Was it on NPR's Morning Edition that I recently heard the sportswriter John Feinstein hyperventilating on baseball's steroid scandal? No, I think it was on The Colbert Report, where the satiric take on "the news" produces an arguably superior journalistic product. Wherever, he was talking loud and fast, gesturing crazily if I could see him--come to think of it, maybe he was on Morning Edition, for I cannot remember checking his lips for flecks of froth, which I certainly would have done had the interview been on TV. The interviewer was having no trouble eliciting from Feinstein strong opinions about the characters of Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens, the moral turpitude associated with their deeds, their lying and cheating ways, all true, probably, though reading about the Mitchell Report I was struck by the preponderance of names which would never start an argument concering asterisks or worthiness for the Hall of Fame--the Manny Alexanders and Chad Allens and Rick Ankiels and Bells (David and Mike) and Marvin Benards and Gary Bennett Jrs. and Larry Bigbies, to name all eight pictured in the first row of this alphabetical rogues gallery from the New York Times.
Here's the deal: the drugs work, performance is enhanced, and the likelihood of getting caught has been slim. Moreover, if you want to play baseball for a living, the major leagues is the only place to do it: our casino economy, which heaps riches upon the top graduates of top law schools, leaving the rest to burrow in suburban subdivisions alongside nurses and sales reps, applies with an even more ferocious vengeance at the borders between triple-A and the show. Roger Angell takes it from there:
If we fans need an image to connect us to the departing era, I would pass up the tarnished Clemens or the unpleasant Bonds and, looking back five years, focus, rather, on some imagined Class AAA infielder who has just been called up to a major-league team as a midseason defensive replacement. He doesn't have to carry his bags anymore, but at twenty-seven he's a gloveman with a lifetime .269 average who will now be looking at world-famous sliders and heat. Sitting a couple of lockers away there's a celebrated but tired-looking shortstop in his late thirties, with two gated-community houses, a nanny, a nutritionist, a trainer, a motivational coach, two lawyers, a divorced wife, three foreign-marque cars, an agent, two chefs, and a part-time veterinarian on his payroll. Our rookie may be competing against this icon for a steady job next spring, but for that to happen he'll need two additional base hits a week, starting right now. The word "Help!" floats into his head, perhaps from not far away.
Alert and forceful at 87, Angell provides the peripheral vision and humane comprehension that amount to a tacit rebuke of the moralizing, gesticulating crowds. Even among big-leaguers, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
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