Rage
Posted: May 8th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Essays | 38 Comments »
So, the last 24 hours have been interesting to me. I will admit, up front, that I generally lack the fury gene that drives so much of sports talk and analysis today. It’s not something I can change. I just don’t have that much sports outrage in me. Oh sure, now and again I will see something that I feel is an injustice or something preposterously stupid, and then I will unload with all I have. Invariably, after I unload, some people will write in and say that I should do that more often. But that’s not my personality, really. I’m more of a, “I can see both sides,” kind of person. And anyway,
I don’t think we’re lacking for rage in our sports coverage.
Some tell me that all this is because I’m naive … and I’m OK with pleading guilty to that. I suspect I am naive about sports. I think that sports are fun, games are diversion, losses are not deaths, that a college coach cheating to recruit a player is not on the level of a investment banker cheating retirees out of their pensions and a player who is a jerk to teammates and media members is not on the level of the person who commit violent crimes. There are serious moments in sports, hateful moments, heroic moments. Most of the times, we’re talking about games here.
So, I have to admit … I did not reach the level of rage that so many people seemed to reach over the drug suspension of Manny Ramirez. I spent part of Friday reading and listening to some of the thoughts … I think a representative example would be the rage of my friend Bill Plaschke, who in his understated way said: “Shame on us if anyone has this guy back. I knew coming in this guy was a knucklehead. … This guy has let down the entire city of L.A., he has cost the Dodgers millions of dollars … I am sick of him, period.”
Now, it’s personal for Bill because he’s in L.A. … I guess it would be like that here if, say, Zack Greinke would test positive for a PED. Maybe if that happened, I would feel betrayed and furious. Because, hey, I am not saying that anger is wrong. Manny Ramirez did cheat. He did take a banned substance. He did betray his fans and he did embarrass his team and he did make us all look at his great numbers in a whole new way. And, no, I don’t buy that it was an innocent mistake, and I don’t buy that it was a misunderstanding, and, sure, as a fan, as an analyst, as a teammate, I can see being angry about the whole thing. I can see tearing into MannyBManny.
But … I just don’t know where this sort of rage comes from after all this time. I mean, we’ve been through McGwire, through Giambi, through Bonds, through Caminiti, through Clemens, through Sheffield, through two Canseco books, through the Mitchell Report, through Balco and through A-Rod story after A-Rod story. We’ve been talking about this thing for years and year years; it has been inescapable, and it has overshadowed the game, and it has filled our newspapers with boring stories about boring people making boring excuses and other boring people making boring charges. We have endured the worst home run chase ever — the Barry Freak Show. We have watched TWO absurd Congressional circus acts. How many times can we get enraged? Are we just endlessly raw on this subject? Are we simply chasing the killer again and again as if it’s brand new, like the guy in “Memento?”
I don’t know. When the Manny Ramirez story broke, I wrote that I was surprised … but I think that got misinterpreted by some of the people who wrote in. I was only surprised because I think Manny is a goofball who always seemed to march to his own drum solo — if someone had broken that Manny Ramirez had climbed to the top of a billboard and refused to come down, that would not have surprised me. But he didn’t seem the PED type to me. That said, the surprise was not especially deep or enduring; I simply don’t think I could be TRULY surprised by a drug revelation at this point.*
*People have asked me how I would feel if Albert Pujols was found to be be using performance enhancing drugs — you know, since I wrote the “Don’t be afraid to believe in me” cover story about him in Sports Illustrated. I’m sure I would feel disappointed. I’m sure I would feel let down. But surprised? Angry? I couldn’t say for sure … but I don’t think so. When I went to talk to Albert Pujols, I wanted to let him talk about what it is to be the best player in baseball in this time of doubt, when every home run is a clue and every big season is a reason to doubt. He was the one who wanted to say: Believe in me, I’m doing it the right way. I was happy to hear him say it. I was proud to give him a chance to put himself out there. But it’s his life and his choices. I believe him. I do. But I’ve been wrong before. He’s the one who has to live up to his words.**
Look, Manny’s a cheat. And he’s a dunce … I cannot even imagine how hard it is for someone to fail these drug tests. But, again, looking at the whole picture, well, there I am again seeing the other side. I used to travel around the country with Buck O’Neil, and people would constantly ask him about steroids hoping to get him to lash out … and he always said the same thing (to the queasy shrugs of the people around him): “The only reason we didn’t use steroids is because we didn’t have them. … It is in an athlete’s psyche to push the limits.”
My friend Bill James is probably the most thoughtful person I know, and he wrote one of the strongest and most sensible paragraphs on this subject I have read: “You give me the opportunity to earn $22 million a year by taking steroids, I’ll shoot the pharmacist if I have to. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying I shouldn’t be punished for shooting the pharmacist. I am saying it is self-righteous to pretend that I don’t have the same human failings that these guys do, and further, if you are insisting that you don’t have them, I don’t believe you.”
And so on. The way I view it, baseball created this culture. They do seem to be trying to clean it up now … and I’m all for cleaning it up. Make testing tougher. Suspend Manny for 50 games. Suspend him for 100 games. Do what you have to do. But I can’t keep pretending that I’m shocked and furious and disgusted every time. I just don’t have those emotions in me over and over and over again. The way I figure it, a lot of Major League baseball players used performance enhancing drugs, maybe most baseball players, maybe even a vast majority. I’m just not going to be able to freak out every time someone new gets caught. Maybe that makes me naive. Then again, maybe it makes me cynical. Either way, I love baseball too much to miss the games tonight.
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I agree, I’m not sure how anyone could be shocked. I get tired of hearing about Manny/ARod/Manny/ARod. blah blah blah
Rage, in its own way, is a form of entitlement.
Think about it: if someone offers you a one-in-a-million shot to win a hugely valuable prize, and you end up not winning, most folks aren’t going to be terribly broken up or angry about that. It’s pretty clear that the odds were against you, so there’s no point in getting worked up over the expected thing happening.
On the other hand, have someone promise you a million dollars, convince you to make personal decisions based on the expectation of that million dollars coming in, then renege and not give you the million? You’d probably be pissed — I would.
So why the outrage over the steroid era? People who seem to be enraged over each new steroid revelation seem to be saying, “Hey, I was promised heroism. The baseball of my childhood was pure and complete, and it should always be that way, and these guys who are messing it up are ruining a wonderful thing.” I’m not sure that’s justified, because
a) baseball has never been pure and complete (the late ’70s and early ’80s, when I grew up with baseball, was the heyday of the non-PE drug scandal in baseball; other eras have been gambling or similar shows of dirty laundry in the national pastime), and
b) I’m not sure that an unchanging game of baseball is necessarily a good thing, either. The baseball of the 1980s, where teams could succeed despite radically different philosophies — veteran power? youth and speed? starting pitching and defense? — would be my bet for the type of baseball to freeze into a time capsule, but others certainly find the turf-fed baseball of that era alien and unpleasant. Should we immortalize the station-to-station baseball of the ’50s and early ’00s? The pitching-dominance of the mid-60s?
Now, guys who get pissed off about players on their own team getting suspended without going off on the scandal as a whole makes more sense to me — in this case, the guy is saying, “Hey, we gave this guy a home and a huge salary, and this is how he repays us? Screw him.” It might not be as consistent (you don’t really care about Clemens’s scandal, because he was never a Dodger), but it makes more sense from an entitlement standpoint.
Which then begs the question of why we feel entitled in our major league sports teams in the first place.
So, what tattoos should the outraged put on themselves? “REMEMBER SAMMY SOSA”? “MANNY B. (MANNY) RAPED AND MURDERED MY NAIVETE”?
Steroids have been a non-issue for me. I don’t see it as cheating, especially if everyone is doing it. You have to do it to keep your job.
It’s brain chemistry, JP. There’s something in the human brain that likes to be angry. We don’t like to let go of it, either, which is why many of us not only have stupid fights with our spouses/etc., but we also don’t make up immediately. Yelling feels good. Obviously there are exceptions among us, like yourself. And Jesus.
I don’t get mad at athletes I don’t know, but I do get mad at people who drive annoyingly if it affects me. So I’m no better.
“Suspend him for 100 games.”
Uh, let’s not lose our minds here.
/dodgerfan
Frankly, Plaschke et al are a bunch of god damned liars. They are faking their outrage. I’m surprised this obvious conclusion isn’t where your musings led you, Joe.
I’m actually more angry at the talking heads and talk radio hacks. They all get up on their soapbox and pontificate about “the sanctity of the game” and “the example for the youth of America”.
I bet dollars to donuts that if there were a magic pill or potion that they could drink that would put them at the top of the broadcast industry, without the years of slaving in obscurity, they would take it in a heartbeat.
It’s called human nature. Every competitive person is ALWAYS looking to gain an edge on the competition. This righteous indignation is all BS.
I’m surprised about Manny. Not THAT surprised, but surpised just the same. I really thought he was clean.
Oh well, I’m watching the game right now. Cliff Lee and Verlander are pitching like Aces. I sure hope the Tribe can figure out their bullpen. I love baseball.
You know, Andy, for the journalistic hacks out there, the steroids story IS their steroids. Instead of doing their jobs by working hard, they’re falling back on an easy cheat–manufactured rage.
Let’s face it, ESPN and its ilk demand this sort of fist-pounding outrage over these sorts of things. It’s no different that Fox News or MSNBC having to go ballistic over political things. They believe that it keeps them in business.
Hell, I started following sports in the early ’70s and we had player strikes, owner lockouts, drug use, outrageous salaries, guys not hustling … all that stuff. The “innocence”–if it ever existed–wasn’t shattered yesterday, or the time before that, or the time before that.
Great post, Joe.
To me, and I may have commented on this before, there is only 1 lesson about the steroid era. It’s not about morality and it’s not how we should compare players from today with players from yesteryear. The only less is: We have absolutely no idea who did steroids. All the easy categories we all want to use, how players look, what positions they play, how good a guy they are…none of these things are indicative of who used and who didn’t. We want to make it black and white with good guys (now Griffey and Jeter) and bad guys (like A-Rod and Manny now), but as the Buck O’Neil quote indicates, it just isn’t like that.
Ramble complete.
I’m outraged. No. Let me say it more strenuously: I’M OUTRAGED. Not about steroids generally or MbM specifically … but that Poz left a double Pozterisk referencing nothing.
“He’s the one who has to live up to his words.**”
What a tease!
As a sports fan who absolutely possesses the “fury gene”, I much prefer a sober analysis of the situation to some of the anger that is displayed by the media. After all, if I want to rail against perceived injustice (and being primarily a soccer fan, there are plenty of injustices to rail against…), I have plenty of friends available to partake in just such a discussion. So thanks for both adding your input and for sharing other objective inputs. I find them much more interesting.
Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment: it seems as if a lot of people attribute steroid use to a certain “culture” of using. This seems to me to be an accurate (enough) assessment. But couldn’t we make the same argument for the constantly pontificating journalists? Perhaps the reason many journalists so harshly condemn the use of steroids is that they are implicitly asked to provide such commentary. By whom or why, I don’t know, but perhaps in a similar position, most of us would act the way many journalists do. I’m not sure I believe this necessarily, but I do think it’s an interesting question to ask if one is going to criticize how lame many of these articles are.
On the other hand, some of them are awfully lame…
Also, Gene Tenace’s real name was Fury Gene Tenace. Roughly translated from Italian.
I think the fact that a sure fire HOF player cheated (or was caught) is an important story. I think a lot of the rage towards the jornalists like Bill is more fans not wanting to discount thier idols skills. Without PEDs, was Manny any better then, say John Olerud? Would the Sox have won in 04? Would those late 90s Cleveland teams scored 1,000 runs? Does he drive in 165 for Joe’s Tribe? Probably not, but fans don’t want to think about the impact of the cheating so we get lame excuses like “everyone was doing it”, when we know that wasn’t true, or “Steroids couldn’t have improved his swing” when we don’t know that, or we argue as James did that any of us would have taken the 22m.
The Steroid story isn’t ever going to go away because it’s too important and too harmful to baseball to ignore.
Aaron M wrote:
“Steroids have been a non-issue for me. I don’t see it as cheating, especially if everyone is doing it. You have to do it to keep your job.”
That is *precisely* the true, larger evil of the steroids phenomenon — the slippery-sloped moral relativism that erodes integrity and ethics.
It’s certainly not limited to sports (see: politics, Wall Street, income taxes, traffic laws, etc.), but sports *used* to be (and are often propped up by those who defend it them as they erode them). But once you reach the point that “everyone does it” or “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,” then the character being built is a liar’s and a cheater’s.
I’m still disgusted by the clip of Michael Jordan’s last (illegal) bucket for the Bulls, when he blatantly pushed off but was praised as “knowing how to work it” with the refs to avoid the call. ESPN recently ran the story of a high school basketball coach who told his player to, in a principled stand, tank a technical foul.
Consider that: For cheaters, Aaron says “everyone is doing it. You have to do it,” while meanwhile now someone’s doing the right thing is *newsworthy* just because it’s so rare.
We’ve soiled the nest, fellas.
This is not a surprise, and there will be more to come.
The thing that blows my mind about all the furor over Manny and Alex et al. is the idea that these players are somehow “soiling” or “disrespecting” a formerly pristine, untainted sport.
Cheating in baseball has existed exactly as long as the sport itself has existed. Spitballs, mudballs, cut balls, corked bats, super-balled bats, the Black Sox, “greenies,” sharpened cleats … the list goes on and on and on.
The names of players who cheated throughout the years to gain an advantage includes some of my all-time favorites, and countless HOF’ers. I don’t feel even an ounce of “rage” or even disappointment in this latest batch. They’re merely following the fine examples of players throughout history.
Thanks for a thoughtful post, Joe. My personal opinion is that the only outrageous behaviors over the last 20 years or so were committed by those in your profession, the owners, the commissioners office and mlbpa officials. They all were operating with blinders on. When Brady Anderson popped 50 dingers in 96, most intelligent observers that I know concluded that the PED “problem” was out of control.
Much has already been said about the nature of the competitive athlete and the rewards for success. I loved your Bill James quote ….it’s spot on.
The only thing that truly sparks my “rage” is the hijacking of the HOF by the “holier than thou” scribes who, having ignored the problem for years, suddenly and immorally (IMO) take the position as “guardians” of the integrity of the game. What a bunch of hypocrites. Until McGwire is voted in I will continue my sense of rage over the issue.
This is to see if the comment section is now working.
This is to certify the comment section is working for somebody else.
Or, if it doesn’t appear, it doesn’t.
Yay! Good to see you back up, Joe.
I agree there’s no shortage of rage in sports coverage, and I think that’s partly due to the sheer number of hours and words that are devoted to sports coverage on TV, radio, newspapers, and the web. There’s a battle for audience and apparently nuanced debate doesn’t attract enough eyeballs (or ears). Building on that fact, rage builds on rage… after you’ve spent an hour ranting about the latest front-office move or player peccadillo, you come away sincerely convinced of your own righteous indignation. And once you’ve enraged yourself over that, you’ve got to do it the next time a headline breaks… blech. I can’t stand listening to more than 5 minutes of talk radio.
I’ve always appreciated your thoughtful perspective, Joe. Keep it up.
Mr. Posnanski, I think that the outrage comes from the simple fact that people would like to see honesty in their world. I don’t think that Gaylord Perry should be in the HOF. While we can’t necessarily know the dirty secrets of all baseball players, we invest emotional energy into our teams and our favorite players. And when the results that we celebrate have anything to do with dishonesty, it destroys the figure. It’s the same with regards to anything – not just sports. An honest story of a peddler who made his way slowly to the top is heartwarming; it’s inspiring. And a story about a guy who cheated and stole on his way up is not. We look to stories to give us inspiration, and when the inspiring story turns dirty, it’s disheartening. Hence the outrage.
Agree with a lot of the comments and with Bill James. This is a non issue for me and I strongly agree with the comment above that this issue is the steroid for the journalists who want a story to ride–very similar to the drool that formed on the lips of the news hawks when the swine flu story broke. Oh boy oh boy!
Head over to http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com for a refreshing blog post asking like Joe how can anyone be surprised/angry anymore?
Players have “cheated” throughout the history of sports in many different ways to gain an edge, steroids is the latest barnch of that.
Oh and where was the outrage when Romero got his 50 game suspension? Its like Joes post on randomness, we only notice because its Manny but when a little-known player gets suspended no-one cares.
i didn’t think 50 games sounded like a lot back in the day when the punishment was set up, but as i see it happen with the significant loss of salary, the playing time itself, and the hit on the leagacy, i think it’s perfect.
also whatever happened to memento. when it came out, it was kind of an instant cult classic. rightfully so. it also gave you an idea what christopher nolan was capable of. somehow, it just kind of disappeared. there are a lot of movies like that. in comedy..remember how funny road trip was? you barely hear about it anymore.
also, Romero was a different story. He never tried to hide it. he bought it at a store. he brought it to his trainer. it appeared even the MLB agreed with him (they offered him 25 games instead of 50 if he sat out the playoffs. he declined). thats why nobody was up in arms.
also, he hired a publicist before the news broke.
I don’t have a problem with Gaylord Perry at all. I mean, cheating by loading or scuffing a ball — on the mound, with 4 umpires and 25 opponents watching to see if you’re doing it — that’s a skill. Stealing signs is a skill. Corking a bat, or injecting a PED, in the privacy of your home is cheating. Not saying that loading up a ball is right, or okay, but there’s a moral distinction in my mind between that and doing something illegal behind closed doors.
Great post. Perfect illustration of why this is the best sports blog there is and Bill Plaschke is a punchline and an embarrassment to the LAT and ESPN.
I’m disappointed that so few people in the press have bothered to point out that this is kind of a win for baseball’s testing policy. A huge star, one of the biggest in the game, was caught and punished swiftly and severely. Isn’t that what everyone has been saying they want for the last ten years?
Given that the substance Manny tested for is not literally on the list of banned substances and falls into the “other” category, baseball *could* have looked the other way. They didn’t. Nobody seems interested in giving any credit for this.
I think that we’re getting closer to a numbed acceptance of the Steroid Era in baseball. And it’s overdue. I’m wondering how long it will take for us to know just how pervasive it was, and the extent to which anyone involved in baseball knew or suspected that it was going on. I think that’s going to be even more surprising than learning that Manny got a 50 game ban for hCG.
Are the umpires getting drug tested? Nothing gets me into a rage more than seeing a home plate umpire who either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about calling balls and strikes according to MLB rules. I am all for these calls to made electronically, because I am tired of players getting screwed because the ump makes his calls by who is pitching, how big of a star a player is, or how late he is for dinner. Fire them all.
Refreshed to see this perspective. Really could not have more disdain for all the rage-spewers out there, especially the rage-spewers who want fans of Manny’s most recent teams, the Red Sox and Dodgers, to somehow act out contrition for Manny’s wrongdoing. Apparently Red Sox fans are now supposed to pretend that the 2004 and 2007 World Series didn’t happen and apologize to everyone we meet because now everyone ASSUMES Manny was taking PEDs then. Even based on that assumption, somebody needs to explain to me exactly what action they expect me to take. Stop watching baseball? Stop being a Red Sox fan? Refuse to enjoy the sport?
If anybody’s really THAT outraged about it, you go first. If this has truly tainted the whole game for you, it’s just masochistic to stick around and keep watching, right? Or it’s just hypocritical.
Excellent and thoughtful post, Joe. As a Dodger fan living in LA, I am sad and disappointed. I am not surprised, but I miss having him in the lineup. After all the negative hype that came from the East Coast, I was enjoying a different side of Manny that I rarely got to hear about, and man, he is fun to watch in the batter’s box. I have never seen a guy with better pitch recognition. He cheated, he got caught, he should serve the penalty out. What bothers me is the outrage over stuff like this in baseball, but it tends to be ignored in other sports. What bothers me even more is that athletes that rape, beat their wives, or get caught with DUI’s get less of an outrage for some reason. Does this suck? Of course it does…but baseball is bigger than this, and I still have hope in our young talent out here. I will welcome him back when he returns, but I mostly look forward to cheering the team on from here on out.
I think the steroid vs. spitball question can be answered using a Godfather analogy. When the Sollozzo and Tattaglia families propose that Vito Corleone share his influence with politicians so they can sell drugs, Vito says:
“I must say no to you, and I’ll give you my reasons. It’s true. I have a lot of friends in politics, but they wouldn’t be friendly very long if they knew my business was drugs instead of gambling, which they rule that as a – a harmless vice. But drugs is a dirty business…”
So when it comes to things like steroids vs. things like the spitball, one of them is considered a “harmless vice” while the other is a “dirty business.”
Now this is the Godfather, about crime families. Nothing they do is legal. Similarly, the spitball and steroids are banned by baseball. But the difference between the two is exactly how Vito Corleone differentiates gambling and drugs. Steroids is dirty business.
This is an outrage. There is NO evidence that Manny Ramirez or anyone else has ever used steroids. All these “test results” are a steaming pile of BS, cooked up by the commissioner and biased journalists.
The fact that you’re talking about Plaschke, not Manny, offers one possible insight.
Rage makes the story about the one who is outraged, not the subject of his outrage. It offers a soapbox – and a pretension of moral high ground to denigrate those who are not as enraged as you are. And it frames the debate about the rager’s opinion, not the facts of the case.
I’m no fan of Mr. Plaschke’s. I thought his schoolyard bully approach to Paul DePodesta was unconscionable. But he’s just playing the game by the rules here and getting his name out there ahead of everyone else’s. He may sound like he’s roid-raging on his own to do it, but, hey, they’re not testing columnists for PEDs yet.
[...] none of it ever happened. But I’m also realistic. I find Negro League legend Buck O’Neil’s remark about steroids poignantly honest: “The only reason we didn’t use steroids is because we didn’t have [...]