Baseball

I am not religious, but I do admit I worship at an altar quite frequently in the summer months. My devotion is genuine, and I derive great comfort from every service, although the sermon is not always one I agree with.

I'm a big Dodgers fan.

So, currently my favorite sport is embroiled in scandal, thanks to PEDs: Performance Enhancing Drugs. Steroids and HGH - Human Growth Hormone were widely used in the sport beginning in the late 80s early 90s. Yes, that's so twentieth century of them wasn't it. Anyway, the report has all the sports media in a lather. I am not very worked up about it myself, and here's why:

It's common knowledge many players were juiced. I remember one year Fox's ads for the All-Star game featured ballplayers as animated superheroes. Sammy Sosa was one of the prominent figures, and his freakish cartoon body was not all that different than his actual physique. You had to be blind to think Mcgwire and Canseco weren't taking something, and let's not forget Barry.

Now the management didn't have specific knowledge, but they guessed. There wasn't much they could do about it, because they didn't have testing. They couldn't get testing because that was part of the collective bargaining agreement with the player's union, and the union was pretty powerful. And ultimately, juiced players sold tickets, lots of them. So there wasn't really a financial incentive to fix the problem.

I think the outrage started coming to light when Barry started approaching the hallowed home run record. The absurdity of his freakish body (when compared to his pre-doping days) was readily apparent to anyone with eyes. And the fact is, you don't get stronger/faster/better when you age. We all know it. So against that backdrop, and the occasional untimely death, Congress and George W thought that this was important enough to investigate. GW mentioned it in a state of the union for crying out loud. Only one example of his many stupidities. Congress put on an unsatisfactory show, and told MLB that they needed to get their act together, or else.

I don't really know why baseball has an antitrust exemption, the history of it is too arcane for me. But I do know that MLB doesn't want to lose it, and threats from Congress do get results. Thus Selig commissioned the Mitchell Report. So today we have a handful of players named, and reputations ruined. Selig should come out and say, the problem was there, it was pervasive, and we are all to blame. I'm sorry. Anyone who took steroids has immunity from prosecution, just tell us your story so we can figure out how to get this stuff out of baseball.

They won't do that of course, and this can only cause more useless media attention and probably very little resolution. We'll see.

My miniplan ticket invoice is here, I have til the 11th to pay. Any guesses what I do?

Song of the day:
White Stripes, You don't know what love is