Friday, December 21, 2007
Roger, Pete, Barry & M.C.
Charlie Hustle and The Rocket are getting some airplay these days, Roger for his prominent place in the Mitchell Report, and Pete for his never-ending quest to rehabilitate his reputation. M.C. is going to offer his take on these characters: every time I hear them speak my knee-jerk response is always "shut the hell up!" Man, they are clowns. But, you know what? That's cool. I'm not paying jocks for eloquence. (I'll leave that--eloquence, that is--to the bloggers.) I have a sadistic desire to see Roger thrown under the Steroid Bus, because my man BLB got royally screwed by the whole mess, but I learned forgiveness in Catholic school. So, you know something Rog? I'm cool. If you skate, you skate. It'd be nice if Barry got a break, but I'm through hoping for sanity and perspective. And speaking of perspective, Ol' Pete is using the "I ain't as bad as those fellers" defense, a tried-and-true rhetorical device, one I've employed many times myself when defending some point in an argument. Funny thing--he has a point. He may be a low-life and a dumbshit, but he was one hell of a ballplayer. And he should be in the increasingly irrelevant Hall of Lame (Bowie Kuhn? Really? Yeeesh!). As far as MLB goes, he got his punishment, his lifetime ban. And he probably deserved it, but I'm reserving judgment on that after seeing what MLB (and the BBWAA, for that matter) considers "evidence." (A must read: Bill James' Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame). Anecdotally, it is hard to picture another player in my lifetime who attacked the game with Rose's abandon, and whose will to win bordered on psychotic. Damn, if I had been a Reds fan I would have LOVED Rose. Another Giants fan I knew once said "Bonds is exactly the kind of player I would hate if he played for someone else." Yeah, no kidding. You always hate the guys who kill you (hello, Ron Cey). Betting on your team is a worse sin than PEDs, Pete, sorry. But, I'm willing to cut you some slack because I don't believe you "conspired" to destroy the "integrity of the game." Nor do I believe you were a enough of a high-roller for organized crime to take you seriously, or that what happened "between the lines" was ever realistically threatened. You were just another clueless schmuck. With each passing day, with the silly utterances from Clemens, Inc., Jayson Stark, Gene Wojciechowski, Jim Bunning, Jim Bouton, and the posturing smugness from Curt Schilling, I think you have plenty of company.
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4 comments:
I believe that one of the names that was named today (12/21) associated with PEDs was........wait for it.....Pete Rose Jr.
I think that any type of gambling scandal is far worse than a PED thing when considering HOFers. First of all, gambling is THE SIN and every minor leaguer knows it. There is all kinds of history with little ambiguity. Gamble and you are through. The PED issue is totally cloudy...is it legal? is everybody doing it? etc. Another thing is that using PED means you are TRYING to IMPROVE (sounds noble to me) whereas with gambling you are only really effective if you are trying to do poorly, after all you can always control that. Gamblers are blatantly disregarding the decency of the game for individual profit and PEDers are covertly trying to stay competitive and help their team/career.
Bottom line: No way Pete goes in the bogus hall. Roger and Barry do go in, after a delay.
Bottom bottom line: the HOF is a joke and no longer worthy of discussion
Saturday, NY Times. College football mostly over, bowl games mostly not yet started, pro football not until Sat. evening and Sunday. Time for more spin and blah blah woof about steroids. But here is a little perspective from George Vecsey:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/sports/baseball/23vecsey.html?_r=1&ref=baseball&oref=slogin
"It’s like the current fuss over Britney Spears’s sister, what’s-her-name, who, I gather from the tabloids and the tube, is pregnant at 16. This event is now supposed to provide a forum for sitting down and talking with our children about teenage promiscuity. Setting up ballplayers as some elite caste is just as dangerous as taking our moral examples from some teenager who was probably being exploited just by being put on television."
Oh, and Merry Christmas to both of our readers.
Thanks to Zo for the link to the Vecsey NYTimes article -- and here's an non-expert-on-statistics baseball fan who reads you all. I recall when Shaquille O'Neal startled everyone by stating, 'I am a professional basketball player. I am not required to be your kid's role model. That's your job.' Pete Rose played terrific ball -- and he gambled on it. That IS a crime, in every way and he is a sleezebag to this day for doing it and acting like it was no big deal. This day's bruhaha is rife with amorphous attitudes on all sides, but was it a 'crime' -- I think that's a sanctimonious judgment call by a lot of people who,if they are setting themselves up as instant morality experts, should first check out their own integrity fiber. Thanks to M.C. for starting this and J.C. for his pithy commentary as well -- and The Mystic Zo for joining in. So -- Happy New Year -- and, hopefully, happy new baseball season. So rants your 3rd (?) reader.
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