Those Guys Were Good.

I am almost too flabbergasted to say anything. I am almost speechless. There are almost no words to describe the situation. Almost.

In fact I can always say something, I'm not sure I've ever been speechless, and unless you run into an alien there are always words to describe a situation. Heck, even if you run into an alien you can describe the situation with such prose as "OMGWTFBBQ!1!one!" which, while technically not a valid lexeme, is a close enough simulacrum to satisfy 99% of the population.

Speaking of 99% of the population, it would appear that is about the sample that is on steroids. Despite A-Rod's past comments (which, everyone had to admit, were entirely reasonable) that he didn't need performance enhancers because he had always been the best player at every level of the game (he didn't say it in exactly those words but come on, it was true and everyone knew it) and there was no need. Well, apparently he has done needless things because he tested positive in 2003. Whoopee. Where does the sport go from here?

Probably down a big toilet of repetition. The thing I find funny about this whole situation is that there was no particular reason to believe A-Rod's veracity while denying others'. Well, there was a particular reason, but it had nothing to do with ratiocination and everything to do with wishful thinking. We believed A-Rod because we wanted to believe him. He was the last chance to save the game's big numbers. Bonds and Sosa and Big Mac had cheated to beat the legends of yesteryear, but A-Rod was clean and A-Rod was going to take all of the numbers back and give them meaning again. Yeah. That was it.

The ironic and hilarious part about this is that we repeat our mistakes so quickly and so emphatically and with such gullibility it is *almost* incredible. Think about our desire to have A-Rod be clean. Isn't this exactly the behavior that led to our being defrauded the first time around? Of course it is. Mark and Sammy were doing unbelievable things. Like, they were literally unbelievable. But we believed because we wanted to do so. When Barry Bonds turned from a base stealing threat into the second coming of the Incredible Hulk and proceeded to outdo an already unbelievable feat, and then outdo another one, we believed because not believing would be quite painful indeed. It would mean admitting that we had been winked by a huge hood, and no one likes doing that.

We did the exact same thing with A-Rod and it is has completely destroyed the numbers of this game. Not the wins and losses. Steroids and HGH were apparently so prevalent that even the bat boys must have been on them. So I feel fine admitting that the Red Sox won legitimately, even if David Ortiz did turn into a monster overnight, that Roger Clemens was on two Yankee World Series teams and the White Sox--the White Sox--won a World Series. But the big numbers--the ones that no one ever forgets...they have been killed dead. 61 was a monument. 73 is a joke. 755 was instantly recognizable. I literally do not even remember what Bond's "record" is. in 1997 there had been two--TWO--60 homer seasons in the 100+ year history of the league. Ten years later that number had been quadrupled. The sixty home run club is meaningless.

And A-Rod can no longer be the savior of the game. Ironically enough, the one thing that would have endeared this preening, unfaithful, stats obssessed pretty boy with baseball fans everywhere was the fact that whatever we thought of him, we thought he was clean, and he could have saved baseball's numbers. Instead, he has destroyed himself. In a recent Jayson Stark column, Stark makes this list:

"The all-time hits leader (Mr. Peter E. Rose) won't be in the Hall of Fame.
The all-time home run leader (assuming that's where A-Rod's highway leads him) won't be in the Hall of Fame.
The man who broke Hank Aaron's career record (Barry Bonds) won't be in the Hall.
The man who broke Roger Maris' single-season record (Mark McGwire) won't be in the Hall.
The man who was once the winningest right-handed pitcher of the live-ball era (Roger Clemens) won't be in the Hall.
The man with the most 60-homer seasons in baseball history (Sammy Sosa) doesn't look like he's headed for the Hall, either. "

This is terrible but it doesn't have to be. It is terrible because Bud Selig doesn't have the cojones to do what would save baseball's hallowed marks. Take Bonds out of the book. Take A-Rod out of the book. Take McGwire out of the book. Take Roger out of the book. Put the records back where they belong, in the hands of the actual greats.

It isn't that steroids are an impeachment of these guys' characters. They have enough other things to do that and the old timers did too. But Babe Ruth ate too many hot dogs and liked too many girls, Roger Maris liked beer too much, etc. These were not the type of things that discredit the game itself. And that was where A-Rod survived in our world. We all know he is a loser off the field, deranged by Jeter-jealousy in the locker room, and suddenly a math wiz regarding the standard deviation of RBIs when a reporter is nearby, but on the field he was a magician who could barely swing and send a ball 450 feet. How sad.

But let's take a moment to think about that of which this should remind us. 755. 61. Babe Ruth's 60 homer season where he also batted .356. These numbers are still, in every way that matters, standing. I mean, holy crap. Those guys were good.

Those Guys Were Good.