Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

The Red Socks beat the Yankees eight times in a row earlier in the season, and it was the biggest thing in history up here. It was unparalleled dominance! The Socks owned the Yanks! Could they sweep the season series? Sure, it wasn’t even the All Star break, but the Yankees were buried!

All the Yankees have done since is cruise through their schedule, and beat the Red Socks 7 out of the last 8 times. No big shakes, though. Sure, the Yankees have the division sewed up. Sure, the Red Socks haven’t really shown any sort of ability to beat the Yankees when they’re playing well, even with the newly acquired slugger Victor Martinez. But it doesn’t matter, you know, because the Red Socks will probably make the playoffs, so these late games against the Yanks aren’t important.

So I was heartened to see the Village Voice’s Crazy Yankee Chick address this issue:

It would be inordinately helpful if Boston could collectively delineate their parameters for “Which Games Count.” If I understand it correctly, the current guidelines dictate that:

1. Any World Series won before 2000 is not relevant and should not be considered in arguments debating the historical success of franchises
2. Steroid use only voids the validity of a title in years outside of 2004 and 2007
3. A division title does not enable fans of title holder to assume superiority
4. Wild Cards and Division Champions possess equal levels of significance
5. In the event of a loss, Boston retains the right to default to inflated payroll accusations and/or invalidating loss on basis of team’s injuries
6. Any close and late hit from Alex Rodriguez shall automatically be stricken from the record in accordance with “ARod sucks in the clutch” bylaws
7. In the event of a save at the hands of Mariano Rivera, the current game’s outcome shall be eclipsed by past blown save incidences
8. In extreme situations, Boston fans may choose to redistribute vested interests, by taking an early withdrawal from the Red Sox 2009 Season account and re-allocating interests into Patriots 2009-2010 Season account
9. Substantiated support is not a prerequisite for “Yankees Suck” contentions
10. These guidelines are subject to change on the sole discretion of Boston advocates

Preach.

Congratulations to Derek Jeter, America’s Greatest Hero, who just surpassed Lou Gehrig as the all-time Yankees hits leader. I’m a little amazed that for all the great hitters the Yankees have had on their team (I’ll spare you the litany), the franchise hits record stood for more than 70 years. Incredible!

I was watching Sportscenter this morning, and I watched this Outside the Lines bit about these two high school wrestlers from Ohio: one lost his legs in a horrific railroad accident, the other is legally blind. These inspiring ESPN stories are often heavy on the saccharine, higher-meaning-of-sports schmaltz, to the point of being unwatchable.

Not this one. It’s a really awesome story, which I recommend you watch in its entirety. Let’s just say that it got a little dusty in your favorite blogger’s living room toward the end.

Obviously, I had to do a post about the big news of the day: David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez are reported to be on the list of 100-odd ballplayers who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003. Manny is, of course, old news, and I’ve pontificated on him not once but twice on this very blog.

Big Papi, though, now there is a juicy bit of news. (Pun intended, of course.) I’ve always had a special type of antipathy for David Ortiz. As you’re all well aware, I’m a bit of a Manny Ramirez fan (or at least I was; who knows what I think now). I never felt that fans up here in Boston truly appreciated how great a hitter Manny was, and how much he contributed to the team. When the pudgy guy from Minnesota came along and started beating the ball like it owed him money (58 home runs in six seasons with the Twins, 244 in seven with the Red Socks), he became one of the most beloved athletes this town has ever seen. I’d argue that Socks fans loved Papi more than Nomar, more than Pedro, more than Schilling, certainly more than Manny. He certainly earned that affection: the guy made the All Star Game in five seasons, led the league in home runs in 2006, and was a beast in the postseason.

And he killed the Yanks. But that’s neither here nor there.

What makes Ortiz’s fall from grace so precipitous and fill me to the gills with my favorite kind of freude is Papi’s world-class hypocrisy. Of all the blowhards railing against fellow players who use performance enhancing drugs, Ortiz was one of the most vociferous. ESPN’s Howard Bryant has a nice piece about it that I recommend you read in its entirety. But here are a few money quotes from Papi himself.

You’ve got the biggest guys in the game getting caught with this stuff, and that’s why they don’t think you can have mechanical problems or you can not have your mind in the wrong place or have injuries. It’s all steroids. That’s why I don’t talk about it. When I get turned around, people are going to say, ‘Oh, he’s back on it.’

Don’t come in once and test two or three guys. Test everybody, in season and out of season. And if you still use and you get caught, then you should be suspended for the whole year. I said that a long time ago, and nobody listened.

I know what it is for my son to have Big Papi as a father. There are a lot of people who do great things for him because he’s my son. His life is going to be easier because he’s the son of Big Papi.

And that is the biggest reason why I have never used steroids. Because then he would have to go to school and have to listen to all the kids say that his dad is dirty, a cheater, and everything for him would be taken away from him and he would be ruined. I make sure I don’t do those things, for him.

The Yankees have had a lot of guys who used PEDs. It sucks. Their success has been called into question, and rightly so. Of course, the most obnoxious of the sanctimonious high-horse sitter were Boston fans. (Remember when Manny got suspended earlier this season, and Socks fans tried to rationalize that he didn’t use the juice while he was with Boston? Does anybody else remember that?) Of course, there will be more rationalizations in the days to come; that’s to be expected. But it’s all going to be for naught, and I couldn’t be happier. Welcome to the mud, Boston. We’ve been waiting for you.

One man’s bemused vexation becomes another’s biting satire.

Eh? Eh? Eh?

Here’s a piece from SI.com lamenting the lack of sportsmanship displayed by new undisputed UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar after his fight last night.

I’m not a big UFC guy, but I’m sure there are a lot of things that fans are looking for from an exhibition where men are paid handsome sums to savagely beat each other. I’d be surprised if sportsmanship were one of them.

Apparently, boxer Arturo Gatti was found dead in a hotel room in Brazil today.

In the grand scheme, Gatti isn’t an all-time great, but I feel like he was my guy. He was born in Canada, but settled in Jersey City, the next town up from me, when he turned professional in the early 90s. Boxing fans will remember his epic trio of fights against Micky Ward. They’ll also remember Gatti being completely outclassed by Floyd Mayweather in June of 2005.

I’m not a huge boxing guy, but I liked Gatti, even more so because he was kind of from Jersey. He was the sort of things you wanted to see in a fighter: tough, a big swinger, tons of heart and grit. The sort of guy that other, non-tough, non-confrontational, soft, bespectacled Jersey guys saw themselves as. I have no idea what happened to Gatti, but it’s a sad story. Anyway, here’s a nice piece from Sports Illustrated about him.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun are familiar with my, I guess ambivalence is the right word, toward Manny Ramirez. He recently returned to Major League Baseball from a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance. I think he’s hit a home run already, he had a couple RBIs last night, got kicked out of the game for making a petulant display after a strikeout. Same old, same old. The news stories about the games he’s played in since returning seem to want to play up all of the boos directed Manny’s way, but the veracity of these claims is, shall we say, questionable.

Obviously, we can’t be surprised if the baseball purity scolds massage the reality of Manny’s return to fit the “God-Fearing, Apple-Pie-Eating, Baseball-Loving Americans Think PED-Users Are Villains” motif. Those sanctimonious columns lambasting steroid-users as history’s greatest monsters more or less write themselves. Meanwhile, in the real world, Manny’s return in particular, and the (God-willing) winding down of the steroids era in general, is being met with a collective “meh.” I’m sure Dodgers fans are thrilled to have their best hitter back; I’m sure fans of other NL West teams will boo Manny vociferously. Me? Yawn. He paid his debt, he’s back. Let’s play ball.

In this spirit, I was elated to read this column on Slate from Charles Pierce, subtitled “Manny Ramirez reveals our true attitude about baseball’s drug war.” In it, Pierce reiterates my thesis of Manny Ramirez as big-kid, as jester who holds up to our faces the mirror of our own hypocrisy. To wit:

At his best—not as a hitter but as a public person—Manny Ramirez always has been most valuable in his ability to be a walking (if an occasionally completely unwitting) satire on baseball’s pretensions, which sorely need to be mocked on a very regular basis.

In the end, it’s going to be up to the individual baseball fan to reconcile themselves with the baseball era we’ve recently been living through. I have friends that will still crucify anyone that fails a drug test; that’s fine. I know other people who groan disappointedly, but eventually just shrug. Or, as Mr. Pierce says,

Ramirez’s weird pilgrimage to the bushes served as a living reminder that the great steroid hunt is almost solely an intramural problem between baseball and its various acolytes. The overwhelming number of baseball fans—who, given the economic problems of the moment, are filling ballparks in reasonably overwhelming numbers—have quite obviously made peace with what happened in the game over the past 20 years. Manny Ramirez was treated as though he’d pulled a hamstring or tweaked a tendon. Now, he’s back. That’s the way things are going to be from now on.

Preach!

So the other day, the Cleveland Racist Mascots, I mean, Indians, won a game against the Kansas City Royals when a bottom-of-the-10th-inning hit with runners on first and second by Shin-Soo Choo hit one of the many seagulls hanging out in shallow center field, putting the immediate kibosh on any sort of play at the plate, and Cleveland won in walk-off fashion as Mark DeRosa scored from second amid the confusion. Watch the video!

This would all be a quirky, albeit heartbreaking for Royals fans, little baseball story if not for the fact that it happened in Cleveland where, a year and a half ago, the Yankees infamously lost a game after reliever Joba Chamberlain was attacked by a plague of locusts. When is Major League Baseball going to step in?! What sort of menagerie are the Indians running over there? Calling down all manner of beasts to smite your opponents isn’t in the spirit of baseball, and it’s got to stop. I mean, look at this clip from last month, when the Devil Rays visited Cleveland. It’s unacceptable!

Holy smokes. I was subjected to Dennis Eckersley’s unvarnished bias when he filled in for Jerry Remy as a color man for the local Red Socks broadcast earlier this season. Now, when I’m watching the Socks game in Boston, I expect unabashed, baldfaced homerism, and Eck failed to disappoint. However, comma, when I’m watching the national broadcast of the game between the Yankees and the Indians on TBS on a Sunday afternoon, I expect a baseline level of objectivity. You don’t have to sing the Yankees’ praises, but be fair! Eckersley has spent all afternoon absolutely KILLING Phil Hughes. “He doesn’t have any offspeed stuff. His curve doesn’t have any bite. Blah blah blah.” The guy gave up four runs on five hits and a walk in five innings, with six strikeouts. That’s not a terrible game! Listening to the commentary, you’d think he was loading the bases every inning! You can’t tell from the shots in the booth, but I think Eckersley might actually be wearing red socks today.