April 4th, 2005 by TEX
Hurray, baseball season is here!
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a pretty great winter. Maybe the best winter of my life so far. But boy am I happy that spring and baseball season are here.
Watching the Yankees shellac the thrice-cursed Red Sox last night was just lovely. I felt a little bad for David Wells… but only a little. The grand order of the universe was upset last year when the Red Sox won the World Series. They were clearly not the better team playing for the Championship. It had to be voodoo. So it was only fitting that they should take a proper pasting at the hands of the Yanks and Randy Johnson last night. Now things seem to be back in order.
Really though, the single best thing about the Red Sox losing last night is that it may portend a season-opening losing streak, and since that team is a bunch of ninnies about superstitions a losing streak may portend haircuts and shaves in the future of that scruffy bunch of dirtbags.
I really didn’t think it was possible, but Mark Bellhorn actually looked more ragged, ruffled and downright filthy than Darren Erstad. And the sight of Johnny Damon makes me want to leap from my chair through the TV screen with a set of clippers and scissors in my hands. *yuck*
Now you may think I’m just ranting and griping here but there’s more to it than that. The majority of the Red Sox players have chosen to look as if they have no respect for the game, no respect for their team and no respect for their fans. This is not stylish scruffiness in the mode of the early 1970s Oakland A’s clubs. It’s just faux good-ol’ boy, which is another way it manages to be insulting. These guys are not good-ol’ boys. They play in New England for crying out cupcakes. Bathe! Get haircuts! Tuck in your shirts and wear hats that fit you!
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March 19th, 2005 by TEX
This whole congressional steroid hearing debacle makes me want to hurl.
Over and over and over again all anyone says about this is that the players cheated and that the integrity of Major League Baseball is at stake if the truth doesn’t come out.
Um, no.
There were, until very recently, no rules against doping in baseball. None. If there was no rule against it, it wasn’t cheating. It was wrongheaded and probably life-threatening to the players who used ‘roids, human growth hormone and whatnot, but it wasn’t cheating. Corking your bat was cheating. Throwing a spitball was cheating. But not performance enhancing drug use.
And, by the way, baseball has always been about skirting the line on rules. Exactly how many times do you think Sammy Sosa stepped up to the plate with a corked bat without getting caught before that humiliating incident where his corked stick exploded all over the infield? And long-time fans openly praise Gaylord Perry for throwing spitballs throughout his career. He was crafty.
The fans want to see home runs and they want to phenomenal feats of strength. This isn’t your father’s baseball anymore. Fat guys struggling to make it around the bases aren’t acceptable anymore. The fans want to see men with tree trunk-sized biceps knock the ball halfway to Mozambique. They want athleticism and punch. You can probably thank the popularity of the NFL and NBA for that. But for better or worse the style of the game has changed, and as Bud Selig said, it will continue to do so and should continue to do so in order to thrive and continue to be culturally relevent.
These hearings are a spectacle and a diversion. If the House of Representatives have nothing better to do than interogate baseball players then I think we ought to send them home and stop paying them. This nonsense about protecting the integrity of the game is bullshit. And there are equal measures of excrement being flung about by the House members who insist this is about protecting impressionable youth from dangerous drugs. Horse hockey!
If Congress is so concerned about the examples set by athletes for our children why are there no congressional hearings where thousands of pro athletes of all sports are called before the Congress and the media to explain why they are so commonly found to be beating their wives and girlfriends? How about a congressional investigation of all public figures to determine how many of them cheat on their taxes?
I’m sorry but this so-called steroid scandal is a tempest in a teapot. Congress might as well be trying to get down to the bottom of exactly how many Hollywood stars have had plastic surgery.
Posted in Baseball, Politics, American Politics, Sports, Opinion | No Comments »
