Tired of Phony A-Rod Outrage
I’m sitting eating lunch listening to ESPN Radio as the hosts encourage Syracuse head basketball coach Jim Boeheim to register his opinion on Alex Rodriguez admitting that he took steroids. Along with the hosts, it’s the run of the mill comments about how terrible it all is. Then Mike Tirico and Scott Van Pelt go to commercial promising more guests, some actually related to baseball, that will also talk about A-Rod, including whether or not he should go to the Hall of Fame.
One of the commercials? A radar detector for your car touting that it literally confuses the computer in the cop’s car and is so effective it’s illegal in some states.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Earlier, I heard Jody MacDonald lightly chastising Phillies fans for not lighting up the phone lines to praise the Phillies for signing all of their restricted free agents, including Ryan Howard. This was barely 12 hours after President Obama warned us again that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Does this seem strange to anyone else?
Perusing the Inquirer I see more quotes from the owner of the Texas Rangers and Pete Rose on A-Rod. Everybody wants to express their outrage, apparently.
Enough already.
I understand that part of a sports talk show host’s job is to generate calls and listeners. I’m not really interested in criticizing the three mentioned above at the moment. But could we please be spared the feigned outrage over another athlete getting caught cheating? And if we don’t get charged up because one more athlete and his descendants never really need to work again, do we have to have our fandom questioned?
I’m as happy as any Phillies fan that the core of the World Series championship team is locked up for the next three years. But should we throw another parade because a local franchise finally spent some of its millions, if not billions, to keep a winning team together? Aren’t they sort of supposed to do that?
I’ll give MacDonald a pass because there is something worth discussing in the fact that fans can’t wait to talk about bad news but say little when a team does right. Although, even that’s a tough argument after the parade this town just witnessed.
But I’m already sick of the Rodriguez story. Why do we have to care? Baseball doesn’t care enough to suspend him. His excuses are as absurd as all the other idiots that have been caught. He cared so little about it that he was one of more than 100 guys that were caught even after they were warned about forthcoming testing because there was no penalty tied to getting caught.
He did it to get a big free agency contract, and he got one. If baseball doesn’t have the stones to throw him out of baseball, along with all the other frauds known to have juiced, there’s nothing fans can do. In fact, if fans are finally smart enough to take the play on the field as a fun distraction from the real problems of life without worrying about the extracurricular activities of many of the guys that play the game, they should be applauded and not criticized.
We don’t need talking heads to tell us what to care about. We don’t need every famous person in the world to offer an opinion. And we certainly don’t need 48 hours of supposed poignant commentary from guys that cover sports for a living every time a big name in sports does something naughty.
Obviously, Joe Torre hit the nail on the head calling Rodriguez A-fraud in the book, The Yankee Years. Could we please just leave it at that?
One of the commercials? A radar detector for your car touting that it literally confuses the computer in the cop’s car and is so effective it’s illegal in some states.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Earlier, I heard Jody MacDonald lightly chastising Phillies fans for not lighting up the phone lines to praise the Phillies for signing all of their restricted free agents, including Ryan Howard. This was barely 12 hours after President Obama warned us again that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Does this seem strange to anyone else?
Perusing the Inquirer I see more quotes from the owner of the Texas Rangers and Pete Rose on A-Rod. Everybody wants to express their outrage, apparently.
Enough already.
I understand that part of a sports talk show host’s job is to generate calls and listeners. I’m not really interested in criticizing the three mentioned above at the moment. But could we please be spared the feigned outrage over another athlete getting caught cheating? And if we don’t get charged up because one more athlete and his descendants never really need to work again, do we have to have our fandom questioned?
I’m as happy as any Phillies fan that the core of the World Series championship team is locked up for the next three years. But should we throw another parade because a local franchise finally spent some of its millions, if not billions, to keep a winning team together? Aren’t they sort of supposed to do that?
I’ll give MacDonald a pass because there is something worth discussing in the fact that fans can’t wait to talk about bad news but say little when a team does right. Although, even that’s a tough argument after the parade this town just witnessed.
But I’m already sick of the Rodriguez story. Why do we have to care? Baseball doesn’t care enough to suspend him. His excuses are as absurd as all the other idiots that have been caught. He cared so little about it that he was one of more than 100 guys that were caught even after they were warned about forthcoming testing because there was no penalty tied to getting caught.
He did it to get a big free agency contract, and he got one. If baseball doesn’t have the stones to throw him out of baseball, along with all the other frauds known to have juiced, there’s nothing fans can do. In fact, if fans are finally smart enough to take the play on the field as a fun distraction from the real problems of life without worrying about the extracurricular activities of many of the guys that play the game, they should be applauded and not criticized.
We don’t need talking heads to tell us what to care about. We don’t need every famous person in the world to offer an opinion. And we certainly don’t need 48 hours of supposed poignant commentary from guys that cover sports for a living every time a big name in sports does something naughty.
Obviously, Joe Torre hit the nail on the head calling Rodriguez A-fraud in the book, The Yankee Years. Could we please just leave it at that?
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