The nuisance of baseball purity

Although I know that all of you have been breathlessly awaiting my valuable insights on the mysteries of life, I would like to take a small detour as pitchers and catchers report to spring training; to throw in my two cents ( probably all the value it will ever achieve ) over baseball's inability to get over itself; or more properly, those who inhabit it's biosphere. Lo, with the gnashing of the teeth, and the renting of the garments, are we once again beside ourselves over the revelation that A-Rod used performance enhancing drugs. Many are the sports scribes and attendant voices raising the hew and cry over this latest punch to the gut of our beloved national pastime. So what.  It's becoming too much to this particular individual. I say this as someone who invests a far greater part of his personal time to playing ( yes, an old guy leaguer to the bitter end ), watching, and observing the game of ball ( a lovely anachronism that I think should return to the popular vernacular of the game ) than he ought to. I am not an anti-sport crackpot. Nor am I an obsessive who has no personal life save the online community of stats geeks and virtual teams. I love the game; have loved it all my life, and no doubt will until I'm moldering in my grave. I am also someone who has a decent understanding of the history of the game and recognize that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, pure as the driven slush.

 

It is therefore time to say enough is enough. Baseball history is replete with the sagacity of individuals doing whatever it takes to gain an edge. From doctoring balls and the tools of the trade, to the apartheid that kept the great players of color out of the game in the early twentieth century, to the many and various potions and drugs that players have imbibed from the game's beginning. Professional baseball is not a sport; it is a business, and has been for a very long time. It is not the sport of children, or amateurs; the game that the rest of us play for our own amusement at our leisure. Everyone involved in professional baseball is complicit in the latest era of the game. As early as the 90's, when it became obvious, even to the most casual observer, that players were no longer the same physically as their caveman ancestors, the suspicion that players were juicing, as powerlifters and body builders had been for some time, became an open secret. 

Yet we all continued to go to the games. 

All that money from those of us who go to the games, watch them on TV ( and the advertisers looking to sway us ) , buy the merchandise, only fueled the desire for those in control of the game from the owners, their mouthpiece Bud Selig ( let's not forget that he is a former owner and as commissioner the spokesman and front man for the owners ), the agents, and players to get their cut of the pie. With millions on the line, the idea that there wouldn't be individuals motivated to use any means at their disposal to give themselves an edge; or to do as most were doing; an important point to note, is naive and goes against human nature. Very, very few of us would turn down the kind of money being offered the guys to play. That includes fans and members of the media who were in on the play who chose instead to laud rather than to expose.

Let it go.

 Hypocrisy is an ugly face no matter who chooses to wear it. Be honest and accept that the game has gone down this road with all of us cheering; whether we had a queasy feeling in our stomachs or not. If baseball chooses to try to stem the tide of PED's; let it try. Maybe someday they'll be as clean as football ( because as we all know it's normal for men to be that big and that strong and that fast naturally even if their football forebears were not ), or it won't be as important. If you are outraged; don't watch; don't participate; do something else with your time and energy. All these calls by the sirens of baseball is hypocrisy; plain and simple. Asterisks and fey calls to remove records only point to the absurdity of this precious little dance. It's our little piece of baseball history; no better or no more egregious that those of the past. Get over it. 

Time to play. To the next era of the game.