Mr. Hanky, the Voice of Reason?
Proving that if you say enough crazy shit eventually you’ll make sense, Hank Steinbrenner became the champion of one of my favorite causes today:
“I don’t like baseball being singled out,” the New York Yankees senior vice president said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Monday night.
“Everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don’t know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it’s not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.”
This is something I’ve been saying for awhile. Sure the NFL gets a free pass because it had a policy in place long before, and because of the numbers, and because people don’t really give a crap about the players on the field because we don’t expect them to be human and on and on, but you know what, none of those reasons are any good. They don’t have anything to do with the actual game on the field or the policies now.
At this point, I’m ready to just give up. Perception isn’t going to change. If anything, steroids will be accepted as a part of the game now. No fans think sports are clean in this day and age. And so what? If Hank Steinbrenner is going to be the biggest advocate for baseball against the NFL, well that’s not a fight MLB is going to win. Who cares anyway? Football might be the new American pastime, but that’s just because it’s a lazy, mindless game that’s easy to follow and requires little commitment. Is that really what I want baseball to be? Pass.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I think the difference is that ever since the Black Sox scandal (and probably before) baseball has had an anti-cheating ethos or at least perception, whereas the NFL hasn’t really concerned itself with cheating or had any major brouhahas (until Bill Belichick came around anyway). Plus, there’s the whole stat obsession. When a baseball player cheats he fucks with the record books; when a lineman uses PEDS…so what? He gets more “pancakes”? No quantifiable repercussions.
Anyway, the average football fan can’t even spell PED, so it’s hardly surprising they don’t give a shit.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Hey, don’t insult pancakes. Orlando Pace got like 78 pancakes in 1999; that’s at least as important as Bonds’ 73 HR.
As a sidenote, I think MLB should start counting catcher collisions as a stat to see which baserunners are the most gritty and badass. I’m guessing it’s someone like AJ Pierzynski.
February 21st, 2008 at 2:54 am
It might mean something if the Yanks hadn’t given a known steroid user (Giambi) $100 million…it might mean something if baseball had done something about the rampant steroid use before Congress forced them too.
The NFL has been testing for steroids since 1990…so given the disparity in times, I think Hank needs to shut the fuck up.