I agree with Mike Lupica.

Overall, I agree with his angle in this story. The overall angle being that Giambi's biggest crime is his stinking on the baseball field. Does this mean Hell has frozen over?

But I'd pose a couple of questions to Lupica:


I. Why did he write a book called the "Summer of '98" which glorifies the McGwire / Sosa HR race?

On the Sports Reporters yesterday, Lupica actually stated that now the '98 HR race now comes under question.

Now? All of a sudden? What was he watching in 1998? It was obvious to anybody with eyes and a brain that McWire and Sosa were both juiced.

Please understand that this does not necessarily mean they were using illegal steroids. They may have been using substances that were not-yet-illegal (which is exactly what McGwire admitted to). Plus, they both undoubtedly trained very hard and took advantage of watered-down pitching staffs, smaller strike zones, lower mounds, smaller ballparks.

It's obvious to me that a fairly large percentage of baseball players have been juiced for a while. I am surprised by magnitude of the anti-Giambi reaction mainly because I thought we all understood and sort of shrugged our shoulders. Like we basically do with the NFL and its 350-pound linemen running 3.9-second 40-yard dashes, the Olympics where fooling the drug testers may as well be a medal event, Gaylord Perry spitballs.


II. Just in general, this is not directed solely at Lupica: Why aren't we similarly angry with Randy Velarde? I honestly don't quite understand this.

We're angry at Barry Bonds because he's on the brink of taking over a "sacred" baseball record from a "dignified" player. (Well, Aaron is dignified, Ruth not so much.)

We're not angry at Randy Velarde. He cheated, he put his health at risk, he tore down everything that is pure and good about baseball. Except nobody weeps for poor Tom Paciorek when Randy Velarde passes him on the all-time HR list.

I don't know about this attitude. We all ought to stop assigning levels of guilt based upon a player's ability on the baseball field.