from Amazon
Friday, March 23, 2007
Field Of Dreams
Tim talks about the double-standard that MLB faces with regards to drugs.
Ken Fidlin ponders a what-if, which I’ll paraphrase for baseball purposes:
Suspend reality for a moment while we paint a grim, fictional picture. It is the day after the final game of the World Series and the Yankees, America’s most decorated franchise, have won their 25th title, double the total of any other team in MLB. There is, however, little joy in New York, or any other city in America for that matter.
The team general manager has resigned, embroiled in a game-fixing scandal that appears to involve league referees and administration officials. The scandal already has claimed the MLB commissioner, who was forced to resign in disgrace the week previous. Former President George W Bush has been appointed “extraordinary commissioner” to sift through the allegations and clean up the mess. The entire Yankees board of directors has resigned and shares of the publicly-traded company are sinking faster than the Titanic.
Meanwhile, the Yankees’ highest paid player is under investigation as part of a massive gambling and game-fixing scandal from two years previous. The star is accused of betting on games in which he was playing. In all, dozens are under investigation for various roles in the scandal, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg. If the allegations are proven against the Yankees GM, it is very likely that the World Series victory will be nullified and the team banished from the league.
With that horrifying, fictitious scenario fixed firmly in your brain, we welcome you to the wonderful world of Italian soccer. And this is no fantasy. It’s real and it’s happening, almost on the eve of the 2006 World Cup.
European soccer can weather its gambling scandal. The NBA, NHL, and NFL would be able to weather any drug scandal that will come its way. If I were to tell you that rock stars dabble in drugs, you’d hardly be surprised. The surprise would be that they didn’t. And the truth is that teenagers are far more influenced by musicians than athletes. Parents know this because they’ve lived it.
We’ve all come to accept that everything in our world is tainted, and we’ve gotta live with it. But, not baseball. Baseball is above it all, a pure and beautiful game that MLB has the privilege to control. A right that it must abdicate if they don’t keep it pure and beautiful. That’s the bullshit that Field of Dreamers believe.
Baseball is baseball, and MLB is MLB, and MLB is Eurpoean Soccer, NHL, NFL, and Rock Stars. When you are watching MLB, you are not watching baseball, that pure and beautiful game. You are watching an event, like any other event performed by the best money (and other things) can buy. And all the sellers (the performers) and all the middle-men (management) and all the buyers (you) are complicit.
Live with reality.
And the funny thing is, to us Canadians, the paraphrase reads just as well in the original NHL version ... hockey, baseball, soccer ... perhaps every country has its one untouchable sport.
Absolutely, MLB is not morally responsible for anyone’s overromanticized misconceptions of what it represents.
(Unfortunately, the powerful don’t see it that way. Can you imagine a congressional committee investigating the troubling development of New Coke, arguing that the Coca Cola corporation is risking its “privilege” of controlling America’s favorite beverage and one it holds dear? But I digress.)
Joe Fan’s disillusionment is not binding on anyone. If you incorrectly expect MLB to be perfect, and it turns out not to be, that’s your error. MLB does not automatically assume any extra responsibility to be perfect just because of your overinflated expectations.
And, also, you might want to open your eyes a bit wider. If you believe your girlfriend is pure and precious and innocent, and then it turns out that for the last six months she’s been sleeping with half the varsity football team ... well, you have a right to be mad, and you have a right to be sad. But if you’re completely surprised, you should maybe also feel a little bit embarrassed.