Hypocrisy and Steroids in Baseball

Today, it was revealed that New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003. To some, this comes as no surprise but, ardent followers of the Yankees and/or A-Rod like myself may be a bit shocked. He has long been anointed as the "chosen one". He who would break all of baseball's hallowed hitting records and live to enjoy the accolades. Over the years he adamantly denied ever using any performance enhancing drugs and without proof to the contrary, we were inclined to believe him. Now, he will become the poster-child for all that is wrong in Major League Baseball. He will be branded a cheater, liar, and a fraud.

My problem with this branding is the hypocrisy that comes with it.

What has always been my argument in this epidemic of steroids in baseball is that everyone involved was complicit. Right down to the bat boys. I take special umbrage with the team owners who have never been called to the mat for their involvement with steroids in baseball. Along with league executives themselves, these were your enablers. For lack of a better analogy, let's say something you've invested in or someone you care about needs guidance or needs to be protected from outside influences whether it's alcohol or drugs. It could also be something as simple as food; we all know what its like to over-indulge. When the players actually needed the owners the most, they turned a blind-eye. For obvious reasons of course but, I will get to that later. Barry Bonds, yesterday's poster-child, would have his steroids dealer in the locker room under the guise of being a personal trainer. If I'm the owner of the San Francisco Giants, wouldn't I like to know who's in my locker room talking to my players? In the wake of the Pete Rose scandal, wouldn't it prudent to know if you had a bookie in the house? You have a player who has his own personal training staff and hats and shoes that are 3 sizes larger than when he arrived there 2 years before. Of course owners will say: "We didn't know.". And, of course, I don't believe them. Owners had a chance to protect their employees and the game and they whiffed.

Baseball was the first thing I ever fell in love with that wasn't related to me by DNA. However, I felt like the sport had changed when they expanded in 1993. The league was being infiltrated by businessmen and marketing people who had no vested interest in the sanctity of the game. It ceased being a sport for fathers and sons and simply became a business to be observed. Maybe it was always like that and I was the one who changed. It seems like the only thing that matters is that the stadiums are packed at all costs but what's left is just rhetoric. Shortly after expansion, we saw a boom in statistics that had everyone scratching their chins but happy to be present during such a historical time. From time to time, MLB has "tweaked" the game to suit its needs whether it was strategically moving in fences or using tighter baseball's but, the benefits from rampant steroid use required almost no effort on the part of the owners or league executives and their judgement became clouded. They knew chicks dug the long ball and their profit margins began to hinge on it. Owners were making (unsuccessful) all-star squads only to have a fire-sale the very next year due to lack of cash flow to sustain ever growing contracts. The idea was that if they could put bodies in all 48,000 seats of their new stadiums regularly, they could afford to field a good team (albeit a team of performance-enhanced supermen). It was the chicken and the egg. We need good players to get fans to show up so we can then pay those good players to stay so we can get more fans to show up. But once word got out that players were juicing, MLB was left with egg all over its face.

And what about the players? I don't give them blanket amnesty. Individuals felt they needed a competitive edge to obtain lucrative contracts and would obtain both at any cost. So they drank the Kool-Aid. Alex Rodriguez, apparently, is no exception. If these players did something illegal then they should be punished.



The feds can parade all the players they want in front of commissions and cameras but, until the team owners and the league itself acknowledge their part in this farce and forfeit all the revenue they obtained from it in the form of steroids education, I will hold them just as responsible. The league and the owners need to be on trial, not individual players. That only serves to make this issue linger. Owners fostered a competitive environment and then capitalized on the weaknesses of the players to push their agenda only to sell them out when the proverbial poop hit the fan. What happened to the game I fell in love with?

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Do you think your boss would fire you for using performance-enhancing drugs?

The Lazy Barista

You know what puts me off? People who are so lazy it permeates into how they think. The other day I was in a coffeehouse and asked for a decaf chai. The waitress said, "There's no such thing. We have vata tea if you want something similar with no caffeine."

What?

Vata tea is fine but don't tell me there's no such thing as decaf chai. I have a box of it in my cupboard at home. The correct phrase is : "Sorry, we don't carry that." Just because you don't sell it doesn't mean it's a figment of my imagination.

Of course, I acknowledge this could be karma. I have been known to play a game I call 'Stump the Barista'. This is where I go into Starbucks and order something really long and complicated to see if they will mess it up. About 50% of the time I get my drink and a conciliatory free-drink card. :-)

Tell me your story of someone eggregiously lazy in the service industry.

The Bandwagon

Well, I've had a day or two to marinate on the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. When I look back at this time I will always remember the range of emotions I felt during the campaign, election, and inauguration. It wasn't lost on me that I spent a significant amount of time over the last two and half years traveling in the South, usually on business. Over this period, I met white supporters of Mr. Obama, optimists, skeptics who happened to be black, segregationists, and even my own history. I have to wonder if it was meant to be this way; that I was supposed to better understand my place in America during such a momentous time.

At first, I was very skeptical. When I first heard of Barack Obama in 2005 he had no intentions of running for president but it was obvious that someone wanted him to after his keynote address at the DNC the year before. He was receiving an unusually high amount of press for a junior senator and his 'gift of gab' was front and center. That gift is what troubled me in the beginning. He seemed more orator than ordained. Eventually he announced that he would run for commander-in-chief but there was no inner-conflict; I already knew that I wouldn't vote for him solely because he was brown like me. Something this important cannot be performed viscerally. My skepticism runs deep when it comes to politics and he would have to earn my vote by being the lesser of many evils.

Soon enough, he squared off against Hillary Clinton in the primaries. I was determined not to hold Bill Clinton's transgressions against his wife; she would be judged on her own merits. I thought she did well and she garnered my vote. I have to admit, I was mildly surprised when she didn't win the nomination but it wasn't that she did anything wrong, he was just that good. And, I was starting to understand what the buzz was all about.

Flash forward to 2008 and things begin to happen. In April, I found myself in Charleston, SC for my maternal grandmother's 80th birthday. She lived in New York but my aunt thought it would be good to make her birthday a centerpiece for a family reunion. For those who don't know, Charleston was the largest slave port in the United States. If you are African-American, your ancestors more than likely arrived there from Africa. It was wonderful seeing my cousins, aunts, and uncles again and the weather was fabulous but I will always remember this trip for the revelations I had. Four names stick out when I think about Charleston now: Heyward, Seabrook, Rivers, and Brown. These are some of the names that define Charleston. These were the names of plantation owners. These are the names of my family. I can't describe how weird it is to look at a map and see so many unique and personal words that translate history. Add to that, The City of Charleston still seemed segregated and this is not paranoia talking. It wasn't quite racism but the doctrine was still alive. If you look closely you'll see that there are a lot of Jim Crow southerners that are still alive there...and very wealthy. And we all know that wealth breeds influence. However, it was the younger people that surprised me because their attitude was...mildly condescending. Time spent in Columbia, SC, Wilmington, NC, and Waco, TX rounded out my refresher course in Confederate America but I did learn more about my family history this year to be shared later.

Before I knew it, it was summertime and I was doing something I love: cycling. But, one day in June stands out. I was riding the Loveland Bike Trail which spans dozens of miles in southeast Ohio and just happened to be at an intersection in Loveland itself when I crossed the road and thought I heard a man behind me yell, "Nigger!". I turned my head to see a man half out of his driver-side window staring at me. It was about noon and the area wasn't unpopulated. I thought I was hearing things until he drove to the top of an adjacent hill, stopped and did it again. This time I was looking right at him and I distinctly remember mouthing, "Enjoy your black president.", and continuing my ride. I'm no newcomer to racism and despite her 80 years, not even my grandmother had seen the Ku Klux Klan in person but, I have. Again, that's another story to be shared later.

Despite humoring myself at that man's expense I still wasn't quite sure if Mr. Obama was the real deal. Then, autumn came and the debates against John McCain happened. It would have been so easy for him to poke McCain and watch him implode on national television. Instead, Obama maintained his composure, dictated the pace, and articulated his answers while divulging his plans for America in detail.

I went to an election night party at a local bar with some friends and the patrons were in a lively mood. It turned into a game: every time they announced a state for McCain people would boo and they cheered when a state went blue. For the first time in a long time I was anxious. I don't remember exactly what time it was when CNN announced that he had won the presidency but it was earlier than I expected and strangely simple, just a few words at the bottom of the screen. When it happened I just sat down and cried. So many things came back in a rush. Laughing with my friends in junior high school about how there will never be a black president. My grandmother, who died in August and didn't live to see this. That day in Loveland. All of these things weren't driven by hate or bitterness. It was about identifying with something so meaningful that we could all share: the progress of America.

You know, I could've said that I always knew. Or, I'm voting for the 'brother'. Or, we have to do whatever it takes to keep McCain out but it just didn't happen that way. I needed him to win me over. In fact, I still do. But, you can count me as a member of the Obama bandwagon and like so many others, I will hold his feet to the fire to do what's right…for all of us.

Day Fit for a King

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I realized that I needed to update myself on some facts. That last time I really concerned myself with understanding the history of this great man was when I visited his grave, church, and museum a few years ago. Needless to say, I was almost in tears halfway through the museum. It's not that I forget or fail to observe (even though I'm almost always working on his birthday) but time has a way of revealing all truths. I needed to learn something new.

He turned 80 last Thursday and that served as a subtle reminder that I lost my own grandmother last year at the age of 80. She was originally from Charleston, South Carolina which unfortunately still has that plantation feel. It was definitely an eye-opener when I visited last April.

So, what did I learn? New Hampshire was one of the last states to observe the holiday. That surprised me. The amount of time from the first introduction of the bill to the last state adopting the holiday: 32 years. But, on a positive note, the city of Hiroshima in Japan observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the request of its mayor. On the surface you would think this makes sense. But on the other hand, would it be far-fetched to think that the good people of Hiroshima have reason to celebrate Death to America Day? They don't and that's the power of Dr. King's message.

Transcript from Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima can be found here.
Another good read can be found here.
And a little Wikipedia for good measure.

Old blogs for sale.

As this will be my only blogspot moving forward, there are a few old blogs that I want to post here for posterity. Such as this one that occurred in March 2007.

Preface: I'm fairly tech savvy having been in that sector most of my working days so I can program (or "hookup") a piece of technology pretty quick. But, in my haste, I've been known to miss a few details.

When Text Messaging Goes Horribly Wrong.

Ok, so upon leaving my last job I had to get a new cell phone number and decided to send a text message from the new number in a batch to about 50 people. However, I didn't put my name in the message so I received back about 46 "WTF? Who is this?" messages.

Thankfully, I had software to make correcting my mistake easier. About 4 out-of-towners were like, "We knew it was you dude.", as I am the only person they know in Ohio. All the in-towners are probably having a laugh at my expense.

And so it begins...

Hello world. My name is Steve and this is my first blog on blogspot. I had blogged previously on MySpace but I have found that medium to be cumbersome and more about special effects and not really about people. I find that I'm more interested in discussions, anecdotes, and ideas with little else in the way. So, if you're reading this, I hope you stop by often and sorry it took me so long.