An Open Letter To Baseball On the Bosch Deal

"So if A-Rod OPSes the same as a duck, he's made of wood"

Dear Baseball:

Please stop being so fucking stupid about the way you handle PEDs.

Spitball Versus Deca Durabolin

There is a very simple difference between loading up a baseball and shooting up with PEDs. One gets an amused chuckle, a suggestion that it's a part of the game and its long, glorious history of spitballers, emery boards and Hall of Fame pitchers named Gaylord. The other is high treason equivalent to strangling kittens whilst doing unspeakable things under the influence of My Little Pony slashfic. 

The Buzz on the Latest Steroid News

There's something comical about the sort of indignation shown by baseball writers whenever the topic of performance enhancing drugs comes up. At once determined to root out even the faintest whiff of steroidiana while being overcome with the vapors should they indeed discover it, they resemble nothing so much as a bunch of teenagers who've gone rooting through their parents' drawers hoping to find Dad's Playboys, and being traumatized when they find Mom's vibrator instead. They are shocked, shocked to discover gambling in this establishment, even as they howl that they're determined to find out that gambling's going on here.
Football writers, by comparison, have a much more relaxed approach to things. When a football player is accused of steroid use, they generally roll their eyes and say "Duh", or, in rare cases, break into pretzel-factory-having-sex-with-a-taffy-puller-in-a-tornado levels of illogic to try to deny that any football players have taken steroids, ever. (See, for example, the case of Brian Cushing, whose defenders think "cycling" is something you do with two wheels and a discounted Lance Armstrong spandex jersey).
But right now it's the baseball guys' turn again, as the Biogenesis investigation - which any sane individual would view as proof that baseball's ongoing vigilance about PEDs is actually working - has the Danny Knoblers of the world ready for the fainting couch. Look, kids, it's simple: the odds of BALCO being the only shop cooking up steroids for pro athletes, particularly in this day and age when HGH gets advertised next to lawn sasquatches in  in-flight magazines, were roughly zero. The chances that there would still be baseball players foolish or greedy enough to risk getting caught and suspended - as well as other athletes willing to take those same risks - for fame and fortune - were basically 100%. The fact that many of the high-profile names on the Biogenesis lists had already been dinged demonstrates that baseball's testing process is working. And the odds that not every individual who made contact with the place was immediately taking SCUD missiles' worth of deca durabolin right where  Mrs. Clemens reputedly got McNameedled are actually pretty good, if the actual lists being quoted are to be believed.
So to all the writers in a tizzy over this, I offer some advice: Close the drawer. Calm the hell down. Cease demanding we throw out the entire American system of jurisprudence in order to satisfy your lust for column inch filler. And go cover football for a while. You might find it relaxing.

Consistency In Action

According to ESPN's Jim Bowden, tickets are now available for the New York chapter of the BBWAA's annual dinner.

One can only hope that they will insist on steroid- and hormone-free beef for the main course.

The Steroid User Narrative, Or, Why We'll Conveniently Forget About Bartolo Colon As Soon As Possible

The new face - and chins - of steroids in baseball

Can't wait to see how the Bartolo Colon suspension affects the narrative of the jacked up, totally ripped,   mega-noggined steroid abuser. Seriously, Colon's the sort of guy who looks more likely to test positive for P-I-E than P-E-D, and who presumably took his synthetic testosterone after it was batter dipped, deep fried, and wrapped in bacon. When you think "steroid user", you think Barry Bonds' giant dome and ripped physique, and conveniently forget that that Bonds' workout regimen was so legendarily brutal that it broke freak-of-nature Gary Sheffield. You don't think "guy who looks like he stars on Man vs. Food Nation"; you think one hit of steroids is like Popeye sucking down a six pack of spinach and Hulking out immediately.
But then again, that's always been the case. The bulk of steroids guys busted in baseball haven't been uber-athletes. They've been fringe guys trying to hang on, end-of-the-bullpen arms and scrappy middle infielders looking for a way to hang on to another year of major league service time. Think back to the Mitchell Report. How many of those guys had you even heard of?
But the public perception of steroid users is set in stone, at least for the moment. It's all about the record-breakers and the superstars, because it's a lot more fun to tear down a guy who's famous than it is to put the final kibosh on the dreams of a guy who's been cut six times and is desperately trying to hang on in Durham or Indianapolis or Scranton. And so the narrative won't change, which means that honest debate on the issue - which is sorely lacking - will continue to remain an impossibility.

And Melky Cabrera is the End of Civilization

For all the amusement Melky Cabrera's clown-car antics may provide, using his special flavor of idiocy as a launching point for endless "baseball's not serious about steroids" screeds is exactly the sort of simple-minded concern trolling you'd expect from ESPN radio. These are the same geniuses who defended Brian Cushing to the death, after all, because he played football, and apparently no one who plays football would ever have interest in getting bigger, stronger, faster, or more muscular - unlike baseball players.
In a sense, baseball can't win with these bozos. If the drug testing program doesn't catch anyone, it's ineffective. If it does catch someone, then it's evidence that the program isn't working. The narrative is set and all that's left is to fill in the blanks.

STFU, Steroids Edition

Here's a thought:
If you work for a sports talk radio station, or a sports-themed television network, that takes advertising revenue for supplements designed to reverse the dreaded "Low T", then you don't get to say jack about steroids, Melky Cabrera, or any other damn thing related to chemical enhancement. If your salary's getting paid in part by ads for drugs to make middle-aged guys whose ding-dongs can't serve as tire jacks any more feel like they're 23 again and you still feel the need to moralize about other people taking the exact same stuff your employer is selling, then you need to take a look in the mirror and shut the hell up.
Because by normalizing that crap, by wallowing in hypocrisy, by feeding an audience that demands that kind of physical impossibility, you're as much a part of the problem as Victor Conte ever was.

Clemens Found To Have Been Friends With Unbelievable Asshole

So here's what I think happened:
Rusty Hardin (Wesleyan '65) took a look at the case. He realized that his client was an unlikable bully who couldn't keep his yap shut, operating in a climate that was disinclined to be sympathetic to those accused of using steroids. He saw that the prosecution had handled its prosecution of Barry Bonds with all the delicacy of Paula Deen taking a frozen ham to the side of her head. He saw that the government's case, regardless of whether or not his client had in fact jammed his ass full of enough monkey hormones to make him climb the Empire State Building clutching Naomi Watts in one meaty paw, rested on the testimony of a dyed-in-the-wool scumbag. And he did a little math - they do teach math at Wesleyan, when no one is looking - and did a rough estimate of how long this case could run, and how many billable hours he could get out of it.
Then, in my imagination, Rusty Hardin did his best maniacal laugh, twirled his imaginary mustachios, and tied an innocent woman to a set of disused railroad tracks. Because that's what Republic Serial Villains, like Rusty Hardin, do.
To be fair, nobody really expected Clemens to be found guilty, not when the government's entire case rested on Brian McNamee, and the public remained convinced Clemens was on trial for using steroids. (He wasn't. He was on trial for perjury, which is kind of serious, and the sort of thing you'd hope they'd actually prosecute, otherwise that whole "trial by jury" thing goes out the window. But I digress.) But Clemens had already had his name dragged through the mud, the public was sick of it, and it became fashionable to bitch about what a waste of time and money the whole thing was.
The real test, of course, will come when it's Clemens' turn on the Hall of Fame ballot. Remember, he wasn't found not guilty of using steroids. He was found not guilty of committing perjury. And the gatekeepers of the Hall of Fame tend to frown upon steroid users and suspected steroid users, even ones who never failed a test or were mentioned in the Mitchell Report or got put on trial for perjury.
There's a hell of a lot more evidence to suggest Clemens did PEDs than there is against Jeff Bagwell. If Clemens gets in - if Clemens gets close - while Bagwell and McGwire and Sosa are locked out, then all hell will break loose.
Then again, maybe it won't. Maybe the weary acceptance of Clemens' greatness will open the door for those other guys.
And if it doesn't, I'm sure Rusty Hardin would be happy to advocate on their behalf.