Filed under: Baseball | Tags: Baseball, cheater, Dodgers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Los Angeles Dodgers, Manny, Manny Ramirez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, tells the story of a reporter returning to his hometown to investigate a 20 year old murder. It was not a cold case, the murderers had been caught at the scene, so why investigate it? The novella seeks to make sense not out of the crime itself but rather the circumstances that allowed it. The murder was an honor murder, a murder committed by two brothers against her lover, who was not her husband but honor is not the theme, societal complicity is. It was societal complicity that allowed and, in some respects, demanded this murder. It was society that aided and abetted the murderers and society that acted as their accomplices.
Today, Manny Ramirez returns to the Dodger lineup after having served his 50 game suspension for violating the MLB performance enhancing drug policy. I could sit here and rant and rave about the ills of steroids and how they have destroyed the integrity of the game but every asshole with an Internet connection will be doing that today. Instead I would like to talk about how this is, in a way, our fault. Yes, us, the fans. We have a part in all of this and it is not a small one. We were accomplices in this because we looked the other way while unassailable records were left in the dust. Records that we all thought were untouchable were shattered and we simply said “Chicks dig the long ball.” Pitchers over the age of 40 made big league hitters look like minor leaguers and we all championed strength and conditioning coaches, pitch counts and weight programs. We all cited the new, smaller ballparks, the year round conditioning and any other reason we could find except the one that looked us straight in the face. Guys were juicing and not a few of them either.
It has been our complicity that has allowed Barry to break the record, Clemens to win Cy Young awards, A-Rod to wow us and Manny to pull the wool over our eyes. In my rage against steroids I have found myself casting about for someone to blame, someone to throw this at the foot of. It’s Don Fehr’s fault or Bud Selig, it’s Bond’s fault or Clemens, it’s Manny’s or A-Rod’s and that is all true. But that is not the whole truth, that is simply the convenient one. That is the version that allows all of us to cast the first stone and stand on the moral high ground. The problemis that we aren’t standing on hallowed ground, we are standing on shaky ground. We aided and abetting these men. We were complicit in this crime and that makes us all accomplices. Today we all return from suspension and so the next time a positive test comes out let’s not be shocked, let’s not cast our eyes upon the unclean and bemoan the state of our game. Let us look at ourselves and recognize our own complicity and instead of casting aspersions and feeling superior, let’s band together and fix our game. Let’s restore the national pastime to its former glory and never let this happen again.
-dodgerdave
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