defending a-rod

alex rodriguez came clean yesterday on the allegations of steroid use. the right move for a bad decision. but does it matter? can he ever escape this? is his career tarnished forever?

i'll admit, when the mitchell report came out, or even before when bonds was under constant scrutiny for steroid use, i thought a-rod was exempt. i felt that he was one player who was above performance enhancing drugs. he's a pure talent, and still is. i guess jose canseco got it right a while back when he implicated rodriguez, but there was no evidence and no further scrutiny. i dismissed that as just more of canseco's wild accusations to cling to what little fame he had left. sorry i doubted you jose. you gave me no reason to, ever.

i'm in the camp to say that 3 years of performance enhancing drug use does not tarnish rodriguez's career. he is a natural talent. he was productive and a star before he took p.e.d.'s and was the same afterwards. look at his stats and he was just as productive prior to and after his steroid years. you could argue that without them he would have been just as effective. it's negligible. doesn't make it right that he took them, albeit under a cloud of non-policy by mlb, just that he shouldn't be forever villainized for his actions. if you want, when his career is done, wipe those 3 years from the record and he is still hall of fame worthy, and rightly considered one of the best ever.

the way rodriguez has played this out is that right way. he's admitting his actions, incurring the wrath, and seeking forgiveness from the court of public opinion. this is something no other player has done. not mcgwire, who refused to talk about it. not bonds, who says he never knowingly took them. not clemens or palmeiro who fervently deny it. he is trying to make it right. he's admitted fault, he's accepted his errors, and he will live with how he is going to be perceived. that shows a lot of strength of chracter. not just to come clean, but to have stopped using when he did.

i genuinely believe he is sorry for his actions and regrets them (some will say regret getting caught). he is human, and exercised poor judgement. rodriguez was sincere, and made himself accountable. he should be forgiven. if not forgiven, then not have his entire career diminished for it.

still there's three issues with all this which don't sit right with me.
1) not for public knowledge
the drug tests that led to this outing were supposed to be anonymous, sealed by court order. how did these test results get out, especially when the tests themselves and the players names were never supposed to be linked and lived in separate databases? i'm not trying to justify the actions of any of those 104 players, but they had a right to have this information protected.

the point is, steroid use was rampant and mlb was trying to stop it. the testing survey was done to gauge just how pervasive it is in order to establish rules and disciplinary actions. it was accepted practice and rodriguez, along with scores of others, were part of it because no rules were in place to govern it. good judgement and morality aside, that was the era these players were in and it was common practice. with all the influences (manager, trainers, owners, agents, etc) it was not hard to play the game.

the effect all this is having is to sling more shit at baseball and generally increase the ire around the sport. i don't think that's needed. mlb needs to reconcile with it's fans and people in general and this is a step backwards form that. i'm not saying brush it under the carpet, but the lessons have been learned, the course is correcting, let's move forward.

2) the faultless mlb
mlb has, and rightly so, only been praised for cleaning up the sport, while not being accountable or admonished for their role in the 'steroid era.' it was their inaction, non-policy, and general state of denial that led to an atmosphere where performance enhancing drugs were able to be as epidemic as they were. don't just tear the players down when you can't look in the mirror and accept your role in this situation, mlb. they too easily throw their players, their product mind you, under the bus while throwing their hands up and saying 'don't look at me.'

happy anniversary designated hitter

today marks the 35th anniversary of the dh rule in the american league. not an anniversary i particularly am pleased exists as i'm ardently against the the dh. this article over at si (itself and excerpt from the book 'change up: an oral history of 8 key events that shaped modern baseball) documents how it came about and the key players in the dh's inception. truth be told, i thought the dh as much older than 35 years and defined the difference between the american and national leagues a lot longer.

straight-up, without my own personal biases, i now understand how and why the dh came about. while i still don't agree with it, i know the purpose it did serve. i don't believe that purpose still exists, but the position (if you want to call it that) is too entrenched in the american league to go back now. you have teams that have for years based their whole system on the dh rule and they're just not going to relent on the matter.

to condense the history down, 1973 was a year dominated by pitching and the owners needed to make a change to balance the game more. and don't think it was purely about the sport being balanced either, their ledgers needed to balanced as well. see a pitching dominated league was less interesting than an offense dominated league, so revenues ebbed downward as people came to the ballparks less because it wasn't as exciting to watch. so the owners got together and instituted the dh, though not an original thought. the notion had been around since the early 1900's. and so on april 6th 1973, ron bloomberg (pictured above) of the yankees became a footnote in the annals of baseball as the first designated hitter.

my biggest beef with the dh is one of athleticism, both in symmetry and versatility. a baseball team should consist of 9 players who on the defensive end, take to the field to collect three outs and then offensively take turns batting. there is a completeness and tradition of players and teams who do this. in terms fo value to the team, a specialized player who can only bat really detracts from a team in a lot of situations where other skills are required. essentially, a dh takes the spot of a player who can provide more value to the team in situations outside of just hitting.

in reading this article, i found it interesting how the dh role has evolved over time. it started as a way to generate more offense and make the games more interesting. of course, this was still at a time where the fundamentalist approach of the game was still in fashion. that being get men on base, move them over and bring them home. that compared to the power game of today which has players thinking the long ball. so the dh of old would have been something i could be on board with. they were athletic type guys who drove in runs, got on base themselves, hit for a high average, and otherwise put up all-around decent numbers.

fast forward to today where designated hitters are all about power, with home runs being the key stat to mark a decent dh of today. that's only one facet of the game, and outside of fan excitement, one that has less on-field value than other stats. homers are still rarities (in perspective to other types of hits) so banking on that one long shot every so often isn't as good a return as a solid hitter, who when not clearing the bases those few times is contributing in other ways, like getting on base himself or moving other runners over.

as i will always do, there are points to support the dh, which i will share. it extends a players career, provided that they were a good batter. look at george brett or paul molitor, they got a couple extra years by moving over to dh. now tis point is only reserved for those players that can continue to perform at a high level at the plate. no one should extend a career if it is out of vanity or ego or something else if they aren't performing, so becoming a dh to extend your career better be for the right reasons.

proponents will also say it alleviates the demands on the pitcher as they are the only ones on the field who do as much constant and tiresome work. i'll give em that, but today's pitchers are a lot more coddled than in the past when they did have to bat. so perhaps they could toughen up some. besides, no one expects the pitcher to really do anything at the plate anyway, so get in there and take a couple swings.

to quote the movie bull durham, kevin costner's character says: "there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter." i couldn't agree more. it's a hack rule that further babies half the pitchers.

the 'mitchell report'

what is one to think when a 400+ page report is compiled naming and detailing some 80+ players allegedly taking performance enhancing drugs? oh wait a second, i seem to have been too fair in assessing an 'allegedly' in there. because george mitchell and the media certainly weren't so fair in what hit the front pages in the last couple days. mitchell for taking the testimony at face value and presenting it aas fact and the media for being so definitive in their accusations and shakedown of the players. particularly roger clemens. i've waited a couple days so i can include some appraisals and admissions in here as well.

i'm not saying this is all a complete load of shit. i do believe there is steroid use, and believe it was quite rampant. what i don't believe is in tarnishing a players name on hersey and saying a player took steroids without hard facts to back that claim up. the article that most closely mirrors my own thoughts on the matter belong to that of jayson stark over at espn.com. the emphasis of his article is to elaborate on the single most glaring omission in this whole debacle - that what was in the mitchell report is mostly devoid of actual fact and credibility.

i'm personally on the fence about whether this whole exercise needed to be conducted in the first place. i don't know if drudging up the past does any particular good. there's certainly a lot of information missing and even if it was to be unearthed, the players can't be punished retroactively anyway. especially for an offence that wasn't technically against the rules anyway. so all this serves is to destroy the names of a number of truly great players and the game as a whole. but i think it was an important illustration of just how pervasive performance enhancers were and the blind eye turned by all sides within baseball. a starting off point for which to change going forward. but we all knew that anyway.

please don't confuse what i'm saying here. i'm not defending steroid users in any way. i think taking steroids is wrong and those who do take them are cheaters. all i want is complete information, and that will never happen. many of these players are heroes to a lot of people and to call them out without hard evidence is unfair to them. i believe that's the definition of slander.

in this situation, there is a big gap in knowledge of what we hear in the media. a lot of people don't know the whole story, all we get is the sensational headlines. yes, steroids are bad, but for instance, human growth hormone is lumped in with them. it's assumed hgh is in the same camp because we don't hear about what these substances are. hgh is not a steroid, nor is it illegal. does anyone hear that? andy pettite came forward and admitted to use of hgh but not steroids. in his statement pettite asserted that he "wasn't looking for an edge, he was looking to heal." that's what hgh does, but to the greater populace, this point gets lost or is understood. they're all just cheaters.

i'm a big fan of baseball and i hope this report works to clean the sport up and bring integrity back to america's pastime. to me the names aren't tarnished because i don't know the whole truth or maybe even any of it. no one does but the players themselves. the game is tarnished and everyone involved at all levels of the game are to blame. the owners, the players, the trainers, the coaches, everyone. they all let this get to the point it is today and are paying the price. i hope the sport can recover and steps are taken to ensure the integrity of the sport is recovered and maintained going forward.

the postseason

tonight is the start of the 2007 mlb playoffs. many of you aren’t baseball fans and don’t think that playoff baseball is any different. but it is. everything changes once the first 162 games are finished.

as an avid baseball fan, i can admit that there can be slow games, maybe even boring ones. not in the playoffs. something magical happens. the baseball gods sprinkle a healthy dose of excitement and energy down on the 8 diamonds fortunate enough to make in. i find moreso than in any other pro sport, the games enhances so much more come playoff time.

take for example the one game playoff between the rockies and padres monday night. two teams fighting for their playoff lives. the game had everything you could dream of: controversy, grand slams, extra innings, blown saves, back and forth lead changes, stolen season records, blown calls, late rallies, defensive blunders and when it was all said and done, you were riveted for 4 hours and 40 minutes and didn’t even know it.

this year’s crop of teams all look to be a gritty bunch who will be battling hard. you have the improbable rockies who had to win 13 of their last 14 games just to get into a tie-breaker situation, the yankess who battled back from 14 games down in the division to almost taking it (and i hate to say anything nice about the yanks), the phillies who hung in and toppled the mets (that was equally the mets fault, but philly still capitalized), the d-backs who seemingly came out of left field (pun intended) and the sweet lou’s cubs who turned it around from 2006 and scrapped with milwaukee all season for their division.

and here’s to a national league team winning it all