While part one of this column focused on two tremendous games to begin the new year part two has some of the surprising and non-surprising things we’ve seen in a long time. Mark McGwire shocked no one with his confession, and for the first time in a while someone in the NBA not named Artest left us shaking our heads, all the while one of the more vocal coaches in all of college football crushed his credibility and Volunteer nation with an abrupt move out of town.
While Mark McGwire sat with Bob Costas and told America things we already knew he did over a decade ago, the one thought that ran through my mind continuously was, “will this guy ever drop the act and just be blatantly honest with us.”
I personally do not care for Alex Rodriguez at all, but I do respect him sitting down and telling people the truth about what he did. Whether or not he told us everything will never be known by anyone but him, but at least he made me believe that he was telling the truth. He said he used them and didn’t try and cover it up, unlike Big Mac.
Big Mac first shocked us all when he said that he periodically used steroids throughout the 90’s and during the infamous 98 season where it became more interesting to guess whether it would be McGwire or Sosa, that would bust the seams on their jerseys first, rather than who would actually hit more home runs. Please spare me the tears if you’re not going to be completely honest. To come out and say that you did them to stay healthy and that they did not impact his performance is a sad attempt at trying to make the situation ok. Well I hate to be the one to break it to Big Mac but if you are taking steroids to avoid the disable list your numbers are going to improve because you are playing that many more games a season.
Steroids have become so main stream with fans during the last decade that nothing surprises us anymore, it’s just another player that we worshipped doing what every other player of the time was doing. This is why I don’t understand why players can’t just be honest and say that they did it, admit that they needed to keep pace in a league that became so over run by steroids that the commissioner looked the other way to increase revenue. Whether or not this will affect Big Mac’s Hall of Fame chances is yet to be decided but guys who do come forward and admit are viewed in a better light than those who try and hide from it. Did Big Mac wait too long to come clean, time will tell, but maybe he should be in, could you tell the history of baseball without mentioning him? I don’t think I could.
In the basketball world Gilbert Arenas somehow managed to top Ron Artest drinking Hennessey at halftime when we admitted to keeping an unloaded fire arm in his locker. The facts started to unfold after it was leaked that Gilbert Arenas and teammate Jarvaris Crittenton pulled guns on reach other following an argument about a gambling debt. This story seemed to be a little ridiculous to be true from the beginning but as an investigation began and Arenas admitted to keeping a gun in the locker room it became appearent how small this was for Arenas, how little he seemed to care about his career. Arenas still had one for surprise for us up his sleeve. During a federal investigation and Arenas’ fate hanging in the balance, the Wizards guard found this to be an appropriate time to have his teammates circle around him pregame and for him to pretend to be shooting guns, with his hands being the guns. Despite how outrageous all of this has been and who knows if, and when we will get to see Gilbert Arenas play basketball again, but for me the real shocker has been that we are yet to hear Artest comment on the situation. I mean this is a guy who out of the blue this season told us how he used to drink Hennessey at half time, and I was truly looking forward to an unforgettable sound bite down playing what Arenas did. Who knows if we’ll get it, but in the mean time lets be glad Gilbert Arenas wasn’t involved in the brawl at The Palace in Auburn Hills, because that could have gotten bad for the league.
I originally wasn’t planning on a three part column as my first one, but due to the events that have happened that’s what we’re looking at. I will be posting the part about Layne Kiffen within a few days. Until then enjoy part two.
January 25, 2010 at 5:28 am |
The steroid era is Bud Selig’s fault. A lifetime ban on users would have done the trick. Baseball survives every scandal and always will. It would have recovered from the 94 strike without steroids and HGH.