Interesting Article on Optimism in America

Joe Mathews on Zócalo Public Square wrote an interesting article about optimism in baseball, and also in America.

 

It speaks to the doe-eyed optimism we usually experience on Opening Day, the time when all teams are still tied for first and anything is possible.  And then it tears it down as a sort of “ignorance is bliss” fairy tale.  Mathews suggests we stop holding the game up on a pedestal and instead embrace it and all it’s flaws.  In a way, I think this view has been forced upon us lately, with all the cheating and steroids and looking the other way.  You see some stick their head in the sand and try to forget Andy Pettitte, Barry Bonds, or Alex Rodriguez were, or are, cheating and you see others desperately cling to their innocence and claim their favorite player, whether Piazza or Jeter or someone else, was clean the whole time.  Perhaps it’s better to accept the flaws and the corruption and stop pretending it’s a game played between gentleman and instead a battle of players doing anything they can, against the rules or not, to win.

 

A point he makes about the Mets that a lot of people don’t seem to be bringing up is that a lot of the Mets actions over the past couple of decades have been funded via Madoff profits.  This is perhaps a simplistic look, as the Mets certainly would’ve invested elsewhere and still signed players and make moves, but it’s not a stretch to say that Tom Glavine’s acquisition was funded by Bernie Madoff.

Anyway, it’s an interesting read and it’s not that long. Check it out.

 

 

Still Cheating

The baseball players that decided to cheat, especially the ones that cheated this century, are unlikely to have stopped cheating because of testing. In past decades these things were almost universally, if secretly, accepted in baseball so It’s harder to be annoyed at any one guy. Everyone was cheating to get that edge. But as Balco happened, as we started to talk about making baseball clean, many people continued to cheat. The guys that have been caught, A-Rod among them, aren’t likely to have stopped because of the 2004 testing policy, especially considering how weak the original penalty was. More likely these guys, used to taking something undetectable that gave them a boost, simply switched to something else undetectable. Many of them are wealthy and have access to many trainers and resources that can provide these things. So even when A-Rod tries to tell us, as guys like Pettite have told us in the past, that it was a momentary mistake, they only did it once, they’re clean now, it’s hard for me to believe. I’m sure most of them switched to HGH or something else that is undetectable in today’s drug tests.

Mitchell Report

I’m sure you’re all just dying to hear what I have to say about the Mitchell Report. Well I wrote my TOTK.com article on it this week. Big Names, Bigger Needles.

The report is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m amused that Roger Clemens is scared of needles, but it’s very sad that it seems like the only reason he didn’t take HGH in addition to steroids is because he didn’t like the “Belly button shot”.