During their lively banter on ESPN Radio Saturday morning, show host John Stashio and Mel Kiper, Jr. (right, with coif) lamented their perception that "all this talk about Roger Clemens and steroids" can produce no good, and has taken sports fans' attention away from the game itself.
Aside from my belief that the Mitchell report and subsequent congressional hearings can and will produce some good -- if only the reluctance of players to engange in what still amounts to cheating for fear of winding up having one's career, life and, as we now see, wife prosecuted in national media -- there are also those of us who still have our heads in the game.
"Nobody is talking about the fact that pitchers and catchers report February 13th," Kiper said.
Mel, Mel, Mel. If only you'd read TheCoxSection's February 8, 2008 entry, (below) you'd have seen that at least one media outlet has its eye on the ball. Apparently, this 98-mile-an-hour fastball of a blog slips under ESPN's radar gun. Swing and a-you-miss-out on what's important if you don't read TheCoxSection every day. Okay, I've had a couple, and I'm self-aggrandizing, but I have to admit, I did feel a little bit on my high horse after hearing Stashio and Kiper (Jr.) say what they said and then think to myself, "I said it, fellas, I said it."
Having said that I said that, let me say this:
I think it's too bad that Kiper (the younger) posed the rhetorical question "what good can possibly come of these hearings?" Stashio acquiesced, and harmonized, "None." After seven years of dealing with a president who has seen fit to place himself above somewhere around 1,100 laws, by issuing signing statements excusing himself from following the law passed by congress, I hear people saying, "Just let it go. He'll be out of there, soon." Naturally, the appropriate response is, (with apologies to all members of Queen, living or otherwise), "Bismillah! No, we will not let him go!" Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom -- and of the integrity of the Great American Pasttime. So wherever there are baseball players who would break the rules for personal gain, and owners and a commissioner who would turn a blind eye for the sake of financial profit, I say, "Let the gavels mete out whatever semblance of justice can be felt just by knowing that someone is paying attention." Goodnight.
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