SPORTS SUNDAY

when we caught hervey & donnie & jay stealing from the outrigger, confronted them w/the evidence, & they lied about it, well, that ended any PRETENSE of friendship that existed. at the time, were we all bestest of best friends & all that? no. they worked for us, we signed their paychecks, & we told them what to do at work. in a sense, i suppose, we were "the man" to these shits & stealing from us was cool. i don't particularly buy this, esp since they were also emptying MY pants pockets whenever they could for extra cash. the real clincher here was their bare-faced denials when confronted w/incontrovertible truth. stealing & then lying about it. it's a fundamental violation of ethics. what more can you say?


i've admired tony larussa for a while now. he's done great jobs doing what he's paid lots of money to do in various venues. he's managed teams & made me a fan of those teams because he's a "thinking mans" baseball manager. i don't have really strong feelings about the guy. he does contribute his time & name & money to a great animal cause in the bay area &, just for that, he's high on my list of people i don't know & never will know who have no impact on my life & never will. i try not to get really worked up about those kinds of people. through experience i've learned that these folks aren't who or what we've oddly made ourselves feel fervently they are. i'm not surprized when i read about another nut who tries to slash a hollywood star or who kills themselves in the star's empty hollywood mansion. in a better world, i'd be surprized.

anyway, back to tony.

tony managed the liar & cheat mark mcgwire back in the heady days of baseball's return to fan favor, the glorious steroid-fueled season-long home run derby between mac & sammy sosa. the deal about big mac(& sosa)is that at that time in baseball the drugs(supplements, for those who want to keep the wool over their eyes)they were taking weren't illegal. in fact, the whole thing really blew up when a sports reporter noticed an over the counter bottle of stimulants(a brand that i used to buy at gnc)sitting in mac's locker in plain sight during an interview. i agree w/michael here: it's all about accountability & these player's commitment to the integrity of the game. illegal or not, the drugs were cheating in all the senses of that word.


larussa has come to big mac's defense but in a way, he's actually coming to his own defense too. as michael pointed out, owners & the commish should be taking some heat for this ignominious era. i think the managers should too. that includes my man joe torre who was managing clemens & pettite during their usage. don't kid yourself & believe the managers weren't aware of what was going on. it was in no way in their best interests to press the issue.

now, do i think big mac should be in the hall of fame? hell no. clemens & bonds & sosa & what's his name shouldn't be either. have i agonized over that position? hell no. they cheated. they lied. mantle was a drunk, you say? ruth had illegitimate kids? what's your point? if mantle could still produce while doing everything he could to REDUCE that production, it's just sad. having children, in wedlock or not, has no impact on the game at all. period. ruth owned up to the kids & mantle owned up to his alcoholism & neither lied about either one. when the whip comes down, no one expects humans to be perfect. as humans ourselves, we do make allowances. when haller told me, "i'm ashamed to admit it but yeah i took money out of your pants," that was that. i forgave her right then & there.

let me put it this way: i remember an old timer in a.a. always saying that alcoholics were liars & thieves. invariably, in meetings after he'd made that assertion, someone would stand up & dispute it. "i'm no thief," was their predictable response. "o really?," the old timer would say, " did you ever tell folks you wouldn't drink again & then you did? did you ever tell someone you were stopping for them?" lots of hemming & hawing would follow. "if you lied, you stole. you stole anyone's time who had to listen to your lies & time is pretty damn precious," was how he ended that particular conversation. bonds & clemens & mac & sosa & etc basically stole from the fans & then lied about it when they got caught. it's a fundamental violation of ethics. what more can i say?