A cyborg?
A simulacrum?
A fictional creation of a viral marketing campaign?
On December 24, 2006, "Scott Miller" comes out strongly against Mark McGwire's Hall of Fame credentials:
"McGwire and his fellow Bash (The Integrity of the Game) Brothers have dishonored the sport by dragging it into the worst scandal since the 1919 Black Sox.
They have twisted some of the game's most treasured numbers into an indecipherable maze of voodoo statistics largely devoid of meaning and context.
They have turned on the game's most important natural resource -- Little Leaguers, high schoolers and college players -- to a whole medicine's chest worth of dangerous unnatural resources that can be harmful or, at worse, fatal."
Then, on December 27, 2006, he writes this:
"Know whose box I'd also love to check on my ballot?
The late Ken Caminiti's, as a show of respect toward the one player out of hundreds who had the guts to publicly discuss the game's raging steroids problem.
That it took so long for a player -- any player -- to publicly identify the insidious cancer that was growing inside major league clubhouses is just one glimpse into the union's steely code of silence.
By speaking out shortly before his death -- admitting his own steroid use and discussing the high percentage of others who were using -- Caminiti performed a far greater service to the game and to the future health of his fellow players than anybody had to that point, including commissioner Bud Selig and union chief Don Fehr."
Wow.
I guess Ken Caminiti really cared about the children while he was Bashing (The Integrity of the Game) and winning an MVP with his voodoo statistics and leading his voodoo team to the voodoo World Series.
As for the union's steely code of silence, which players can really claim innocence?
Cal Ripken didn't know what was going on?
Tony Gwynn kept silent while his teammate's head swelled to the size of a Geo Tracker? Tony Gwynn didn't thereby indirectly risk the lives of all the nation's Little Leaguers?
No, I don't think it's a teammate's job to rat out a steroid user. I also don't think it's the Federal Government's job to waste resources hunting down steroid users in baseball, especially while a new NFL player tests positive every other day.
But if steroid use is really ruining our society from the inside-out -- if you really think this is a serious problem -- if this is something more serious than protecting Roger Maris's precious record -- then there's a heckuva lot of blame to go around.
If you're looking for saints on your Hall of Fame ballot, you're not going to find any.
1 comment:
Scott Miller has biases like everyone else. He's very biased toward the Padres. Unlike others, he has certain motivations. His most important lifelong goal was to vote on post season baseball awards (I documented him saying this). Within that, his current priority is to get another Padre in the HOF (one who's still pitching). He'll slant his various writings to enhance his guy and minimize another guy. If you know this, you'll understand his stuff better.
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