Chone Figgins

I guess it all comes back to hope and belief in the future. There is reality, and there is dominance, but in the end, there is the brutal truth. Either we follow the example of Admiral Stockdale and confront it, or it confronts us.

 For example, in the world of 4th of July fun, one can eat lots of hot dogs over the course of 10 minutes at Nathan's for a chance at national glory and a $10,000 top prize. There is something to be said about gulping down pounds of food in order to be the best, but whether it's throwing, catching, hitting, or running, there is something to be said about being the best.

In the eating world, to win this year, it took 54 dogs making it to the point where they're in the belly, but Mark Chestnut put down 62 because he could. That's ass kicking power. Since the days of Takeru Kobayashi and his domination over all comers, which reportedly still exists - though outside of the world of Major League Eating, which he refuses to be a part of - there has been a national following for the 4th of July competition. Chestnut is still there... but Kobayashi has gone away.

Where do stars go when we don't see them on TV? I know where I'd like to see the Kardashians go, and I'd be willing to watch TV to see them go there, but alas, that's just me.

One has to wonder where do great stars go when they can't play anymore? Is there an old folks home for these guys to go? Do they take back large parts of excessive contracts (from Denny Neagle sized to Barry Zito sized) in order to allow the players to hang out there and be pampered by guys and gals who will say "I remember you when..." Do the guys still whip out game-used memorabilia to sign? Do the girls still want to get naked? Do they still allow them to play and manage the same baseball team in corners of the country (Yuma, Arizona) where nobody knew there was baseball, let alone people who wanted to watch baseball?
Oh, Jose Canseco, where have you gone and why can't you just vanish?

There was a great article on ESPN's website today about players who don't live up to their promise. Some of this is injury related, while some of it is just plain disintegration of talent - Chone Figgins, case in point. Maybe he was good at one point, but this year, he's lousy in that special Dunn / Uggla kind of way.

In fact, he was referred to as:
"the worst everyday hitter in baseball."
ESPN followed this up with "His defense has tailed off sharply from peak levels, and his baserunning skill has also started to wane. Figgins might be the former star who's least likely to bounce back.. Two and a half more years to go on his four-year, $36 million contract, and that assumes his $9 million option doesn't vest in 2014. Oy."
It's another sub Mendoza Line blunder. If anyone couldn't see that giving him big money to leave Anaheim and make things happen for Seattle was a bad idea, they shouldn't be within 20 miles of a baseball stadium - much less covering the game.
Such is the nature of being a 2nd tier team with no hope for the immediate future other than to play well enough that King Felix doesn't demand a trade before you can make the miracle happen (Pittsburgh is feeling it at 3 games over .500 and Cleveland is remembering the good old days, too, as they continue to hold off Detroit for first place). Sadly, sometimes, it's all about the gambles that you don't make in hoping that the hot girl with the "do me" eyes is actually going to pay off in life for you when in actuality, she's just a Hooters waitress looking to make bank off you while giving you nothing in return.
And that my friends is Chone Figgins - except he doesn't have implants and he doesn't look good in a tight top - at least to me.

Ken Caminiti

Providing the world doesn't end, you will be reading this - that you are means that it either:
A) hasn't happened yet.
or
B) isn't going to happen.
Nevertheless, the death of Randy "Macho Man" Savage did happen. While it seems sad, it seems that he's just another pro wrestler to die early from abuse to his body that years in the ring caused.
And while baseball has not seen death due to steroids since Ken Caminiti... let's be honest, even football hasn't seen much death (Lyle Alzado), it has witnessed lots of career death. From Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens, the stars of the past have been tainted. The stars of the present seem to be without a lot of the big guns steroids users with exception to Alex Rodriguez. It's a slippery and sad slope, but all the same, it's pretty much covered in its entirety at Baseball's Steroid Era (though they stopped writing last year).
At the time Ken Caminiti was famous for 2 things:
1) the 1996 NL MVP for the Padres.
and
2) doing a lot of steroids and not getting clean.
On October 10, 2004, he shuffled off this mortal coil, a victim of his demons. Prior to this, he never was able to go back to 1996 (neither was Brady Anderson), and while 1997 and 1998 were good, they will always be steroids tainted (as will his 239 home runs).
He finished his career where it started - Houston - and went noisily to his grave. In 2001, he was arrested, and it wasn't pretty - cocaine in Texas. He came clean to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated in 2002 and admitted to how much better that steroids made him (Mark McGwire would disagree with this, but alas... as we've never used roids, we wouldn't know. We do know that they cut down the time between workouts, help with recovery, and make working out easy, so...).
Interestingly enough, in the discussions with Caminiti, he said that 50% of players are on steroids. Jose Canseco said that 85% of players were. Verducci thought Canseco was about shock treatment, but alas, history has vindicated him, but all the same, he's still a worthless piece of crap.
Today, Lance Armstrong faces the accusations of Tyler Hamilton, a cyclist who trained with Lance, and said that he also used EPO. Lance is famous for employing the Clemons defense (or vice versa): spend A LOT of money, tell the world that your accuser(s) is a lying piece of crap, and hope that you can outspend him / her / them.
It worked for Lance. He got the French book that trashed him from being published in America (either we love Lance, hate the French, or both), but it didn't work for Roger. Now, it seems that it's not working for Lance either, which is sad because his was a story that we needed to be real (cancer victim makes good and wins the Tour De France 7 times in a row, once again leaving the French to feel inferior.
Now, he looks to see his image and world destroyed as Hamilton has given up his Olympic medals, and just like Floyd Landis who took Armstrong to task, we see a sport so shattered with regard to PEDs. EPO is the undetectable drug of choice for the field as it's natural in the body - unless there is too much of it there, so players will measure their level and and inject more to get to the top of the spectrum for what they can have in there. The EPO allows for more oxygen to be absorbed by the body during breathing, and wahlah, the cyclist kicks butt in the mountains.
Until he's found out.
Then he's meat, and that's not good.
Many baseball players have walked the line that Mr. Armstrong looks to walk, and while they've come back from disaster in varying degrees, the yellow bracelets for Lance will be history very soon. It's a shame since it's talent at the end that wins the race, and Armstrong is talented, but some will say he's dirty, and perhaps that's true, but in the end, is a player cheating if he's just cheating to keep up with a sport full of cheaters?
And for this, we have to wonder if all sports will soon be seen as "sports entertainment" rather than natural competition. Wrestling survived when it admitted to being "fake." Will baseball and cycling when they admit to benefiting from better living through chemistry? Since they can't be like the NFL and just manage to avoid the fray despite their cast of 300 pound goons who run 4.0 40s, we can only wonder.

Ryne Sandberg

I was watching The Wizard of Oz last night. I can't remember ever having watched it before, but then again, I give myself no credit for anything that I've done before turning 18. Simply put, I remember very little of it, and some is for good reason - being a teenager is an awkward time that I'd rather forget about (and a pre-pubescent, and a kid, and...), but alas... I know that I've seen bits and pieces of it, and I get its populist message that lurks underneath the childhood story, but more than anything (and somewhere beyond Dorothy's annoying moans - man, how do people appreciate Judy Garland when her 2 most important offspring - being Judy and Liza frickin' Minelli - just grate all that we are, but nevertheless, before I start getting hate mail, let me just say, I was laying in bed thinking about how there really is no place like home. 15 years ago, I was living in England, and it was rapidly coming to the point that I was heading home. I had no desire to go home at that point. England was my adopted home, and I was clinging to it with a fierce tenacity that wouldn't give way to the fact that the relationship I was in had to dissolve so that the both of us could go on to happiness (we've both since married and are doing reasonably well with our lives), and I had no concept of what America or life was meant to be - just that I was going to soon go back home and live with my parents while I went to school and got my life together (on July 8, 1996, that reality finally happened). It took a while. The first year was hard. I still had a lot of England left in me - not least of all the idea that I would go back and be with my ex-gal friend (when you're older than high school, you can't really be a girl), but alas, that didn't happen, and it was a long dark winter that was finally punctuated with a few trips to California to see another friend. For the first trip, I bought a baseball preview guide with Derek Jeter on the cover. I didn't know who he was or hate the Yankees at the time (that was in 1998 with the story of Roger Maris and accentuated with the pickup of Roger Clemens), but it was that which brought baseball back. Sure, there were moments like watching the Braves dominate in 1996 while working at an Air Force sports bar in England, or watching the Phillies lose in 1993 when the Blue Jays smacked them around (thank you Paul Molitor), but through it all, there was nothing other than the memory of Ryne Sandberg... a guy who played for the Reading Phillies, but was later traded to the Chicago Cubs where he went on to have Hall of Fame stats. And he was right there waiting for me when I returned home, and for that, I am eternally grateful. His career wasn't like it was in the 1980s, and while I still have his rookie card, it isn't the value that I'd like it to be. Then again, neither are the cards that my wife bought me the other night that sit smack dab in the middle of this era (1990ish). It was a great gift for a player, and there's something about looking through cards - even of players we don't necessarily know. There are still favorites from my childhood, guys left over to adulthood, and marquee players that will always be known. In the end, there were a few cards that stood out. Curt Schilling 1990 Topps - not THE rookie, but a first Topps card. Sammy Sosa 1990 Topps - if only it was 1998... I'd be sitting pretty. While not the Upper Deck Griffey Jr., there was the regular set Topps marked rookie of Ken Griffey Jr. Most of these are now selling for $1. Juan Gonzalez? Joey (Albert) Belle? Names of once great, but fallen stars. Jose Canseco? You can't even give his rookie away, but there was a 1990 Canseco - when he still sort of kind of mattered. But there were the guys from this era... the ones that were still left... the Ryne Sandbergs... the million dollar contract trail blazers who used to name names and define the era... And they're largely forgotten in modern baseball history, but they're still a part of my childhood history, which I see myself going back to more and more (also, the Disney Pixar movies and brainless comedies)... and I know that's not such a bad thing. It's made me the man that I am, and it's made my American home (in the middle of Amish Paradise) such a great place to be and to sit on the backyard furniture while watching my firepit and looking over my wife's garden and just being. That's really what home is all about. That sense of mellow Americana and nostalgia for a time past in a time now... Even if that time never really was.

Barry Bonds

What would baseball be without Barry Bonds? Ken Burns seems to think that extended sections of the 10th Inning should belong to him and his father, who personally thanks Mark Reynolds every day of his afterlife as he no longer stands as the biggest whiff threat in baseball history.
Well, here we go... the perjury trial is for real. The man with 73 home runs in a season and 762 for his career is officially facing 5 counts against him (instead of 11).
He still says that he's innocent, but so does Roger Clemens, and we all know how that's working out for him. So for Bonds, the big day is March 1st, which is when he gets arraigned for perjury. Greg Anderson, his former trainer and bestest buddy who never testified against him, will most likely get more contempt of court charges for continued refusal to talk (we have to wonder how much money that is translating to in thank yous from Barry). That said, Jason Giambi and more unknown former major leaguers are going to state that Anderson hooked them up with steroids in the same way it's alleged that Anderson gave Bonds the Clear and the Cream.
For Clemens, his next date with destiny is March 14th when his subpoena for the notes from the House committee that investigated Andy Pettite, Brian McNamee, Chuck Knoblauch, and Jose Canseco (because where there is juice, there is the Typhoid Mary of Steroids) is analyzed for whether they'll give up the documents or not.
Nevertheless, the issue here isn't whether these guys are guilty. Let's be honest, guilty or not, their entire careers are trash. Neither guy is taking his accumulation of some of the greatest numbers ever into Cooperstown. Neither guy is ever going to truly accrue fans or love - despite the fact that Roger was still able to find time to joke about throwing a broken bat at Mike Piazza when he performed for charity. In this, I'm just curious who thinks that inviting Roger to raise money is really the way they want to go with an event of this status, but with that said, I'm sure it got a couple of chuckles and guffaws.
So alas, the 2 biggest names in the Mitchell Commission hearing are going to be facing justice - even if it's only to show them that they can't fight authority because as John Cougar Mellencamp once sang, "Authority always wins." In the end, the 2 of them will go down like the Titanic and without the chance of getting saved that rescued Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from their baseball exorcisms. There is no life preserver like the one that was thrown to Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Smoky Joe Wood. It's over.
There's no nostalgic love like that for Pete Rose and Joe Jackson. It's done.
And that's what's at issue here. Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds have done nothing to make people love them. Jeff Pearlman's Love Me Hate Me Barry Bonds and American Icon by Teri Thompson and others truly sum up how ugly and loath-able these once great athletes are. The lies and deceptions of Barry Bonds and his myriad of lives that don't remember what each other did while quietly countering his villainy with charity. The betrayal of Roger's wife and best friend to save his records in light of the accusations that were leveled at him.
And while these guys fight for their lives and their backsides not to be made entertainment in the federal prison system, there is something out there that wonders what will became of baseball and the rest of the accused steroids users in baseball. Who else is on the list of anonymous players from 2004? Who else will be named when the witch hunt continues? Who will the next test failure be? Do we really want to know?
I really have to say that I don't.
There needs to be at least a few good memories left of all that is good and pure of the game that I love.