Tony Romo sings at Wrigley

Sunday was a big day for baseball. Greg Maddux won his 350th game, and Illinois native Tony Romo fumbled the snap during the Seventh Inning Stretch at Wrigley.

Rocket Flame Out

Today is the day that the Mitchell Report gets released. The report is the exhaustive findings of George J. Mitchell's 20 month investigation into drug use in Major League Baseball. Let me tell you this thing has taken on a life of it's own. The internet tubes are popping and sizzling, buzzing with leaks and speculations, hints and allegations. It's sweeping across the sports blogs like a prairie fire. It's as if George Mitchell threw a party and everyone in baseball was invited. But the guest of honor seems to be none other than the mighty Roger Clemens whose lawyers are, at this very moment, no doubt trying to mitigate the damage being done by having their client fingered in the investigation.

Clemens, the surly, megalomaniacal, fire-balling New York Yankees pitcher, nicknamed "The Rocket," has been a singularly unlikeable figure for some time. One could start just about anywhere with him, from his churlish attitude to his penchant for throwing at batters and being labeled as a headhunter. But for me, his problem is he just wont go away. He retires after every season and then, around spring time, he begins his diva-like dance where he begins to murmur about coming out of retirement, causing a stir among teams. Picture Roger with a fruit basket on his head, shaking some maracas, and you'll have an idea of how distasteful this all is. He then fields offers and by May he is once again pitching for a contender. He always signs huge one-year deals so that he can do the dance again the next season. Plus, the deals he gets entitle him to special treatment. (For example, when pitching for the Houston Astros he did not have to travel with the team for road games.) Roger doesn't have to travel with the team. The other teams travel to him.

On the baseball field, Clemens trajectory seems to have mirrored Barry Bonds's in many ways. By 1996 his career was faltering, having gone 10-13 with the Boston Red Sox. Notoriously, Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette said Clemens was in the "twilight of his career" following four consecutive seasons, 1993-96, in which the pitcher was a mediocre 40-39 with few of the eye-popping statistics that had become his norm.

Duquette traded the ailing Clemens to the Toronto Blue Jays and things magically turned around. Well, most of that "magic" came in the form of enhancing drugs which were injected into Clemen's ass via personal trainer Brian McNamee. Clemens career turned around from that point and he averaged 17 wins and 6 losses over the next ten seasons, capped off with a 2005 in-which he went 13-8 with a godlike 1.87 ERA, at the age of 42. Like Bonds, as Clemens got older he got better. But, like Bonds, he also got larger. Gone are the early days of his career when he clocked in at 190 lbs. Now he packs on 220 lbs and throws bats at people who upset him. He once threw at a batter during an All-Star game. And once threw at his son during a minor league game after his son homered off him in a previous at-bat.

Clemens has always loved the attention. From his awkward re-signings to his patented post season flame outs. Most recently, in the 2007 ALDS game three, he gave up two runs on four hits in the first two innings and by the third inning he pulled up lame and had to leave the game. Clemens put in similar post-season antics in 2005, 2004, 2003, 2001, 1999, and got himself ejected in 1990. He's the Barbara Streisand of pitchers.

Well now Clemens will receive all the attention he desires. The Rocket was singled out in nearly nine pages of the Mitchell Report, with much of the information on the seven-time Cy Young Award winner coming from McNamee himself. More than a dozen Yankees, past and present, were among the 75-plus players identified.

"According to McNamee, from the time that McNamee injected Clemens with Winstrol through the end of the 1998 season, Clemens' performance showed remarkable improvement," the report said. "During this period of improved performance, Clemens told McNamee that the steroids 'had a pretty good effect' on him."

McNamee also told investigators that "during the middle of the 2000 season, Clemens made it clear that he was ready to use steroids again. During the latter part of the regular season, McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin."

And, incredibly enough, ex-baseball player turned hatchet-man Jose Canseco was right all along. In his book Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big Canseco alleges that Roger Clemens had expert knowledge about steroids and suggested that he probably used steroids, based on the improvement in his performance after leaving the Red Sox. While not addressing the allegations directly, Clemens was dismissive of Canseco stating "I could care less" and "I've talked to some friends of his and I've teased them that when you're under house arrest and have ankle bracelets on, you have a lot of time to write a book."

Good one, Roger.


Update: By the way I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't predict that Sport's Illustrated's steroids-in-baseball watchdog Tom Verducci is no-doubt currently churning the froth on his latest venom filled anti-doping article for the magazine. Verducci relentlessly dogged Barry Bonds for well over a year during his pursuit of Hank Arron's home run title. He seems to have turned a blind eye to the obvious in Roger Clemens of whom he wrote in 2003, "Clemens' feats in the late stage of his career are remarkable."

Almost magical, isn't it Tom? If you can stomach the whole article it's here.

Which brings me to this, an excellent piece by Jeff Pearlman of Slate, written in 2006.

Likewise, when I look at Roger Clemens, I wonder: Where's the investigative digging? Like Bonds, Clemens is a larger-than-life athletic specimen. Like Bonds, Clemens is producing at an age when most of his peers are knitting. Unlike Bonds, Clemens does not have journalists breathing down his neck. Instead, the hometown Houston Chronicle has covered his recent re-signing with the Astros as a time for unmitigated celebration. Forget combing through his garbage for vials—I just want the Chronicle to ask Clemens whether he's used. Is the Rocket cheating? Again, I don't know. But doesn't someone have to at least try and find out?

"A lot of baseball writers are drunks or cheat on their wives," says Jose de Jesus Ortiz, the Chronicle's Astros beat writer. "I would never question anybody unless I have evidence. It's unfair to feel that just because of Bonds now we're required to question everyone about their methods."

Is it unfair to pester individual athletes about steroids? Maybe. Is it the right thing to do journalistically? Without a doubt.

My sentiments exactly. Now all the writers, like Verducci, who butter their bread with anti-doping columns, who ridiculed Canseco and his book, can act stunned about the great Roger Clemens.

And, finally, I dug this quote up from Hank Aaron himself. "A guy can take steroids, drugs, whatever. He still has to be able to hit that Roger Clemens 96-mile-an-hour fastball. Steroids don't help you hit that fastball."

No one imagined the fastball could be hopped up on 'roids too?

Family, Facial Hair, and the Chicago Cubs

Taking a refreshing turn away from politics, I received an e-mail this morning from a relative which read, "I’m doubly happy, the Cubs clinched their division and the Mets went down to defeat. Ha ha, payback is hell. That’s for what they did to us in ’69. That’s how far back my disappointment goes." (Thanks, mom, for writing in.)

This aptly summarizes the sports heritage I grew up with, which was, namely, to root for the Cubs and know their history, and hate the Mets for what they did to us in 1969. Yesterday both things came around full-circle. The "unsinkable" Mets finished their floundering, broke in-two, and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic, handing the division title over to Philadelphia. The Cubs ended on top of the National League Central. A chapter of family angst has been closed.

The Cubs and their lore is but one leg upon which my childhood was carefully erected. The other two are Ronald Reagan and cable television. This might explain a few things. I have successfully renounced two but shaking baseball has proven less simple. The oddity is compounded by the obvious fact that the Cubs are the cruel mistress which has mistreated me the most. And yet I continue to enter into her temple. I play the role of the hapless man who keeps returning to the woman who lifts him up and breaks him when he leasts suspects it (Game 5, 2003 NLCS). Why do we keep coming back for more punishment? Because we believe that all the pain we have endured will make the victory that much sweeter when she comes around. And if she doesn't, well, maybe as Cubs fans we just can't change.

It has been 99 years since the Cubs have claimed a World's Championship, and so their clinching the National League Central division, and thus making the playoffs, is the first step towards redemption, right? Which is sort of like the rush you get when your ex accidentally drunk dials you in the middle of the night. (Ohh, she was thinking about me!) Hell, we are nothing if not hopeful beings, but I'll let my left brain have the rest of the paragraph. How do I like their chances? Well, on paper it doesn't look good. Their 85 wins are the fewest of any team to reach post-season play this year. But the Cardinals held the same dubious honor last year and went on to beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Cubs fans believe their team is this year's Cardinals but I wont go that far because, one, these are the Cubs and their history is my catechism. And two, what makes teams like the 2006 Cardinals so special is that they are atypical.

Still, I will be doing my part to will the Cubs to victory. Borrowing from hockey tradition (after all, I am dislocated in Minnesota) I will not shave until the Cubs have won the whole damn thing or have been raucously booted from the post-season play. May my beard grow long and bushy. Amen. I also prepared to don Chicago paraphernalia and heat up a Chicago-style pizzas from the store, consuming them at my vigil. I am prepared to do these things to appease the mistress. Yes, here she comes now. And, if they make the World Series, I can drive to Wrigley and pray at the left-field wall on Waveland Avenue. And maybe fool the mistress into loving me with a World Series title. When patience fails, a little trickery cannot hurt.

And if they lose? I'll be the unkempt fat man with the Chicago shirt on. If they lose, life goes on. But who lives their lives on "if they lose?" anyway? Life is but a perpetual giving of your heart hoping one day it will return to you truer than when it left. No guts, no glory, or something.... Either way, I am prepared for a gut wrenching week or two, and I hope the Fates smile on me, or at least overlook me. One false move and it will be my heart tore out and tossed into the disposal. It would not be the first time.

Update: From SI.com, last night "the NL wild card came down to a wild, 13-inning finish Monday night that put Matt Holliday and the Colorado Rockies into the playoffs and sent Trevor Hoffman and the San Diego Padres home weary and dazed." Another choke by a team which looms large in the Cubs' legend (1984 NLCS), perhaps Cubs fans are calling in all their favors.

Don't ever go against the family.

McGwire Hall of Fame?...going, going, gone

You may have heard that Mark McGwire did not make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. It didn't take me long to discover this picture and a blog post was born. I've been somewhat torn over the McGwire / baseball steroid issue for a while now. Line56 has an interesting article that uses McGwire's situation as a market analogy. I like analogies so here it is:

For some reason, the furor over Wal-Mart's new software reminds me of the righteous indignation at Mark McGwire, the former baseball now denied entry to the Hall of Fame. It is symptomatic of a certain kind of schizophrenia that we demand our heroes to kill the cow and then interrogate them over how they got the meat. Wal-Mart is, after all, responding to our demand. We want big home run hitters and $9 DVDs and plenty of other things that someone, somewhere has to sacrifice to achieve.

If baseball fans hadn't salivated over the McGwire-Sosa home run derby, and appreciated Ichiro's style of baseball more, steroids wouldn't have taken over the big leagues. If we remained willing to pay $22 for DVDs, Wal-Mart workers wouldn't be paid minimum wage.

Why should Mark McGwire and Wal-Mart suffer for our greed?

That's essentially how I feel about this whole issue. Let's face it, we're taking McGwire, Palmero, Bonds and others down for basically giving us what we wanted. Often the 1998 McGwire / Sosa home run chase is credited with saving baseball. I don't know if I'll go that far but it did serve as a huge turnaround. Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci has become the resident watchdog for purity in baseball, but even he was not immune, when recapping the '98 season he called McGwire's 70 home runs "good for baseball." We were all turning a blind eye to the obvious.

Still, I'm glad the Hall of Fame voters stood up and erred on the side of ethics. The things we value one moment and the things we honor for a lifetime are two different things. Baseball, for better or worse, is a game of tradition. It is a game of comparison. Perhaps most of all it is a game of purity and innocence. Or, at least, we'd like to think it is. When football's Shawne Merriman failed a steroid drug test earlier this season he was suspended for four games. He came back and was elected to the pro-bowl. When baseball's Rafael Palmeiro committed the same gaff everyone knew his career was over.

Football has a much shorter memory. Rules and records are broken but the game is fixated on next Sunday. Mark McGwire's congressional testimony may have said that he didn't want to look at the past, but that's all baseball fans look at. It is a game linked to history. Knowing what we know now about the use of steroids in baseball, it is not hard to extrapolate backwards to McGwire. He may have saved baseball, but his day in Cooperstown will have to wait.

What do you think?

Welcome to the Hall Cal and Tubby

Red October

Sorry, I was gone for a few days. What did we miss?

Holy crap, the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series?

Ah, another baseball season has come to a close and this time a truly improbable winner emerged and won in improbable ways. The Cardinals won in five games against a heavily favored team; they won with strong starting pitching coming from a rotation with only one reliable starter; they won with strong relief pitching from a pen full of rookies; they won without the mighty bat of Albert Pujols, the best hitter in baseball. The Cardinals were led by 5'7" David Eckstein, a throwback style player epitomizing all the good things about baseball: team play, hustle, and fundamentals. In a year heralded as "clean", I think it is only fitting that someone like Eckstein won the World Series MVP. Congratulations to a great city, St. Louis.

Another Yankee Collapse

Barring another Republican fiasco, the biggest news of the weekend is almost certainly the collapse of the New York Yankees. My sense of shaddenfraude: very high!

The ubiquitous Yankees entered the post-season as overwhelming favorites (again) to win the World Series. They field a line up of all-stars (again) and carry the largest payroll in baseball (again). The Tigers had lost 119 games two years ago and have a manager who was born during FDR's last term.

The Yankees get all the prime-time slots while announcers and players who didn't make the playoffs but are brought in to be post-season analysts routinely trip all over themselves handing out their praises. After Derek Jeter went 5 for 5 in game one I heard “he's my favorite player” gush from some guy's mouth on Baseball Tonight. Swoon! But just underneath all the man-love lurked a fragile and dysfunctional team with a crappy pitching staff and zero clutch hitting. After game one, which looks like a fluke now, the Tigers easily dispatched the Yankees in four. It wasn't even competitive.

I think it's time to start comparing the Yankees to the Atlanta Braves. Does anyone really fear this team in the post-season anymore? Long gone is the late 90s dominance. Their premature exit from the playoffs is pretty much routine at this point. They've won the division nine years in a row, but haven't won the big one since 2000. And when you have a payroll more than double what 25 other teams have, you're expected to win the big one. Anything else is failure.

Oh, yeah, these Yankees are proud owners of the greatest choke in post-season history: the 3-0 ALCS lead they turned over to the Boston Red Sox in 2005. No team has ever lost a playoff series after leading 3-0. Ever...in 100+ years of post-season baseball. I'm really glad the Yankees can claim that.

So what the hell is wrong with this team? Well, they're old, hobbled by injuries this year, and they act like a dysfunctional bunch of prima donnas. Jason Giambi just got done flapping his gums about A-Rod in a Sports Illustrated expose. What kind of teammate does that? If you have a problem you take it up in the locker room, not in SI. That embarrassing display capped a season-long attempt to throw A-Rod under the bus by teammates. He will now certainly be the fall guy for their collective failures. Maybe that's not a bad thing if he means he gets traded to some kind of real team. Do any of these guys even like each other? Much less know how to play together?

To quote Giambi, “A-Rod doesn't know who he is. We're going to find out who he is in a few weeks.” Well, we found out A-Rod hit .071 for the series. Giambi kept him company, hitting .175 and sitting out the game four loss. Rather than pointing fingers, bitching, moaning, and bloviating about earning “Yankee stripes” maybe these guys should learn to play together first. A team with a 200 million dollar payroll can probably steam roll its way into the playoffs, but it takes a team to win in post-season. I know that sounds terribly cliché but baseball just works that way, thank God.

And so rather than 2006 World Series Champs, the Yankees will be remembered as a dysfunctional mess that imploded at the usual time. They were too busy figuring out who was going to be the fall guy and not spending enough time manufacturing runs. Thou shalt not earn "Yankee stripes" by trying to save thine own ass. None will be earned by calling teammates out. They're earned though a concept called teamwork. Maybe next year?

Pete Rose Voted Ugliest Person to Ever Bet on Baseball

Former Steroid User, Watchdog Comebine to Ponder A-Rod

What do you get when the Yankees aquire a expensive future hall of famer and then turn on him at the slightest sign of weakness? Certainly not news, right, unless you're Sports Illustrated.

Do you hate Alex Rodriguez? Take a number. Even The Onion now reserves ink for jabs at the Yankees' mysterious superstar. So, why should SI’s head baseball writer Tom Verducci miss out on the fun? His article featured in this month’s edition reveals Rodriguez to be a self-obsessed weirdo whose own teammates are more than happy to criticize behind his back. But, uh, what's the problem?

Baseball has done its part, producing compelling stories this year, but instead the focus is on A-Rod is doing wrong, and why people don't like him.

The best part is that A-Rod doesn't seem to care, which, of course, pisses people off even more. To me the story reveals the real problem: spoiled Yankess fans, candid teammates, and writers incapable of focusing on anything but the negative.

To get some insight into A-Rod’s mind Verducci taps Yankee slugger Jason Giambi for some good quotes. Giambi turns his insight and integrity onto Rodriguez; what ensues is a cathartic linty.

He says A-Rod displays a “false confidence.”

He told manager Joe Torre it was time to stop “coddling him.”

"We're all rooting for you and we're behind you 100 percent," Giambi recalls telling Rodriguez, "but you've got to get the big hit."

He ended by saying “Alex doesn't know who he is. We're going to find out who he is in the next couple of months."

You might remember Giambi as the guy who once used steroids. Now he’s busy making hey criticizing fellow teammate Rodriguez, a guy who has always put up better numbers without being on the juice. In-fact, without Giambi’s quotes there would be almost nothing to talk about in this article.

Ironically, Verducci has cast the brightest light on the steroid scandal and routinely talks about how it taints the game. With rhythmic timing he lobbs shells at Barry Bonds and now he’s using a former steroid user as his star witness?

But any hypocrocy involved is quickly absolved; Verducci is ready to grant a pardon: “For all the scorn heaped upon Giambi for his ties to the BALCO steroid scandal, he is a strong clubhouse voice because he plays with a passion that stirs teammates and even opponents. This season, for instance, he reprimanded his former Oakland A's teammate, Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada, for occasionally showing up late to games out of frustration over another losing Baltimore season. ‘You're better than that,’ he told Tejada. So Giambi's gripe about Rodriguez sounded an alarm with Torre.”

Nice.

To read Giambi in the article you’d think he was some kind of champion. He speaks with the sense of authority, Yankee authority, I’d expect from three time world champion Derek Jeter. The Yankees hauled Giambi over from Oakland in 2002; he didn’t win anything in Oakland and he hasn’t won anything for the Yankees either.

Giambi World Series rings: 0

Rodriguez World Series rings: 0

Giambi ever on juice: yes

Rodriguez ever on juice: no

Verducci’s stance on steroids: ruins the integrity of the game

Verducci’s stance on quoting steroid users: Acceptable if their name isn’t Barry Bonds.

Verducci’s stance on the McGwire/Sosa steroid fueled 1998 home run chase: good for baseball.

Rodriguez won his first MVP award in 2003, the season *after* he hit 57 home runs and drove in 142 RBIs. His value was questioned because his team finished 4th that season. Rodriguez hit 47 home runs and drove in 118. He won his second MVP award in 2005, for the first place Yankees after hitting 48 home runs and driving in 130. His team loses and his value is questioned, his team wins and his value is questioned—nothing new to read here folks.

Essentially, here we have a player, Rodriguez, who—barring a Ken Griffey Jr-like tragedy—will be remembered as one of the greatest players ever. He’s just never been popular. We also have another player who has used steroids accusing another player of being disingenuous. Then there's a writer happy to put it all together for some good copy.

I’m no fan of Rodriguez’s; I could really care less. I just think it’s laughable that people like Verducci clamor for some good, drug-free athletes to celebrate and here we have one of the best pure baseball players….ever…and the focus is on why he's so hard to motivate. So he’s a loner? So he turns to God for support? So he wears suits in his hotel room at 1 A.M.? So what? I don’t know what any of that means but I think he’s better for baseball than those who criticize him.