"I wasn't willfully-blind when I wrote 'Summer of '98' -- not ME!"

Or, you could write, what is the BFD about this whole business in the first place, and not pretend that somebody broke your widdle heart. If we're going to accept it as "part of the landscape" in the NFL then it makes no sense to get hysterical over MLB.

 

Anyone else catch Wallace Matthews' column in Newsday the other day where he said hell no, he won't vote for McGwire? It included the following passage. Anyone else think it was a subtle dig at a certain someone?

At the time, a lot of us suspected McGwire, but shamefully, few wrote about it, out of naivete or worse, getting caught up in baseball's manufactured feel-good Summer of '98.

EDIT: Entire link: http://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/ny-spwally284993576nov28,0,6960829.column?coll=ny-sports-columnists

 

We've long accepted the NFL is the sporting equivalent of sausage getting made (forgive me Bob Ryan if I screwed up your metaphor). We know something unnatural has to go on to get those guys out there every week. Though people shouldn't view baseball any differently, we do because it's baseball, the National Pastime, as pure as the grass is green. It's held to a different standard.

 

the standard is different simply because baseball is all about individual records and numbers. football is about the team, with the steroid heads mostly unseen, unknown, in the pits people. linemen get bigger by any means necessary? not many people care.

baseball's cherished records get attacked by 'roid-rage freaks? fans get fired up.

if the best seamheads can come up with is, "hey, football's got juice problems, too," that's pretty sad. football's had juice issues for 30 years. why would the outcry that o-linemen juice up ever hit the average joe as hard as mark mcguire or sammy sosa or barry bonds, who have put up numbers making roger maris, babe ruth and henry aaron seem small.

it's apples and oranges. the ultimate team sport vs. the individual, man vs. man deal. it seems pretty simple to me.

 

1. I like the reference to W. Mattews piece; and no I don't think it was so subtle. (and on a tangent, I'm happy to read his opinions again, he is one of our best).
2. I didn't read it (Summer of 98) but was told that the word "steriods" was not ONCE used in the book. Is this true?
3. TSR's critique, and this is not an anti-L post, but how many times to we have to hear "best selling author" of "Miracle on Whatever"....
4. My kid read previous "best selling author" of something about getting cut and my guy said it was horrible. Horrible.

 

So I suppose this means Wally wrote about McGwire and steroids at the time? Well, if he did, he was writing it in the New York Post, whose standard of proof is more liberal than most papers'. So I don't think he can legitimately go all haughty on us now just because his paper might have allowed that kind of speculation while most newspapers wanted some concrete proof before accusing an athlete of cheating.

 

So why didn't you do it - or push to have it done - then. Hindsight is wonderful, but its the kind of shoddy, speculative journalism you are proposing that is a major problem with news gathering these days.
If I was your editor and you wanted to write some "speculative" column based on a jug of andro found by another reporter and photos dug up by the photo department, I'd say get off your lazy ass, do some fucking research and investigation and write a real story.
Not some effing "opinion" piece that gets you to the bar by 7 p.m.
I'm not saying McGwire is clean. What I am saying is you are a lazy reporter.

 

Well, Frank, I doubt Wally's gonna be posting any links to all the steroid columns he wrote in '98 because they didn't exist.
In this case, he's a bigger hypocrite than Loopy.

 

I don't say this often, Boom, but you pretty much summed up my thoughts exactly.

 

You really think the steroid problem in football is limited to just anonymous trenchmen?

 

uh, fuck you EE94. i was posting hypothetically. in 1998 i wasn't a columnist and i had yet to cover my first MLB game or even work for an outlet that covered MLB.

 

In other words, leo, you're just talking out of your ass because it's really easy to say I would have done this... when there was no possibility of you or anyone you know ever doing it.

I honestly think most MLB writers/columnists watched the '98 HR derby and said "these guys have to be on something," but never pursued it because there was no testing and no way to prove anything other than finiding a hot syringe in somebody's locker. (Remember, folks, the Andro that was discovered in McGwire's locker was a legal, over-the-counter supplement that anybody could walk into GNC and buy in unlimited quantities.)

So they all went along for the ride because it was great fun, good to write about and good for baseball. My problem is all of the revisionism that's going on now, with guys writing "if I knew then what I know now," or "I was duped."
That's the real bullshit.