Baseball Has Become a Joke; Attack the MLB, not Bloggers
Although my area of expertise is fantasy football, I could not leave this subject alone. After taking in the ESPN Outside The Lines debate on Jerod’s article regarding Raul Ibanez, I feel compelled to write in defense of someone I have great respect for.
Over the past five years, we have watched Major League Baseball fall apart right before our very eyes. Decades of baseball players and fans have been destroyed by the widespread disaster of Performance Enhancing Drugs, which has tainted every record broken in the 90’s and beyond, as well as iconic players’ images. In my very own house, I have to deal with the issues of Performance Enhancing Drugs because of these players and their decisions, which affects my children greatly.
Growing up, I idolized Roger Clemens. I wore his number when I played. I tried to pitch just like him, and collected whatever had his name or number on it. My oldest son, only 12, idolizes Manny Ramirez. As he currently plays baseball and is only a few years from high school, I have to explain to him and pray that he does not follow in his idols’ footsteps to get an unfair advantage over his competition. My youngest son, age 10, worships Alex Rodriguez. He also plays baseball on a traveling team, 44 games a summer. This league is extremely competitive, and again, I fear the worst with what his decisions will be when he reaches more competitive levels of baseball as he ages.
I found out about Clemens at an age where I know better, and can make educated decisions on what should and should not be done to my body. But if I found out my idol did this at the influential age of 10 or 12, would I be so smart? Could my decision-making of what is right and wrong be stronger than the influence, positive or negative, that is displayed by those I look up to?
With that said, how in the hell can anyone look at Ibanez’s numbers and not think exactly what Jerod wrote. He did not say he was on PED’s, but after the likes of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, how could you look at this in any other light?
Manny testing positive was the capper for me. If he could test positive, one of the purest hitters in all of baseball, ever, I have to believe that everyone could be on them. Think about Brady Anderson and Bret Boone. These two went from single digit home run totals one year to hitting 51 home runs and the other batting clean up in the All-Star Game.
Major League Baseball is tainted, and will be for years to come. Jerod spoke on what everyone else thinks, and yes, this is America, where we still do have freedom of speech. He did not accuse Ibanez of taking PED’s, but based on his numbers, how can you not speculate until the positive tests stop coming forward?
If we have this speculation now, wait until the 100+ names from the Alex Rodriguez list are published.
Jerod handled himself with class while the mainstream media tried to beat on his writing to justify their own existence. Jerod was dead on in his writing and his comments. Baseball is a joke, and the negative influence this has on our youth is frightening.
Jerod, my hats off to you for saying what everyone else thinks!
* – Photo Courtesy: BlissTree.com
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Kurt Fraschetti
Profootballinsight – Now on Facebook
profootballinsight@live.com
Tags: Jerod Morris, Outside the Lines, PED, Raul Ibanez
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Nice to see so many defend Jerod here. If you really know him, he is the anti-thesis of any negative blogger assumptions; like 42 yearold in mothers basement, trawling the message boards, angry, all opinion no fact writing hack. He’s smart, he does think before he hits enter. (He’s the site’s editor and the best to do that job), good looking (Let’s debate that, some called him freaky looking, i just think the guy lighting in the studio might not have been a local high school tech geek. Easy on the 4k HMI light a foot from the lense kid. Your lighting an interview for a guy doesn’t sit around outside or hit the tanning bed for a bronze. but i digress. more on the production later.
What Ken was saying in the OTL debate made it seem he never read the article. He kept blabbing like Jerod’s article was about steroids and Ibanez’s name was dropped in it. False. If feel bad for Ibanez having to respond to this Philly article. Wait, how did it we get to this again Ken? Ken’s shock value role was well played and as I said in other comments this is TV and ESPN mostly wanted an entertaining debate. Done. Ken served an annoying purpose more than I thought he was personally attacking Jerod.
A well thought out look back on it was John Gonzalez’s comment that this is a very good case study if you look objectively at the path this came from (starting with others before JRod). And even more reason why “main stream media” wanted to jump all over this because it was more steroids in baseball talk which they simply cannot stop. Addiction? At this point yes. We’re still waiting to get the most exciting HR hitter back weeks after he got smacked with 50 by the MLB. Does he care he failed a drug test? No, he has an excuse, while not admitting guilt.
This just shouldn’t be looked at as shoddy journalism on any level.
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One thing about baseball. It has got to be one of the most boring things on the face of the earth. Watching a bear hibernate is more exiting. Or, watching paint dry. 9 innings of yawning and it’s 1 to nothing. WOW! The pitcher throws it to the catcher; he throws it back; back to the catcher; he throws it back….etc….etc…YAWN!
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