Friday, December 14, 2007

Steroids = Bad


So the Mitchell report came out, and it names a whole assload of players who took/purchased steroids - I know, I couldn't believe it either. Who would dare cheat the pure game of baseball, with its proud tradition of nobody cheating ever and no stories told with a chuckle of people cheating. Such pure wholesomeness must be protected and preserved at all costs. Tradition means everything.

Seriously, this report isn't really all that big of a deal. I mean, no shit a whole bunch of players were/are taking steroids. Hey baseball, you mean there's something out there that will help people make millions of dollars, you don't bother to test for it or even say it's against your league rules, and a bunch of people took it? Get right out of town. Baseball should really just shut up and try to let this story go away instead of pushing it out to the forefront. Bud Selig used to be known as an idiot because of contraction and the tie in the All-Star game, now his legacy is just going to get worse.

This report probably didn't even get a third of the players taking them, it names a total of 86 players. I'm no legal expert, but I'm guessing there have been a whole hell of a lot more players on the sweet, sweet Roids than that. I haven't read the damn thing because it's 400 pages and half of it is "steroids are bad." But here's the list of players mentioned, broken out in arbitrary categories assigned by me.

I'VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THESE GUYS (15):
Tim Laker
Mark Carreon
Cody McKay
Adam Riggs
Bart Miadich
Mike Bell (not the football player. I checked)
Gary Bennett
Jeff Williams
Howie Clark
Mike Judd
Ricky Stone
Ryan Jorgensen
Steve Woodard
Todd Williams
Stephen Randolph

GUYS WHO WERE PROBABLY USING A PLACEBO INSTEAD BECAUSE THEY SUCKED (32):
Dan Naulty
Armando Rios
Marvin Benard
Bobby Estallela
Jeremy Giambi
Randy Velarde
Larry Bigbie
Josias Manzanillo
Matt Franco
Jason Grimsley
Gregg Zaun
FP Santangelo
Ron Villone
Chris Donnels
Todd Pratt
Mike Lansing
Kevin Young
Kent Mercker
Phil Hiatt
Adam Piatt
Jason Christiansen
Matt Herges
Jim Parque
Chad Allen (Go Twins!)
Brendan Donnally (He once humped some groupie on a balcony of the house he was sharing with several other minor league teammates and ended up with crabs. True Story)
Nook Logan
Paxton Crawford
Darren Holmes
John Rocker (I'm shocked)
Jerry Hairston, Jr.
Ricky Bones
David Bell

GUYS WHO WE ALREADY KNEW ABOUT (8):

Barry Bonds
Jason Giambi
Gary Sheffield
David Segui
Ryan Franklin
Rafael Palmeiro
Ken Caminiti
Jose Canseco

GUY WHO TOOK STEROIDS AS PRESCRIBED BY A DOCTOR FOR A MEDICAL CONDITION (1):
Paul Byrd

The players in the above lists I would have to label "Who Cares?" as a group. They either are insignificant, or we already knew about it. That covers 56 out of the 86 players in the report. The remaining 30 I would say are somewhat more significant, and can be broken out into three categories:

NOT AT ALL SURPRISING (5):
Brian Roberts
Rondell White
Roger Clemens
Eric Gagne
Gary Matthews, Jr.

SOMEWHAT SIGNIFICANT (18):
Benito Santiago (no wonder he played for 40 years)
Lenny Dykstra (although I'm guessing he'd put about anything in his body)
Jack Cust
Todd Hundley
Hal Morris
Chuck Knoblauch (really?)
Glenallen Hill
Denny Neagle (Go Gophers!)
Mike Stanton
Paul LoDuca
Fernando Vina
Derrick Turnbow
Jay Gibbons
Scott Schoenweis
Ismael Valdez
Rick Ankiel (how's that feelgood story now?)
Jose Guillen
Wally Joyner

That leaves 7 guys in the entire report who actually matter. 7. On the whole thing. That everyone is freaking out about. 7.
Andy Pettitte
David Justice
Mo Vaughn
Miguel Tejada
Kevin Brown
Troy Glaus
Matt Williams

Only three of these guys are even still playing. And they're old. No A-Rod. No Pujols. No Vlad. No Santana. No Peavy. No Ryan Howard. No Josh Becktt. So what's the big deal? Talk about anti-climactic.

If anything, this report is a boost to guys like Bonds, Clemens, McGwire and Sosa (where are those two on the list, by the way?) because of how many players took the juice and still sucked ass. If you want to call baseball a joke, do it for this ridiculous report or for the fact that David Eckstein got $4.5 mil for one year, not because of steroids.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This Blog = Bad

WWWWWW said...

Thank you for the headsup.

Anonymous said...

And where is LeCroy on this list? Prolly the most obvious juicer other than Bonds.