Reilly re-distributing baseball's MVP awards

christ, that made me laugh. god bless, rump.

 

I really don't know why people don't get the reason why guys took steroids. No, they don't give anyone the ability to hit a baseball, they just give them the strength (or at least the ability to build the strength) to hit it farther.

PEDs take career minor-leaguers and make them major-league bench players. They take major-league bench players and make them starters. They take starters and make them All-Stars. They take All-Stars and make them Hall-of-Famers. And they take Hall-of-Famers and make them inner-circle Hall-of-Famers.

It's all a matter of degrees. Not everyone who took PEDs became the 1998 version of Mark McGwire. But steroids probably transformed Paul Lo Duca from a career minor-league/fringe major-leaguer (he didn't reach the big leagues for good until age 29) into a four-time all-star.

 

Steroid use leads to an increased level of scrappiness? I had no idea.

 

Lo Duca took the designer steroid, Ecksteinodol.

 

And speaking of hustle and scrappiness:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/turns_out_craig_counsell

 

Double J. A reporter is a stakeholder in the facts. Baseball would have been much better served had there been more outside scrutiny of this issue in the 1990s, just as it would be better served at some effort to provide perspective rather than the moralizing bullshit that so often accompanies the national pastime.

 

Word. I'm soooo tired of the catch-up sanctimony.

 

There was money to be made on Sosa/McGwire and there's at least the possibility that money might be made on uncovering the steroids scandal.

 

My problem with Reilly is his approach - You can't pick and choose within an era as to what and who was legit and what and who were not - it is impossible to extract parts from the whole. Example: If clean player A batted before dirty player B, the pitches A received were probably affected by the fact he hit in front of B, hence even though A was clean the game was changed and his performance was tainted as well B's performance. And any game B played in was similarly affected - pitching changes were made, guys were or were not pinch hit for, etc., etc., due to his presence in the lineup And even if a given team was entirely clean, because other teams in the league were not, that skews everything else. Everything.

Personally, I think that from 1988 onward, MLB has all the competitive integrity of the WWF. That goes for the NFL and NBA and NCAA as well. It's all a crock - and probably has been - but its in everyone's self-interest to perpetuate the myth. Sports are like the movies - entertaining but not real. I still follow, I still watch, I still write about it, but at a certain level, I realize the whole thing, all of it, is total BS.

 

Please don't misunderstand, Michael, I don't disagree at all with what you're saying.

 

You just blew my mind ...

 

Didn't want to let this pass unnoticed.

Outstanding.