IT'S JUST A GAME

OK Base-ball fans, here we go. I wrote it base-ball because that's how it was written in the 1800's. I bring that up because we will be hearing a lot about tradition, national pastime, and mom and apple pie. Here is my warning: When a conversation about people drowning in money turns to questions of "right and wrong", duck because a lot of BS will be flying. We will all receive a great ethics lesson, or at least see a fascinating show about human nature. We will have another chance to see if the superstars of the world-- athletes, entertainers, politicians, religious leaders-- really give a darn about what the rest of us think. Maybe to perform at that level, you need a monstrous ego. Maybe the spotlight and the limelight cause egos to grow to monstrous proportions and we should pity them when they crash to the ground (yeah, right). Or maybe repentance and redemption are for real, that a conscience, if you had one to begin with, will not die. We will look earnestly for apologies and think hard about who to forgive. We hope to learn maybe that only some of those people are creeps.

Now for the people who run the business, who never injected anything but deposited hefty checks. Whose heads grew big from world series rings and media attention, not from HGH. We will see if actions speak louder than words and whether the Mitchell report on steroids use and all kinds of other drugs and substance abuse will indeed clean up my favorite sport. Clean it up because if the playing field is not level, then we who have spent money on tickets, merchandise, overpriced beer and food and time, have been robbed. So, will the Mitchell report be a prelude to reform or to the most massive PR exercise in recent years? We shall see. We need to know.

Because it’s not pro wrestling. Pro sports, baseball, football, basketball, hockey here, soccer everyplace else on the planet, is supposed to be pure. Purer than churches, purer than poltical elections, maybe purer than the food we eat and the air we breathe. If players cheat with their bodies, they may cheat in other ways when the local mobsters come along. That’s a problem. We need the idea of pure sport to give us a few moments away from the the frustrations and struggles in our lives. We need the idea of pure sport because, lets be honest, for many men sports is a relgious experiece: few people pray as hard for world peace as they do for a strikeout with two outs in the ninth inning. For many men, the only transcendant experience in their life is when Mariano gets the final out in the final game, Michael Jordan hits the winning jumper and Roger Staubach cries "Hail Mary". And maybe it is an outlet for our more violent human tendencies. So after the press conference tomorrow, don’t piss me off.

Now maybe the Mitchell report will have no lasting impact of any kind because human beings have a tremendous capacity for self-delusion and succumbing to manipulation. Maybe sports is just another addiction, another way certain chemicals have a strange effect on our brains (possibly related to our testosterone levels according to some studies) and so we fans can be excused too—we can’t help but continue to watch the game and drink the beer. As for this Yankee fan, I am bracing for anger and disappointment, but I know I'll get over it. It is just a game. Oh, but what a great game! First, let me trot out my best excuses and rationalizations. Are there legitimate excuses for our favorite players using illegal substances? Well, maybe at the start of their careers, in their wayward or naïve youth they used 'stuff" to help them bulk up, to have a shot at the big leagues, and then stopped. If they admit it and apologize, I’ll give them a complete pass-- if their glory years were not illusions and frauds. Second, if they used the stuff to promote healing and rapid recovery, to get back to their natural performance level after sustaining serious injuries, I'll grudgingly excuse that if there is an apology. I can too easily see myself making that mistake. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that in our youth, we did or might have made mistakes in judgment if we were tempted. All of us. But not all of us would choose to make a life, build a career, or raise a family based on fraud, whether on Wall Street or 161st Street, in Congress or in Yankee Stadium.

We are now at the crux of the matter: the possibility that our very favorite players are frauds. Not just the players we cheered when they won games for us, but the players we identified with and promoted to fans of rival teams not just as great players, but fine human beings (silly huh? but its tough to know how much your favorite team can be hated and despised--though some Yankee fans revel in that). Current Yankee fans are vulnerable because the Joe Torre Yankees were the most un-hated team in Yankee history. I'm old enough to remember when the Yankees were un-hated for the wrong reasons: they really sucked. Were there were no steroids for Horace Clarke, Jerry Kenney, Dooley Womack and Jimmy Lytle, or were they saints whose baseball shortcomings we must forgive?

Enough stalling. I know this is gonna hurt. Here goes, the list my favorite Yankees of the past 15 years, the one's I most identify with (please excuse the conceit but some very important illusions are about to crumble, so I have to feed some of the others) the ones I hope are not in the Majority Leader's report:

Bernie Williams --fellow switch hitter and center fielder

Mariano Rivera -- fellow skinny guy with just one pitch with heat and pin point control

Constantino Martinez -- namesake, fellow Greek American (part) and all around nice guy.

Derek Jeter -- fellow handsome devil (OK that one is a stretch)

Andy Pettitte -- fellow left hander (writing hand--I throw right) and clutch performer

Paul O'Neil -- fellow passionate fellow

There it is.

Now, the guys on other teams I will not cry for: Big Poopi (no typo) Jeez he’s just too big and scary.

Manny (who will claim he was too dumb to know better but I won’t believe it even though we were both born in Washington Heights)

Roger Clemens (because he was a mercenary not a Yankee, thought he was our best mercenary)

Mike Piazza (not because he was a bad guy but because I don’t believe the mercenary really wanted to hit him with the bat in the world series and a very stupid boss--a genuine Baltimoron--once attacked me for defending Clemens)

All the Arizona Diamondbacks

All the Florida Marlins

All the California Angels

And now for the obligatory self-righteousness (ie. if I were a baseball executive I would have definitely stopped it, had I known, blah blah blah)

Shame on Bud Selig, who is doing the right think now, but if he had done the right thing years ago he would not have to do anything now

Shame on the Players Union officials and Agents--who don’t care that some of the people who pay their salary will get sick and die prematurely, that children who look up to their clients (including their own) will get sick and die prematurely.

Shame on the players who WERE clean, for not having the guts or brains to find a "manly way" of keeping their livlihood clean. Locker room loyalty is one thing, but a lot of kids endangered their lives because they looked up to your locker room neighbors them and took their examples. You didn' have to rat on your friends, but you should have tried harder to warn the kids. Your agents could have put you in touch with some good P.R. people.

Amen.