Reilly re-distributing baseball's MVP awards

Here is Reilly's take on Bill Romanowski, in 2003:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/rick_reilly/09/02/reilly0901/index.html

9:55 -- After team meetings Romo downs one of three power shakes he'll drink today. They're crammed full of unpronounceable stuff and count toward his colossal intake of 250 grams of protein a day. He'll also gulp between 100 and 130 pills throughout the day, depending on what his feces sample, his consultants and his body are telling him.

He carries his pills in a plastic container the size of a welcome mat -- about 500 colorful vitamins and supplements divided into dozens of tiny compartments. Inside it looks like Willy Wonka's briefcase. One time, he dropped it. "It took me three hours to pick the pills all up and sort them again," he says.

The whole thing is a hoot, as Reilly blindly recounts Romanowski's health food and "vitamin" intake.

 

Taking away MVP's and giving to the likes of Piazza and Gonzalez, who most would say aren't clean is ridiculous.

 

You know the funniest thing about PEDs? The most roided-up guys in baseball still couldn't hit 500-foot-plus home runs with the regularity of the beer and hot dog-fueled Babe Ruth.

 

A lot of truth to that.

 

So now Reilly has demanded that Isaac Bruce clarify his religious beliefs, challenged an athlete to tinkle in a cup and appointed himself The Decider regarding baseball's awards.

 

To me, the biggest difference in "context" before now was, that you knew that the ball was dead in 1915, that the mound was higher in 1968. You knew who played in Fenway and who played in the Astrodome, and could make mental adjustments accordingly.

But the problem with the steroid era is that you just don't know who was clean and who wasn't. And so you can never be sure how to judge someone.

 

Hondo cannot be serious. C'mon man. Tell us you're kidding.
Because as I sit in my flat on February 18, 2009, at 8:28 PM EST, thinking about baseball's steroid era, I don't know which--if any-- players were clean. To retroactively take individual awards from players and then re-distributing those awards to other players is the height of silliness.

 

I've said this before, but much of the media furor over PEDs in baseball is IMO driven by guilt among baseball writers they whiffed so thoroughly on the issue in the McGwire-Sosa heyday. The overreaction today is driven by the same problem that caused them to overlook it then-too many baseball writers love the game so much they act as if they are stakeholders in the sport rather than outsiders.

 

I'd love to know how this didn't set off cognitive dissonance alarms, either in Reilly's head or the editors':

And...

Reilly is saying that Beltre, for some reason, chose 2004, the year after anonymous testing began, to use steroids and have a big season. Meanwhile, Gonzalez comes out of nowhere to hit 57 in a season, two years before any form of steroid testing, and he's presumed to be "clean" without a doubt.

How does this see the light of day?

 

Because he probably has a no-edit clause.

 

actually, it's a privately owned museum, and they can do whatever the fuck they want inside their doors. if you don't like the decisions the folks who own/run it make, stay the fuck out of cooperstown and keep the $12 in your pocket.

 

'Roids can give you bigger muscles and faster bat speed, but not talent.