I don't think Pujols is juicin. He's been a baseball freak since he picked up a bat. Alot of the people that seen Mays, Musial, Mantle etcetc say he is only player around on their level. There are quite a few other great players that I doubt do it and others from the past that prolly get lumped in. I don't think you can discount players that have declined with age, the Ken Griffey's and Frank Thomas's of the baseball world.
I enjoy all the "baseball players are frauds" comments. If people put themselves in their places for 10 minutes most would make the same choice all these guys did.
Let's see, I can go natural and make $1.5 million a year or take the juice for a couple years and then sign a multi-year, guarenteed contract, worth 10's of millions of dollars. It's pretty simple.
A lot of guys on rosters (players 20-25) will take it to stay in the bigs and make better pay instead of riding the buses in the minors.
That's a bunch of bull, and it's called greed. I would NEVER put that crap in my body. If I could hit in the majors, I would do it naturally, and be proud of myself, not cheat and feel guilty everyday whilst my balls shrivel.
They should just make the penalties more harsh so that these guys would think twice before taking anything. Maybe Manny should get banned for TWO years, then we'll see how many of these idiots take the shit to 'get by'. Shit, I try to not even take cold medicine if I dont have to.
if some of the best players ever are caught..how the hell are the decent players getting by w/o it..
that said..i now assume everyone is on it
Yeah... you would think after all this mess, that whatever players aren't (and haven't) used would make a big deal about it... But I guess even the clean ones benefit, because these juicers have pushed up the salaries for everyone.
My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
I found this on http://www.rotoworld.com
"A source told Yahoo! Sports that the illegal substance for which Manny Ramirez tested positive is supposed to boost sexual drive. Cue up the performance enhancing jokes. It's possible, if rumors of the source of the positive drug test are true, that the sexual enhancer could have been used to boost testosterone for those coming off a steroids cycle."
Maybe it was "natural male enhancement" that Manny was taking.....he wanted to be like "Smilin' Bob" :twisted:
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.
You think the doctor has any responsibilty here? He is prescribing it and HAS to know that there is that danger for manny? I find it hard to beleive that he would/could/should take ANYTHING prior to having it checked out by the mlb or the players association for that matter, whether it be vitamin c or a freaking aspirin!!. I just dont see how this happens. Not sticking up for Manny in any way shape or form, just wondering if the doctor should have some sort knowledge of this shit.
In this situation Manny should be working through the team doctors that's if the doctors screws up he can then clearly say this doctor should KNOW what is banned by MLB and what is not. I'm not buying this story one bit these players with millions on the line and HOF numbers on the line should know exactly what goes in and what comes out. You can't tell they don't know.
It's not like those polo horses down in Wellington, Florida who had no idea the prescription given to them was was wrong and went straight to their hearts and killed them.
In this case Manny appears to be a horses ass to let this happen and I really like the guy. Like Charles Barkley said some of these players just act like Knuckleheads, Manny included.
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
The following article really hit home with me. I'm a Giants fan. A Bonds fan. An LA hater. But I take no real joy (well, maybe a little ) when guys other than Bonds get caught. The thing is, many, many players have and continue to look for "the edge." My team's last "glory" was making it into the 2002 World Series. Besides Bonds, what about Kent, Aurilia, Benard, Santiago, etc? I wouldn't be surprised if most of the team was juicing. But look to the other side of the diamond...Glaus was caught and was the WS MVP. How about Fulmer? Spezio? I've tried to forget the rest of those Angels , but I'm sure they had a bunch of juice guys as well. I don't know where I stand. You've got tons of middle relievers doing the stuff so how are you supposed to not do the stuff? The following article doesn't "speak to me" because I'm a Sox hater (I'm not) but more because it just "is what it is" and I KNOW that every team to have won a WS in the last 10 years has had some (so called) cheaters on it.
Boston's 2004 title was a defining moment in the lives of many New Englanders. Dateline: May 7, 2014
My son and I have flown from California to spend the week in Boston. He is a little more than 6½ at this point. He has never set foot in Fenway Park. The time is right. He likes baseball. He likes the Red Sox. He's a little sports encyclopedia. I have brainwashed him. He is just old enough to understand the significance of his first Fenway game and, more importantly, old enough that he'll be able to remember the experience decades later.
Manny Ramirez was the best right-handed hitter of his generation. But now, we're not sure what that means.
We bring my father with us. Three generations of the Simmons family taking in a Yankees-Red Sox game for the first time. This should be a wonderful moment. A signature moment, even.
We find our $1,500 seats in the lower boxes near third base. We are sitting in Best Buy's Section 17, which is right between Bob's Discount Furniture's Section 16 and Costco's Section 18. Every section has a sponsor now. The Green Monster is now called "The Pepsi Green Monster" and has a big Pepsi can painted on it. Ted Williams' special seat in right field is now sponsored by Muscle Milk. Even home plate is sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts. Has the logo on it and everything. That's just the way sports work now.
We settle into our seats. I point toward the championship banners over the first-base side. They go in order: 1903, 1904, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007. Ever since Boston won the World Series 10 years ago, I always imagined pointing to that 2004 banner and telling my little boy, "That's the team that changed everything."
So that's what I do. I point at the banner and tell him, "That's the team that changed everything."
"Isn't that the team that cheated?" he asks.
My father and I glance at each other. A few beats pass.
"Well, technically, no," I stammer. "I mean ..."
"I thought they had a whole bunch of steroids guys on that team," he says.
"Well, there have been some accusations, and yeah, some of the power numbers were a little suspicious, but ..."
"I'd do it again!" my dad yells happily.
"Dad!"
I shake my head at him. He shrugs. The thing is, he WOULD do it again. He wanted to see the Red Sox win the World Series in his lifetime. He worried about it constantly. So did I. So did every Red Sox fan. We worried about living a full life, then dying, without ever seeing them win. All of us knew people who fit in that category. None of us wanted to end up in there.
All of us would have made a deal with the devil at the time. And maybe we did. We just didn't know it.
"Nothing was ever really proved," I tell my son, trying to keep up the good fight.
He ignores me and starts rattling through our 2004 lineup with creepy precision. He points out Nomar Garciaparra's remarkable 1999 and 2000 seasons, his subsequent tendon injuries and how his career played out so blandly afterward for reasons that remain unclear. My dad points out the Sox traded Nomar midway through the 2004 season. Technically, that debate shouldn't even matter. Score one for Dad.
"But what about Trot Nixon and Bill Mueller?" my son says. "They missed a bunch of games every year with injuries, put on weight when they were skinny guys, peaked quickly and were never seen again. Same for Mark Bellhorn, right? That's suspicious."
"Well," I say, "their names never came up in anything, so that's not really fair ..."
"And Kevin Millar, he had a few big homer years, then his power numbers went way down once the testing started."
"That's true, but it doesn't prove anything ..."
"And Johnny Damon, he got bigger and started hitting for more power even though he was a singles hitter, right?"
"Well ..."
The events of that magical fall of 2004 are now in question.
"And what about Big Papi?" he wonders. "Played for Minnesota, didn't hit for power, came to the Red Sox, turned into the best slugger in the league, and as soon as they cracked down on steroids, he stopped hitting homers again. And he was friends with all the other Dominican players who were linked to performance-enhancing drugs. What about him?"
Silence. Nobody says anything.
Finally, my dad steps in: "He had an inside-outside swing at Minnesota, when he came to Boston, we encouraged him to pull the ball, so ..."
"Come on, Gramps!" my son says. "That's dumb, and you know it."
We glance out to the field. Big Papi is one of Boston's coaches now. After he hit 54 homers in 2006, his career was over within four years. Now he's just a fat guy in his early 40s coaching first base. You would never guess this is the same guy who carried us in 2004, the guy who fueled the Greatest Comeback Ever, the guy who helped convince an entire fan base that, yes, we could believe.
"And what about Manny?" my son asks. "He tested positive for performance enhancers in 2009 with the Dodgers. How do you know he wasn't using that whole time?"
"Well, we don't," I say. "But that was kind of a fluke -- he had a doctor in Florida who prescribed him a banned substance, and ..."
"Come on, Dad, I read your Red Sox book. You said that at least you knew Manny couldn't have ever used steroids because he was too dumb to figure out how to stick to a cycle. Then he tested positive. You were, like, his biggest fan. You wrote a big piece after he got traded that was so long, it took me a week to read it."
"I told him not to write that column," my dad says. "Manny needed to go. He was a selfish jerk. Your father had blinders on ..."
"Come on, that's not fair," I say. "I loved the guy. He was on the team for more than eight years. He helped us end the curse. He made our lives as Red Sox fans more fun. He was like family. I wasn't gonna dump the guy from my life after everything he did just because his agent poisoned him against the team."
"But you defended him and said he was a good guy at heart," my son says. "And then he cheated, right? So how does that make him a good guy?"
I take a deep breath.
"It doesn't make him a good guy," I say. "You don't understand what it was like to follow baseball before you were born. There was a strike in 1994, and the World Series was canceled. Everyone hated baseball. Then Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa started hitting homers, and the balls started flying out of the park, and it was so much fun that everyone looked the other way. We didn't care that these guys were practically busting out of their skin or growing second foreheads. We really didn't. All the cheating made baseball more fun to watch. We were in denial. It was weird.
"Then, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in a season, and that was like the turning point. We realized that things had gone too far. We blamed him for cheating and looked the other way with dozens of other guys who might have been doing the same thing. Brady Anderson hit 50 homers in 1996; we didn't care. Bret Boone had 141 RBIs in a season; we didn't care. Big Papi went from 10 homers to 41 in four seasons; we didn't care. Roger Clemens was washed up, but suddenly he could throw 98 miles per hour and win Cy Youngs again; we didn't care. Eric Gagne saved 84 straight games and threw 120 miles an hour; we didn't care. Good players started blowing out tendons nobody had ever heard of; we didn't care. Pitchers blew out elbow tendons and shoulder ligaments routinely; we didn't care. This was the deal. They cheated; we pretended they didn't. It's really hard to explain unless you were there."
My son tries to soak everything in. That's lot to process for a 6-year-old.
Finally ...
"So when the Red Sox won in 2004, did you know some of the guys might have been cheating?" he asks.
"At the time?" I answer. "No. Either we were in total denial, or we just didn't care."
"I'd do it again!" my dad yells happily, getting another withering glare from me.
"You have to understand," I say. "EVERYONE cheated back then. You know how I drive 80 on the highway even though all the signs say to go 55? That's how everyone thought back then -- the signs said one thing, but everyone did the other. There were so many people cheating that, competitively, you almost had to cheat to keep up with everyone else."
"So why didn't the people in charge get everyone to stop cheating?" my son asks.
"I wish I knew. The players' union didn't care, the commissioner's office didn't care, nobody cared. Until it was too late."
"So you won the World Series twice because of Manny and Papi," my son says, "but they might have been cheating the whole time, and so were some of their teammates? Dad, your whole book was about how you could die in peace because they won in 2004. If they cheated to win, does that make what happened OK?"
The question hangs in the air. And hangs. And hangs.
"I don't know," I finally answer. "I still haven't figured that part out. Again, you don't understand what it was like. Everyone was cheating, so the playing field was kind of even, as weird as that sounds. You can't imagine how depressing it was to be a Red Sox fan at the time. Things always went wrong. We hadn't won in 86 years. We were the whipping boy of the Yankees. We always expected the worst to happen, mainly because the worst always did happen. That 2004 title made life easier for everyone. We could just follow the team without all the other negative crap. Does that make sense?"
"I guess," he says, nodding. "But Manny was your favorite hitter on that team. And he tested positive later. Is he still your favorite hitter?"
"Yes and no," I say. "No, because he cheated. Yes, because whether he was cheating or not, I can't forget watching him hit baseballs on a daily basis. I just can't. You should have seen him. Perfect swing, perfect balance, perfect everything. He was a hitting savant. That's the funny thing -- he didn't NEED to cheat. The guy was put on the earth to hit.
"But he did cheat," my son says.
"He did. Yes. He did."
"So he's not your favorite player from that team now?"
"He never was; Pedro Martinez was. Manny was my favorite hitter. I loved Pedro the most."
I am dreading the next question. I am dreading it. I do not want him to ask it. I know it's coming.
"Did Pedro cheat?"
Silence.
I take a deep breath. So does my father. You can't describe in a few tidy sentences, off the cuff, what it was like to watch Pedro Martinez pitch in 1999 and 2000. To paraphrase Joe Mantegna in "Searching for Bobby Fischer," Pedro was better at pitching than you or I will ever be at anything. He had swagger. He had four A-plus pitches. He had everything. He spurred me to buy tickets from scalpers when I was broke. I would do it again. I watched Pedro Martinez pitch at his apex at Fenway Park. I get to brag about this when I'm old. He's the one guy who didn't cheat. He definitely didn't cheat. I bet anything, the man did not cheat.
Do I say this to my son? No. He wouldn't believe me.
"I looked at Pedro's numbers," my son says. "He peaked for like three years right as the steroids era was going, then he battled injuries and never did as well. Fits the profile, right?"
"Nah, I don't see it," my father says. "He was skinnier than you are. Steroids make you bulk up. Pedro was like a buck-sixty soaking wet."
"I don't see it, either," I say. "I don't think he did."
"But you don't know?" my son asks me.
"Honestly? I don't know anything anymore."
We look at the 2004 banner again. I always thought that, for the rest of my life, I would look at that banner and think only good thoughts. Now, there's a mental asterisk that won't go away. I wish I could take a pill to shake it from my brain. I see 2004 and 2007, and think of Manny and Papi first and foremost. The modern-day Ruth and Gehrig. One of the great one-two punches in sports history. Were they cheating the whole time? Was Pedro cheating, too? That 2004 banner makes me think of these things now. I wish it didn't, but it does. This makes me sad. This makes me profoundly sad.
My son can read it in my face. I am sad. He can see it.
"That's OK, Dad," he says, rubbing my shoulder. "Everyone cheated back then."
If I had known then what I know now...
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
I'm guessing there is no "doctor"....at least not in the AMA, board certified sense.
If I had known then what I know now...
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
I enjoy all the "baseball players are frauds" comments. If people put themselves in their places for 10 minutes most would make the same choice all these guys did.
Let's see, I can go natural and make $1.5 million a year or take the juice for a couple years and then sign a multi-year, guarenteed contract, worth 10's of millions of dollars. It's pretty simple.
A lot of guys on rosters (players 20-25) will take it to stay in the bigs and make better pay instead of riding the buses in the minors.
That's a bunch of bull, and it's called greed. I would NEVER put that crap in my body. If I could hit in the majors, I would do it naturally, and be proud of myself, not cheat and feel guilty everyday whilst my balls shrivel.
They should just make the penalties more harsh so that these guys would think twice before taking anything. Maybe Manny should get banned for TWO years, then we'll see how many of these idiots take the shit to 'get by'. Shit, I try to not even take cold medicine if I dont have to.
That's why I said "most people". Not everyone would do it but many, many people would for the money
What an ass he is. He never needed any drugs to make him better. :evil: I wonder if he realizes that his career may go right down the tubes, and say bye bye to the Hall of Fame, because he definitely would have been in there...
What an ass he is. He never needed any drugs to make him better. :evil: I wonder if he realizes that his career may go right down the tubes, and say bye bye to the Hall of Fame, because he definitely would have been in there...
It would kind of defy logic to think he decided to start after they began testing. :roll:
If I had known then what I know now...
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
Comments
if some of the best players ever are caught..how the hell are the decent players getting by w/o it..
that said..i now assume everyone is on it
That's a bunch of bull, and it's called greed. I would NEVER put that crap in my body. If I could hit in the majors, I would do it naturally, and be proud of myself, not cheat and feel guilty everyday whilst my balls shrivel.
They should just make the penalties more harsh so that these guys would think twice before taking anything. Maybe Manny should get banned for TWO years, then we'll see how many of these idiots take the shit to 'get by'. Shit, I try to not even take cold medicine if I dont have to.
Yeah... you would think after all this mess, that whatever players aren't (and haven't) used would make a big deal about it... But I guess even the clean ones benefit, because these juicers have pushed up the salaries for everyone.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Yep.
work = work + 1;
sleep = sleep - work * 10;}
else if (work >= 0) {
reality.equals(false);
work = work +1;
}system("pause");
return 0;}
Wish you were here...
♥~RIP Dad
In this situation Manny should be working through the team doctors that's if the doctors screws up he can then clearly say this doctor should KNOW what is banned by MLB and what is not. I'm not buying this story one bit these players with millions on the line and HOF numbers on the line should know exactly what goes in and what comes out. You can't tell they don't know.
It's not like those polo horses down in Wellington, Florida who had no idea the prescription given to them was was wrong and went straight to their hearts and killed them.
In this case Manny appears to be a horses ass to let this happen and I really like the guy. Like Charles Barkley said some of these players just act like Knuckleheads, Manny included.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/st ... ortCat=mlb
Confronting my worst nightmare
By Bill Simmons
Page 2
Boston's 2004 title was a defining moment in the lives of many New Englanders.
Dateline: May 7, 2014
My son and I have flown from California to spend the week in Boston. He is a little more than 6½ at this point. He has never set foot in Fenway Park. The time is right. He likes baseball. He likes the Red Sox. He's a little sports encyclopedia. I have brainwashed him. He is just old enough to understand the significance of his first Fenway game and, more importantly, old enough that he'll be able to remember the experience decades later.
Manny Ramirez was the best right-handed hitter of his generation. But now, we're not sure what that means.
We bring my father with us. Three generations of the Simmons family taking in a Yankees-Red Sox game for the first time. This should be a wonderful moment. A signature moment, even.
We find our $1,500 seats in the lower boxes near third base. We are sitting in Best Buy's Section 17, which is right between Bob's Discount Furniture's Section 16 and Costco's Section 18. Every section has a sponsor now. The Green Monster is now called "The Pepsi Green Monster" and has a big Pepsi can painted on it. Ted Williams' special seat in right field is now sponsored by Muscle Milk. Even home plate is sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts. Has the logo on it and everything. That's just the way sports work now.
We settle into our seats. I point toward the championship banners over the first-base side. They go in order: 1903, 1904, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007. Ever since Boston won the World Series 10 years ago, I always imagined pointing to that 2004 banner and telling my little boy, "That's the team that changed everything."
So that's what I do. I point at the banner and tell him, "That's the team that changed everything."
"Isn't that the team that cheated?" he asks.
My father and I glance at each other. A few beats pass.
"Well, technically, no," I stammer. "I mean ..."
"I thought they had a whole bunch of steroids guys on that team," he says.
"Well, there have been some accusations, and yeah, some of the power numbers were a little suspicious, but ..."
"I'd do it again!" my dad yells happily.
"Dad!"
I shake my head at him. He shrugs. The thing is, he WOULD do it again. He wanted to see the Red Sox win the World Series in his lifetime. He worried about it constantly. So did I. So did every Red Sox fan. We worried about living a full life, then dying, without ever seeing them win. All of us knew people who fit in that category. None of us wanted to end up in there.
All of us would have made a deal with the devil at the time. And maybe we did. We just didn't know it.
"Nothing was ever really proved," I tell my son, trying to keep up the good fight.
He ignores me and starts rattling through our 2004 lineup with creepy precision. He points out Nomar Garciaparra's remarkable 1999 and 2000 seasons, his subsequent tendon injuries and how his career played out so blandly afterward for reasons that remain unclear. My dad points out the Sox traded Nomar midway through the 2004 season. Technically, that debate shouldn't even matter. Score one for Dad.
"But what about Trot Nixon and Bill Mueller?" my son says. "They missed a bunch of games every year with injuries, put on weight when they were skinny guys, peaked quickly and were never seen again. Same for Mark Bellhorn, right? That's suspicious."
"Well," I say, "their names never came up in anything, so that's not really fair ..."
"And Kevin Millar, he had a few big homer years, then his power numbers went way down once the testing started."
"That's true, but it doesn't prove anything ..."
"And Johnny Damon, he got bigger and started hitting for more power even though he was a singles hitter, right?"
"Well ..."
The events of that magical fall of 2004 are now in question.
"And what about Big Papi?" he wonders. "Played for Minnesota, didn't hit for power, came to the Red Sox, turned into the best slugger in the league, and as soon as they cracked down on steroids, he stopped hitting homers again. And he was friends with all the other Dominican players who were linked to performance-enhancing drugs. What about him?"
Silence. Nobody says anything.
Finally, my dad steps in: "He had an inside-outside swing at Minnesota, when he came to Boston, we encouraged him to pull the ball, so ..."
"Come on, Gramps!" my son says. "That's dumb, and you know it."
We glance out to the field. Big Papi is one of Boston's coaches now. After he hit 54 homers in 2006, his career was over within four years. Now he's just a fat guy in his early 40s coaching first base. You would never guess this is the same guy who carried us in 2004, the guy who fueled the Greatest Comeback Ever, the guy who helped convince an entire fan base that, yes, we could believe.
"And what about Manny?" my son asks. "He tested positive for performance enhancers in 2009 with the Dodgers. How do you know he wasn't using that whole time?"
"Well, we don't," I say. "But that was kind of a fluke -- he had a doctor in Florida who prescribed him a banned substance, and ..."
"Come on, Dad, I read your Red Sox book. You said that at least you knew Manny couldn't have ever used steroids because he was too dumb to figure out how to stick to a cycle. Then he tested positive. You were, like, his biggest fan. You wrote a big piece after he got traded that was so long, it took me a week to read it."
"I told him not to write that column," my dad says. "Manny needed to go. He was a selfish jerk. Your father had blinders on ..."
"Come on, that's not fair," I say. "I loved the guy. He was on the team for more than eight years. He helped us end the curse. He made our lives as Red Sox fans more fun. He was like family. I wasn't gonna dump the guy from my life after everything he did just because his agent poisoned him against the team."
"But you defended him and said he was a good guy at heart," my son says. "And then he cheated, right? So how does that make him a good guy?"
I take a deep breath.
"It doesn't make him a good guy," I say. "You don't understand what it was like to follow baseball before you were born. There was a strike in 1994, and the World Series was canceled. Everyone hated baseball. Then Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa started hitting homers, and the balls started flying out of the park, and it was so much fun that everyone looked the other way. We didn't care that these guys were practically busting out of their skin or growing second foreheads. We really didn't. All the cheating made baseball more fun to watch. We were in denial. It was weird.
"Then, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in a season, and that was like the turning point. We realized that things had gone too far. We blamed him for cheating and looked the other way with dozens of other guys who might have been doing the same thing. Brady Anderson hit 50 homers in 1996; we didn't care. Bret Boone had 141 RBIs in a season; we didn't care. Big Papi went from 10 homers to 41 in four seasons; we didn't care. Roger Clemens was washed up, but suddenly he could throw 98 miles per hour and win Cy Youngs again; we didn't care. Eric Gagne saved 84 straight games and threw 120 miles an hour; we didn't care. Good players started blowing out tendons nobody had ever heard of; we didn't care. Pitchers blew out elbow tendons and shoulder ligaments routinely; we didn't care. This was the deal. They cheated; we pretended they didn't. It's really hard to explain unless you were there."
My son tries to soak everything in. That's lot to process for a 6-year-old.
Finally ...
"So when the Red Sox won in 2004, did you know some of the guys might have been cheating?" he asks.
"At the time?" I answer. "No. Either we were in total denial, or we just didn't care."
"I'd do it again!" my dad yells happily, getting another withering glare from me.
"You have to understand," I say. "EVERYONE cheated back then. You know how I drive 80 on the highway even though all the signs say to go 55? That's how everyone thought back then -- the signs said one thing, but everyone did the other. There were so many people cheating that, competitively, you almost had to cheat to keep up with everyone else."
"So why didn't the people in charge get everyone to stop cheating?" my son asks.
"I wish I knew. The players' union didn't care, the commissioner's office didn't care, nobody cared. Until it was too late."
"So you won the World Series twice because of Manny and Papi," my son says, "but they might have been cheating the whole time, and so were some of their teammates? Dad, your whole book was about how you could die in peace because they won in 2004. If they cheated to win, does that make what happened OK?"
The question hangs in the air. And hangs. And hangs.
"I don't know," I finally answer. "I still haven't figured that part out. Again, you don't understand what it was like. Everyone was cheating, so the playing field was kind of even, as weird as that sounds. You can't imagine how depressing it was to be a Red Sox fan at the time. Things always went wrong. We hadn't won in 86 years. We were the whipping boy of the Yankees. We always expected the worst to happen, mainly because the worst always did happen. That 2004 title made life easier for everyone. We could just follow the team without all the other negative crap. Does that make sense?"
"I guess," he says, nodding. "But Manny was your favorite hitter on that team. And he tested positive later. Is he still your favorite hitter?"
"Yes and no," I say. "No, because he cheated. Yes, because whether he was cheating or not, I can't forget watching him hit baseballs on a daily basis. I just can't. You should have seen him. Perfect swing, perfect balance, perfect everything. He was a hitting savant. That's the funny thing -- he didn't NEED to cheat. The guy was put on the earth to hit.
"But he did cheat," my son says.
"He did. Yes. He did."
"So he's not your favorite player from that team now?"
"He never was; Pedro Martinez was. Manny was my favorite hitter. I loved Pedro the most."
I am dreading the next question. I am dreading it. I do not want him to ask it. I know it's coming.
"Did Pedro cheat?"
Silence.
I take a deep breath. So does my father. You can't describe in a few tidy sentences, off the cuff, what it was like to watch Pedro Martinez pitch in 1999 and 2000. To paraphrase Joe Mantegna in "Searching for Bobby Fischer," Pedro was better at pitching than you or I will ever be at anything. He had swagger. He had four A-plus pitches. He had everything. He spurred me to buy tickets from scalpers when I was broke. I would do it again. I watched Pedro Martinez pitch at his apex at Fenway Park. I get to brag about this when I'm old. He's the one guy who didn't cheat. He definitely didn't cheat. I bet anything, the man did not cheat.
Do I say this to my son? No. He wouldn't believe me.
"I looked at Pedro's numbers," my son says. "He peaked for like three years right as the steroids era was going, then he battled injuries and never did as well. Fits the profile, right?"
"Nah, I don't see it," my father says. "He was skinnier than you are. Steroids make you bulk up. Pedro was like a buck-sixty soaking wet."
"I don't see it, either," I say. "I don't think he did."
"But you don't know?" my son asks me.
"Honestly? I don't know anything anymore."
We look at the 2004 banner again. I always thought that, for the rest of my life, I would look at that banner and think only good thoughts. Now, there's a mental asterisk that won't go away. I wish I could take a pill to shake it from my brain. I see 2004 and 2007, and think of Manny and Papi first and foremost. The modern-day Ruth and Gehrig. One of the great one-two punches in sports history. Were they cheating the whole time? Was Pedro cheating, too? That 2004 banner makes me think of these things now. I wish it didn't, but it does. This makes me sad. This makes me profoundly sad.
My son can read it in my face. I am sad. He can see it.
"That's OK, Dad," he says, rubbing my shoulder. "Everyone cheated back then."
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
uh, no. :roll:
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
I'm guessing there is no "doctor"....at least not in the AMA, board certified sense.
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
That's why I said "most people". Not everyone would do it but many, many people would for the money
Only if you're trying to become a woman
Hey wait thats how his hair got so long !!!
I can picture manny with man boobs maybe he is trying to change....
The ONLY thing better than a glass of beer is tea with Miss McGill
A protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers
Wish you were here...
♥~RIP Dad
I wonder if he's been juicin all along.
It would kind of defy logic to think he decided to start after they began testing. :roll:
Vegas 93, Vegas 98, Vegas 00 (10 year show), Vegas 03, Vegas 06
VIC 07
EV LA1 08
Seattle1 09, Seattle2 09, Salt Lake 09, LA4 09
Columbus 10
EV LA 11
Vancouver 11
Missoula 12
Portland 13, Spokane 13
St. Paul 14, Denver 14
They scored one run last night against Barry Zito.
They will fall hard and fast.
Not necessarily. I think there are ALOT of player that were lookin for somethin to keep them in their prime. Manny is the perfect candidate for that.
Where I'm not ugly and you're lookin' at me