The Steroid Era in baseball has never really ended, its just gotten funnier and funnier. This
long running, juiced up sit-com has provided more laughter than a season's worth of "Seinfeld" episodes.
Major League Baseball's recent dosey doe with Alex Rodriquez lasted longer than the Davis
Cup and was more painful than watching a WNBA game. It culminated with a 211-game
suspension for Rodriquez, who does not have to sit out a single game until an arbiter decides
the case, which should be some time in December. Good, grief. Only in Major League Baseball.
Rodriquez had a press conference in Chicago before he took the field against the White Sox
and said it wasn't the time and place to talk about his suspension for alleged PED use, which
begs the question, why the heck did you have the press conference? To tell everybody that
you love the game?
It's laughable how players react when they've been outed as cheats. It's lie, deny, and try to
pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Steroids? Who, me? What? The congressional hearing
of 2005 was a sit-com in itself. You couldn't make it up. There was Mark McGwire who
didn't want to "talk about the past." Sammy Sosa didn't understand English, even though he
spoke it pretty well. Rafael Palmeiro wagged his finger at members of Congress and said,
"I've never used steroids, period", only to test positive five months later. Jose Canseco
muttered, "I must be the only one lying here." Can I buy the rights to those hearings?
Commissioner Bud Selig followed up by asking Congress a rhetorical question, "Did we
have a major problem? No. Let me say this to you: There is no concrete evidence of that,
there is no testing evidence, there is no other kind of evidence." Really? I guess the size
Barry Bonds' head wasn't evidence enough, nor was the fact that Bret Boone morphed into
Ted Kluszewski overnight, posting power numbers like the former Reds great, despite being
about half his size.
Things got even more entertaining three years later when Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee
faced off in front of Congress. The former pitcher denied using steroids and when a
conversation between he and Andy Petitte came up where the Yankees lefty said that Clemens
told him he used HGH, Clemens said his former good friend, "misremembered" things.
"Misremembered?" That went down in the annals of malapropisms. Misremember? LOL.
More comedy ensued in February of 2012 when Milwaukee Brewers all-star Ryan Braun,
stepped to the podium in spring training and defiantly told the world he was cleaner than
Tim Tebow at his baptism and people shouldn't have the audacity to ever question him
about PED's. He all but celebrated getting cleared from a overwhelmingly positive drug test,
thanks to a break in the chain of custody because a FedEx man didn't deliver it to the lab by
a certain time.
Braun said the system was flawed and that he'd never put anything in his system. He blamed everybody and pretty much said that nobody should ever question his integrity. Ever. After
all, he was Ryan Braun, former MVP.
Oooops. Braun got caught again putting stuff in his system, this time from the Biogenesis
clinic and there was nobody to blame but himself. Not a FedEx guy nor the system. Just
good ole Ryan Braun. He took a 65-game suspension and went home to practice for his
next press conference. Comedy, pure comedy.
MLB has really become one big joke. Selig and everybody else turned their heads or just
buried them in the sand 20 years ago when punch and judy hitters were belting balls into
the upper deck at alarming rates. Every meaningful record in the game became meaningless
because of steroids and the ugly greed in the game. Now, as he's about to ride into retirement
and the sunset, Selig is trying clean up the game, the same game he said didn't have a "major" problem at those congressional hearings in 2005.
13 players were suspended on Monday. Nope, that's not a "major" problem, but it is
comical. Very comical.
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