Random Chatter

Josh Deitch chats away about Manny Ramirez, A-Rod, and the state of the game of baseball.  Like Tony Soprano, he just wants to remember the good times.

May 2009 is turning into a great month for sports.  In the NHL, the Penguins just evened their series against the Capitals at two games apiece.  And how did Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin—the league’s two best players—mark their soon to be historic meeting?  They both scored hat tricks in the first game of the series.  Over in the NBA, the Celtics and Bulls just finished up one of the most compelling seven game series played.  In any sport.  Ever.  The two teams played seven overtime periods and besides the blowout that was game three, the average margin of victory was 3.5 points.  Moreover, the NBA playoffs have been marked by compellingly physical play, close match-ups, and the fact that Kobe Bryant and LeBron James—the league’s two best players—are on a collision course to meet in the finals.  The NFL continues to be an athletic economic juggernaut.  How the NFL draft has become a national media event is a conundrum that ranks right next to why “Friday Night Lights”—the best show on TV—struggles to remain on the air, while “The City” spins off from “The Hills.”  And then there’s baseball.

Major League Baseball can’t stop tripping over its own two feet.  The New Yankee Stadium opened at half-capacity and has doubled as a launching pad through the first month of the season.  Attendance across the league in the first two weeks of the season dropped 6.9% from last season.  Finally, the giant elephant in the room that is steroids keeps burying baseball in mountains of dung.

Manny Ramirez fails a drug test,and we’re not talking about failing like Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry did in the ‘80s. Thankfully, beyond the black eye that baseball now has to endure and the tarnished image of Manny Ramirez, there’s a little humor in this situation.  Ramirez asserted that he had a personal health issue for which his doctor had prescribed him a medication that apparently was on the MLBPA’s list of banned substances.  The drug turned out to be hCG, a female fertility drug commonly employed by steroid users cycling off and hoping to jumpstart their body’s production of testosterone.  So, either Manny used PEDs or he was auditioning for a new reality show based loosely on “ Junior .” Maybe Manny had heard that Jon and Kate from “Jon and Kate Plus 8” were having marital issues and saw a niche on basic cable that he could fill.

Here’s my response: I’m done.  I’m done being surprised.  I’m done heaping scorn on PED users.  I’m done arguing whether those that used are cheaters or if steroids help a player statistically.  In the field of public perception, today’s professional baseball player is officially guilty until proven innocent. Donald Fehr and the Players’ Association have made their beds, now the ballplayers have to lie in them.

Speaking of PED users,Alex Rodriguez returned to the Yankees on Friday night.  He drove the first pitch he saw into the leftfield seats in Camden Yards for a three-run homer.  CC Sabathia’s masterful performance (CG, 0 R, 4 H, 1 BB, 8 K) helped those three runs stand up, and New York broke its five game losing streak.  However, lost in the circus that has become Alex Rodriguez was the accusation that he tipped pitches to opposing players, hoping that they would offer him the same courtesy in the future.  Red Sox DH David Ortiz, responded to these allegations this past week.  “I would beat the crap out of him,” Ortiz said. “I mean, seriously. You’re my teammate. I mean, I don’t care if that’s your brother pitching out there. We’re trying to win the game. That’s not the right thing to do.”  I never thought I’d write the following, but God help me, I agree with Ortiz.

Maybe it’s the fact that I was a pitcher in my former athletic life, but I saw these allegations as the ultimate betrayal.  Who cares about the steroids?  Everyone used them.  But Rodriguez committed a deeper sin when he broke the bond between teammates.  Teammates don’t have to like each other.  They don’t have to get along, but for 162 games, they go to war together.  You have to trust that they have your back.  The fact that Rodriguez was tipping pitches in the name of some stat-padding quid pro quo is the ultimate betrayal.  It ranks right up there with Big Pussy flipping for the Feds in “The Sopranos,” Michael shooting Libby and Anna Lucia in “Lost,” or Riggins and Lyla hooking up in the first season of “Friday Night Lights.”  If I ever heard of something like that on my team, the next time I threw batting practice, the Benedict Arnold would get one right in his ear.

Dom DiMaggio dies at age 92.  Always overshadowed by his brother Joe, DiMaggio was a seven-time All-Star, who hit .298 for his career.  He holds the Red Sox record for hitting safely in 34 straight games and sacrificed four seasons in his prime to serve his country.  He was one of the great baseball men of this past century and to really get a sense of how integral he was to those Boston teams of the ‘40s, you have to read David Halberstam’s Summer of ’49 .  He will be sorely missed.

Depressed? Remember when it came out that players like Moises Alou, who did not use batting gloves, actually urinated on their hands to build calluses?  Everyone freaked out.  I miss the days when baseball’s biggest public relations issues were things like pee-hands.  If you’re like me and long for the good old days, check out this skit by Conan O’Brien , sent to me by my sister.

Quick side note: I’m so glad to see Andy Richter back at Conan’s side.  The two of them are hilarious.  Richter’s one of the most underrated funnymen of the last 15 years.  At the beginning of the decade, he had “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” and was poised to become the funniest man alive.  Then came the ascension of Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen and company, and Sasha Baron Cohen.  However, Richter’s remained consistently funny throughout that time.  When all is said and done, Richter’s going to be the equivalent of Paul O’Neill: a non-Hall of Famer that always was entertaining to watch and reliably made everyone around him a little better.

To end on a final, happy note,my buddy Tex sent me this video of Bernie Williams a few weeks ago .  In his assessment of the Celtics-Bulls series , Bill Simmons wrote, “One of the best things about following sports is following someone from the ‘Hmmmm, this guy has some talent, we might have something here’ stage all the way through the ‘He did it, he’s here’ stage.  It’s almost like investing in a stock and watching it balloon to a ridiculously high price.”  For an entire generation of New York Yankees fans, Bernie Williams was that athlete.  We watched him grow from a skinny bespectacled kid from Puerto Rico that had to be consoled by Don Mattingly in the back of the team bus, to a confident All-Star and batting champion.  One of my defining baseball memories is deciding at the last moment of a sweltering summer day to head to Yankee Stadium, scalping tickets with my mom, standing in the upper deck and throwing high fives to anyone near me as Bernie circled the bases after hitting a walk-off home run against the Texas Rangers.

That’s the beauty of baseball.  In the midst of negativity and despair, we still have our memories of the good times and the meaningful moments.  We know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, we just have to endure a little longer.  To paraphrase James Earl Jones’ Terence Mann, this video reminded me of “all that once was good, and could be again.”