Letters to the Editor
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McNamee had a motive to turn in Clemens
I don't necessarily believe Clemens, but let's get real about McNamee. He made an accusation that can never be proved or disproved, so he will never be able to be accused of lying. Mitchell was clearly looking for a big fish, and only a Clemens would do. Without Clemens, Mitchell's report would look even more petty than it already does. McNamee would stay out of jail and be able to console himself that Clemens would do no time, although he would be put through a lot of personal anguish. Many people in his spot would do and have done the same. It's known as "our system of justice". Ultimately is was Mitchell's need for the big fish that had him naming Clemens without any evidence whatsoever, on the say-so of a guy with a lot to lose if he didn't "cooperate".
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Clemons
Roger seems quite comfortable in sticking to his lie because he knows the only people who have knowledge of his steroid use are his trainer and probably Andy Pettite. Since he's probably sworn his friend Andy to secrecy his lawyers have told him he's safe to lie his ass off on TV
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Roger Clemens
His performance on 60 Minutes was totally unconvincing. He's going to have to better. Also as pointed out, him taking Vioxx 'like Skittles' does not seem to be the practice of an upstanding athelete
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Actually, the fans do share the blame.
Tom 70 said, "All we're supposed to do is enjoy the game, and that's all we can do. We can't take responsibility for it."
I have to disagree with that. Fans are the ultimate source of revenue for the sport, and as such have a very real responsibility for it, albeit one that's detached from our intent, and thus frustrating.
I should distinguish between being a fan of baseball in the general sense, and being a paying fan of baseball. If you simply like baseball and watch it on broadcast TV or radio without buying any MLB merchandise or, for that matter, the products being advertised during the games (and you're not a Nilesen family), then you're not contributing to the problem in any direct way.
But as soon as you spend one dollar on baseball (or any other sport), by going to a game or buying that official MLB jersey or cap, or in any other way putting any money at all into the baseball machine, you're casting a vote for the status quo. Whether or not that's your intent, that's the result.
And I mean that in the literal sense. Tom also opines, "we have no way to act collectively rather than individually (which has no impact)." That's not really true either, because the sum total of individual actions is the collective action. It's just like casting a vote in an election. One vote may not seem to matter, but it's the sum total of all those individual votes that creates reality.
It's a common form of denial, especially in this country these days, for the individual to resist responsibility for the big picture. What difference does it make for me to litter, drive a gas-guzzling vehicle, buy water in plastic bottles? None at all, if you were the only person doing it. But when millions of people make the same choice, it has a huge impact, and the only way to have an impact on that is to change one's own behavior, and encourage others to do the same if you believe it's necessary.
This isn't to say that fans are the ultimate source of problems, which is perhaps the idea that offends Tom. None of us want our sports teams and favorite athletes to do bad things. Fans present the baseball machine with enormous sums of money, and the businessmen and athletes who are inclined to avarice make the choice to run wild with that, to do whatever it takes to generate and hoard as much money as they possibly can. Winning it all even comes second to generating revenue, and then the distortions of normalcy (decency?), like steroids and $250 million contracts, start appearing like grotesque mutations.
So we're not making the drugs, not selling the drugs, and not taking the drugs. But we're slipping our favorite addicts a little cash here and there, out of affection or support, and thus helping the cycle to continue.
I wish I knew what the best answer is. I'm not sure whether a boycott would help. More than anything else, this seems to be an inevitable revealing of human nature, and what can you do about that?
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A phony gun-deck job
is what Captain Queeg would have called the Mitchell report. Not that Captain Queeg is a fine upstanding character, but his complaint about a subordinate's report in The Caine Mutiny rings true: "It tells me nothing I didn't know before, and explains nothing I wanted explained."
This latest round in the steroids furor is more meaningless dross, and does nothing to address baseball's real problem: what will be allowed, what won't, and how will the league enforce those policies? I mean, really enforce them, not just pay lip service to a policy developed by a focus group.
On another note, notwithstanding this season's achievements, the Patriots have been looking mighty beatable lately. No doubt they are bearing down hard on prep for the Jaguars, and anyone favoring them to win the whole shebang isn't crazy, but let's not engrave their name on the Lombardi Trophy just yet, King.
* I just saw a headline proclaiming Clemens' intent to sue McNamee. Wonderful.
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Injecting Speedballs
You know what? Star jocks are the pathetic narcissists the rest of us all thought they were in high school. But it's seedier than that, the doping athletes are the poster boys for the general increase in corruption in American society, ushered in by the baby boomers of the 1960's. You’d think the hippy ideal of equality for all would have been taken further in our society by the phony boomers but it wasn’t to be; just their drug message got through. The drug message benefits the wealthy; the average guy is criminalized for illegal drug use while the rich get to extend their playing careers and break long-standing sporting records making criminal amounts of money off of drug use, like drug pushers do. Outing your fellow drug using player makes you a dirty rat? A stoolie? When did American sporting institutions start behaving like the mafia? Like shady criminals? Performance enhancing drug use in sport is wrong and should be prosecuted by district attorneys as rabid as a dope-taking athlete in a steroid rage. What a society we live in the accused millionaire athletes say? Yeah, we make trans-fats and soda pop illegal and pay athletes tens of millions of dollars for using performance enhancing drugs. You'd like to be able to tell your kids that someone made it to the top based on their character, persistence, practice, and natural ability, not on testosterone, HGH, and steroid injections, by being corrupt. I take my hat off to Marion Jones, she has more cajones than most pro male athletes. The slender gentleman Hank Aaron and the pear shaped Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris remain my baseball heroes. Where did you go, Joe DiMaggio? America's been taken over by crybaby wrecked'ems.