Today may become known as the darkest day in Major League Baseball history. Don't get me wrong...There have been dark days before. There have been days when things could be a lot better...There have been days marred with scandal such as the days of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the White Sox. There have been days marked with greed, such as the strikes. But today quite possibly is the darkest of them all. The Mitchell report came out today and confirmed what almost all of us who are baseball fans already knew, but deep down never wanted to know...Major League Baseball is filled with cheaters. Today we realized, or maybe just couldn't hide from any longer, the fact that the last 10+ years in professional baseball are marked forever in history with an asterick. It's not just Bonds...It's far bigger than Canseco, McGwire, and Palmeiro. It's big and it encompasses all of baseball. Sure they only named around 80 players specifically, but now we all know that this is a widespread problem. They named 80 players, with a tie to EVERY SINGLE MAJOR LEAGUE TEAM. They named General Managers and Trainers and Owners who swept things under the rug simply to keep the cash flow coming...The biggest devastation for me as a Yankee fan is the involvement of Clemens and Pettite, two of my all-time favorites. I cannot believe these guys were implicated...I guess deep down I knew they were recovering from injuries faster than one could realistically do without some help. But I didn't want to believe it...And two of my favorites, two of the truly good guys in the game were caught cheating...And it is so much bigger than those two guys...Today we, the baseball fans in America, lost what little innocence we had left. Steroids has not affected a few players in the game. It has not even began to infiltrate the game. Steroids and the use of illegal performance enhancers have not tainted the game. They have ruined it. Today we found out that steriods are the bedmate of baseball - Not just players, but management and owners and trainers. All so that the money keeps rolling in...And little kids all over America got a message that you do whatever it takes to get the big contract...even cheating. There have been some hard days for professional baseball, but this cloud may very well be the darkest one yet...
2 comments:
I watched a lot of the espn coverage this morning, and Buster Olney answered a question along the lines of "How do fans move forward from here?" and he said, "They stop believing in the fairy tale."
I'm not swearing off baseball or refusing to ever see a game again...but going to games is going to start to feel like going to a movie: let the overpaid celebrities entertain me, but don't ever pretend that what they do for a living makes them any more worthy of hero status.
i love that graphic
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