Aww baseball’s season opener begins today … take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd, buy me some peanuts and cracker jack …. I love this all American past time, sitting in the stands, smelling the sizzle of the hotdogs cooking, eating those salty peanuts, sipping an ice cold beer and all the while cheering your favorite team on to victory. And of course booing and trash talking the opposing team. It’s totally intoxicating. The rush of telling off the ref, is almost better than my dreams of telling my boss to you-know-what. It’s (one of) the greatest ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.
While I’m reminiscing about the enjoyments of baseball, I have to get to the heart of the matter. What is really on my mind … not about the hotness of Mike Lowell, Joe Torre’s managerial debut, and that Duke didn’t make it to the dance – there’s something that is nagging at me. It’s baseball and steroids. Although, my love for baseball remains, I have to admit that it is slowly waning away. My disgust is in the athletes, namely the baseball players who cheat. Somehow, I’m taking it personally, no I am. For years I have built a relationship, like a marriage, with my favorite team, players, coaches and the game itself. As such, it’s almost like the baseball players have cheated on me – worse than Kobe and Eliot Spitzer cheating on their wives.
While I’m excited about the new baseball season, I’m just leery of spending my hard earned cash (especially in this recession or as Bush termed it a “slowdown”) to see a bunch of overly priced cheats. I feel that by purchasing a ticket, I am somehow condoning that it is ok to take a little pill to boost one’s edge over your competition. I know, I know I’m generalizing by lumping some non-roid takers with the pill-popping, needle injecting scum of the earth cheats.
Players are going to continue to cheat because they get off so easily, and we, the fans, pay to see those great plays and the homeruns knocked out of the park. Why would the owners want to crack down on cheating, if you have an athlete who is a crowd favorite, makes the big plays, and packs the stands? Something has gotta give. How can we go back to the days when baseball was pure?