What, that doesn’t sound like a #2 or #3 starter to you either?
Bert also wants you to know that Piniero is only 31 years old too! Please don’t worry about the fact he was injured a lot when he was younger, I am sure his body actually grows stronger and less injury prone as he gets older.
CARL PAVANO (33, turns 34 on Jan. 8) 14-12, 5.10 ERA with Indians and Twins in 2009
Somewhere every New York Yankees fan reading this is laughing. Even though I don’t know how much intelligence Bert has, he has to be smarter than to fall for Carl Pavano. He has had 1 good year of pitching while he was in the major leagues and 2 years that were passable as decent. That's it. It just so happens two of those years he pitched passably well were also his contract years. Shouldn't that concern Bert Blyleven a little bit when he was making his list? Forget Pavano's name, pretend his name is James Anthony, and take a look at these numbers. Tell me this is a good enough pitcher who you would think is a Top 5 starter in even the worst pitching free agent class. There is no way.
Pavano had four miserable seasons in New York, as everything went wrong and he just couldn’t stay healthy.
What Bert means by “miserable seasons” is “Pavano got minorly injured and then refused to pitch for the rest of the year for some unknown reason. What he means by “everything went wrong” is “he lied about how he got injured and pissed off all of his teammates by not rehabbing hard enough to contribute to the team.”
Hopefully the Twins will keep him in the fold. He was a good leader and a strong presence in the clubhouse, taking a lot of pressure off young pitchers like Nick Blackburn and Scott Baker. I was very impressed with his work ethic and the way he went about his business.
If Bert really was impressed with Pavano and his work ethic, then he would be the first person I have ever heard talk about Pavano in a favorable fashion. What kind of advice and counseling is he giving the young pitchers for the Twins?
"If you ever get injured away from the baseball field, immediately make up a lie about what happened and then sit out the the rest of the year."
"The key to alienating your teammates is to go to Tampa to rehab at the team's facility there instead of working hard and traveling with the team...this works especially well if the team you play for needs starting pitching help during the year and you aren't around."
Everyone should read “Living on the Black” by John Feinstein sometime to hear what Mike Mussina and the rest of the Yankees thought about Pavano and his work ethic. He is a risk at best and an absolutely mistake signing for more than a one year deal at worst.
The last guy Bert picked was JJ Putz and as far as relievers go, he may be a good risk for a team. He may not be a Top 5 pitcher in this free agent class, but he is better than the other guys Bert mentioned here. Apparently Bert Blyleven has never heard of a “contract year” and these three guys I talked about all are over the age of 31 and had their best years in contract years. It is not a coincidence.
-Our long national dream is over. The Browns have put Brady Quinn back in the starting lineup. Now we can’t see the epic depths that Derek Anderson is able to achieve. So it looks like JaMarcus Russell and Jake Delhomme can fight it out for the worst quarterback of the 2009 season. I wanted Brady Quinn in the lineup, but I thought it would never happen. I got what I wanted, but I still wanted to see how bad Derek Anderson can be. Of course in typical Browns fashion, they have chosen to start Quinn against the Ravens who are coming off a tough loss to the Bengals…and the game is on Monday Night Football. Just a brilliant move. This should keep the pressure off Quinn and put him in a position to succeed. The Browns un-bench Quinn for a game against a team with a good defense coming off a tough loss to a division rival and the game is on national television.
Browns coach Eric Mangini has decided to go back to Quinn after Anderson went 1-4 as a starter and posted the NFL's lowest quarterback rating (36.2). Mangini said he would like to stick with Quinn for the remainder of the season.
(A tear slowly falls down Bengoodfella’s face at what could have been with Derek Anderson starting for the Browns all year)
Mangini has been impressed with Quinn's work ethic since being demoted.
When the other quarterback on the roster has a QB rating of 36.2, do you really need to use the “work ethic” excuse to replace that quarterback? All you have to say is, "Derek Anderson sucks and we want to attempt to be competent and plan for next year. We need to know if Brady Quinn can be an NFL quarterback, so if he can't, we can draft a player who could be an NFL quarterback. Derek Anderson sucks."
The best part of the story is that Eric Mangini claims he didn’t know about the clause in Quinn’s contract that gave him salary escalators for 70% of the snaps this year.
Judge asked Mangini about the possibility that Quinn was benched due to the escalator clause. And here's what Mangini said."No, absolutely not. With all the different contracts. . . . I don't know what the incentives are. But that wouldn't make my decision [even if I did]."
Really? This is the point where Bill Simmons would write, “Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2009 Cleveland Browns!”
So the head coach of the Cleveland Browns did not know there were escalators in Brady Quinn’s contract that gave him more money for taking 70% of the snaps? If that is true, then Mangini was the only person who follows football closely who didn’t know about this. More than likely I think Mangini is outright lying here, which is typical in football, but if he isn't lying and really didn't know about the clause in Quinn's contract, he has reached new levels coaching ignorance.
I don’t see how Mangini lasts as Browns coach after this year. He is like Bill Belichick’s mentally handicapped younger brother (not to insult mentally handicapped people, I love them, and they can not help their fate in life. It is an insult to compare something out of a person’s control to the idiocy that is Eric Mangini…which is completely in his control). He is Bill Belichick if Bill Belichick decided he was going to do everything completely and utterly wrong in building a franchise. If Belichick felt a gut instinct and went the other way from it or did the exact opposite from how he would normally do it, that’s Eric Mangini.
-It took two losses but now Woody Paige is calling for Kyle Orton to be benched.
To give themselves a jump-start, the Broncos should give Chris Simms the start against Washington on Sunday.
He believes that Chris Simms is a better option for Denver. I admit I began the season thinking the Broncos should give Simms more of a shot to be the starting quarterback in Denver, but I was wrong. I’ll say it again, I was wrong. Orton was the right guy and I think he has proven that. The Broncos have lost to the Steelers and the Ravens. It’s not like they lost to two shitty teams who have yet to win a game. They lost to the two participants in last year’s AFC Championship Game. Don't hit the panic button at this point. The Broncos have no quarterback on the roster who can do better than Orton is doing right now.
Kyle Orton hasn't performed awfully (except for the three interceptions Monday night). Yes, the Broncos still have won six games — but he is what he is — the 18th-best quarterback in the NFL. And the Broncos are a reflection of that number. They are 22nd in scoring (18.8 points per game), just ahead of the Titans, and behind, ahem, the Bears. They are 19th overall in offense, 17th in passing, 18th in rushing.
Part of the reason the Broncos are playing well is because Orton isn’t trying to do too much and he is managing the game. Seriously, quarterback changes are a desperate move for a team and they are not a move that a 6-2 team generally makes unless that team’s coaching staff is a bunch of morons.
It has been suggested, wisely, by my columnist colleagues at Postmortem that the Broncos start Correll Buckhalter at running back, which they did against Pittsburgh, and open up the offense, which they didn't do. It doesn't matter who starts at running back, and McDaniels can't unleash the offense with Orton.
Yes, you can tell from Chris Simms’ career numbers that he isn’t exactly the type of quarterback who needs the offense unleashed with him at the helm. He is not exactly a horrible quarterback but he would basically end up being a left handed version of Kyle Orton for this year. Look at Orton’s career numbers and they are similar or exceed what Simms has done in his career. Both options aren’t fantastic, but 6-2 teams don’t change quarterbacks.
When I suggested this move to a rather large cheese at The Post, he said: "Simms hasn't played since early in the 2006 season."
Orton only played three games in 2006-07 after being benched, following 15 starts in 2005, before the Bears went on to the Super Bowl. Simms has started 15 NFL games.
So basically Orton has more starts in one year than Simms has for his career. Woody really has no point here.
Yeah, but Simms has a stronger arm. Orton's lack of arm strength was revealed twice against Pittsburgh when he tried to make throws off his back foot and couldn't get the ball to open receivers.
Chris Simms isn’t exactly the model of arm strength either. Really, Simms is a less experienced, more mobile version of Kyle Orton. Let's all recall how Chris Simms didn't start his entire senior year at Texas because Major Applewhite was beating him out for the starting quarterback position. Remember that? How come Woody doesn't? I am not down on Simms, in fact I thought he should get a chance to start this year, but the loss of two straight games to tough teams after a 6 game winning streak is not the reason to change quarterbacks.
McDaniels told me he doesn't care to switch quarterbacks in midgame or midseason, but, then, he had Tom Brady as his quarterback at New England, and who's going to remove him?
This has nothing to do with Tom Brady or who the backup in New England was or wasn’t, it has to do with the options available to the Denver Broncos, which aren’t vast. This has nothing to do with Tom Brady or when Josh McDaniels would or would not switch out a starting quarterback for the backup. What McDaniels should have said is that he doesn’t care to switch quarterbacks while the team has a 6-2 record. Maybe Woody Paige is hitting the panic button a bit too early here?
Showing posts with label sammy sosa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sammy sosa. Show all posts
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
3 comments Howard Bryant Blames the Real Steroid Culprit, The Fans
I know a lot of people here are absolutely tired of talking about steroids and I really am as well too, but unfortunately Howard Bryant has sort of pissed me off with an article he has written and it deals with steroids. The media loves to start naming names of who his responsible for the steroid problems in baseball. They never seem to cast an eye upon themselves as a culprit at all though, they are funny that way. As I have said before, the media who interviews the players and those writers in the clubhouse are the ones who would have had great access to the players and could have had any suspicions, but they did not say anything. That won't stop writers like Howard Bryant from being completely innocent and blaming others though.
A saying exists in baseball that the smartest person in any clubhouse is the guy with either the highest batting average or the most consecutive zeroes on his paycheck.
Everyone without their ability either falls in line or risks the kind of peer-pressurized alienation most of us escaped moments after graduating from high school.
This is not a new revelation that the greatest players of the past decade or so have completely snookered the general public, the fans, and the other players in Major League Baseball. This is not a new or incredibly revealing idea.
For years, the discussion about performance-enhancing drugs has existed within a structure that always has benefited the players. In the late 1990s, there was the argument that steroids did not exist in large measure, that players were the victims of a "witch hunt."
I am sorry, who was the proponent and main arguing party of this "witch hunt" theory? Some of the mainstream media and yes, the fans.
The fans have an excuse though. They had no way of knowing whether a player was using steroids or not because they have, in general, zero access to the players. Many fans just want a player's signature and are only able to get close enough to talk to the player for 10 seconds max, which is not enough time to ask the player detailed steroid questions or ask to examine his ass or any other place on his body for needle marks. The fans want their players to be innocent of steroid use. Only in the media's messed up frame of reference could they ever infer that the steroid problem in baseball is even a great percentage of the fan's fault. There is a list of media members and players who could have blown the whistle long ago and they did not. The reason doesn't matter, the simple fact is they did not blow the whistle and the fans have to accept a tainted game full of tainted players who compiled tainted records.
The fans have accepted the steroid use willingly to an extent because it is already done and there is now testing in place. We can't go back and relive the Summer of 1998 over without steroids because there may not have been a Summer of 1998 without steroids. The fans have to accept steroids were being used and trust MLB to make sure fewer players are using now. When the media blames the fans for accepting the steroid use, it feels they are the police almost blaming the victim for the crime against them. Sure, we as fans could have suspected something, but the media wasn't reporting it so why should we be suspicious? There was no reason to be suspicious because none of the rumors were ever proven true.
The truth is quite the opposite, for it was the star players who used their power, their influence and their good standing to create a steroid culture.
I would agree with this comment but also throw in the caveat that the star players may not have been the star players if they had not been using steroids. Without steroids is Mark McGwire just a Dave Kingman clone through the latter half of his career and is Sammy Sosa just another flamboyant Latino outfielder who thinks more of his skills than the team does? The steroid culture was created by human nature to get ahead and to take advantage of the fact there was no steroid testing in place. If there is no speed limit posted, how fast are you going to drive? You are going to drive fast. These players cheated because no limits were given.
This steroid problem had a three headed cause: the lack of steroid testing by Major League Baseball, the player's need to get ahead through any means necessary, and no reporting by the media on what they saw, when they had access, in the locker room because the media was too busy keeping their access to the players up and did not want to rock the boat or piss them off.
Don't blame the fans for accepting the steroid culture they did not know existed and not being angry about something they can't change that happened ten years ago.
They knew that the fans would be more than forgiving, that the fans, in fact, would be determined soldiers against any negativity, even if that negativity happened to be the truth.
The fans were forgiving because they did not know the truth. There was no testing, there was no smoking gun, the fans only had the player's word and what little information was given. Now the fans know the truth, they condemn the player but also realize there is no much they can do about retired players and steroid accusations. Current players who have used steroids are going to be treated badly in every city they go to, except for their hometown team's city. Manny is going to get it bad in every city except for Los Angeles. It just works that way.
Howard Bryant is a douchebag for trying to pin the fans as neanderthals who stand by their man no matter what happens. No one reported the truth so the fans were only soldiering against their own perceptions of the players in question.
Even as the card house collapsed, the players knew the fans were just red-blooded capitalists who would forgive lying and cheating because there was big money at stake.
I don't know who or where these fans who forgive cheating are, but I think players should be suspended for a year at the first negative drug test. It think there should be serious consequences. What columnists and mainstream media types like Howard Bryant like to do is transfer their guilt on to the fans, and they use the 5% of fans who support a player no matter what as if that represents the majority of Major League Baseball fans.
They like to say, "we are really laying it to the players now and are exposing all their previous dirty deeds, but the fans are the real problem. Look at them still supporting the players who are caught."
This is disingenuous.
The media seems to be under the impression that because they are coming down hard on players in lieu of actually attempting to do something about the problem, like report what they knew, they are now in the right. Sure many media types did not know for sure if a player was using steroids, so they did not report it, but imagine how much less a fan knew about that same player, yet Bryant thinks the fans are for some reason to blame. Yes, there is a sub-section of fans who will still be in Mannywood, but there are more fans that want him out of baseball for the year.
When this attitude was coupled with an era when powerful entities ranging from the White House to the military to the blogosphere have skillfully turned the mainstream media into the ubiquitous enemy, the players knew the strategy all too well: They used the fans' loyalty against them.
The mainstream media is not the enemy. Don't use the fans loyalty as a reason to excuse the media for turning a blind eye though. The media was too busy being fans to the players and not actually attempting to figure out how two players in the same year could come near a homerun record that only one person had even come close to over the last 50 years. Fans can be loyal, especially in the absence of evidence that would prove their loyalty to be misguided.
Ironically, it is the Phillies' Raul Ibanez, burned by a blogosphere that does not have to adhere to traditional journalistic standards, who now turns back to the mainstream media -- with all of their supposed "agendas" -- to defend his name.
What journalistic standards? Turning a blind eye to steroids? Beating the same story about Brett Favre, Manny Ramirez, and Terrell Owens into the ground? Daring a player to pee in a cup and taking credit for being ahead of the curve while ignoring the puff piece that you wrote about another steroid user? Writing an entire book with accusations based on anonymous sources? I want to hear all about these journalistic standards because I don't see them today. If you ask me, the media is being a little naive in defending Ibanez.
Fuck Howard Bryant. What he calls not adhering to journalistic standards I call exercising freedom of speech using a well thought out and reasoned argument that included evidence. That blogger who accused Ibanez of steroid use, or suspected it at least, did more research for that post than many journalists do for an entire year. The mainstream media jumped all over him. That would have been a very similar reaction had the same thing happened in the 1990's. The media would have served as cheerleaders instead of reporters.
The fan has been the greatest enabler of the steroids era. Face it: Had the paying customer revolted, the institutional reaction would have been decidedly different. The superstars knew the paying customers were either too forgiving of their golden heroes or too selfish to have their fun and games interrupted (or both) to hold them accountable.
When do we revolt? All of the major steroid users had the allegations proven AFTER they retired. Why would the fans stop watching baseball games to punish the active players when the retired players were the ones who were the newsmakers? In regard to the active players, people like baseball, they aren't going to let a few active players who have tested positive ruin that for them. I am absolutely furious at this trumped up piece of shit for calling the fans enablers during the steroid era...and Bryant knows it is wrong. Who is the real enabler? The fans who had no knowledge or the sportswriters who get paid to gather facts and report? The writers did not want to report the facts, they were having too much fun watching the home runs fly out of the ball park and writing stories about it. Even today when the fans revolt and start getting suspicious of players, like Ibanez, the mainstream media steps in and defends the player. The media would have also defended McGwire and Sosa if they were accused by a blogger of steroid use. Howard Bryant is full of shit.
Some in the media are equally guilty by intellectual laziness, the bait-and-switch thinking of the apologists for whom there is no way out.
At least he admits this.
It is one thing to be taken, quite another to make excuses for the very people who perpetrated this fraud. And it is even worse to reward them with induction into the Hall of Fame. The players got to keep their money. Why should they be rewarded for their deceit?
Again, I absolutely want to agree with this. I don't think these players should be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame. They cheated and they should pay this penalty. I don't want them in the Hall of Fame if they cheated to put up their career numbers.
Then again I am a little torn with leaving these steroid users out of the Hall of Fame. I don't want them in there but many of these players who cheated may have been in the Hall of Fame anyway. Would Barry Bonds really not be in the Hall of Fame if he had not used steroids? I think he would have made it regardless. It also brings up another factor, which is we will be leaving nearly an entire generation of sluggers out of the Hall of Fame. It would feel slightly incomplete. Not to mention the Hall will probably include someone who never got caught using steroids (I am looking at Mike Piazza) who most likely did use. How is that fair to include that person in the Hall just because his name did not get leaked? These are people who hold all-time Major League records and they are not in the Hall of Fame. It would feel slightly incomplete to me.
I would rather the Hall of Fame be incomplete than tainted though, so I vote no for these steroid users. When I visit the Hall of Fame, it is good to know cheaters are not allowed in there. I also would feel a little sadness at some of the big names who cheated who aren't allowed in because their names got leaked or they were the ones caught, while others made it because they weren't caught.
The real value will come from the superstar who actually uses his celebrity for reform, the star player whose Hall of Fame plaque might actually say "was instrumental in the fight against drug use in his sport."
That would have to have been someone from the mid to late 90's who blew the whistle or tried to warn everyone. I don't know of anyone who did this. Most of those I have heard come out against steroid users like Chipper Jones and Curt Schilling are told to shut up and then they are suspected of steroid use. I am not naive but I think the age of prevalent steroid use is over. I would like to think Major League Baseball testing will be able to keep up with science...I hope that is true.
Regardless, the fans are not at fault for the previous use of steroids by baseball players. We as fans did not know and were not in a position to know. Fans today that support steroid users are only doing it because they are trying to support their team and those fans I would think are in the minority.
A saying exists in baseball that the smartest person in any clubhouse is the guy with either the highest batting average or the most consecutive zeroes on his paycheck.
Everyone without their ability either falls in line or risks the kind of peer-pressurized alienation most of us escaped moments after graduating from high school.
This is not a new revelation that the greatest players of the past decade or so have completely snookered the general public, the fans, and the other players in Major League Baseball. This is not a new or incredibly revealing idea.
For years, the discussion about performance-enhancing drugs has existed within a structure that always has benefited the players. In the late 1990s, there was the argument that steroids did not exist in large measure, that players were the victims of a "witch hunt."
I am sorry, who was the proponent and main arguing party of this "witch hunt" theory? Some of the mainstream media and yes, the fans.
The fans have an excuse though. They had no way of knowing whether a player was using steroids or not because they have, in general, zero access to the players. Many fans just want a player's signature and are only able to get close enough to talk to the player for 10 seconds max, which is not enough time to ask the player detailed steroid questions or ask to examine his ass or any other place on his body for needle marks. The fans want their players to be innocent of steroid use. Only in the media's messed up frame of reference could they ever infer that the steroid problem in baseball is even a great percentage of the fan's fault. There is a list of media members and players who could have blown the whistle long ago and they did not. The reason doesn't matter, the simple fact is they did not blow the whistle and the fans have to accept a tainted game full of tainted players who compiled tainted records.
The fans have accepted the steroid use willingly to an extent because it is already done and there is now testing in place. We can't go back and relive the Summer of 1998 over without steroids because there may not have been a Summer of 1998 without steroids. The fans have to accept steroids were being used and trust MLB to make sure fewer players are using now. When the media blames the fans for accepting the steroid use, it feels they are the police almost blaming the victim for the crime against them. Sure, we as fans could have suspected something, but the media wasn't reporting it so why should we be suspicious? There was no reason to be suspicious because none of the rumors were ever proven true.
The truth is quite the opposite, for it was the star players who used their power, their influence and their good standing to create a steroid culture.
I would agree with this comment but also throw in the caveat that the star players may not have been the star players if they had not been using steroids. Without steroids is Mark McGwire just a Dave Kingman clone through the latter half of his career and is Sammy Sosa just another flamboyant Latino outfielder who thinks more of his skills than the team does? The steroid culture was created by human nature to get ahead and to take advantage of the fact there was no steroid testing in place. If there is no speed limit posted, how fast are you going to drive? You are going to drive fast. These players cheated because no limits were given.
This steroid problem had a three headed cause: the lack of steroid testing by Major League Baseball, the player's need to get ahead through any means necessary, and no reporting by the media on what they saw, when they had access, in the locker room because the media was too busy keeping their access to the players up and did not want to rock the boat or piss them off.
Don't blame the fans for accepting the steroid culture they did not know existed and not being angry about something they can't change that happened ten years ago.
They knew that the fans would be more than forgiving, that the fans, in fact, would be determined soldiers against any negativity, even if that negativity happened to be the truth.
The fans were forgiving because they did not know the truth. There was no testing, there was no smoking gun, the fans only had the player's word and what little information was given. Now the fans know the truth, they condemn the player but also realize there is no much they can do about retired players and steroid accusations. Current players who have used steroids are going to be treated badly in every city they go to, except for their hometown team's city. Manny is going to get it bad in every city except for Los Angeles. It just works that way.
Howard Bryant is a douchebag for trying to pin the fans as neanderthals who stand by their man no matter what happens. No one reported the truth so the fans were only soldiering against their own perceptions of the players in question.
Even as the card house collapsed, the players knew the fans were just red-blooded capitalists who would forgive lying and cheating because there was big money at stake.
I don't know who or where these fans who forgive cheating are, but I think players should be suspended for a year at the first negative drug test. It think there should be serious consequences. What columnists and mainstream media types like Howard Bryant like to do is transfer their guilt on to the fans, and they use the 5% of fans who support a player no matter what as if that represents the majority of Major League Baseball fans.
They like to say, "we are really laying it to the players now and are exposing all their previous dirty deeds, but the fans are the real problem. Look at them still supporting the players who are caught."
This is disingenuous.
The media seems to be under the impression that because they are coming down hard on players in lieu of actually attempting to do something about the problem, like report what they knew, they are now in the right. Sure many media types did not know for sure if a player was using steroids, so they did not report it, but imagine how much less a fan knew about that same player, yet Bryant thinks the fans are for some reason to blame. Yes, there is a sub-section of fans who will still be in Mannywood, but there are more fans that want him out of baseball for the year.
When this attitude was coupled with an era when powerful entities ranging from the White House to the military to the blogosphere have skillfully turned the mainstream media into the ubiquitous enemy, the players knew the strategy all too well: They used the fans' loyalty against them.
The mainstream media is not the enemy. Don't use the fans loyalty as a reason to excuse the media for turning a blind eye though. The media was too busy being fans to the players and not actually attempting to figure out how two players in the same year could come near a homerun record that only one person had even come close to over the last 50 years. Fans can be loyal, especially in the absence of evidence that would prove their loyalty to be misguided.
Ironically, it is the Phillies' Raul Ibanez, burned by a blogosphere that does not have to adhere to traditional journalistic standards, who now turns back to the mainstream media -- with all of their supposed "agendas" -- to defend his name.
What journalistic standards? Turning a blind eye to steroids? Beating the same story about Brett Favre, Manny Ramirez, and Terrell Owens into the ground? Daring a player to pee in a cup and taking credit for being ahead of the curve while ignoring the puff piece that you wrote about another steroid user? Writing an entire book with accusations based on anonymous sources? I want to hear all about these journalistic standards because I don't see them today. If you ask me, the media is being a little naive in defending Ibanez.
Fuck Howard Bryant. What he calls not adhering to journalistic standards I call exercising freedom of speech using a well thought out and reasoned argument that included evidence. That blogger who accused Ibanez of steroid use, or suspected it at least, did more research for that post than many journalists do for an entire year. The mainstream media jumped all over him. That would have been a very similar reaction had the same thing happened in the 1990's. The media would have served as cheerleaders instead of reporters.
The fan has been the greatest enabler of the steroids era. Face it: Had the paying customer revolted, the institutional reaction would have been decidedly different. The superstars knew the paying customers were either too forgiving of their golden heroes or too selfish to have their fun and games interrupted (or both) to hold them accountable.
When do we revolt? All of the major steroid users had the allegations proven AFTER they retired. Why would the fans stop watching baseball games to punish the active players when the retired players were the ones who were the newsmakers? In regard to the active players, people like baseball, they aren't going to let a few active players who have tested positive ruin that for them. I am absolutely furious at this trumped up piece of shit for calling the fans enablers during the steroid era...and Bryant knows it is wrong. Who is the real enabler? The fans who had no knowledge or the sportswriters who get paid to gather facts and report? The writers did not want to report the facts, they were having too much fun watching the home runs fly out of the ball park and writing stories about it. Even today when the fans revolt and start getting suspicious of players, like Ibanez, the mainstream media steps in and defends the player. The media would have also defended McGwire and Sosa if they were accused by a blogger of steroid use. Howard Bryant is full of shit.
Some in the media are equally guilty by intellectual laziness, the bait-and-switch thinking of the apologists for whom there is no way out.
At least he admits this.
It is one thing to be taken, quite another to make excuses for the very people who perpetrated this fraud. And it is even worse to reward them with induction into the Hall of Fame. The players got to keep their money. Why should they be rewarded for their deceit?
Again, I absolutely want to agree with this. I don't think these players should be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame. They cheated and they should pay this penalty. I don't want them in the Hall of Fame if they cheated to put up their career numbers.
Then again I am a little torn with leaving these steroid users out of the Hall of Fame. I don't want them in there but many of these players who cheated may have been in the Hall of Fame anyway. Would Barry Bonds really not be in the Hall of Fame if he had not used steroids? I think he would have made it regardless. It also brings up another factor, which is we will be leaving nearly an entire generation of sluggers out of the Hall of Fame. It would feel slightly incomplete. Not to mention the Hall will probably include someone who never got caught using steroids (I am looking at Mike Piazza) who most likely did use. How is that fair to include that person in the Hall just because his name did not get leaked? These are people who hold all-time Major League records and they are not in the Hall of Fame. It would feel slightly incomplete to me.
I would rather the Hall of Fame be incomplete than tainted though, so I vote no for these steroid users. When I visit the Hall of Fame, it is good to know cheaters are not allowed in there. I also would feel a little sadness at some of the big names who cheated who aren't allowed in because their names got leaked or they were the ones caught, while others made it because they weren't caught.
The real value will come from the superstar who actually uses his celebrity for reform, the star player whose Hall of Fame plaque might actually say "was instrumental in the fight against drug use in his sport."
That would have to have been someone from the mid to late 90's who blew the whistle or tried to warn everyone. I don't know of anyone who did this. Most of those I have heard come out against steroid users like Chipper Jones and Curt Schilling are told to shut up and then they are suspected of steroid use. I am not naive but I think the age of prevalent steroid use is over. I would like to think Major League Baseball testing will be able to keep up with science...I hope that is true.
Regardless, the fans are not at fault for the previous use of steroids by baseball players. We as fans did not know and were not in a position to know. Fans today that support steroid users are only doing it because they are trying to support their team and those fans I would think are in the minority.
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