Nearly Spring Training: Gentlemen, Fill Your Syringes

It's rather difficult to avoid the moment the word "baseball" comes off the tongue these days: there are about 143,000 pages devoted to Jose Canseco and his accusations of steroid use. Guess the self-appointed Godfather of Steroids must be pretty happy with himself by now.

Part truth, part sensationalism? Does it matter how much is true and how much isn't?

Does it matter that it is true at all?

It's not like any of these guys were throwing baseball games and ruining the integrity of the game itself. Yeah, they were cheating, they were trying to get an unfair edge over their opponents, probably so they could hit homers like all baseball fans were clamoring like rabid dogs to see. The road of sport is littered with ideals tossed aside in the spirit of competitiveness. It's the very nature of competition that an edge will be sought and found, legal or illegal. Sure, it's too bad these guys got huge taking drugs that could ruin them physically. They still had to hit the balls. And didn't baseball itself juice baseballs to ante up the stake for homerball and cheat as well?

No one has clean hands on this, not players, not agents, not baseball who looked the other way, not fans who craved seeing those homeruns so badly. The homerun is probably the manliest achievement in all sports in America and it is a natural junction with the desire to see more of it that getting there means crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed.

But is it the end of the world of baseball? Hardly. Bonds was the NL MVP three times out of four seasons well before any steroid mumbling started. McGwire had 49 homers his rookie season, well before any rumours surfaced. A guy hitting 50 homers and batting .200 isn't very valuable. If you look at their numbers: McGwire hit .299 the year he had 70 homers. Sosa hit .308 the same year he chased McGwire with 66. When Bonds hit his .328 when he hit 73 homers. People talk all the time about how it gave them an unfair edge to hit homers with but it doesn't make .300 hitters out of Dave Kingmans, does it? I mean as simple as it sounds, you still have to hit the ball before you can hit a homer and perhaps steroids makes them stronger to hit the ball harder and fartehr but as far as I know, there aren't any steroids around to improve hand-eye coordination and if there were, players would have already taken them.

Still, as Chicago writer Rick Morrissey aptly noted the other day, "thanks to a muscle-bound former slugger obeying his muse, we now have the wholesome image of Canseco jabbing steroid-filled syringes into the butts of Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez. Makes you want to grab a glove and play catch in the back yard, doesn't it?"

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On a more thrilling note about baseball, Red Sox Republican Huckster Curt Schilling, whose sock is in the Hall of Fame, has hinted he might be around after all to pitch on Opening Day against the Yankees and The Unit after all. The biggest question will be, does the winner or the loser get to pick Roger Clemens like a scab off the wound of the Houston Astros by the 2005 trade deadline?

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If the Detroit Tigers make the same percentage jump in victories this season with the addition of Troy Percival and Magglio Ordoñez as they did last season (43 wins in 2003, 72 in 2004) with the addition of Pudge Rodriguez and Fernando Vina, they'll have 101 victories this season, "probably" enough to win the AL Central.

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When you consider the word "exhaustive", you might find this summary of the Best and Worst Trades of the Trade which examines all trades made in baseball from 1961 to the present. It comes as little suprise that the Mets have had a history of the worst trades made.

Sickening Super Bowl

And now, in the dying embers of the NFL season, cames the news earlier this week that Donovan McNabb was "sick" during the Super Bowl.

And now that he's had his surrogates speak for him, allowed others to plant the seed, he's safe to deny it and appear valient for doing so (no, I wasn't sick, I just sucked) but still, being sick would certainly explain his performance that allowed the bloody Patriots to steal another it. So does it all mean that were it not for an upset tummy we wouldn't be forced to listen to all this dynasty prattle?

Hmmm. Guess all that chunky soup isn't so good for you after all. In fact, in some circles, this is all the evidence we need for a The Chunky Soup Curse.

I haven't given up on them though. Even though McNabb has choked now in four out of five Championship games he's played in and he's not even 30 years old yet! Just think of the possibilities!

What he needs is another Terrell Owens. Since there is only one, what I'd like to see, since he's rumoured to be available, is for the Eagles to engineer a trade for Randy Moss - can you imagine Randy Moss and Terrell Owens together on the same team? I don't care about the one-two punch in end talent and the defensive nightmares trying to cover the two of them at once. What I care about is the subsequent fireworks as the two of them jostle for position in the World's Biggest Ego competition. Of course, Moss has the big edge in that he has never played in the Super Bowl nor made a miraculous recovery to play in one. He's just got a big mouth.