Letters to the Editor
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Culpability
If a fan hates the DH rule and complains about it every chance he gets, are you really saying that if he spends any money on baseball then he’s partly to blame for the DH rule? And what about any positive things that a fan might think baseball does, such as charity work or boosting civic pride or who knows what—wouldn’t boycotting baseball mean voting against all these things? It’s not nearly as simple or straightforward as casting a vote in an election.
It's funny, I never heard fans complain about steroids-- especially during the McGuire home run sweepstakes-- the way they bitch about the DH rule. (In fact, I said something about McGuire juicing way back when and my baseball-loving relatives acted like I was crazy.)
Would a boycott have been the answer back then? I don't know, but I don't think all the commemorative merchandise ball fans snapped up to celebrate McGwire helped discourage steroid use, that's for sure.
All this back-and-forth really does, though, is focus us on the exact thing the Mitchell Report claimed not to want us to focus on: what went wrong in the past. Selig's leadership is nothing but a national joke, but it'd be nice to see some other leadership in MLB saying, "well, that sucked, but here's the best way to move forward and preserve the game we all love so much." I'm not holding my breath.
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And furthermore
Mitchell's urge to focus on the future instead of the past (which King endorses) doesn't sit so well with me, the more I think about it, and it's of a piece with the idea that fans (i.e. everybody) should shoulder some blame for the steroid mess. It's really just another way of saying that nobody should have to take responsibility for whatever went wrong, regardless of whatever important positions they held, because we couldn't bear to actually investigate and accuse and punish all these fine upstanding people. There's no price to be paid for fucking up, and the parallels to our current political situation are hard for me to overlook.
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@teaparty420
Marry me.
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Seahawks rout?
"The Seattle Seahawks routed Washington 35-14, ending that team's emotional late-season run."
Perhaps you didn't watch it--let alone watch it waiting for the hometown gladiators to fall to dead-guy magic--but this game was anything but a rout. The Hawks scored 22 points in the last 6 minutes to make it look that way, but with seven minutes remaining in the fourth, it was 14-13 Skins. And then NBC flashed a graphic that Joe Gibbs's teams were 17-0 when they had a fourth-quarter lead, and... well, now they're 17-1. Thanks, Truf.
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buckeye title
looking forward to reading about it tomorrow.
I want everyone to watch the 2 teams tonight and wonder how many times each would lose out of 100 to stanford.
Beanie Wells - 28 carries, 173 yards, 2 touches.
The only use for the NFL is to give ex-buckeyes something to do with their sundays.
Vernon Gholstin will make millions tonight.
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Mitchell Report
Why the crying for ballplayers named in the report and the statement that they can't "defend themselves"? Poor babies. Actually, before the report was issued every single ballplayer was contacted and told what information would be included about them in the report and each was given a chance to respond. I believe that Mr. Mitchell himself said that only one player took him up on that offer, and that player was subsequently not named in the report as his version of events was found to be convincing. Clemens should stop digging, the hole will only get deeper.
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Fans' Culpability
First, to Kevred, it's disingenuous to say that there is some difference between watching the games on TV and going to the games in terms of participating in the fraud. Baseball gets paid money for ratings exactly the same way it gets money for tickets. Even watching the highlights on ESPN makes baseball money; they are paid rights fees for the clips that are shown and the ratings for SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight are factored into the price for those clips. So you can't run and hide behind "I didn't pay them directly." You paid them indirectly.
But I disagree that the fans are culpable at all. Rather the fans are, as I've written here before, the victims of this fraud that was perpetrated by MLB, the people who were selling the tickets, the merchandise and the broadcasting rights (the networks were, however, wilful co-conspirators--you must remember the cute little "it's just andro and it's legal under the CLB" stories about McGwire in 1998). But we fans were only offered one kind of baseball product during the whole steroid era, a product that was marketed as real baseball and was instead adulterated baseball. It's not a consumer's obligation to go out and test the frigging players' bloodstreams. They wanted our money, they promised a legitimate product and they didn't deliver. I can pretty much prove how much I spent on tickets for those particular years; I'll be happy to accept the refund.
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Coerced testimony
I disagree with your characterization of McNamee's role in this matter. Whenever the state can coerce testimony, the witness will have a clear idea of what the authorities want testified to and will, under coercion, provide exactly that testimony. This is a recipe for corruption and injustice and is one of the biggest problems in the American criminal justice system generally. Whether or not Roger Clemons took steroids, I don't know. I hope he didn't. But I can't convict him on the testimony of someone who is compelled to tell the story that the authorities want told.
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won't someone think of the children!!??11!!
This sanctimonious "what will I tell my kids?" stuff is embarrassing.
Tell them any number of lies you want, like we are all going to do anyway, enforcing our own political prejudices and biases.
So "Clemens" doesn't exist. Big deal. Neither does Santa. What will you tell them about him?
By the time a child born today comes of age the honesty of millionaire boys chasing a ball will be so far down on the list of problems it will be laughable. Don't get me wrong, I love sports and follow my home team with (perhaps misplaced) pride and excitement, but its just a non issue.