You Have to be Kidding
Listed in: BaseballSo yesterday the news came out that everyone's Golden Boy, Rick Ankiel, received HGH through an illegal prescription drug ring in 2004. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Ankiel was a great story...guy loses his mind on the mound, never recovers his phenom status, comes back as an outfielder, and starts smacking home runs...The Natural, all that. Like I said, it was a great story. Then this. Oh well Rick, it was a great run, but get used to being booed everywhere you go.
Oh wait, apparently not. See, it seems like everyone wants to give Ankiel a pass. "He was just using it to recover from Tommy John surgery," they say, or "it wasn't technically against the rules of baseball (even though he got it illegally)." You know who else didn't technically break any baseball rules, but has been pilloried for his alleged abuse of HGH? Yeah, that's right, Public Enemy #1 Barry Bonds. For a lot of people, Bonds' claims that his lack of popularity was because he's black just seemed silly. People didn't hate him because he was black, they hated him because he cheated. Only now, who looks silly? Not Bonds, but the people who seem insistent on defending Ankiel.
Rick Ankiel cheated, plain and simple. People who say there's a difference between him and Bonds are just kidding themselves. So are the people who say the difference is that "Bonds is an asshole." I ask you this: have any of you met Bonds (or Ankiel)? Will you? Does it matter that Bonds is an asshole? No, what apparently matters to you is that Bonds is an outspoken, defiant black man, while Ankiel is some soft-spoken humble white kid who's clearly not at all mentally stable, considering his highly-publicized meltdown on the mound and inability to pitch successfully again. Who here would be surprised if he melted down in the batter's box one day and stopped being able to hit?
The sad thing is that neither Ankiel nor Bonds really deserve the hatred. They're just the tip of a very large iceberg. Over a year ago, when the news about Jason Grimsley's PED use came out, I wrote
But now, everyone who puts on a jersey is suspect. We've entered a time in which we must acknowledge that not only is PED use rampant, but utterly unstoppable. As much as I'd like to believe that none of my more favored Mariners are using PEDs, I have nothing to back that up but my (almost certainly misguided) faith.So what does this mean? I'd say we're embarking on a new era in baseball (and by extension, sports). It's certainly been harder and harder over the last 20 or 30 years to view athletes as heroes, but now I think it's not just difficult, it's unwise. It's time to put sports in a more reasonable context: just like actors will have all sorts of things done to their bodies in order to earn more money, even if the long-term health effects are at best unknown, so too will athletes. With the amount of money at stake, it would be foolish to assume otherwise. Perhaps if we're concerned that our children will take to using PEDs in furtherance of their dreams of professional stardom, we could either encourage them to use their talents in other, more worthwhile ways, or at least maybe keep an eye or two on what they're doing to themselves.
I'm not sure there's anything wrong with this approach. These guys are great at baseball, but we all know they want to win and do as well as they can. Just like most everyone else, they saw a way to get better, and took it. Does that make Ankiel (or Bonds) a good guy? No, not in my mind...it makes them perhaps a bit overzealous, but when everyone else around you is using, you do what you have to. What bothers me is the fact that the sports public seems to be interested in pillorying (or maybe lynching) one of those two, while the other seems to be getting something of a free pass. Even the normally astute Will Leitch (probably because of his well-publicized love affair with Ankiel) could only muster a weak "he's my guy" defense. Or take guys like Dan Shanoff, who start out by saying Ankiel is worse than Bonds, but soft-pedal that by saying that they're really just sad that Ankiel cheated, not angry like they are with Bonds. As I said, neither player deserves the anger, but if you're going to get outraged about Bonds it's the height of hypocrisy to not get angry at Ankiel.
I'm writing this piece for many of the same reasons Ben wrote about the Sonics...because sometimes it's better to have someone "removed" from the situation write when the story is this upsetting. Still, I wanted to quote you the e-mail I got from Ben this morning about this story.
I admit I've never been so shocked, not at Ankiel, but reading message boards about it. The guy has got loads of support, saying he did nothing wrong. WTF? He did the same damn thing Barry Bonds did!!!This is why black people are so damn paranoid. And you know what? If the sympathetic sentiment that it appears Ankiel is getting is more than this crowd (Scott Miller, where art thou?) it will validate everything Bonds said about the racist nature of why people were trying to bring him down.
I'm actually pissed right now. The other cases of white athletes being glossed over for black ones in their crimes (David Kircus, Scott Olsen) had the excuse of "he's not famous enough". But shit, after all the Ankiel hype? No excuse.
