8/8/07

Note: I had originally planned to do a post in the political blog this morning, as I wrote I would yesterday. However, Barry Bonds' breaking the home run record is not something that could be ignored. Anything else I tried to write about, Bonds would be the white elephant in the room. So, I'll give you my thoughts on this issue today instead.

Ok, so Barry Bonds is the new Home Run King Of All-Time. Congratulations are in order. Thank you, Barry, for saving the sport of baseball from itself.

Think of this as the Ultimate Sacrifice Bunt. We're sacrificing the two most cherised records in baseball - the single-season home run record and the career home run record - to keep the players from all bulking up until they were practically bursting and all start dying at 37 from brain tumors.

In short, to keep it from becoming wrestling.

You want the next generation's Cal Ripken to suddenly snap one day, kill his whole family, and then hang himself?

I didn't think so.

So, once again, thank you Barry Bonds.

Barry was the only one who could have killed the whole steroids era the way he did. Because Barry Bonds is perhaps the biggest (or at least the most overt) asshole in all of baseball. And this is in a sport where one guy beat up a cameraman for taking his picture!

But Barry reigns supreme. The fans hate him so much, that they are finally going to call baseball out on the steroids issue. As if we didn't know before.

As if all of a sudden, we just "figured out" that everyone was juicing at precisely the same moment when the one guy in the whole world we would least want taking all of baseball's most important records was in the process of doing just that. How convenient that when it was "nice guys" like Mark McGwire or Smilin' Sammy Sosa were out chasing the records, we failed to notice all of the signs that the players were practically sweating testosterone. The signs were there, we just chose to ignore them because we were aught up in all of the fun.

And if it weren't for Bonds, we'd still be ignoring them. We would all be celebrating every home run milestone with the kind of reception such a feat would normally deserve. Rafael Palmeiro would be a hero, on his way to the 3,000 hit/600 home run club. Think he'd be sweating the Hall of Fame, then?

And then, about a decade from now, the players would start dropping like flies. Do you know anybody who was seriously suprised - outside of wrestling fans - when they heard what Chris Benoit had done? Nobody. Because wrestlers have been dying suspicious early deaths at a rate of about 1 a year. This would be baseball in the 21st century, had Barry Bonds not broken the home run record.

Instead, Bud Selig has to clean up the game now; or, at least, he has to look like he's trying. Of course you can't clean up baseball, everyone knows this. As long as there is no test for HGH, it's time to go to town on that. But at least, now the effort is being made. Maybe some of the players will choose not to risk it now that baseball (and Congress) are snooping around.

But how do I feel about the records falling? Well, obviously it is something that is hard to swallow. Hank Aaron has been the home run king for my entire life. 755 has been the number. Now we won't even know what the number is until Bonds retires. It's the end of an era - the Hank Aaron Era.

But, you know what? We attach too much emotional baggage to numbers, as baseball fans. We hold up these records on a pedastal as if they mean anything. Baseball fans, ask yourselves this: Are you upset because Hank Aaron is the greatest power hitter of all-time, and now, because he has the record, Barry Bonds will be?

No, right? I mean, Hank Aaron has never really been considered the best power hitter of all-time; that honor usually goes to either Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, or Josh Gibson. The Babe didn't have as many home runs as Aaron because he spent the first chunk of his career pitching. God knows how many home runs he would have hit if he was in the line-up every night. Ted Williams, well, he definately would have broken Ruth's record and, in all probability, by more than Aaron did, were it not for the fact that he fought in two wars during the prime of his career. And Josh Gibson, well, he doesn't have a single stastic from any game he ever played, because he never played in Major League Baseball.

So, then, isn't Aaron's record tainted? You see what I mean? Every record is set in its own era, amidst its own circumstances. We're all going to know, when it's all said and done, and we're looking at whatever number Bonds ends up with, that he wasn't that kind of home run hitter until his body mysteriously doubled in size, and so then he probably can't be considered the greatest home run hitter of all-time. Just as, for the most part, we all used to accept that Aaron held the home run record, even though we didn't really think he was the best.

And perhaps most importantly of all, this whole episode gives Bud Selig another black eye, and as much as that motherfucker as done to ruin what used to be my favorite league to watch (baseball is still my favorite sport to watch, but I find I enjoy minor-league and college ball much more), that alone is worth it to me. I hope the whole time Selig was going through this, he was thinking to himself, "this is all my fault, I'm such a stupid asshole." I know he's not, because he's probably so stupid he thinks he's always right (Selig for President?), but at least now maybe everyone else will realize what an asshole he is and how he has to go. He can't appoint himself commisioner for life and barricade himself in his office if everyone else connected to the sport wants him to go, can he?

I hope you enjoy this mess you made, asshole. Ain't karma a bitch?

So, I'm browsing through the Washington Post Sports Section, looking for anything interesting about the Redskins or Maryland football, when I come across this article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073100719.html

Take a moment to read it, because my entire post today is going to be about it.

All right, first of all, anybody who does not know that Joe Theisman, Paul Maguire, and Mike Patrick were the absolute pits as far as NFL announcing teams go - and that is saying something, given the quality of the average NFL announcing pairs - should stop writing about sports immediately. The 2006 Pro Football Prospectus had a hilarious mock transcript of a game called by them. It'll be tough to find last year's now, but if you can see a copy of it, look for it and read it - you'll be howling.

But I digress.

This is the most preposterous column I have read in some time (keep in mind, I do not read right-wing political commentary columns...I'm sure Ann Coulter has written things that make this pale in insignificance as far as sheer idiocy goes, but I wouldn't know because Ms. Coulter does not interest me in the slightest). It starts off with:

"Joe Theismann had no idea how his life was about to change that March 23 day he showed up in Manhattan to meet with ESPN executives Norby Williamson and John Skipper."

I mean, what the hell is this, a sports column or a detective novel? Why not just start the column, "It was a dark and stormy night..."?

We go on to learn that Joe Theisman "was 'stunned' (emphasis mine) by the news" that he was getting the big, ugly, axe, but seriously, was anybody else, except apparently this guy? Look, I'm a Redskins fan, but I'm not old enough to remember the Joe Theisman Era - the only Super Bowl Championship I watched was XXVI, and that was Mark Rypien, not Theisman, at the helm. And my father did not drill Redskins lore into me from the time I was 7 years old; my father is from New Orleans, where, historically, they like to pretend that their professional football team doesn't exist (although they have a dynamite squad right now). So I don't have the emotional attachment to the guy as most Redskins' people do. So I can say this...

Theisman is an idiot. That is why he was "stunned". Hell, that's why he was fired. The guy may have had some very serious quarterbacking skills, and obviously has whatever mental acquity it takes to make reads of coverage schemes and know where your recievers are going to be if they think a blitz is coming, but when he tries to communicate the results are simply painful. The only thing they could have possibly done to make him look good was to do just what they did: put him in a booth where the other two motherfuckers were even stupider than he was. And, I have to say, it worked. Compared to tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumbass, Joe looked like a goddam Mensa applicant. It worked so fuckin' well Joe's bosses were fooled by their own ploy when they deemed him the only one of the three to stay on the team. It turned out that, as most of us independant observers forecasted when the old new line-up was announced: that in fact, none of those dimwits should have been brought back.

On the other hand, Ron Jaworski is a thinker. This guy knows football, inside and out. And, unlike Joey T, When Jaworski talks you actually learn stuff if you pay attention. Anybody who has ever watched a single episode of ESPN's NFL Match-up with Jaworski and Merrill Hodge knows that that was/is easily the best football show on television. and the reason is because of Jaws' unique insights and fantastic communicative skills. Hodge isn't bad - there could have been worse choices to pair Jaws up with (Sean Salisbury...shudder...), but Jaws is the star. I hope he still has time for that show. But if he doesn't the price of losing that show will well be worth the tremendous talent upgrade in the booth.

Of course, if ESPN really wants Monday Night Football to go back to its near-dominance of television on Monday nights, it should get rid of all of the extra crap - the celebrity guests, for instance - and try and be just a football broadcast. People who don't like football won't watch a football game just for an 8-minute interview with Matthew McConoughey where he'll probably mostly be talking about what a big football fan he is. Or Christian Slater, making a total ass of himself. The people who watch football on Monday nights, even though the two teams playing might not even be in their teams' conference, are hardcore football fans who want to watch a hardcore football broadcast. Nobody else is watching, so stop trying to cater to them. Try and get those old viewers back, the ones who used to watch the game simply because they love watching the game of football, but sopped because you have buried the game under a mountain of comercialism and crap.

But that being said, I am very optimistic about this new line-up. I can't wait for the season to start. I'm gonna go hunt for some more Terps and Skins articles...