If I could paraphrase an sardonic quote from Bob Knight, “Most of us grow up playing youth league and high school sports, and when we reach a level when we can’t compete anymore, we move on to other things.”
In other words, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Ken Caminiti, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and now Alex Rodriguez aren’t like most of us.
When they reached that level they couldn’t compete anymore, they looked for ways to cheat. For McGuire, it was when couldn’t hit after his first couple of big league seasons; Sosa couldn’t hit anywhere; Caminiti had warning track power; Clemens lost his stuff with the Red Sox; Bonds couldn’t stand to see lesser people hit more home runs than him and A-Roid says he felt pressure to live up to his salary.
Cowards is what they are. They couldn’t admit that other athletes are better than them. They turned to steroids. They sullied the game of baseball. And they got away with it, until now.
At least Alex Rodriguez confessed he used steroids. He’s not playing the same games of deception as Bonds and Clemens.
Rodriguez’s confession is much of one, though. He says he was young and naïve.
Every kid playing high school sports, if not younger, knows right from wrong with steroids. Rodriguez knew what he was doing all along. He was trying to make more money and pad his stats just like his friends.
Bud Selig and others that ran baseball are just as guilty n sans the needle marks. They looked the other way as they raked in the money.
Peter Gammons, the ESPN baseball analyst that got a confession out of A-Roid, and other baseball romanticists also are complicit. They were weepy eyed as Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa battled to steal the home run title from Roger Maris.
Finally, let’s wrap this up by paraphrasing President Barack Obama.
“It is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful, and part of what we are going to need is for the folks in Major League Base to quit lying and show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.”