Money talks; ethics walk. If there was ever any doubt about the truth of that statement, all you need to do to get your head on straight is to look at the support of Major League Baseball's owners for the man whose everlasting legacy will be that he presided over what is already being referred to as the "Steroids Era" in baseball, Bud Selig.
According to an Associated Press report published on Foxsports.com, Selig, who has yet to even admit to any share of responsibility for the rampant abuse of steroids and Human Growth Hormone, both controlled substances, by MLB players in the late-1990's and early-2000's, enhoys the complete and total support of baseball's owners.
The select group of millionaires and billionaires who should be under the commissioner's control to ensure that the best interests of the game are upheld have revealed their true colors by throwing their support wholeheartedly behind the man who fiddled while baseball burned.
White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf - "He has total support of the owners..."
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner - "He's a terrific commissioner..."
Major League Baseball's owners can decry the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs to the high heavens, but the above statements reveal the truth of the matter - that it's all a smokescreen; all to pacify you, the paying customer, and to make you believe these people have your interests at heart. In reality, though, as long as the money keeps rolling in and profits continue to be made by the majority of the clubs, there will be no change at the top of the command structure in baseball.
It's instructive to look at the result of the last major scandal suffered by Major League Baseball; the Black Sox scandal of 1919. That was the year eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
Even though all eight of the accused players were acquitted at trial, the damage to baseball's reputation was so great that the office of Commissioner of Baseball was established as a direct result of the scandal to reassure the fans that the game's integrity would be upheld. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed baseball's first commissioner and immediately banned all eight players from the game for life.
The judge's comment? "Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball."
Contrast that no-nonsense statement with the public utterances of Bud Selig regarding the performance-enhancing drugs scandal and you can immediately see the difference between a commissioner concerned with protecting the good of the game, and a commissioner whose sole concern is to protect the interests of the game's owners. "For the time being...I'm studying things and analyzing things."
1919 was a long time ago and perhaps it's unfair to compare two different situations from two different eras. There was no player's union in 1919, the men who played on the field were completely and totally under the thumb of the owners.
But those owners, even almost a century ago, were bright enough to see that a scandal of the magnitude of the Black Sox debacle could potentially run the entire moneymaking operation into the ground if the fans, the people who ultimately pay for everything, felt the game was rigged.
How is that so different from today? Well, baseball is enjoying a run of unprecedented popularity, meaning unprecedented income, and the owners don't feel this scandal is of a magnitude to upset the apple cart. If that's the case, why make waves? Keep Selig in the office and continue allowing the clowns to run the circus!
But if profits start falling, suddenly the man who is so popular with all the owners right now will find himself the odd man out and will immediately be held accountable for allowing this issue to take down a great game. Maybe it's not fair; maybe there really was nothing Bud Selig could do for ten years as he watched chemically-enhanced giants tear down records that had stood for decades.
The fact of the matter is, though, the man at the top must be held responsible. He is the one who should pay for allowing the scandal to develop and become full-blown - that's the nature of his job. If and when the money-train starts slowing down, Bud Selig will discover more and more owners feel exactly that way. They will start to wonder what I already wonder: Why in the world are they paying that guy $14.5 million dollars a year to sit around and look befuddled?
Since when did the Chicago Cubs decide to scrap Wrigley Field and build a domed stadium?
That's what I wondered when I read the headline, "Cubs Face Competition for Fukodome," on the front page of Foxsports.com this afternoon. It was a distressing thought. I spent four years in northern Indiana and went to at least one Cubs game at Wrigley every season I was out there.
Every time I visited Wrigley it was a lot of fun, too - The cold beer, the ivy-covered brick outfield walls, the good looking women, the cold beer (Oddly enough, the more of the cold beer you drank the more good looking women entered Wrigley, even if the place was filled. Very strange).
My friends and I were in the left field stands watching batting practice before a game one sun-drenched early-fall afternoon before a Cubs-Mets game when who wanders into the outfield but pitcher Tug McGraw? He was at the end of his career, working out of the bullpen for the Mets and way before he was known as the father of country singer Tim McGraw he had a reputation as something of a free spirit.
Anyway, here comes Tug McGraw meandering out to left field and he's carrying a football. He stops about fifty feet or so from the outfield wall, with his back to the hitters, and starts digging divots in the ground with his heel, just like you and I and every kid who ever grew up trying to kick field goals did in our front lawn.
Then he sticks the football into the divot, backs up a few yards, and nails a perfect end-over-end field goal into the left field stands. He takes a bow and before he can turn around, somebody tosses the ball back to him. So he does it again. And again. And again.
Tug McGraw must have kicked twenty field goals into the left field stands at Wrigley Field that day. He had a pretty good leg, too. I don't remember if he pitched in the game that day or not - if he did, his leg drive must have been a little weaker than normal - because, to be honest, I was enjoying the previously mentioned cold beer and good looking women, more and more of whom kept piling into Wrigley as we drank more and more of that cold beer.
And that's my Wrigley Field story. I love Fenway Park, to me it will always be the foremost baseball shrine in the game, but I have to tell you, Wrigley Field comes in a close second in my book.
All of which leads me back to that headline, "Cubs Face Competition for Fukodome." I wondered why they would even consider tearing down Wrigley and putting up a domed stadium, especially a Japanese one, when they have such a great place to begin with. Well,I read the article itself and you know what? It turns out Fukodome is a player, not a stadium at all!
Kosuke Fukodome is an outfielder, and apparently quite a good one, because he has at least three teams in hot pursuit besides the Cubs - The Padres, Dodgers and White Sox. Silly me. I thought the poor guy was a stadium. But I was glad for the mistake, really. I bet I haven't thought about Tug McGraw kicking field goals at Wrigley Field in ten years or more.
Now that I think about it, I remember where I recognized the name Fukodome. It was the title of that Mel Gibson movie, the one with the great theme song by Tina Turner. You remember, right? "Mad Max Beyond Fukodome."
The dog days of summer are definitely here. The heat is hot, the major league baseball schedule is seemingly neverending, and NFL regulars, hopefuls, and never-will-be's are struggling through workouts in the searing heat.
The MLB All-Star Game has come and gone, the Tour de France has been run although we're not yet sure who won it, Tiger has taken another major by the tail.
So, while we wait for the pennant races to come barrelling down the home stretch, for the first NFL passes to be thrown in anger, and for college football to begin, here's a question for you: In these dog days, who would you classify as the biggest dog of the summer? Who has underwhelmed everyone, who has performed below any expectations there may have been for him or her?
Here are a few possibilites for a winner of the title "Dog of the Summer," although these are just what I've been able to come up with off the top of my head. Sadly, it's entirely possible you may have a different dog in mind; if so, feel free to add some suggestions.
Potential dog-pound members (this is the bad dog pound, not the good, Randy-Jackson-on-American-Idol dog pound):
1) Greg Maddux - I know, I know, he's a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer, a 300-game winner. I also know that since finishing April 5-0 with an ERA of 1.35, Maddux has gone 3-11, 6.03. Perfect personification of the entire Cubs season.
2) Chicago White Sox - It is entirely possible the Sox will right the ship, and the last three weeks will turn out to be nothing more than a bump in the road on the way to another postseason appearance and another shot at a championship. After all, the White Sox still own baseball's fifth-best record. But if not, the All-Star Break will be remembered as the beginning of one of the biggest collapses in recent memory.
3) Ben Roethlisberger - If the Super Bowl Champion Steelers struggle early this season, especially if Big Ben is anything short of spectacular, the most likely figure to be scrutinized will be the quarterback, who failed his audition for the new Superman movie by flying faster than a speeding bullet into an oncoming minivan. The monumental lack of judgement Roethlisberger demonstrated by failing to where a helmet on his motorcycle causes him to be listed as a potential Summer Dog even before he has thrown a pass.
4) Floyd Landis - He's either one of the most inspirational athletic stories of the year or one of the worst kinds of cheaters. That second urine sample may help clarify things, and Landis swears he can prove his innocence, but in the meantime, is he barking or not?
5) Mark Teixiera - After posting home run and RBI totals of 26 and 84 in 2003, 38 and 112 in 2004, and 43 and 144 in 2005, Teixiera has posted the more pedestrian totals of 14 and 62 thus far this season. Not awful, but nowhere near what Ranger fans expected either. Oh well, the Cowboys camp has begun, so no one will be paying much attention to baseball in Texas anymore anyway.
6) Every unsigned first-round NFL draft pick - Every year it's the same. Rookies get to camp late or not at all because of contract squabbles, and their progress is slowed or stalled because the pro game is so much faster than the college game. The newbies need every minute of training camp to adjust to life in their new profession. Sure, the money is huge, but the players stand to lose millions if they can't prove they belong on the field.
Those are my candidates for potential winner of the prestigious "Dog of Summer" title. Do any of them deserve it? Do they all deserve it? Is there anyone else?
The 2006 major league baseball interleague schedule draws to a close tonight and not a moment too soon for the National League, which collectively has been beaten up and had their lunch money taken away by the American League this year. If play had continued for much longer, the NL may have been in danger of seeing all its teams fall under .500 for the season.
As of this moment, in head-to-head competition, the American League stands a whopping 57 games over .500 for the season, at 152-95. This translates into a .615 winning percentage, or looked at another way, 100 wins in a 162-game season.
The National League has performed so woefully against the AL this season, their winning percentage would be worse than every team in the majors in 2005 with the exception of Kansas City. And it's not just the AL elite beating up on the NL's weak sisters, everyone is getting into the act. The Kansas City Royals, widely and rightfully considered one of the worst teams in baseball, have compiled a very respectable 10-8 record in this year's interleague play.
On the other hand, the three best teams in the National League based on their records to date (New York, St. Louis, and Cincinnati) managed just a 17-27 record against their American League opponents, for a pathetic .386 winning percentage.
The result of this old-fashioned butt-whupping is a statistical oddity: Of the teams with the seven best records in the major leagues to this point, only one plays in the National League. Here are the top seven teams as of July 2:
1 - Detroit Tigers, 56-26 .683 2 - Chicago White Sox, 53-28 .654 3 - Boston Red Sox, 50-29 .633 4 - New York Mets, 48-32 .600 5 - New York Yankees, 45-33 .577 6 - Toronto Blue Jays, 46-35 .568 7 - Minnesota Twins, 45-35 .563
Now, I'm no statistician, but this kind of dominance exhibited over a 247-game sample size appears pretty significant. And it shouldn't really come as a big surprise to anyone; the signs that the American League is playing a higher quality of ball than the National League have been there for quite some time.
Consider this. The American League representative has won ten of the last fourteen World Series dating back to 1992, including the last two, in which the NL representative didn't even win so much as a single game! In All-Star Game competitions, the gap is even more noticeable, with the AL winning 13 of the last 16 contests, not including the disgraceful tie game in 2002.
So what does all this mean? Is the American League so dominant that the NL players should stay home for the All-Star break licking their wounds? Of course not, but in this case the statistics most definitely do not lie - better baseball is being played right now in the American League, and has been for some time.
"Hello, you've reached the Guillen residence. This is Ozzie. No one is available to take your call right now, so please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Unless you're Jay Mariotti, in which case you can rot before I return your call, you spineless little f@#$%&t!"
BEEEEP!
"H...hello, Mister Gwillen? My name is Tommy, and I heard my daddy saying that if you could save Dusty Baker's job after the beating the Cubs are taking this year, you are really some kind of miracle worker. I'm not too sure what he means by that, but if you really can work miracles, could you maybe give me a call back? I'm failing all my classes at preschool and I could use some help. Thank you Mister Gwillen."
BEEEEP!
"Yes, hello Mister Goilan, I'm calling on behalf of the Illionois State Democratic Party. We here at Democratic Headquarters know what a fine, patriotic American you are. We feel confident you recognize, as we do, that everything wrong in America today is the fault of George Bush and the Republicans. Please consider donating as much money as you possibly can to help ensure that we return this country to common sense Democratic leadership. Thank you."
BEEEEP!
"Yes, hello Mister Gilwen, I'm calling on behalf of the Illinois State Republican Party. We here at Republican Headquarters know what a fine, patriotic American you are. We feel confident you recognize, as we do, that everything wrong in America today is the fault of Hilary Clinton and the Democrats. Please consider donating as much money as you possibly can to help ensure that we in this country continue with common sense Republican leadership. Thank you."
BEEEEP!
"Hello, this is Attorney Randall Hartless calling from the Law Firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe. I represent Mister Jay Mariotti. Very funny answering machine message, Mister Guillen, Mister Mariotti will be sure to change it immediately when he takes you for everything you own in his lawsuit against you. I'm calling because we're going to have to reschedule the meeting we had planned for tomorrow. Something very important has come up. We're all closing the office and GOING TO A CUBS GAME! HAHAHAHAHA! Thank you."
BEEEEP!
"Uh, yeah, hello, this is Joe Mikulik, manager of the Class A Asheville Tourists. I don't know how you managed to get my home phone number, but thanks for calling! I'm sorry we have to play phone tag like this, but of course I'd be interested in a job on your staff with the White Sox! I couldn't believe it when you said in your message that you like my style. Thanks for the compliment on my originality in cleaning home plate with a water bottle after I covered it up with dirt during my tirade after a bad call in a recent game. That old covering the plate with dirt thing has been done to death; I wanted to try something a little different and original. And did you see my head-first dive into second base, Mr. Guillen? It had nothing to do with the disputed call, but didn't it look cool?
"Anyway, I just called to say of course I'll take the job. I don't care if my only duty will be to harass Jay Mariotti, I'm in! Thanks for the confidence you've shown in me Mr. Guillen, I won't let you down. I'm going to the show! Woohoo!"
Remember that old Rodney Dangerfield line (thanks, whathappnd) about going to a boxing match and a hockey game breaking out? That's all I could think of when I saw the replays of the home plate collision and subsequent fight between the White Sox' A.J Pierzynski and Michael Barrett of the Cubs.
If you missed it, what am I saying, of course you didn't miss it. That play must have been shown on every sports highlight show, every baseball pre-, post-, and in-game show, at every opportunity this past weekend. Close play at the plate. Pierzynski slams into Barrett, who has dropped the ball. Both players go down in a heap. Pierzynski happily smacks the plate, scoring a run. Barrett happily smacks Pierzynski, scoring a TKO.
What makes this baseball fight different from the usual ones you see a few times a season is the fact that a punch was thrown. Not just any punch, but a closed-fist, Mike Tyson-would-be-proud-of-this, straight right to the jaw, all captured for posterity by the ever-present television cameras of the baseball broadcast.
To his credit, Pierzynski, who has the reputation of being a bit of a pot-stirrer, didn't respond in kind. Whether it was because he was too shocked and surprised at actually being hit in the face to act, we will never know. He just backed off and kind of wandered away as around him all hell broke loose. Had Pierzynski waded in with a few haymakers of his own aimed at Barrett, what was really nothing more than an ugly scene could have turned truly dangerous.
The surprising thing in all this is not that there was an altercation, those happen all the time. Inter-city, inter-league rivals, one team going well while the other is struggling in a big way, close play with a big collision at the plate, it was almost inevitable that feelings as well as bones would get bruised. The thing that raised my eyebrows is that most baseball fights are really nothing more than big shoving matches.
The two guys at the root of the thing may start out with bad intentions toward each other, but usually either some shoving takes place, or a wild swing connecting with nothing but air starts the process, and before you know it the principals are buried beneath a pile of sweaty millionaires trying to appear menacing but really just wanting to protect themselves. Everyone seeks out someone from the other team to hang on to and renew old acquaintances with while appearing to be slowing the forward progress of an enemy combatant.
It seems Barrett never received the memo sent to everyone from the the Players Union about appearing ferocious but not doing anything that could potentially end someone else's career. Had his punch landed a little higher, on Pierzynski's eye instead of his apparently iron jaw, untold damage could have been done. Anyone remember Kermit Washington's roundhouse punch that basically shattered Rudy Tomjanovich's face when Tomjanovich was still an NBA player?
The purpose here isn't to condemn either player. Things happen in sports that aren't always pretty. And the collision and subsequent set-to was very watchable, in a Batman and Robin, kapow!, sort of way. In some perverse way it was refreshing to see a fight that wasn't just rich guys swinging their purses at each other. And the best part is, no one ended up in the hospital, nobody is laying in a bed wondering if they'll ever play again.
Hey everyone, I know it must seem like I've dropped off the face of the earth, but it's nothing like that.
I've been busy writing - two full-length novels so far, plus over a dozen short stories - and working hard to try to get an agent. If you are curious and have a few minutes, check out my website, www.allanleve rone.com.
If you're a literary agent or if you know one, by all means contact me! In the meantime, I'll be here when I can - love this forum - and as always, thank you for checking out my blog, especially considering how many great ones you could be reading instead....
