Kiss My Asterisk
How about we just put an asterisk next to any athlete who was not on Performance Enhancement Drugs or HGH and set a record?
A first baseman ends the season at 120 pounds and three months later shows up for spring training at 250 pounds, homicidal and bug-eyed with a fire hydrant for a neck. A washed up 46 year old pitcher hobbles to the mound on a walker one season and next season throws 124 mph fastballs. Wow, he must have really worked hard in the off-season. Or gone to Lourdes.
The entire sports industrial complex conspired in baseball’s version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And I have enjoyed watching pouty, teary meltdowns of sports commentators whose inner boychild is hurt, deeply hurt, by the revelation that their heroes used drugs to enhance and prolong their careers. I especially enjoy it when the commentators themselves have obviously had eye jobs, botox injections, follicular implants to enhance and prolong their careers under the unforgiving lens of HDTV.
While we’re at it, let’s put an asterisk next to George Bush’s name, because he really only ever wanted to be commissioner of baseball, not president of the United States. Of course if he had been a baseball comish dealing with drug use, he would have announced that for the good of the sport he was invading curling.
No insult to Yogi Berra, but George has the same rhetorical flair. Of course Yogi was the manager of the Yankees not head of the US of A. Who said the following: “I didn’t really say everything I said.” “If they don’t want to come, you can’t stop them.” “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
Oh heck, let’s put an asterisk next to every financial “manager” too, from the financial yogis at Bear Sterns right down to my mortgage go-for-broker at Countrywide. The first Bush presided over the Savings and Loan collapse. This Bush is presiding near the ongoing collapse of the housing and banking markets. Bush used the White House as an ATM for the rich. When the balloon mortgage burst, the middle class could no longer use their houses as ATMs. Who said: “We make too many wrong mistakes.” George didn’t. He doesn’t. When God speaks through you, you don’t make mistakes.
And by the way, if Barry Bonds goes to jail, and Roger Clemens doesn’t, I’m trading my baseball cards for race cards.
