Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 Filed in: Events
Baseball, the national pastime, is sick. Where have
you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation mourns for you. The
game just isn't the same anymore.
It is not surprising that baseball players use illegal performance enhancing drugs. It is surprising how pervasive the habit has become in modern times, and how many long-standing, hard-earned records have been broken-- not by talent and hard work, but by modern medicine.
It's not the medicine and diet and exercise that made Barry Bonds the greatest hitter of all time. It was illegal drugs. It wasn't a work regimen that made Roger 'the Rocket' Clemens one of baseball's best pitchers. It was drugs.
Drugs. The kind of drugs that enhance the body's ability to do things in sports that no mortal man has ever done. At least, not since Hercules battled the visigoths.
Even more of a problem than star players taking drugs is the public reaction to star players taking drugs. Guess what? A few are outraged but too many sports fans expect their heroes to do anything possible to gain an edge in their respective sport, legal or otherwise.
Baseball, like any major sport, is man against man, talent against wile, experience against the ravages of aging. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs on a diet of hot dogs and beer. Henry Aaron topped Ruth's record the old fashioned way. Talent, hard work, longevity, sans beef parts stuffed into a sausage casing, and inebriating liquid refreshment.
The likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and other offenders of the modern baseball era deserve to go down in history, too. They brought shame to the game.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
It is not surprising that baseball players use illegal performance enhancing drugs. It is surprising how pervasive the habit has become in modern times, and how many long-standing, hard-earned records have been broken-- not by talent and hard work, but by modern medicine.
It's not the medicine and diet and exercise that made Barry Bonds the greatest hitter of all time. It was illegal drugs. It wasn't a work regimen that made Roger 'the Rocket' Clemens one of baseball's best pitchers. It was drugs.
Drugs. The kind of drugs that enhance the body's ability to do things in sports that no mortal man has ever done. At least, not since Hercules battled the visigoths.
Even more of a problem than star players taking drugs is the public reaction to star players taking drugs. Guess what? A few are outraged but too many sports fans expect their heroes to do anything possible to gain an edge in their respective sport, legal or otherwise.
Baseball, like any major sport, is man against man, talent against wile, experience against the ravages of aging. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs on a diet of hot dogs and beer. Henry Aaron topped Ruth's record the old fashioned way. Talent, hard work, longevity, sans beef parts stuffed into a sausage casing, and inebriating liquid refreshment.
The likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and other offenders of the modern baseball era deserve to go down in history, too. They brought shame to the game.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
