My Sunday Feeling

Sometimes when you write stuff, even stuff like this, you just don't know where to begin. So let's just state the obvious: The baseball world was shocked last week by the revelation that golden boy apparent Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003. Well, shocked is too strong a word. Nothing save the revelation that Joe Torre wears women's underwear could shock baseball anymore.



After all, A-Rod told ESPN in his sorta kinda admission, " Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose." No kidding. As Tom Verducci points out in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, " Linked to drugs are two thirds of the MVP winners from 1995 through 2003, five of the top 12 home run hitters of all time and three of the four players ever to smash 50 homers in a season more than twice." Actually, as I type this deathless prose it occurs to me that the drug culture in baseball wasn't "very loose" at all. Drug use was practically the norm.



So how do I feel about this? I am categorically and positively ambivalent about it all by now. I guess. My initial feelings when I heard the report were ones of extreme schadenfreude at the notion that the Yankees signed A-Rod to a 9 year contract extension so as to ensure that the home run record held by fellow juicer suspect Barry Bonds would be broken by another guy in pinstripes. Which may yet happen. So long as the Yankees' fairly inert bats keep runners from contaminating the bases or they continue not to go deep in the playoffs A-Rod can be counted to put them over the wall. And yet, you can bet that they would not have given him the extension had they known this. Now the half-billion dollar payroll they will bring to Spring Training will be overshadowed by this sideshow at a time when the Steinbrenners are trying to get folks to come out to the new Yankee Stadium.



This could not possibly happen to a nicer bunch of guys. A-Rod and the Yankees are made for each other.



Do I feel that his numbers are sufficiently tainted by the years he was juicing that there should be the proverbial asterisk by them? Nah. Drugs or no drugs, Alex Rodriguez is one of the most spectacularly talented players in the history of the game. You have to think that he would have come close to putting up the same numbers during his steroid years as he would have had he abstained. Unlike Bonds, A-Rod turned to steroids while he was on top of his game. Barry Bonds was as agile as a light pole his last three seasons.



Besides, baseball stats are the most impressionistic in professional sports. To discount the home runs during the steroid years you would have to take away the low ERAs of the pitchers in the so-called "high mound" years. You would have to discount the home runs in the "live baseball" years. And you would have to take into account the crackerbox stadiums built in the nineties where checked swings produce shots that reach the warning track in the opposite field.



I guess when it comes down to it, I'm just exhausted by all of this. Exhausted but not surprised. And I know this, it is easy to deride Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens as nickle-plated phonies. They are every inch of that, and in the case of the first two they are despicable human beings, Bonds being the worst of an exceptionally bad lot.



But steroids could not have possibly proliferated in the culture without Major League Baseball and the player's union turning a blind eye to what was obvious to even the casual fan. Indeed, it is alleged that Gene Orza of the union tipped Rodriguez off to when random tests were scheduled. If he did it for A-Rod, and Orza denies it, he did it for others. They were all in it together in a very real sense. Don't believe me? Re-read the quote from Tom Verducci and ponder these things in your heart.



Spring training will be interesting this year. Maybe they will actually talk about baseball some.

Shameless Plug Department: I will read another story for "Tales From The South" which will be broadcast on February 27th on KUAR FM 98 at 7pm CST. It will also be simulcast on the Internet at www.kuar.org. Tune in if you can. Maybe you will hear something you like.