Answer me this:Do you really want to know who else is on this "A-Rod list?"
Do you really want to know who tested positive for the juice in '03?
I'd rather not.
They say that nobody who is exposed as a juicer should surprise you anymore. And I thought: "Well, if a good portion of the 2003 Mets were on the juice it would surprise me." Why?
They only won 66 games. And it would really hurt me to think that these guys destroyed the "sanctity of the game" and still couldn't win more than 66 games in the process.
But then I thought, "You know, it really wouldn't surprise me. It can't surprise me. Can it really surprise me that this particular team couldn't even win while cheating?"
So I really don't want to know if Jeff Duncan was on Prednisone.
Or if Orber Moreno was on Deca-Durabolin.
Or if Jay Bell smoked some tainted mushrooms.
I don't want to know. And to be honest, I kinda wish this would all go away. But it isn't going to anytime soon because baseball took it's sweet time dealing with this (while getting every last dollar they could off the fans during the McGwire/Sosa era), and they can't even get an anonymous test right (how exactly does it take six days to destroy evidence?)
Besides: at this point, is anybody on that '03 Met team, or any ballplayer for that matter, is really worried about being outed at this point? Chances are, most of those players have already been outed in the Mitchell report (which everyone has pretty much forgotten about), are not nearly as big as Rodriguez and whom nobody will care about, or is Robby Alomar ... who wouldn't be worried about his name being on that list because, umm ... he has bigger problems right about now.
(Editor's note: Way to go Orlando Sentinel ... "Ex-Met great Roberto Alomar"? Seriously? "Ex-Blue Jay great", maybe. "Ex-Indian great", I'd believe. "Ex-Met awful", that's acceptable. "Ex-Met great?" Are you serious? Does anybody do homework anymore? And would he have been an "Ex-Met great" if the story involved Alomar giving a million dollars to overseas orphans? No, because giving money to overseas orphans doesn't get you in the newspaper.)
(Editor's note, the sequel: The author of this blog long ago mused on Barry Bonds. His thoughts on Alex Rodriguez are largely the same. He doesn't believe in asterisks, he thinks the media ... then and now ... have gotten the focus of the issue all wrong. And he thinks the fact that Rodriguez cares way too much about what people think of him has gotten him in all this trouble. Peer pressure, thy name is A-Rod. So this blog's author will not bore you, fine reader, by repeating himself.)
(Editor's note, the other sequel: How often can you come out with a book about drugs and groupies and not even shock anybody? With all the steroids and lawsuits out there, that's exactly what Darryl Strawberry has done. What could he possibly write that wasn't already talked about or implied in Pearlman's book?)
***
I think Ryan Church has won me over:
"It was [shocking what Francesa said], actually. It was one of those things where it made me pissed off, but the season's over and I think he's a Yankee fan, so he's got nothing else to do, so he might as well pick on somebody. I know I felt like crap [from the second concussion] when I came back but everybody's entitled to their own opinion and stuff like that, but I know what I said and what I didn't say. I'll have to get an 'I [Love] NY' shirt, if that makes anybody feel better."Well I feel better already.
8 comments:
You know, the whole thing of nobody being shocked by anyone who took roids thing.. I agreed with that, but I also think some names to me (an ignorant, very bias and uneducated Met fan) could really burn. Guys like Clemens and Bonds mean nothing to me. But what if Mike Piazza was on that list? My favorite player of all time doing the thing i consider cheating. I've heard a few people say they believe he did it.
Anyway, this DOES have a point. Perhaps no name may be able to shock me anymore, but there are some names that would really hurt.
The only name I'm scared of hearing is Mike Piazza. I think I'd got to pieces if that happened. *shudders*
Former Met Great Roberto Alomar is almost as ridiculous as "Former Ray Roberto Alomar.
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=100291&catid=8
He signed with the Devil Rays but retired during spring training and never actually played a game for them.
I agree to some extent with Anonymous, uneducated as he may be. If you have a personal stake in a player, you like to believe that he (and almost you the fan by association) is outside of all of this.
On another note, what the hell is wrong with Bud Selig. Much as I hate A-Rod, and enjoy any controversy that surrounds and may distract him, how can you talk about considering suspension? It pains me to defend A-Roid but he was on a list that MLB agreed to never release. Now it gets leaked, and A-Fraud owns up to it, and you will take action? This will really encourage other players to step forward when confronted. Future headline...Albert Pujols admits that allegations by his 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Crabtree, that he cheated on a spelling test are true. Selig considers suspension. Okay maybe not a great comparison but he shouldn't have cheated, anyway.
It would be pretty funny if the remaining 103 names were largely scrubs. No one would care - it's the EFFECTIVE use of steroids that offends everybody.
I want to know - the players who stayed away from it should be rewarded. I thought Keith's comments were right on the money, although I'm not sure he's the right messenger . . .
I would like to see the list now, if for no other reason than to get it out of the way all at once, instead of dealing with this trickle of information that drags us back into this crap a couple of times a season. Do it like a band aid - or explosive diarrhea.
JP, yeah, that's a bit ridiculous. At the very least that's a Tampa site acknowledging a guy who was a part of the hometown Rays. Of all the teams Alomar played with, a newspaper in Orlando just chooses the Mets out of thin air, and they didn't even mention everyone else. They made it seem like Alomar hit that home run off Matt Mantei. It's different than the papers here mentioning he was a Met.
Unser, yes ... the players who are clean should be rewarded. But you know as well as I do that when/if that list comes out, that's the last thing that anyone is interested in doing: rewarding people.
El, I guess that's my point as well: I don't want to be dragged back to this every two weeks. To me, making the list public doesn't solve or change anything. It would be just to satisfy a witch hunt. If someone gets caught cheating NOW (or since '05), that's different. They deserve to be punished and you have to do something. But to take a big issue with what happened in '03, it's just going through an exercise for the sake of it.
Yeah, A-Rod's an idiot for doing it. But when baseball creates an atmosphere where it's easy to make a decision like that, some of your weaker willed people are going to do it. A-Rod's demon, when it comes down to it, is peer pressure, the need to be accepted. Bonds' demon was jealousy stemming from the McGwire/Sosa lovefest. Clemens' demon? He's a psychopath. All who took them had their demons.
So yeah, I put pretty much all of this on the owners and on MLB. I'm sure you guys know from experiences in your own lives that sludge rolls downhill. If there is a player who disappoints me more than the others it's McGwire. Not only for taking the fifth, but more so because he kept saying at that hearing that he wanted to turn this into a positive and be a shining example to kids ... that's why he wanted to stop talking about the past, right? So he can do something about the future and be a positive role model.
Well, it's been three, four years and we're still waiting for that first steroid PSA from McGwire. McGwire's right in that talking about the past isn't as constructive as fixing the future. He had a chance to turn it around and do something that was worth something for the future, and instead he became a hermit and a coward. Empty promises piss me off.
No, athletes shouldn't be role models. That doesn't mean they aren't.
/long rant
Mike Francesa can go jump in a lake. That is if we can find one big enough.
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