Tag Archives: roger clemens

Baseball, Skitch Hanson

Up the Middle with Skitch Hanson: Shoebox Greetings for the Hall of Fame

Scratchbomb hands over the reins to nationally syndicated sports columnist Skitch Hanson, as we’ve done many times before. You may know Skitch as the author of the highly popular syndicated column “Up The Middle.” You may have read his best-selling book Why Eckstein Matters. He’s also a frequent guest on ESPN’s sportswriters panel show Mouth-Talkers! You can follow Skitch on Twitter here. Without further ado, here’s Skitch.

I apologize that my Hall of Fame column came later than usual this year. I actually handed in my ballot at the last minute. I was searching all over the house for it, then my wife told me she lost it. And while she told me she lost it, she lit the ballot on fire right in front of me. I told her tampering with a Hall of Fame ballot was a federal offense. She said it wasn’t at all and that she was leaving for Ibiza for two weeks with her special friend Marco.

Luckily, I was able to send my choices in by teletype. It’s good to know that the BBWAA still uses the latest technology. Do you know it took me forever to find a teletype machine in my newspaper’s office? And when I did, it was covered in dust, banana stickers, and somebody growing a potato in a jar. When I started in this business, we used teletype to send info back to the newsdesk, and as far as I’m concerned, no machinery has improved on it since. You can keep your Blackberrys and iPans and whatnot. Also, my editor won’t let me get one because the last time I was issued a company cell phone, I gummed up the keys with Mallomar residue.

When Jack Morris failed to get into the Hall of Fame yet again, I poured out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo in his memory. In truth, I knocked over a bottle of Yoo-Hoo onto the hood of my editor’s car, but I retroactively dedicated it to his memory. That and the sizable repaint bill, which is coming out of my paycheck. I had no idea Yoo-Hoo was so caustic.

It’s too bad that we’re letting so many people vote for the Hall of Fame that didn’t watch some of the eligible candidates play. If you look at Morris’s pure numbers, of course he doesn’t belong within a mile of Cooperstown. In order to understand his greatness, you had to have seen him in action, and then remembered that action many, many years later, when most of the finer details are rather hazy in your memory and mixed up with other things you’ve seen on TV. I, for one, will never forget that time I saw Morris pitch a 15-inning complete game and knock in the winning run to save an inner city rec center, aided only by his grit and determination and most of the Harlem Globetrotters.

I truly believe that you can only judge a player if you’ve actually seen him on the field, preferably from a press box view, while ingesting a Skitch Special. That’s when you anchor two hot dogs and a hamburger together with a shish kebab skewer, then drop it into a deep fryer. Some stadiums were better than others in making it for me. The guys at Wrigley were the best; they’d always have two Skitch Specials waiting for me when I showed up at game time, along with a fully charged defibrillator.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite players was Jimmy “Shoebox” O’Leary, backup utility man for the Senators. No one really knows how he got that nickname; some say it’s because he was born in a shoebox, others say it’s because he lived in one. I can’t tell you now why he was my favorite player back then. His batting average always hovered around the Mendoza Line, he couldn’t field worth a lick, and he got a nosebleed every time he ascended the dugout steps.

Still, I thought he was the greatest player in the world when I was six, and to honor that memory, I vote for his induction into Cooperstown every year. My fellow writers keep telling me I’m insane, that he’s not on the ballot, and that they’re going to drum me out if I don’t stop doing this and also bringing my homemade scrapple to the meetings.

If I’m disappointed that Morris failed to get in, that’s how pleased I am that Jeff Bagwell was also denied. As I’ve discussed before, there’s no hard evidence Bagwell ever did steroids, or soft evidence, or even some sort of evidence-mist. However, he did play at a time when many other people may or may not have done steroids at some point or another, and the fact that he didn’t speak up about it is a mark against his character. If someone was around that much cheating at that time and said nothing, they’re just as guilty as those who committed the act. If there’s anything I’m sure of after spending most of the last 30 years in locker rooms, it’s this.

I’m not looking forward to next year’s ballots, full of proven cheaters like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, cheaters by association like Mike Piazza…now that I think about it, it will be easier to vote than ever before. I’ll just draw a huge frowny face on my ballot, check off Morris, write in Shoebox, and be done with it. More time for homemade scrapplin’.

* * *

And now it’s time for Some Things I Think About Things I Think!

  • Tim Tebow has brought joy back to the NFL. Anyone who says something bad about him should be caged.
  • In this strike-shortened season, the play in the NBA has really fallen off, based on what I assume from not having watched a single game so far.
  • Love him or hate him, Shia LeBoeuf is here to stay, folks.
  • I’ve started an online petition to keep egg nog lattes at Starbucks all year round. I have 12 signatures, each from someone named Mike Rotch.
  • Alex Ovechkin is going to have to do a lot more to get my attention. Like play a sport other than hockey.
  • I don’t care for that “Partying Rock” song by L.S.M.F.T. Give me the Little River Band any day of the week.
  • Albert Pujols’ decision to leave St. Louis for the glamor of Hollywood is truly selfish, as it means I will probably have to drive from LAX to Anaheim several times this upcoming season.
  • Insider’s tip: Take a bag of microwave popcorn, poke a tiny hole, pour M&Ms inside, and seal it up before you pop. The result is a delightfully gooey mess and it tastes a bit like metal.
  • Have you guys heard about radishes? Crazy!
  • Stayed up late last night to watch a few old episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati. I really think that show holds up, and the roaring laugh track really helped mask the sounds of Marco and my wife upstairs.
  • Treat yourself to some fried spaghetti this week. You’ll thank me.
Baseball

The Sports Media DSM for PED Use

pettite.jpgWhen Andy Pettite turned in yet another dominant postseason start last week, many sportswriters praised his determination and consistency and leadership. One word I didn’t see in any of their reports was “PEDs”. (I guess that’s more of an acronym than a word, really, but bear with me.)

After all, he was named in the Mitchell Report, and subsequently admitted taking something or other. Most players who’ve been caught red-handed like he was have been raked over the coals in the press–including his ex-teammate/probable connection Roger Clemens. And yet Pettite’s use barely gets mentioned, if ever.

Personally, I don’t care about steroids, HGH, horse tranquilizers, or anything else of that ilk. My feelings have evolved on the subject, and I feel that so many people were using them, rooting out “cheats” is pointless. Especially since MLB’s PED policy was such a joke for so long, you can’t even say players were “getting away with it”, because It was a “crime” nobody was being punished for.

I also think that PEDs can’t make you a major league baseball player. They can only make a major league baseball player perform at his best–and isn’t that what we all want as fans? Performance enhancement has been going on in the major leagues since day one. Players in the 1960s and 1970s took amphetamines to deal with the brutal traveling schedule and day games after night games. The league itself “juiced” the ball at various times to drive up home run numbers, and therefore interest in the game. (MLB has never admitted to doing this, but the anomalous spikes in longball numbers in pre-steroid times have virtually no other explanation.) Not to mention how many players’ performances were enhanced because they never had to compete against black people.

Considering how much we enhance our bodies with pills, medications, surgery, all for non-life-threatening conditions (i.e., boner medicine, Botox), I think it’s hypocritical to hold athletes to higher standards of physical purity. I also think that, in a few short decades (or even sooner), the banning of PEDs will seem as silly as Prohibition does to us now.

That’s just one man’s opinion, of course. If you think PEDs = cheating, no ifs, ands, or buts, I recognize that as a legitimate argument. What I don’t like is the idea that some “cheating” is okay and some isn’t. Usually, that means the cheating is excusable if the cheater plays for your team.

When I pointed out the inconvenient fact that Pettite kind of totally did PEDs on the Twitter and the Facebook, I was accused by Yankee partisans of just being a bitter Mets fan. (Hey, I may be bitter and a Mets fan but…what was the third thing you said?) I have a feeling their reaction would have been different if I’d made comments about Manny Ramirez.

I didn’t understand the cherry picking; either it’s wrong or it’s not, right? But as it turns out, there are different levels of PED use. The members of the sports media are well trained in psychological diagnosis, and have compiled a matrix for identifying who fits into which categories, including recommended treatment. No really, they have!

CATEGORY VI

Criteria: Took PEDs to hit more home runs and therefore rob us all of our childlike innocence; may also be referred to as History’s Greatest Monsters; PED use a sign of enormous, sociopathic character flaws since none of us would ever have done the same thing in their shoes
Examples: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa
Treatment: Constant hounding, to remind them of the torments of hell that surely await them

CATEGORY V

Criteria: Took PEDs to make them pitch better; since pitches aren’t home runs, we don’t really know
how to feel about this, but the tabloidish nature of their downfall makes for
great headlines
Examples: Roger Clemens
Treatment: Snarky comments as needed, i.e., Congressional hearings, accusations of statutory rape

CATEGORY IV

Criteria: Perform at such a high level that they surely must be on PEDs; though there is absolutely no evidence, solid or circumstantial, to support such an accusation, we feel they should confess their horrible crimes while they still have a chance to save their immortal souls
Examples: Jose Bautista
Treatment: Fleeting but pointed and irrevocable

CATEGORY III

Criteria: Admitted PED user and former Category VI member whose personal and spiritual deficiencies have been completely conquered by winning a championship
Examples: Alex Rodriguez
Treatment: Only if you want to look bitter

CATEGORY II

Criteria: Definitely took PEDs but only to recover from injury and help their team win; even though that’s essentially why anyone takes PEDs, a Category III “offender” is such a nice guy that he surely can’t be in the same class as Category VI scum
Examples: Andy Pettite
Treatmant: Ignore and it will go away

CATEGORY I

Criteria: Men who take PEDs to attain the unnatural combination of speed and bulk needed to play modern football
Examples: No idea; we don’t bother to ask any NFL players if they take PEDs
Treatment: None needed

Baseball

Roger Clemens: Portrait in Hatred

nixonrocket.jpgRoger Clemens has been indicted for perjury. On the one hand, I think this is a huge waste of taxpayer money. While lying to Congress is a serious crime, the likelihood of conviction seems iffy at best. The feds have been trying to nail Barry Bonds on a similar charge without success for years, and the evidence against Bonds appears to be much stronger than that against Clemens.

On the other hand, Roger Clemens is one of the worst human beings on the planet. Not enough bad things can happen to him to sate my schadenfreude.

Last week, in a post about Chipper Jones, I wrote about how I can usually separate my personal feelings from objective reality. Emphasis on usually. I could cast a Hall of Fame vote for Chipper Jones. I don’t think I could do that for Roger Clemens. And not because of steroids. Simply because I hate him with a white hot passion. I hate him more than some people who have done actual, tangible wrong to me. If I could harness this hatred and turn it into energy, I could power a steel mill for a year.

The worst thing about Clemens (even worse than the fact that he literally tried to kill Mike Piazza by throwing a 95 mph fastball at his head): His craven, psychotic need to be not just loved, but worshiped. That is often the sign of a man who deep down knows he is horrible, and thus demands love from others. All so he can say, “How can I be a bad person–look at how many people love me!”

In another life or another nation, Roger Clemens would have been a crime lord or a dictator. Someone who snatched power by force. Someone who demanded absolute fealty and craved absolute love from everyone. Someone who can never be told that he has done wrong, for it is impossible for him to be wrong.

I can easily imagine Roger Clemens commanding cowering citizens to perform grand, choreographed games in his honor, as North Koreans do at Kim Jong Il’s behest. That is exactly the kind of sick, depraved person he is.

Keep in mind that the Congressional hearing from which the perjury charge stems would never have happened in the first place if he hadn’t demanded one. It wasn’t good enough for him to quietly deny the charges of the Mitchell Report. No, he had to loudly protest his innocence to the nation’s lawmakers and force us all to shower him in love once again. This maniac was so obsessed with being adored, he laid his own trap.

Joe Posnanski wrote an amazing column (as usual) about Clemens at SI.com, in which he takes us back to the infamous Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, when the Rocket flung the bat at Mike Piazza. Posnanski’s observation: Clemens has no interest in smoothing things over with Piazza, but instead focuses on proclaiming his innocence to the home plate umpire.

That is the essence of Clemens. He had no desire in doing right or being right. His sole focus was on getting over, being absolved. It reminds me of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord who could have lived fat and happy on his cocaine billions, except that he had an insane craving for respectability. He desperately wanted to be elected to Congress, and didn’t care how many bribes he had to hand out or judges and policemen he had to kill in order to do it. As if becoming a Respectable Person would somehow erase the fact that he’d murdered his way to the top.

To this day, I’m still infuriated by the thought that Clemens received absolutely no punishment for this bizarre, dangerous act. (As Posnanski points out, Piazza very easily could have been injured by the shattered bat.) No ejection, no fine, not even a tsk-tsk from Bud Selig. It still blows my mind that someone did this in a World Series game and was allowed to continue to play in that game.

Karma might not really exist, but I like when it makes a select appearance in the lives of folks like Clemens. His life is over, for intents and purposes, and he’s not even 50 yet. Even allowing for Americans’ microscopic memories, and even if steroid use becomes accepted in the future, I can’t imagine his image ever recovering. God, that’s beautiful. There are people more deserving of cosmic payback than him, but he’ll do until they get theirs.

In honor of another instance of Clemens’ spiritual de-pantsing, here’s a trip down Scratchbomb memory lane of The Rocket’s various falls from grace.

Take Your Medicine, 12.13.2007
Wherein I discuss the Mitchell Report and touch on Clemens being exposed for the fraud that he is.

60 Minutes with Roger Clemens, 01.03.2008
Mike Wallace interviews a not-at-all contrite Roger Clemens, with a guest appearance from Hank Steinbrenner.

Roger That, 02.08.2008
An attempt to understand Roger Clemens through old clips from a baseball special called Grand Slam, which you can not watch because Clemens helped shut down my old YouTube account.

Joe Torre Revisits History, 02.04.2009
While promoting his book on Mike Francesa’s show, Joe Torre rethinks his opinion of Roger Clemens, using an amazing piece of equipment called his brain.

Michael More, Roger, and Me, 03.26.2009
Wherein I discuss why I can love Mike Piazza and hate Roger Clemens.