It’s pretty much all been said in the news about the performance enhancing drug scandal in major league baseball. I thought Roger Clemens was a selfish bore way back in 1990 when he was tossed from game 3 of the ALCS after just 1 1/3 innings for profanity. Oh, and he was a member of the Red Sox then…
As always, it’s the fans that pay. Coming out of the 1994 strike, the owners looked the other way while many of their “stars” shot themselves in the ass to create an illusion of greatness and we fans paid for it. We bought the phony home run chase of cheaters Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and invited the widow of Roger Maris to help celebrate a lie. Warning track outs became dingers and fans flocked to see them, allowing greedy owners to raise prices to the point where most families cannot afford to attend a game.
This is yet another example of the unraveling of this country. We are so fatigued by scandals and phoniness that apathy is growing and we’re losing the basic expectation of personal integrity in our society.
In “Field of Dreams,” James Earl Jones as Terrance Mann spoke a beautiful and nostalgic soliloquy about the game:
“The one constant through all the years, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.”
Not anymore.
Hey, there’s no sense ending this post on such a downer. The forecasters are calling for another foot here in the snow belt. I can only hope they’re telling little white lies.
You should write a book dad.