Jayson Stark recently posted an article on ESPN.com
entitled: "Alex Rodriguez has Destroyed Game's History." Yep, that's right everyone. In one fell-swoop, a man that nobody
seemed to like was nostalgically reconstructed into everybody's All-American
(like, say, Matt Bush) just so we can collectively lament how said
phenom-turned-villain-turned-imaginary hero-turned-reprobate let us all down! Pure and utter
ridiculousness. Still, for Mr.
Stark, it's downhill from there...
"Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn't
even understand."
I knew we were in trouble when we got together and agreed to hold A-Rod to a higher moral standard than everyone else, spare maybe the President and his cabinet. Oh, we didn't? Silly me...LET'S FUCKING GET HIM! In case you missed it, Rodriguez finds himself in hot water today after a 2003 positive test for two banned anabolic steroids and testosterone was leaked to the national media. Confidentiality agreements, however, bar disciplinary action from being taken against A-Rod or the 103 other offenders who tested positive in the league-wide survey, designed to determine whether random testing was warranted.
"How could baseball have allowed this to happen to
itself? How? What compares to it? The Black Sox? This is worse. Game-fixing in college basketball? This is worse. Nominate any scandal in the history of
sports. My vote is that this is
worse."
Yes, the college athlete, a transcendent symbol of
purity and integrity in competition.
How is one man using performance-enhancing drugs amidst a de facto sea
of drug use worse than the gambling industry scheming to control the outcome of
collegiate sports competition?
That's not just cheating the athletes, but the coaches and talent
agencies (that furnished the athletes and their families with cars, houses and
high-paying jobs that they needn't show up to), the athletic directors
(that knowingly overlooked all this), and even the students paid under-the-table
to act as surrogate test-takers.
But come to think of it, Stark is right. This A-Rod business is worse. Hell, name any event in the history of
the world and I assure you, this is worse.
Take, for instance, "The Great Leap Forward," the
socioeconomic plan used to bring China into modern, industrialized communist
society. Estimates place the death
count in the 30 million range, most of which were attributable to famine.
Was it genocide?
That's debatable, and has become a point of contention amongst
academic-types. Thankfully, there is something that is
IN NO WAY debatable: A-Rod was worse.
Look; can we please stop behaving so dramatically every
time a big-name athlete get caught using steroids? Check that; every time a big-name baseball player gets
caught using steroids (people seem to have forgotten that Julius Peppers and
Shawn Meriman each served 4-game banned-substance suspensions in the NFL, and
that Adrian Peterson has more muscle definition than the entire cast of
steroid-ridden science-projects recruited for Frank Miller's cinematic shit-fest, "300")? This
can no longer be painted as Shakespearian tragedy, folks; when something
happens bi-weekly, it loses its ability to resonate as a portentous event. Instead, it is simply melds with the
other mundane realities of day-to-day life (commuting, feeding, defecating,
lucubrating, masturbating etc.) and fades into the proverbial ether.
Just for fun, I'm gonna rattle off as many (current) roid-cakes as I can
think of in ninety seconds; then, at the very least I'll have an empirically
documented "I told ya so" cheat-sheet once they get nabbed. Here it goes. Ready? OK,
Boom! David Ortiz, B.J. Ryan, Mark
Teixeria, Brett Gardner, Gabe Kapler, Magglio Ordonez, Travis Hafner, Carl
Pavano, Carlos Quentin, Mike Jacobs, Jesse Crain, Matt Holliday, Jack Cust,
Juan Rivera, Hank Blalock, Chris Davis, Scott Hairston, Chris Ianetta, Mike
Cameron, Hunter Pence, Ivan Rodriguez, Rick Ankiel, Ryan Ludwick, Ryan Gomes,
Elijah Dukes, Dan Uggla, Jorge Cantu, Carlos Lee, Ivan Rodriguez, Raul Ibanez
and Gonzo (is he retired?). Wow,
time's up already...think we got 'em all?
I'll guess no, and much to my chagrin, one name that I consciously
excluded keeps popping into my head, no matter how hard I try to purge myself
of the suspicion. Jose Alberto
Pujols. (By the way, Mr. Pujols,
just for the record: if you are using P.E.D.'s, that's 100% fine. I'm like a drugged-up orangutan, a research patsy whose had his balls electrically shocked so many times
that I don't even twitch when a heavy current is administered right to 'em. Honestly, I could care less. Just, for the love of Christ, don't
ever get caught. I wouldn't throw a conniption fit, those days have passed.
But I might just descend into a chasm of soul-crushing alcoholism from
which I could never truly recover.)
"So weep not for what A-Rod has done to himself. Weep for what he has done to his sport."
Weep for what Jayson Stark has done to hyperbole.
