By: Bones
Today, it was leaked to the media that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are on the list of roughly 100 players who tested positive for steroids in 2003, along with the previously reported Sammy Sosa, A-Rod, Bonds, etc etc. All the sudden it’s like my life and my TV have been rewound to 2 months ago, 5 months ago, a year ago, 4 years ago. I am so sick of having my blissful and endless sports watching interrupted by this bullshit every few months. For the next week I have to watch ESPN trot out a long line of anchors, commentators, and athletes screaming down at us from way up on their high horse about how the game has been disgraced, blah blah blah….over and over. Gammons, Phillips, Kurkjian, Kruk, Player X…rinse, and repeat. How does this affect their Hall of Fame chances? Will you vote for him? Polls, followups, E:60 and Outside the Lines with Bob Ley. Same questions, same answers, over and over. It’s like a bad nightmare that keeps repeating once you fall back asleep. Finally, you aren’t scared anymore, you are just bored. I am not surprised anymore, nor do I care in the least little bit. I do not fucking care. At all.
All I care about is that I am forced to listen to a multi-media blitz of bullshit. It’s making my favorite channel unwatchable, and it pisses me off. The thing that really gets me is that someone is leaking this information strategically; every couple of months new names come out that should not be out, as the ‘list’ is in the hands of the FBI and supposedly is on double top secret probation. Except that someone who has access to the list is doling out one or two names at a time. Whoever it is obviously is very smart, and and very vindictive. They know that the best way to hurt MLB and each player on the list is to give them the slow drip of Chinese water torture every few months. Someone didn’t happen across the list in Stu Scott’s trash can, and it’s not written on bathroom stall wall- otherwise all the names would be out, and whoever it is hasn’t been fired or caught, or left a trail, or anything. Different sources get the scoop each time, so that tells me that they don’t even know who is leaking the information to them.
The most amazing thing is that the people who are getting outed are the ones who have most recently came out and said something to the effect that they didn’t do ‘roids, or that people should be punished who did do them, etc. Sosa, Ramirez, Papi, ARod, Bonds…all of them denied it, and this guy is obviously trying to make them look silly. It makes you wonder whether the next bomb will be Pujols or Ichiro. But really, I don’t think I am the only one who is sick of it, or has stopped caring who cheated and who didn’t. You can’t keep an entire generation out of the HOF. There was the live ball era, the dead ball era, and now there’s the steroid era, and stats and records fluctuated as such each time. I think its pretty dumb that record holders, players with great careers steroids or not, are not in or may never get in. The records stand as far as MLB is concerned, so the voters should recognize those who set them.
Ugh. I am tired of writing about this, or thinking about it, or watching it on TV. Why doesn’t ESPN come out with an ESPNLegal channel for all this shit? Keep the games separate from everything else- ‘roids, trials, Vick, Burress, and Brett fucking Favre. See which one has the higher ratings. I bet I know which one