Back Acne

oooooooooooooo

(stuffs data underneath hat)

and it would be hard to tarnish my youth.

And Mgwire hit 49 homers as a skinnyish rookie.

Nevertheless, I though the whole thing with him, Sosa Bonds and Plmeiro etc. was cartoonish. Do i think it is cheating? Yes. Any more so then getting a cortisone shot? hell, I am not into getting down and dirty on the fine points of this topic. I will take the cheap ass Potter Stewart route.

These guys possibly ruined their health. Their choice. I guess Sandy Koufax may have ended up with arthritis in his elbow, Bench in his knees,. it isa tough game.

I do not like the aspect of other guys having to choose whether to harm themselves to compete on the level of these other guys.

If your eyes aren’t wide open about life and gets shattered by some crap in baseball, you’d be a naif to begin with (I don’t mean “you”, but one, anyone).

But I prefer my sluggers with giant beer guts a la Harmon Killebrew and Frank Howard and Ruth. Or with wrists of steel like Henry Aaron, from, I dunno, swinging an axe or lifting blocks of ice with tongs a s kid (that’s actually a Joe Lewis story).

Bonds, MgWire and Sosa? They looked like complete idiots to me, albeit rich ones, and I really did not give a flying rat’s ass about that home run chase.

Did I feel cheated? No. I just didn’t care about it. Plenty of folks did, though. baseball made money. Shocker, the owners and players are greedy as anyone else in this life. It attacted the casual fan and non-fan. Or, to the young at the time, became part of their fandom.

Not knocking that. And there is an aspect of, as some became more knowledgeable about what counted in the game, homers and walks being a huge part of it, what is wrong with guys hitting a buncha homers? people like it. I mean, folks always knew homers and walks counted a lot. But I do think that gets glorofied a bit compared to the rest of the game. I do prefer to see a Reyes triple than most homers. Although MgWire brought back memories of kingman’s blasts. :)

I saw Robert Deniro once on letterman, and letterman said oh, did you hear about David Wells’ perfect game. He said what’s that. Letterman says no hits, no walks. Deniro said no hits, no walks, that sounds boring.

Anyway, long-winded, but I fall in a middle camp, i guess. I don’t feel cheated. I don’t miss it. For players, i think it is better it be policed, and i don’t think it should be tolerated. As afan, i didn’t like it, but knew, sans evidence, that it was going on. I didn’t need the evidence. I could see. people aren’t idiots. And people at the time kept talking about needing evidence. Why? I am just watching, I am not a prosecutor. And it turnwed out Joe Blow Idiot fan was right. They WERE all juicing. Most of the big ones.

The question for baseball really is what does the casual, marginal fan or non-fan think, or really what do they do. Wil they go to games knowing all this or not. That’s all abseball cares about. Me, I will watch some games either way. But i didn’t go out of my way to watch Mgwire, Sosa, Bonds et al chase records. You couldn’t help but see it if you watched baseball tonight or sportscenter.. Those guys are kinda persona non grata. That’s it. That’s their comeuppance. Cards don’t welcome Mgwire back, if i understand that correctly. I don’t care either way. he has to live with how people feel. you can’t legislate that or say fans that now don’t like him are wrong.

Although the sentiment is whipped up by some of the bigger hack writers. I don’t care for that either. fans ripped off? Please. Spare us.