Surprised? Hardly

Were you surprised when you tried to beat Joey Chestnut’s hot-dog eating record and failed? Were you surprised when Obama won the election? Were you surprised that the hot girl left you when you spat game like Tarzan? No? Then why the hell is anyone surprised that Sammy Sosa was juicing?

I’m sorry, but I’m fed up with all the steroid talk. Everyone is peddling eulogies, saying how this is such a shame, how it degrades Sosa’s legacy and how it undermines the game. People talk about how inspired they were by the summer of 1998 and how Sosa and McGuire provided a respite from the otherwise pedantic lives of their fans. Now that the truth is out, they don’t know if they can live anymore. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeesus. What sycophantic talk!

I could go on and on about how I think almost every single word that’s been spoken about steroids are misguided tropes filled with moral relativism completely lacking any modicum of context and perspective. If I did, however, I would give myself an aneurism. Wellllll, let’s tempt fate.

What’s so frustrating is that the debate among baseball enthusiasts rings, most unfortunately, like debates among politicians. All parties point fingers at others, each thinking that it is magically able to occupy the moral high-ground all by itself. Players blame the league, the league blames the players and the fans blame both.

It’s part and parcel with Democrats blaming Republicans for being overly ambitious in their war planning, the GOP shirking any responsibility because Democrats were being unpatriotic and the people blaming both because DC politicians can’t do anything. It’s like, Hellooooooo! Both parties voted for the war, and most all Americans wanted to kick some Middle Eastern tail. Everyone is to blame!

It’s relatively similar in baseball, especially with regards to the widespread applicability of blame. Except in baseball, it’s something like this: Pitching dominated baseball during the 1960s and 1970s. The league messed around with mound height, ball density, bat technology etc, all with the hope of balancing out defense and offense in the game. With the popularity of baseball struggling to compete with the ascendancy of the NFL, the need to liven up baseball was pressing. Home runs came in to solve this problem. “Chicks dig the long ball” is what we’re told, but so do Johnny, Billy and everyone else playing Little League baseball across the country. So players knew that power and home runs were what was going to get them that lucrative salary. Good lord, what are players supposed to think when Adam Dunn gets millions for his .225 average, 200 Ks and 40 HRs but David Eckstein (model baseball player) gets chickenshit? So home runs began flying all over the place and fans were happy and therefore Bud Selig and the league were happy.

So who cares if they took steroids? No one was complaining when Sosa and McGuire were belting home runs. It’s just so typical for people to get moral in hindsight. What, was no one suspicious? Did people not want to be? Were red flags not raised when the normally affable Sosa had near apoplexy after Rick Reilly challenged his arrogance by informing him that there was a testing facility 10 minutes down the road and that if he really wanted to quell the rumors why not go piss in a cup? Then, when the guy stops hitting dongs, he gets caught with a corked bat. Hmmm, what year was that? Oh, 2003? The year he tested positive for steroids? This is just way too obvious.

People need to accept the fact that steroids were, and still are, a part of baseball. In fact, they’re probably more prevalent in sports than many people think. How else has the average O-lineman in football gained 75 pounds, increased his bench-pressing ability, yet still manages to run a 4.8 40-yd dash? That wasn’t happening 20 years ago. Wow, just wait until 60-minutes breaks this one.

The steroid era does not need to have a big tainting effect on the game’s legacy. If you set aside your predilections, the last 15 years of baseball have been some of its most entertaining. No one discounts the achievements of Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson for having pitched in the Dead Ball Era. We’re going through the same thing now. Get your panties out of a twist, and enjoy the fact that the game is more offensively minded.

But hey, don’t get me wrong. I love a good pitchers duel. But the last time I saw one, every goddamn tech-start up, entrepreneur wanna-be, venture capitalist never-will-be was too wrapped up in their Crackberry to soak in and appreciate the subtle intricacies of the game of baseball. Instead, it was only when Barry Bonds was pelting balls into the Bay that these college-nerd drop outs took their thumbs off their QWERTY keyboards to stand up and cheer. The game has changed because the fans have changed. Baseball is no longer the slow, cerebral, thinking man’s game that made it popular at the turn of the century. Fans don’t want to see a perfectly executed relay, much less a well-timed pickoff move. They want to see balls flying out of the park as if they were North Korean missiles.

I think I feel an aneurism coming on.