A smart baseball fan would follow the game this way: read nothing in the sports pages except the box scores and standings; keep the tube on mute when watching a contest; and ignore all the blogs (except maybe “Subway Squawker” in the Daily News), ESPN and talk radio.
Unfortunately, unlike my father-in-law, Rudy, who roots for the White Sox in the aforementioned manner, I’m not that smart. Why I continue to read the East Coast’s worst baseball writer, The New York Times’ Murray Chass (The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy is a close second) is a mystery I wrestle with more often than whether or not to engage the next-door neighbor, a Clinton Democrat, in a political discussion. It’s not just Chass, of course—YES’s Michael Kay and Ken Singleton, ESPN’s Rick Sutcliffe, Buster Olney, Joe Morgan (did you know he was a member of the “Big Red Machine”?) and FOX’s horrid duo of Tim McCarver and Joe Buck are all pure noise pollution—but grumpy Murray’s May 8 Times column was a dilly.
Chass begins: “Alcohol last week killed one more major league baseball player than steroids ever have.”
He’s referring to the premature death of Cardinals’ pitcher Josh Hancock, who died in a car crash at the age of 29, while drunk, not wearing a seat belt (Jon Corzine says hello), talking on a cell phone and, according to the police report, possibly stoned. Now, Major League Baseball is in a fit of soul-searching, with an increasing number of teams banning alcohol from clubhouses, as if grown men don’t have the common sense to make the decision whether or not to drive after consuming a couple of beers. Chass goes on to slam the baseball establishment and Congress for being “steroids zealots” while ignoring the dangers of excessive drinking.
I’m agnostic about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports—it’s not as if players haven’t abused their bodies in other ways, whether it’s uppers, booze, cocaine or dope—although I agree it’s a bad example for teenage athletes, a tiny percentage of whom will make it to the pros. But Chass zigs and zags about the controversy, especially when it comes to Barry Bonds, who’s on the verge of breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record.
On May 16 of last year, Chass wrote a love letter to Albert Pujols, the Cardinals slugger who is allegedly under the age of 30. “[I]t’s good they don’t make many players like Albert Pujols, because if there were more, he wouldn’t be so special, and Albert Pujols is very special … Pujols is the anti-Bonds. He has achieved his numbers free of the suspicion of the use of steroids or any other illegal performance-enhancing substances. In that sense, he is a refreshing superstar who can say, ‘I don’t cheat.’” Maybe Special A is as clean as Eliot Spitzer, maybe he isn’t, but how Chass would know that for a fact is something he didn’t divulge to readers.
Just a few days later in ’06, Chass was on the Bonds beat again, saying that the melon-headed Giant was maybe “the most controversial player” in the history of sports. One might say that Ty Cobb, the Hall of Fame Detroit Tiger who sharpened his spikes to inflict injury on opponents and once almost killed a heckling fan, would rate higher on the “controversy” meter, but we all have opinions. But more from Chass about Bonds: “If a substantial percentage of [Bonds’ home runs] were chemically aided, maybe he doesn’t deserve to be placed in [Babe] Ruth’s class. Ruth ate hot dogs and drank beer. If either helped him hit home runs, more players should have followed his example. They might have fattened themselves, but they would have been better hitters.” Chass doesn’t mention that Ruth drank more than just beer and had a habit of crashing cars. He was just luckier than Josh Hancock.
So the veteran Times columnist, who hates the Red Sox almost as much as Bonds and Sen. Jim Bunning, is all over the map. Yet, in fairness, so are too many loudmouths. Take Curt Schilling, a borderline Hall of Fame pitcher, currently with the BoSox—and as a Boston fan, I’m glad he is—who also felt the need last week to wade into Chass’ filthy waters.
Schilling—whose frequent diatribes make George Bush seem articulate, Joe Biden concise and the early-60s Cassius Clay humble—held forth on Boston’s WEEI on April 8 about Bonds. Asked whether “people should hold their noses” about Bonds breaking Aaron’s record, Schilling said, “Oh yeah, I would think so. I mean, he admitted that he used steroids. I mean, there’s no gray area. He admitted to cheating on his wife [surely a unique occurrence among baseball players], cheating on his taxes, and cheating on the game … And I don’t care that he’s black, or green, or purple, or yellow or whatever. It’s unfortunate … there’s good people and bad people. It’s unfortunate that it’s happening the way it’s happening.”
Red Sox manager, Terry Francon,a (rapidly becoming one of the best in the Majors) told Schilling to “zip it,” and the next day the pitcher apologized on his blog “38pitches.” “It was a callous, reckless and irresponsible thing to say and for that I apologize to Barry, Barry’s family, Barry’s friends and the Giants organization, my teammates and the Red Sox organization.”
And let’s not forget the self-righteousness about Roger Clemens returning to the Yanks for an enormous salary. The New York Post’s Mike Vaccaro, on May 9, gassed on that GM Brian Cashman’s acquiescence to the contractual demands of Clemens—allowing the 44-year-old pitcher to come and go as he pleases, whether it’s to return home to Houston or play in a celebrity golf tournament while the rest of the team is on a road trip and in the dugout of each game—has forever tainted the “class” of the Yanks.
Vaccaro, unlike other commentators, doesn’t fault Clemens for applying the financial leverage he had to make a good deal. Instead, ignoring the “classy” antics of past Bombers like Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Darryl Strawberry, Reggie Jackson, Carl Pavano and George Steinbrenner, Vaccaro writes, “Gone are the days when the Yankees can even pretend their dirty socks don’t smell the way everyone else’s do. Gone are the days when they can harrumph and say they don’t adjust to the times, the times—and the players—adjust to them … They sold their collective history—and all the moral authority that allegedly went with it—down the Harlem River. Here’s hoping ol’ No. 22 is worth it.”
I love the sport, but with few exceptions—say Mariano Rivera of the Yanks, Tim Wakefield and David Ortiz of the BoSox, the Blue Jays’ Vernon Wells and, going back, Brooks Robinson of the Orioles—only a fool would combine the words “baseball” and “class” in the same sentence.
