What happens in Vegas can no longer Stay in Vegas

It has been a while since I said much about Baseball, but it is my first, best true love. As we have seen for the last three years, the "Steroid Controversy" has been getting bigger and bigger. And for as many years we have heard, and accepted, the fact that players will not tell on each other. That what happens in the club house stays in the club house. People cheat on their wives, people abuse alcohol and recreational drugs. And there is a long-time, unwritten rule that says we don't rat on fellow ballplayers.

Without getting into whether or not I approve of that mentality, my question is this. How did steroid use manage to find its way into this mix? I don't get it. No one disagrees that it is cheating. How does cheating the game fit in to this. You are cheating your opponents. You are also cheating someone else who is trying to make it to the major leagues legitimately. Pitchers will throw at a player if he admires his home runs too much. Unless your name is Barry Bonds (more on that later)Players will slide high and spike you in retaliation for some perceived offense. Baseball is loaded with "time-honored" traditions of policing itself and punishing people for showing up others. I don't understand how CHEATING got put on the protected side of the unwritten rules instead of the payback side. Rob Dibble threw a pitch at a baserunner who was trying to steal home because he thought the game was out of hand and that was rude. But he won't throw at people who he knows are cheating?

Ok, that aside for a second. Tonight it comes out, that new Steroid Poster Boy Rafael Palmeiro blamed his positive Steroid Test on Miguel Tejada. Saying Tejada gave him a vitamin that may have caused it. Whoa! So what happens in the club house stays in the club house until its you thats on the hook right? Then its blame anyone else that you can? Tejada by the way has been tested 3 times now and has been clean every time. He gave Palmeiro a B-12 vitamin, which apparently contains no Stanzolol, aka. Super Meat Head Pump You Up medicine.

If this isn't the last straw, I don't know what is. Major Leaguers can no longer afford to live in this world where silence and integrity are the same thing. As long as they maintain this attitude, then it will be the public's right, and the media's responsibility to cast doubt on every great achievment, on every suspicious injury and on every increase or drop off in production. Nomar Garciaparra. Class Guy? So what, he hasn't been healthy since testing started. Adrian Beltre 25 home runs in 03, 48 in 04, 18 in 05? Seems fishy to me. Roger Clemens? Good Story? Boston dropped him in 98 because they thought he was done. Maybe he was. He was so determined to prove the Sox wrong that he won 4 Cy Youngs since then. Guess what else happened in 98. The McGwire/Sosa musclehead marathon. Coincidence?

It is time for clean players to start cleaning this up. If you know who is doing it, tell us. Its time to get rid of those players. I'm tired of seeing Mike Schmidt and Hank Aaron and Harmon Killebrew and Reggie Jackson just shaking their heads. These are the greatest Home Run hitters to ever live. And they are wondering why no one will speak up for them. They can't. They are too classy for that. Why don't today's players respect them enough to stand up for them. Holy Crap People! I just called Reggie Jackson classy. Do you see how ridiculous this has become?

And then there is the Barry Bonds/Willie Mays fiasco. Worthy of its own separate discussion. Barry Bonds is a classless Jackass. There has never been a better example of the word Jackass then Bonds. And there aren't many people in Baseball that are more classy, and better loved than Willie Mays. I'm a Dodger fan and I see Willie Mays and get goose bumps. And Willie loves Barry. And will defend him to the end. What Barry Bonds is doing is painful to watch. How he can let Willie Mays stand there and Defend him that way. And before you say there is no proof of Barry on Steroids, there is mountains of evidence. Including his own admission in Grand Jury Testimony.


Willie Mays carried the olympic torch a few years ago. And he turned that torch into a trophy. He presented that trophy to his Godson Barry Bonds last year on the field when Barry passed him on the Home Run list. It might have been a touching ceremony if not for that fact that Willie was the only person in the entire world that thought that Barry wasn't a phony. Then it just became sad. One day someone will finally rat out Barry to the point where he will have to come clean. And that day he will owe one very big apology to his Godfather. I hope it won't be too late.

The time has come for the 90% who are clean to stop covering up for the 10% who are not. Tradition and unwritten rules be damned.

-T