Friday, May 15, 2009

Manny being stupid and leaving us wondering

Can I just go on the record as being sick and tired of the "Steroids Era" in baseball? I love baseball and am just fed up with the fact that we can't enjoy the game anymore without some jackass getting caught with a needle in his butt, a piss-poor excuse (my cousin made me do it; my doctor said it was OK) at the ready, and fans ready to accept these poor misguided souls back with cheers and applause. Why? These people cheated. Why on earth would they be cheered on and welcomed back with open arms?

Manny Ramirez is just the latest to get caught. "Manny being Manny" turned out to be "Manny with a syringe in his fanny."

What's worse is that the memories you have of the game get tarnished as memorable and joyous events are revealed to have been brought to you by some chemical concoction. Did I really believe that the Red Sox had somehow avoided the scourge of steroids? No, of course not. Still, it's almost painful that because of Manny and his female fertility drug, the validity of the greatest sports moment in my lifetime -- the Red Sox finally dispatching the Yankees and going on to win the World Series in 2004 (sorry but I didn't see the hockey game at Lake Placid in 1980) -- is now being called into question. Sports Guy Bill Simmons recently offered a great look at how it feels to have those doubts raised as well as how we might have just been ignoring the obvious. I feel his pain.

In a way, perhaps ignorance is bliss. You can just watch the game without doubts or cynicism. On the other hand, you can keep your cynicism and play baseball on the Wii. Just enter the cheat code "triplecrown" to boost your hitting by 50%. It's too bad someone at the game developer didn't have a more wicked sense of humor and choose "steroids" as the cheat code.

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