The Trouble With Not Washing Your Hands
Cheating is wrong. Period.
I don't care if you're injecting yourself with Human Growth Hormone to shatter Henry Aaron's record, loading your bat with cork or putting pine tar on your hands. You are a cheater and unfit for professional baseball.
The trouble is I am more or less alone in this belief.
Think about it: the Bay area disagrees with me. Their hero is a cheater. St. Louis disagrees. They are still broken hearted by how their hero looked so small in front of the Senate. Chicago booed their bat corker out of town, but it wasn't for corking his bat.
New York doesn't agree with me. Graig Nettles and Jason Giambi's popularity are proof of that (for those not in the know, Graig Nettles filled his baseball bat with super balls, which once bounced all over the infield in a game when his bat broke).
San Diego, Atlanta and all the other cities where Gaylord Perry and Phil Niekro played also disagree.
And now we can add Detroit.
I'm still rooting for the Tigers. But this Series, like all of baseball is once again tainted -- stained like Kenny Rogers' hand.
I found it poetic, however, that this should happen against a Tony LaRussa team. Tony LaRussa, whom baseball experts consider a great manager and a "good baseball man", managed young players that are now household names like Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi. He managed the Cardinals in McGwire's '98 season. And he defended his stars time and again.
Perhaps he didn't insist the umpires check Rogers for that reason. Perhaps he was afraid Jim Leyland would return the favor and force Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds to pee in a cup.
Baseball was never a clean sport. It seems this, the 102nd World Series, is the showcase of what's always been wrong with it.
I don't care if you're injecting yourself with Human Growth Hormone to shatter Henry Aaron's record, loading your bat with cork or putting pine tar on your hands. You are a cheater and unfit for professional baseball.
The trouble is I am more or less alone in this belief.
Think about it: the Bay area disagrees with me. Their hero is a cheater. St. Louis disagrees. They are still broken hearted by how their hero looked so small in front of the Senate. Chicago booed their bat corker out of town, but it wasn't for corking his bat.
New York doesn't agree with me. Graig Nettles and Jason Giambi's popularity are proof of that (for those not in the know, Graig Nettles filled his baseball bat with super balls, which once bounced all over the infield in a game when his bat broke).
San Diego, Atlanta and all the other cities where Gaylord Perry and Phil Niekro played also disagree.
And now we can add Detroit.
I'm still rooting for the Tigers. But this Series, like all of baseball is once again tainted -- stained like Kenny Rogers' hand.
I found it poetic, however, that this should happen against a Tony LaRussa team. Tony LaRussa, whom baseball experts consider a great manager and a "good baseball man", managed young players that are now household names like Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi. He managed the Cardinals in McGwire's '98 season. And he defended his stars time and again.
Perhaps he didn't insist the umpires check Rogers for that reason. Perhaps he was afraid Jim Leyland would return the favor and force Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds to pee in a cup.
Baseball was never a clean sport. It seems this, the 102nd World Series, is the showcase of what's always been wrong with it.
posted by E-Luv at 8:40 AM
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