Apparently It Took More Than Milk

Mark McGwire has admitted to using steroids during his Major League career.

In other breaking news, ice is apparently cold.

Jayson Stark On Alex Rodriguez

Jayson Stark’s take on the revelation that A-Rod tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 pretty much echoes my feelings.

A sad day (and decade) for baseball.

Maddux Calls It A Career

Greg Maddux announced his retirement from Major League Baseball on Monday.

I grew up watching Maddux and the other members of Atlanta’s Big Three, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, baffle hitters and win lots of games.

Maddux was my least favorite of the three (he arrived in Atlanta last and always seemed somewhat like a hired gun), but he was also the best, and he put up some historically shocking numbers in the mid 1990s.

Really, Maddux was also most representative of the great Atlanta teams of the 90s and early 2000s—an absolute terror over the long course of the season who suddenly became mortal when the playoffs rolled around (Maddux was just 11-11 in the postseason during his 11 seasons with the Braves).

Maddux retired with 355 career victories, 8th on the all-time list and one ahead of Roger Clemens, which I think is significant, and appropriate.

Significant because I think Maddux wanted to finish ahead of the Rocket, and appropriate because I think he deserved to.

For much of the two pitchers’ careers, the debate raged about which was the greatest pitcher of the era. Over recent years, the argument had tilted in favor of Clemens, who continued to be one of the best pitchers in the game while Maddux increasingly looked like a 40 year-old who used to be good (eerily similar to what happened with Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr.).

Of course, then all the allegations of Clemens’ steroid use came out, and Roger joined the ranks of Bonds, Mark McGwire and the rest of the baseball stars who have fallen from grace.

And his sudden distancing of himself statistically from Maddux late in their careers made a lot more sense.

Clemens (like Bonds) was a great player who possibly could have been the best of his era, but Maddux (like Griffey) came by his numbers cleanly and deserves the distinction instead.

And really, maybe that would be the most fitting legacy of all for the Steroid Era.

“The Kid” at 600

Ken Griffey Jr. made history Monday night by becoming just the sixth player in Major League History to hit 600 home runs.

If you watch a lot of ESPN, you knew that he was approaching the milestone, but otherwise, you might have been unaware, because it hasn’t really been talked about too much. The way Griffey hit the home run was somewhat fitting: on the road, at a largely empty Dolphin Stadium in front of just 16,000 fans.

Why does no one seem to care about such an achievement from Griffey, once the most popular baseball player on the planet?

This article offers some ideas. First, the fact that Griffey plays in small-market Cincinnati certainly doesn’t help. When Alex Rodriguez approaches 600 home runs in New York, he’ll certainly get more coverage.

It’s also true that Junior has battled one injury after another ever since he started playing for the Reds, and that has whittled away at the enormous fanfare that he once enjoyed. Just ask Grant Hill or Nomar Garciaparra—as an athlete, it’s hard to stay popular when you never get to play.

But likely the biggest reason is the fact that a home run just ain’t worth what it used to be. Ever since 1998, when McGwire, Sosa, and their enormous bodies started the assault on all of the home run records, each successive milestone has seemed less and less impressive.

Hitting 500 home runs used to be a special thing, but nowadays, it’s almost commonplace, and 600 doesn’t seem that much more exciting.

But in Griffey’s case, we should be excited.

Not only a great player on the field, he’s also been a great ambassador for the game. He’s not surly with reporters, he’s been a positive role model, and in this era, maybe most importantly of all, there’s never been any hint of steroid use.

He’s not perfect. People have called him greedy, and they’ve questioned whether or not he’s a winner, but at the end of the day, Griffey is one of the greatest players of all time, and he did it the right way.

As he got older, his body began to break down. He couldn’t make the spectacular plays in the outfield, didn’t have the speed on the basepath, and much of the time couldn’t seem to stay in the lineup.

But when you think about it, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. It may have happened a little bit too soon for Griffey, but still it was right—as we get older, our bodies break down. They can’t do the same things they used to. And “The Natural,” who early in his career lived up to his nickname with his seemingly unending talent, lived up to it later in his career by making the most out of what his body could give him without enhancing it with drugs.

In an era where the alternative has become all too common, and we’ve seen the artificially inflated bodies and numbers of player after player, Junior should be applauded for doing the right thing.

But there’s an important lesson there too, I guess. Sometimes when you do the right thing, you don’t get recognized for it. You don’t get the credit or the acclaim you deserve. But the acclaim isn’t what’s important.

Doing the right thing is.

A Busy Few Days In The World Of Sports

I am supposed to be working on the second halves of other posts (and I am), but there have been several momentous developments in the world of sports, and I wanted to mention them briefly before they were all old news.

• Barry Bonds has been indicted on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. Apparently, the Federal Government is not convinced that Bonds told the truth when he claimed that he had never knowingly taken steroids. Go figure. Bonds could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts (no matter what, he won’t serve nearly that much time), so he’s facing some pretty serious charges.
  
• News reports have confirmed that Houston Nutt will not be back next season as the head football coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks. No one knows for sure yet if he is being let go, is stepping down on his own or is off to ruin someone else’s football program, but whatever the specifics, the majority of Arkansans will now have one more thing to be thankful about on Thursday.
  
• The Razorback Basketball team lost its first game under new head coach John Pelphrey yesterday, suffering a 16-point defeat at the hands of Providence at an early season tournament in Puerto Rico. The alarming thing is that the Hogs have committed 58 turnovers over the course of the last two games, which, outside of Junior High games, has got to be about the highest total I have ever heard.
  
• It looks like A-Rod will be a Yankee next year (and several years after that) after all. Rodriguez swallowed his pride a little and went back to the negotiation table, this time without agent Scott Boras. Analysts have surmised that Boras’ reputation will take a hit from this episode, which might be supported by the fact that Kenny Rogers has already fired him.
• Oregon QB and Heisman hopeful Dennis Dixon saw his season end Thursday night in the first quarter of his team’s loss to Arizona when he went down with an ACL tear. Dixon is another in a long line of Heisman candidates who have had disappointing seasons due to injury, inconsistent play, or being on a bad team. The injury will help out the chances of Arkansas’ Darren McFadden, but after another mixed performance today (D-Mac had a 50+ yard TD reception and threw for a score as well but ended up with less than 100 yards on the ground), it will probably take a huge game against LSU to give him the Heisman hardware.

There are probably a couple of other developments that I missed. I don’t remember the last time so many big sports stories broke at the same time.

He Never Ceases To Amaze…

As much as I dislike Barry Bonds, I was planning on taking the high road and giving the guy a break for a while, even though he turned the greatest record in all of sports into a travesty.

But that was before I read this article.

Apparently, BALCO Barry is tired of people suggesting that he reached his freakish proportions unnaturally, and is now considering suing those who have accused him of roiding up, including Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.

Who knows, since I’ve accused Barry of cheating as well, I might be on his radar as well.

This might be my favorite quote from the article:

Schilling said some things that were inappropriate and potentially defamatory. I know it was upsetting to Barry.

I can believe that it upsets Barry that nobody likes him. After all, that’s what prompted him to begin his steroid regimen in the first place back in ’99.

What I can’t believe is that there is any sort of ground for a defamation of character lawsuit. I mean, after all, don’t you have to have character before it can be defamed?

Hat tip to my cousin Veronica for sending me the article.

Rick Reilly on Bonds

I have a short-term subscription to Sports Illustrated which I bought from a girl at church who was selling magazine subscriptions as a fundraiser. Some issues of SI are better than others, but one of the high points is always Rick Reilly’s back page column.

The July 23 issue of SI focused on Hank Aaron and the home run record chase, and Reilly’s column, Giving Barry His Due, was particularly enjoyable, as he suggested different ways to properly celebrate Barry Bonds’s impending record-breaking home run.* Here are some of my favorites:

• Light one of his baseball cards and hold it up like a Bic at a concert.
• Call the Hall of Fame and ask which cap will appear on Bonds’s head in his Cooperstown exhibit—the size 7, the 71/2, or the 8?
• If you’re watching TV, flip to something a little more plausible, like MacGyver.
• Pull out a copy of Game of Shadows and begin reading aloud how Bonds used steroids, human growth hormone, insulin, testosterone decanoate, bovine steroids and female fertility drugs to help him set this record. And then watch Bonds step on home and point to God.
• Squirt juice out of a giant syringe.
• Remind yourself that they put a gold medal around Ben Johnson’s neck for a while, too.

Reilly closed his column by putting Hank Aaron’s achievement into perspective:

Remember this: The man who held the record before Bonds—one of the most principled and honorable men you will ever meet—is reluctant to even speak to Bonds on the phone, much less be there to witness the record breaker. Just because a thief paints over a masterpiece doesn’t mean the masterpiece isn’t still underneath.

Bonds will end up with more home runs than Aaron, but I’m convinced that in the long term, Aaron, and not Bonds, will be remembered as the Home Run King, while Bonds will be remembered as a colossal talent who ruined his legacy by cheating.

*Through the seventh inning of tonight’s game against Atlanta, Bonds remained homerless. It’s starting to look increasingly hopeful that he won’t break the record against my beloved Braves!

If One Picture is Worth 1,000 Words...

If this guy told you he didn’t take steroids, why on earth wouldn’t you believe him?