Sports Rant: A-Rod and Steroids

As I continue to hit all the subjects in life that matter to me, today I decided to hit the sports world with my little section of the Blogosphere tonight. Baseball has always had a special place in my heart due to it being involved with one of my earliest childhood memories dating back to my first trip to Dodger Stadium for a game between my beloved "Doyers" against the San Diego Padres. So of course I still follow baseball as my time allows (ESPNNEWS helps a lot) since as any of you that have been following this blog can see, I have far too many interests/vices. 

What has been bothering me for a while is the media's obsession with steroids and how they are prevalent throughout the game. The steroid issue used to bother me in the past when congress called up the Mt. Rushmore of performance enhancers to Capitol Hill so many years ago (Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmiero, and Sammy Sosa) and watched them throw everyone under the bus (Canseco), plead the FIF (McGwire), wag their finger and LIE (Palmiero) and conveniently forget the english language (Sosa). This was escalated when good old Barry Bonds had an ENTIRE BOOK written about his use of "the cream and the clear" and the subsequent PERJURY in federal court and how this was the lead story for an entire year. This was getting annoying. I already hated Bonds as it was since was a member of the "Hated Ones" (San Francisco Giants), I did not need any more reason to add to my hate. 

EVEN later on there was a "Mitchell Report" where they named off a bunch more players who were also guilty of enhancing their performance, including Roger Clemens who made a mockery of everything by DENYING everything in the face of evidence from his former best friend. It had gotten to the point where the only reason Baseball was in the news was because of steroids. Finally, this past season had been very exciting with teams like the Tampa Bay Rays somehow playing well and making the Yankees look like they were tossing cash out the window, the New York Mets choking away for the second year in the row, and Manny being Manny and moving to my backyard and playing like he actually cared for once in his life. This excitement would not last.

So it turns out that the hero that E V E R Y O N E was counting on to erase Barry Bonds from the record book in a couple of years, the one guy who was praised for doing it the "right way", the guy who went on 60 minutes and told Katie Couric that he NEVER took any performance enhancers and NEVER felt overpowered or threatened on the baseball field, Alex Rodriguez, was just as guilty as everyone else. This was revealed from a "confidential" test taken back in 2003 to see how bad the roid problem really was in major league baseball and these "confidential" results were recently made public by Sports Illustrated and now A-Rod is screwed for the rest of his baseball life. 

Now this also basically leaves baseball pretty damn screwed as well. To quote Jim Rome, "It is either assume none of them are doing it or ALL of them are doing it, and since we have proof that SOME do it, that pretty much means we can't rule out ANYONE" If the golden child A-Rod is guilty, then damn could this mean any of my heroes be guilty as well. Will we find out that Manny Ramirez could be using enhancers to extend his dreads? How about Mike Piazza doing it to give his mullet more shine? Will we find out that Tony Gwynn used enhancers to make his GUT bigger? Of course these are ridiculous and baseless accusations but really, it would take stuff like this to surprise me from here on out. 

In the end, I will just try to ignore all this steroid business and enjoy the national pastime, a game that most of you do not realize, is based on FAILURE. If you want an explanation, maybe that will be my next sports rant...