A Fraud is A-Rod

Asterisks in the Hall of Fame?
Sure, But include apartheid era
By Terrance Gavan
With the Alex Rodriguez admission of duplicity regarding his use of steroids comes a bellowed demand for redress of an era.
An era that seems to line up increasingly in favor of Jose Canseco’s rabid anecdotal steroid prognostications and against the gentler, kinder, vaguely naïve, and more muzzled form-enhancing meanders and ruminations of baseball’s hardball, hard-nut commissioner Bud Selig.
Canseco wrote once that 60 to 80 percent of ballplayers in the late eighties, nineties and beyond were motoring around the basepaths juiced, cleared, or needled.
Canseco was tarred, feathered, and pilloried for his then outlandish output. Many sportswriters, broadcasters, owners, and a broad swath of the lumpen baseball proletariat felt that Canseco had taken too many pop-ups to the melon. Or that he was ingratiating himself to the loopy conspiracy theorists in some Oliver Stoney claw for a prodigious publishing payday and a large advance on his next book.
This latest admission of steroid use by A-Rod, once thought to be the poster boy for Selig’s less jaded version of events, comprises a blunt force fungo bat blow to baseball that enhances the demarcation of what has come to be known in the modern baseball lexicon as “the steroid era.”
This all coming on the heels of a very convincing interview A-Rod did with heralded CBS baseball insider and analyst Katie Couric a short while back. Look, I love Katie, but for gosh sakes, if we want to prod and poke a grumbling and mumbling baseball bear, let’s get someone who knows what the heck they’re asking and why. Someone who possesses at least a modicum of baseball bona fides, and someone schooled in the art of the quick-quip and jive.
Where’s Howard Cosell when you need him?
A-Rod lied in that interview with Couric, everyone’s favorite whitebread, lob-ball chucking media darling, and there’s very little he could say right now that would promulgate a belief that he’s telling the truth now. The admission conveniently covers only three years of his career. And it eschews any damning admission of performance enhancing in the period after steroid use was specifically banned by major league baseball - and the dulcetly duplicit Selig - in 2004.
Sorry A-Rod but the mea culpa looks a little too natty, neat, nifty and nimble. As in, “Rod be nimble, Rod be quick; Rod beat those newsmen away with slick schtick.”
A-Rod, like a lot of similarly disenfranchised switch hitters, is now playing for a stake in baseball’s greener field: Enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. Cooperstown is calling. But the walls surrounding that halcyon stage and green, green grass of home are crumbling under the weight of a looming asterisk.
Sportswriters who vote yearly on Hall of Fame nominees are seriously advocating adding an asterisk to the whole era. An era where Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and then Barry Bonds were credited with renewing the fan base after a debilitating lockout and strike in 1994-95. They brought people back to the parks and the corporate boxes because of their unique penchant for ripping cover from ball.
In the same time frame, Roger Clemens asserted himself as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. Prodigious hitting, superhuman pitching, and maturing veterans playing quixotic games, tilting at separate windmills of time and age. Getting better like Bordeaux wine in weather-beaten old oak casks.
Someone should have asked the right questions back then. Facts remain. Arms break, old hitters slump, numbers go down with age. Dorian Gray had that weathered portrait in the attic. Baseball had the roids, the bulls, the junk, the gear, and the clear. Sportswriters, owners, commissioners never thought to traipse up to the cobwebbed old garret to investigate why shirt sizes, necks, bat speed and deliveries rose so exponentially. Why the old guys were suddenly flourishing in their declining years. The curious case of Benjamin Button hit baseball long before Brad Pitt put us all to sleep this year in a Multiplex.
Nothing much is new here. Baseball’s list of cheaters is long and legend. Gaylord Perry juiced the ball. Legions of hitters corked their bats. When hitting percentages dropped, baseball lowered the mounds. When pitching suffered, baseball raised the mounds. The ball was wound tighter when baseball realized the fan power of the parked pitch. Teams regularly moved outfields in or out to accommodate team strengths.
Ty Cobb was a racist. Drug abuse of the recreational kind was rampant in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Pete Rose lied, Whitey Ford regularly nicked, scuffed, spat and shined balls to bend them to his will from his hill on the infield. Bat boys and third base coaches steal signs. Amphetamines or greenies, blues and uppers were once dispensed like Pez in major league locker rooms.
Sportswriters are saying that we should mark this era with an asterisk. Let the McGwire and Sosa and Clemens and Bonds into Cooperstown, but mark their passage with that lovely little stigmatizer, the lowly asterisk.
Websters defines it as: the character (*) used in printing or writing as a reference mark, as an indication of the omission of letters or words, to denote a hypothetical or unattested linguistic form, or for various arbitrary meanings.
Talk now turns to the condemnation of an era through an all-encompassing use of that little slice of delicious and delectable punctuation. An arbitrary catch-all.
The asterisk.
Funny little jumped up starburst.
In saying so little, it says so much.
Let it go people.
Or put an asterisk baseball’s apartheid era. That lovely little gentlemen’s dance that preceded Jackie Robinson’s smashing dalliance with baseball’s Jim Crowe hierarchy.
Put an asterisk on Ruth who never had to hit against black hurlers like Satchell Paige or Smoky Joe Williams. And add another because Ruth never had to be compared with that legendary long ball hitter, slammin’ Josh Gibson, who was credited with a not quite apocryphal exit of ball from the old Yankee Stadium and who caught for the Pittsburg Crawfords and Homestead Greys from 1927 to 1946. Gibson’s own induction to Cooperstown in 1972 accompanied by the all-purpose asterisk, if not literally then figuratively, on a colorless panoply of injustice. Gibson, labeled with that lumbering nickname, the “Brown Bambino” a hunkered homage to Babe Ruth, which belies Gibson’s own prodigious accomplishments.
Buck Leonard, regarded as the greatest first baseman in the history of the Negro leagues, was known as “the black Lou Gehrig.”
But that was not exactly the way the Hall of Famer and onetime Negro leagues star Monte Irvin saw it. “Buck Leonard was the equal of any first baseman who ever lived,” Irvin once said. “If he'd gotten the chance to play in the major leagues, they might have called Lou Gehrig the white Buck Leonard.”
Leonard was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.
But Buck never got to play in the major leagues. He was of an age that precluded playing when Jackie and Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey brought down the color barrier.
Who knows? With some HGH and an ample sampling of the clear, Buck Leonard might have had a few seasons in the sun, playing with Jackie at Ebbett’s Field, hitting scuffed spitters, with stolen signs, over a short porch down the line and out into the clear blue sky over Brooklyn.
And the Hall of Fame? It’s too late for the due diligence that should have been done a decade hence when Dorian put the painting in the loft.
Let ‘em all in I say. Pete Rose too.
Save the asterisks for the historians. Let the chips from the corked bats fall … where they may.

Mikey Phelps and the Apologetic Shrug

Phelps and Tinkering with the Paradigm
Boys Just Wanna’ have Fun
By Terrance Gavan
Mike Phelps hasn’t been charged with any offence. He was caught on camera at a University of South Carolina frat party in full-bong bas-relief.
He issued the de rigueur chaste apology.
“I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” Phelps said. “I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”
Now, he’s young. And he’s been caught doing something that several US presidents have admitted to doing. He smoked some weed. No biggie as far as I’m concerned. If the wacky cell phone image, a little blurred – perhaps mimicking the moment - can be believed, unlike President Clinton, Mike Phelps almost assuredly did inhale.
President George Bush not only inhaled, but he was prone to mixing the Haile Selassie treat with a certain white powder and a liberal dose of Jack Daniels. This might explain why the once-AWOL fighter pilot was never asked to set an F-16 onto the bobbing deck of an Aircraft Carrier on NATO maneuvers.
The mewling, meticulous and mincing Michael Phelps who issued the apology seems a little different from the joie de vivre gung ho troubadour of swing described at the University of South Carolina frat bash held just three months after his return from Beijing.
Quoted in News of the World - the British Tabloid that broke the photo and the story - some members of Phelps’s hastily formed entourage of hangers-on and paparazzi-in-waiting college goofballs said that Phelps looked right at home in the over exuberant milieu of the typical low angst, high octane frat bash.
One exuberant swim fan who witnessed the star’s behaviour told the News of the World: “He was out of control from the moment he got there. If he continues to party like that I’d be amazed if he ever won any more medals again.”
As he basked in his hero status, Phelps knocked back beers and tequila shots. And when a student offered him the glass bong engraved with red writing, he did not hesitate, says the source at News of the World.
“You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do,” said the frat-tat-ta. “He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”
Aha, probably heading to the 7-11 for a late nite post-toke hit of 4-liter Big Gulp, six chili-dogs and 3-pound cardboard crate of jalopeno-cheese-melty nachos.
So you can see my problem with Phelps’s new-found evangelical spasm and the airy fairy apology. Phelps issued a similar apology in 2004 when he was caught drinking and driving and was subsequently hammered with a court ordered 18-month probationary sentence.
News of the World sources tell us exactly what that apology was worth. The night after being caught on digitized camera, Phelps returned again to party. “Like the night before he was holding court, throwing back shots two at a time and pouring drinks to every cute girl.”
We are hoping that Phelps did not follow up this night at Pavlov’s Bar with a moonlight spin in his tricked out Lexus with the moon roof and built in barf bag.
I got no problem with Mike Phelps having fun. Busting out. Cutting loose.
I got a problem with the fact that he’s collecting close to $10 million large in endorsements (cut by a mill or two since Kellogg decided to suspend his endorsement rights) which, knowing lawyers and big corporations, are most assuredly liberally sprinkled with all manner of manhole-cover-sized morality loopholes.
Clauses like: “The party of the second part acting on behalf of the party in the first part shall endeavor to act in a manner commensurate with the good name of the party of the first part’s upstanding and relevant world view. To wit: the party of the second part shall not act out in a manner that may cause the party of the first part embarrassment. This may include things like armed robbery, cavorting with members of the Communist party, hanging with Bloods or Crips, dating Amy Winehouse, being caught on video with Paris Hilton, or assaulting Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. The party of the first part should also not act like a morally repugnant idiot by being caught on camera with his speedo trunks wrapped and twisted in a shepherd’s knot around his ankles. Failure to comply may result in the party of the second part pissing away $4 million into an Olympic Sized puddle of chlorinated water.”
Again, no problem at all with Michael risking it all on the big duck, duke and dive. It’s his money to fritter and I couldn’t give a spit.
My problem was with his searing promise lo those many years ago to act as a significant role model for youth in America and around the world.
Here’s what I know about role models.
By definition, role models do not indulge in idiotic and semi-comatose activity that will necessitate a public apology – twice - on the world stage.
So please Mr. Phelps.
By all means go out and have some fun.
Sew your wild oats, hang out at the animal house, crank back a few liberal hits of whatever suits your fancy.
But don’t expect the thinking members of society to be placated by the mince and mewl of those hurried virtuous words issued with blank stare and broad-shouldered shrug.
I don’t believe you.
And I know the kids don’t.

Bullyboy Coach Needs Refresher

Dallas Coach Refuses to Apologize for Lopsided 100-0 Loss
A Bully to the End Fired for No Remorse - Thus Endeth a Good Life’s Lesson
By Terrance Gavan
I’ve never been a big fan of the bully.
They live in the schoolyard, they prey on the weak, and they are almost inevitably destined to spend the better part of their productive lives wondering why no one much cares for their company.
They live in a cocoon of bubbled frenzy. They remain forlorn antiques. They squint often and question why the real world doesn’t mimic high school, an arena where things were so nicely stacked in their favor. Where the quick fist, blunt threat and blank sociopath’s stare always seemed to turn the trick.
They find life in the real world, cold, hard, complicated and inconsistent. They hate the gray shades, preferring the ersatz reality of the black and the white, sometimes taking that theme to another time-worn and inevitable conclusion. Bullies become racists, Republicans and jackboot control freaks. Once in power they revert to the schoolyard. Sometimes they sashay into politics. Sometimes they become leaders. Sometimes they become Governors of Alaska. Sometimes they shoot their friends in the face with a twelve-gauge shotgun. You know the type.
The bully in charge. He refuses to delegate and he muzzles cabinet ministers. He attempts to mollify the hard edge by donning demure cardigans. He placates his minions with soothing tones, but somewhere behind the grin, the 90-pound weakling and the schoolyard runt will detect that telltale glint in the piercing blue eyes. These leopards might alter cashmere spots but ye shall know them by that frozen grin.
They often seek therapy in their middle age.
Their psychiatrist, collecting $300 per, will tell them things they want to hear.
Things that will shift blame to some manifest destiny.
Their mother failed at nurture. Their dad was demanding. They grew up too fast. They were victimized by a deconstructive family paradigm. They were too good looking. They are Mensa candidates. They were ahead of their time. People didn’t understand them.
These things the Shrink will affirm over 10 years of intense psychotherapy and group-based dynamic sessioning. Anger management will play heavily in the mix. Spooner, Jung, Freud with spates of Dr. Phil will jangle around the loose-fitted neuron’s of the bully’s bulletproof brainpan. Each session will end the same.
“Not your fault. Well, that’s the hour Adolf. I think we’re making progress here. Don’t forget to pay the receptionist on your way out. See you next Thursday.”
In a worse case scenario, the bully may return to that arena where doubt and the harsh world is dispelled by security’s comforting blanket. In the case of bully Micah Grimes, well, he went back to high school. Grimes made headlines all over America and the world when he coached his Covenant High School girl’s team to a 100-0 decision over rival Dallas Academy a few weeks back.
For the record, Dallas Academy has eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school. It is winless over the last four seasons. The academy specializes in teaching students struggling with learning differences, such as short attention spans or dyslexia.
It didn’t take long. Associated Press, NBC, ABC, Fox, and CBS came a calling to Covenant and last week officials from the winning school said they are trying to do the right thing by seeking a forfeit and apologizing for the margin of victory.
In a statement Thursday on The Covenant School’s Web site, the head of school said, “It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened.” He went on to say that Covenant has made “a formal request to forfeit the game recognizing that a victory without honor is a great loss.”
And how did the tyrant coach respond to this wringing of hands and public apology?
In a statement posted last Sunday on www.flightbasketball.com, Grimes offered his first public comment since the story was reported.
“I respectfully disagree with the apology, especially the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel ‘embarrassed’ or ‘ashamed.’ We played the game as it was meant to be played and would not intentionally run up the score on any opponent. Although a wide-margin victory is never evidence of compassion, my girls played with honor and integrity and showed respect to Dallas Academy.”
While a case can be made for the dubious scheduling of this lopsided contest, Grimes is reverting to Vlad the Impaler form when he maintains that there was anything honorable about the win or his part in the reenactment of Little Big Horn.
It was duly noted by observers that his Covenant girls came out with a full court press and they continued to shoot three pointers into the fourth quarter. There was no respect. There were high fives and there was an assistant coach urging the girls to triple digits.
It was a bullyboy job from beginning to end.
Grimes apparently did not consult his shrink or his anger management group before issuing his lamentable screed against his employers.
The school summarily and unceremoniously fired his butt. Grimes will be looking for another job.
If we’re very lucky.
The Dallas school system will make mental note of this incident.
And Micah Grimes will never again have responsibility for the melding and nurture of young minds.
A Texas high school soccer coach Matt Colvin jumped into the Texas-wide debate sparked by the game with some pretty cogent and insightful words.
“Part of the job of coaching is more than the score. We want to teach to these kids that, yeah, winning and losing are important, but there are other values and core values that you can learn and carry throughout your life. Embarrassing somebody doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing your job.”
We can only hope that this sage piece of advice is grist for the mill during Grimes’s next foray to comfy couch