Author: David Medsker (Page 19 of 20)

This just gets sadder by the minute. The Baltimore Orioles sent Rafael Palmeiro home to let him rehabilitate his knee and ankle injuries on his own time table. This may seem like an act of generosity on the part of the Orioles, but I assure you it is anything but. He’s 2-26 with one RBI since his return from a ten game suspension for violating the steroids policy. He was getting booed so loudly on the road that he tried using ear plugs. Even the hometown faithful in Camden Yards took to giving him the Bronx cheer. And to think, just last year, last year, I attended an O’s game that happened to be Palmeiro bobblehead doll night. From collector’s item to landfill in just twelve short months.

The comments from both Palmeiro and the organization were superb exercises in damage control. The quotes from the team are hilarious, talking of it being in Raffy’s and the club’s best interest that he stay off his knee and let it heal properly. Translation: get the hell out of here, cheater. I can’t say I blame the O’s for taking that stance. Between Palmeiro and the Incredible Shrinking Sosa, they have been taking a PR beating this year.

The best line, though, is from Raffy himself.

“There’s been no controversy in my life at all, on and off the field. I’ve always been a type of person that does it the right way and follows the rules and does the right thing for the most part.”

Ryne Sandberg would beg to differ with this, I’m guessing.

Palmeiro clearly doesn’t want to go out like this; he knows that he has to put together one last solid, controversy-free season in order to have any chance at getting in the Hall. But what he needs to realize is that he’s now viewed no better than Pete Rose in the public eye. First he cheated, then he lied about it. Baseball has always had room for scoundrels, but nobody likes a player who takes advantage of people’s good nature, which Palmeiro did by banking on the fact that his entry into the 3,000/500 club would erase any misgivings about how he got there. He was wrong.

You blew it, Raffy. You blew it all. Now walk away.

Pathetic. An arbitrator ruled that Kenny Rogers be reinstated, knocking his 20-game suspension down to 13 games, or “time served.” Basically, Bud Selig gets slapped on the wrist for a penalty that, frankly, was a slap on the wrist for Rogers. I have no doubt that if you were to look at Donald Fehr’s cell phone, you would find Selig’s number under the name “My Bitch.”

If I’m Selig right now, I’m pissed. It’s bad enough that the players’ union basically kicks the owners around like a stray dog, but the message this ruling sends to players is loud and clear: do whatever the hell you want. You want to assault a photographer? Have at it. You want to squeeze Sam Ryan’s tits on camera while she’s interviewing you? Great, let us know what they feel like. Did Peter Gammons say something you didn’t like? Slit his throat, then sell his head on eBay.

It’s open season now, kids. You think players were only beginning to act like complete idiots? Just wait. The gloves are off now. Next time Oliver Perez wants to kick someone, he won’t bother with a laundry cart, not when he can kick Joe Buck or a beat writer with no fear of reprisal. The Steroids Era may be coming to an end, but the Jackass Era has just begun.

Shame on you, Scoop Jackson.

In a recent ESPN article, Jackson stooped (hey, just stumbled on a pun; from this point forward, his name is Stoop Jackson) to playing the race card in the recent discussion about Dusty Baker and the rumor that has him headed to Hell-A at season’s end. Basically, he said that the white Chicago media wants Baker out because he’s black.

This is preposterous for a litany of reasons, which I discussed in full in my piece about why Baker should go. I find it the height of laziness, never mind ignorance, that any white person who critiques a minority is instantly a racist. It suggests that the predominantly white media should grade minority coaches on a sliding scale. There’s a word for that. It’s called pandering.

Let’s have some fun with some of the more interesting quotes in the piece.

“Trust me, the man has kept two raggedy-ass teams playing .500 ball for two seasons. Yet the columnists and radio hosts in the city want him out.”

Actually, the man has two supremely talented teams barely playing .500 ball. Am I a racist for expecting this team to play to the best of its ability?

The last line in the piece is my favorite, though.

“The only question left to ask will be this: If it were Bobby Cox and not Dusty Baker, would I have ever had to write this column?”

No, because if it were Bobby Cox, the Cubs would be in first place, no matter how many injuries they had suffered. You know, kinda like his Braves are, a team held together by duct tape and chewing gum? You want to talk about injuries and underperforming players? The Braves have cornered the market on it. Chipper Jones, Mike Hampton, John Thomson, Tim Hudson, Danny Kolb, Rafael Furcal, Brian Jordan, Raul Mondesi… need I go on?

Stoop, we don’t want Dusty to leave because he’s black. We want him to leave because he had history in his grasp, but let it slip away on account of his own managerial incompetence. We want him to leave because he’s acted like a sullen teen ever since that moment, pouting and protesting about how everybody’s out to get him. Lastly, we want him to leave because it doesn’t appear that he really wants to be here. Being a Chicago coach is hard work. Ask Tim Floyd, Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron and Jim Riggleman. We ran them out of town too, and guess what? They’re white. Race has nothing to do with this, Stoop. Stop seeing things that don’t exist, and then blaming other people for not seeing them, too.

The “New York Times” is reporting that the steroid Rafael Palmeiro was busted for using is stanozolol, dubbed by a NYU prof as “a mildly strong to strong steroid.” The prof even went so far as to say that “potent is the word I would use.” Lest you wonder how potent it is, it’s the same steroid linked to Ben Johnson in 1988.

Well, that certainly puts Raffy’s comment about “Why would I do this during a season where I was going to get to 3,000 hits?” into question. Suddenly Raffy, a well liked guy across the board, looks like Pete Rose, the guy who corked his bat (according to the guy who rotted in a cell protecting him) in order to break the all time hits record. This kind of news is never easy to take, whether you like the guy or not. But one could argue that Raffy was banking on people to sympathize with him for the same reason that Rose arguably was: because each was knocking on the door of history. Raffy just became the fourth guy to enter the 3,000/500 club, dammit. How could he accomplish such a thing without being as standup a guy as the three who preceded him?

Personally, I wanted to give Raffy the benefit of the doubt when I heard that he had tested positive, in spite of the fact that he was sucking wind when the season started (following a 2004 season where he also sucked wind) only to start beating the snot out of the ball seemingly out of nowhere. I mean, they all told us that steroids don’t help you hit the ball; they just help you hit it farther. Right?

Well, maybe not. Are we going to find out a week from now that Jason Giambi (who hit 14 home runs in July, after hitting five in the previous three months) is using again, too? God, I sure as hell hope not. I really want to think that Giambi has learned his lesson, that being the poster child for all things wrong with Major League Baseball was more than enough incentive to stay the hell away from the juice for good. But I have to admit, the numbers are stacked against him. They’re also stacked against Sammy Sosa, Bret Boone, and even guys like Mike Lowell and Jim Thome should be aware that their numbers will be viewed suspiciously from here on. Now, I actually like all of the guys I just listed, even the diva-tastic Sosa. But I still need someone to explain to me how you go from hitting singles and doubles to hitting a boatload of homers, even in pitcher’s parks, only to completely forget how to hit altogether. It doesn’t look good, guys. You should have known this day was coming. After all, the owners weren’t going to turn a blind eye forever.