As a kid growing up, I loved baseball. In part it was due to my Dad taking me to games.
My team still is the Philadelphia Phillies and win or lose, they will always be my team, We stuck by them in good and bad years, and even though sometimes it hurts to listen to the game when they are doing poorly, they are still my team.
Watching the games when I was younger, either in person or on television, the player looked like an athlete: a regular guy, not like a muscle man straight from a circus tent. I remember Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire battling for the home run crown, and being disappointed when McGuire’s name came up with steroid allegations. Watching Barry Bonds have his normal size head when he played for Pittsburgh and then, in his San Francisco years, watching his entire body blow up like the Michelin man. That was like, “Whoa, what’s that all about?’ My Phillies had Carlos Ruiz, our catcher, suspended for use of a substance that he allegedly bought in a Mall health store in a neighboring state. When the baseball writers had their ballot, it HAD been said that this was Bonds and pitcher Roger Clemens year to get in. “Excuse me”, said the baseball writers with their ballots, ‘No steroid users getting in on our watch”. Now, the New York Yankees third baseman, Alex Rodgriguez, is suspended through 2015, and it is said his suspension will cost him $34 MILLION dollars. Wow! Really?
I guess the Black Sox scandal back in 1919 was the loss of baseball’s innocence times one. They managed to somehow get back on track. How baseball is going to pull the rabbit out of a hat from this one, well, I, for one, will be waiting to see.
thereisnosanityclause 