RUSE the.magazine . The Iron Horse vs. The Synthetic Jackass . Has Manny Ra. Jeffrey Pillow . MUSIC . ARTS . LIFE . POLITICS . NEWS
RUSE the.magazine . The Iron Horse vs. The Synthetic Jackass . Has Manny Ra. Jeffrey Pillow . MUSIC . ARTS . LIFE . POLITICS . NEWS
![Honesty, respect, integrity—three words rarely uttered at the water cooler when a discussion of America’s favorite pastime ensues. The vocabulary of Major League Baseball (MLB) has been replaced with a synonymous diction of cheating, steroids, and lies. Cooperstown discourse for the current and soon-coming Hall potentials is one of asterisks and question marks. Leading the way for the 2013 Class of eligibles [as determined by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA)] are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa.

All men are household names with record-breaking resumes. These men were the blood and bone measuring stick for the success of the 1990’s baseball generation. The finger has been pointed at each for alleged use in some way, shape, or form of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) and/or Human Growth Hormone (HGH). A pity. Whether the legacies of any of these men deserve to rest alongside Lou Gehrig, Nolan Ryan, Babe Ruth, or Ernie Banks on 25 Main St. in New York is a question the Chicago chapter of the BBWAA is presently trying to determine. The cut-and-dry answer should be a resounding, “No.”
As a nation of sports enthusiasts, many it seems have become numb to the drumbeat of allegations over the past few years. Therefore, let us measure the standard of achievement through the perspective we are asked to live up to on a daily basis: in the household, in school, at work. Imagine, if you will, that the valedictorian of your graduating class was a known cheater by the entire school, the school board, principal, and superintendent—even the State Board of Education. Envisage the authorities of this institution turning a blind eye and awarding this individual as if s/he did no wrong.
Picture this student being allowed to give a speech about the groundwork of principles laid down that made him or her so successful: resilience, hard work, honor, and integrity to name a few. Hear the auditorium crowd erupt in applause and cheer. See some cry. Know all along the speech given, the character of this person is what it is: fraudulent—yet no repercussions. This is the model to follow: a flawed model, an empty shell of an image put on shoulders high and carried around as if Glory is his or her first name. Moreover, what if repercussions are pursued? How about an asterisk to satisfy the cynics? A well-you-cheated-but-you’re-still-our-valedictorian approach? Hmm, some justice. Some repercussion.
From Jackie Robinson to BALCO
Poignant and heartrending, this is what baseball has become. A game once recognized by fathers and sons alike for the alluring smell of oiled-in leather gloves, hot dogs, peanuts, popcorn, and cold beer, and for a young man named Jackie Robinson who won the MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947—seven years before the Brown v. Board of Education decision, sixteen years before the March on Washington—baseball has de-evolved in all senses of the term, transforming itself into a sport quickly tainted in scandals, falsehoods, and outright deception (BALCO only one of a handful of examples). Welcome to modern baseball where cheaters prosper and the losers are the players who awaken every morning at 5 AM to work on their slider or swing but without the help of illegal drugs. Come game time they sit with sunflower seeds in their mouths pulling splinters from their rear ends in the bullpen or crouched over on the bench along the first or third baseline.
“Conscience! Aw, phooey!”
The guilty players responsible for this stench of cheating and corruption sit before Congress and before the media, lying through their teeth like Pinocchio, their noses growing longer and longer with each fib told, one even going as far as pretending no longer to comprehend English even with a translator by his side. As the Blue Fairy said to Pinocchio in the 1940 Disney classic, “Now, remember, Pinocchio, be a good boy. And always let your conscience be your guide . . . A lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.” These stilted, wooden caricature superstars carved up like Greek statues by syringes and HGH seem only to follow the wisdom of Jiminy Cricket: “What does an actor want with a conscience anyway?”
To have a conscience, good question—for the guilty parties are but actors with well-rehearsed lines; and what a tired act it is: the callous smirk, the overconfident grin and accompanying laugh when asked a question the guilty never intend to answer directly. The guilty give unknowing winks under dark sunglasses during the pre-game press conference. They dodge questions, chuckle under their breath; their star on the rise, they talk about themselves in the third-person as if they are auditioning for the role of Cookie Monster on Sesame Street; and it is not cute, valiant, or even surprising anymore.
Though the media covered the first scandals so much so it was as if beating a dead horse with 24/7 news coverage (thanks in part to a tell-all book from former steroid user and slugger Jose Conseco titled Juiced), recent scandals seem to disappear as soon as they appear. Once on the front page, the story quickly finds the back page, the font smaller, the article shorter, the opinion of the journalist non-existent as if the Kremlin is the newswire feed of origin. When just this year Alex Rodriguez was outed for testing positive for steroids in 2003, the story hit the newsstands with a ripple effect on television and radio. After a short period, it quickly disappeared. Rodriguez, who won the 2003 American League (AL) Most Valuable Player award and AL homerun title, was quick to deny the allegations; but then, a reversal of statements. “Yes, I used steroids,” he later said. “I was stupid, very stupid.” I bet Bill Clinton wishes it were that easy to give and have accepted a public apology.
A Clean Slate
Only when a player asks to wipe their slate clean should they be given a clean slate. See, ultimately, no matter what anyone tells you, how anyone tries to spin it, however fortunate or unfortunate it may be, the superstar defines the sport he or she plays. Let us step away from baseball for a second. Give Pete Chilcutt all the credit in the world for making it as far as he did in the NBA—that’s fine; but without Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson, the NBA would be about as popular in America as croquet. It is with this realization that just once I would like to hear one of these superstar players who tested positive for steroids or HGH say, “I lied. I cheated. Please strip me of the records I set and the awards I won when I did this.”
Just once. Picture that. Picture Alex Rodriguez pleading with the MLB front office to rescind his 2003 AL MVP Award and Homerun Title. “Please,” he would say, “delete it from the record books. I do not deserve it.” That alone would earn many a sportswriter’s respect, even the respect of the baseball fans and sports fans who loathe the individual for having tarnished the game. But, you see, these players care more about their own ego than they do the love of the game; and their ego was created by a culture willing to let slide a little bit of cheating if it means seeing a 400’+ homerun jacked into San Francisco bay’s McCovey Cove.
A Culture of Cheating and Glamour
As a courtroom has a judge to mediate, so too it has a jury—the jury of the sports world is the fan. Our culture has a jury who frequently misses its call to duty. The fan, the die-hard fan to be specific, the fan who is more concerned whether his team wins no matter the cost than wins the right way, is just as much to blame. Without the fan, the egotistical player has no one to stroke his ego, no shoulders to rest on. Without the fan, the numb fan that hears the news of his favorite player being a druggie and shrugs it off, the egotistical player is allowed a free pass. However, like the modern player, the modern fan upholds a culture of cheating and glamour. Take for example the scene of San Diego, Friday, July 3.
Manny Ramirez returns to the open arms and thunderous applause of Los Angeles Dodgers fans in an away game against the dismal San Diego Padres (34-45). Suspended on May 7, 2009 for 50 games on behalf of violating the MLB drug policy, the outfielder’s return is being celebrated “[as if he were] an Iraq War veteran coming home,” says disgusted sports journalist, Bill Plaschke, of the Los Angeles Times. “The club has done nothing during the suspension but coddle him and treat him as if he had suffered some life-threatening disease."
Rolling Out the Red Carpet for Manny the Great
Furthering the anointment of Manny the Great, ESPN even had the grapes to cover live every at-the-plate appearance for Manny before his return to LA. Allowed a stint in the minor league during his 50-game suspension (wow, some suspension), Ramirez suited up for the triple-A affiliate Albuquerque Isotopes. Roll out the red carpet, in comes the payoff: more tickets were sold for this game than ever before in the Isotopes’ seven-year history. Also reported was a single loaf of bread carried into the stadium by Manny the Great that fed thousands and stories of the blind healed. Manny wigs were shipped in from Los Angeles so that all salivating fans who sought to look just their homerun hero, their baseball diamond deity, could do just that. “Dad, can I have a Manny wig?” “Yes, son. Just remember, you didn’t learn it from watching me. You learned it from watching Manny.” [end of commercial]. Helicopters passed overhead in New Mexico covering the event, silver blades flickering in the summer sky.
As if he were Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt walking down the red carpet in Hollywood with children adopted from numerous third world countries, cameras flashed like twinkling stars capturing Ramirez’s every move, his every at-bat as the crowd stood in applause for him to then strikeout and ground out, going 0-2 on the evening. Welcome to Mannywood, New Mexico. A giant celebration was had all in the honor of a man who cheated the game, its history, and the fans; and clap-clap went the Dodger faithful; and whistle they again did Friday, July 3, as he returned from his 50-game suspension, stepping to the plate against the Padres to go 0-3 in a 6-3 Dodgers win.
The Iron Horse vs. The Synthetic Jackass
“Back on the Bench,” read the headline in the Los Angeles Times for Juan Pierre, the left-fielder who filled in for Ramirez during his 50-game suspension while batting .317 with 31 runs and 21 stolen bases. Time for the sunflower seeds to fill the jowl of Pierre, the man who did everything right and was rewarded with nothing but his former place on the bench with the rest of the splinter pickers. With that said, it is with a sense of transparency and contrast this story comes to a head—for as the celebration of Manny Ramirez erupted like Mount Vesuvius with joviality and merriment for the fans of Dodger blue, his weekend return also marked the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s famous retirement speech in 1939. “And so it goes,” Kurt Vonnegut would say, the schizophrenic personality of Major League Baseball—two men who do not belong in the same sentence, Ramirez and Gehrig, the former an insult to the latter.
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got,” said Gehrig on that day, July 4, 1939, “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
Despite the live play-by-play of Manny’s every move a few weeks ago in Albuquerque, a sort of redemptive quality is found in a special being run by ESPN that I first saw while eating breakfast on the morning of Friday, July 3, and again Saturday, July 4. The special is about Gehrig’s letters to his doctor, Dr. Paul O’Leary from Rochester’s Mayo Clinic. Born June 19, 1903, Lou Gehrig was known in his playing days as "The Iron Horse." From 1925 to 1939, Gehrig missed not a single game on the field, playing in 2,130 consecutive games, personally ending his streak following a diagnosis with the fatal neuromuscular disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—now commonly known throughout the world as Lou Gehrig's Disease. His record would stand the test of time until Baltimore Orioles shortstop, Cal Ripken, Jr., surpassed him on September 7, 1995.
As defined by the ALS Association,
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.
Now available to the public, Gehrig's letters can be read on ESPN.com. Five chapters frame Gehrig's ALS narrative, "Early Stages," "Signs of Decline," "Seeking Hope," "Some Good Days," and "Final Days."
It is with this final question I ask the reader: what is your definition of greatness? Is it a synthetic jackass with an overconfident smirk who cheats the game and robs its fans of authenticity or is it a man like Gehrig and Aaron, Ripken and Jackie Robinson, who played the game the right way and never sacrificed the integrity of the game for the betterment of themselves and their wallet? Think about it. Do the legacies of modern baseball’s chiseled frauds deserve to stand shoulder to shoulder with these guys on 25 Main St., Cooperstown, NY? It is a question the BBWAA should not even have to ask themselves to know the answer.

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The Iron Horse vs. The Synthetic Jackass .
by Jeffrey Pillow
July 6, 2009
