Who’d have thought that the ONLY stand-up guy from what co-conspirator/enabler-in-chief Bud Selig has incorrectly called the “so-called Steroids Era” would be lowlife dirtbag Jose Canseco? But that’s STILL the case even after Mark McGwire “courageously” made his scripted, mendacious “confession” to Bob Costas the other day.
To this day, Canseco is the ONLY former baseball player – and that includes the late, lamented Ken Caminiti — who not only admits to having taken ‘roids, but goes further to admit what we all know about all the other weasels who still won’t admit the full truth, namely: he not only took them, but he knew exactly WHAT he was taking — none of this “some unknown person or persons handed me some unidentified substance and told me to take it and I, naïve multimillionaire manchild that I am, took it without asking any questions”; he knew WHY he was taking them, and it was to get bigger and stronger and to hit balls farther, NOT (or not mainly) for some BS reason like “recovering from injury”; and he knew damn well that the ‘roids he was taking did the job he asked them to do, namely make warning-track flies into fence-clearers; and he knew damned well that with ‘roids, he was an All-Star, while without them, he was, well, Ozzie Canseco. (Maybe not the best analogy; apparently Ozzie took them, too, with rather glaringly worse results.)
Let’s be clear. My beef with McGwire and his ilk isn’t that he took steroids, and thus gave himself an improper advantage in both performance and, of course, earning power. That’s a given, and I’m still not happy about it, but that boat’s already sailed for me. It’s that instead of telling the truth, he STILL gives us a small dose of what Steven Colbert calls “truthiness” together with a whole mess of vile, cowardly lies. That’s called, “spin,” not ‘fessing up. McGwire’s nickname when he played was “Big Mac.” But the way he’s been pussyfooting around the truth ever since, he should now be known, officially, as “The Whopper.”
In this regard, let the record show that Canseco has challenged McGwire to a lie-detector contest. I’ve been on record for years as against the whole “lie detector” myth. Polygraph machines aren’t “lie detectors” in any meaningful sense; they are inherently unreliable; their use and interpretation is at best more art than science; and how good can they be when every single FBI or CIA agent later exposed (by accident) as a spy and traitor to the U.S. regularly underwent polygraph screening – allegedly by some of the best trained pros around – and always passed with flying colors? Nonetheless, my money’s on Canseco in any forum.
Where do we start with the McGwire smarm? How about “I wasn’t really cheating (in my own feeble mind) because I only took whatever I took (I can’t remember now what it really was, if I ever knew) because I took it to recover from injuries, not to gain a competitive advantage. Great, Mark. I’ll try running that by all the guys who DIDN’T cheat, and wound up taking longer than you to recover from injuries. What, advantage in recovering from injuries using illegal/banned substances doesn’t count as cheating?
How about “Yeah, Canseco was right ‘in general’ when he said I was using, but he lied through his teeth about us shooting up together in the toilet stalls.” Sorry, Mark. A woman can’t be just “a little bit pregnant,” and you can’t be just a little bit dirty. You’re either clean or you’re dirty, and there’s no in-between. You were as dirty (and as cowardly) as they come. Doesn’t matter if you only used “a little bit” because you didn’t want to look like Lou Ferrigno or The Terminator. You used, and you damned well knew what you were doing when you used. And don’t tell me that you didn’t really know what you were taking.
And please, Mark McLIAR, Bud Selig, Tony LaRussa (another pompous, self-righteous prevaricator if ever there was one) DO NOT try to pee on my back and tell me it’s raining. DO NOT tell me that steroids couldn’t really influence the game because no matter how many ‘roids you take, they don’t hit the curve ball or the fast ball for you.
What a fatuous load of drivel. Of course I and my ilk can’t hit major league pitching no matter how many kilos of ‘roids we take or how many hours we spend lifting weights. But what about someone who can hit the pitching, say, 20 percent of the time, but can’t hit it very far or very hard? ‘Roids will help those guys hit it farher, so that pop flies become first-row homers; they’ll help them hit balls harder, so that balls that would have been fielded cleanly become base hits; and they’ll help them have much better bat control, if they work at it, because they’re a lot stronger and can wait on pitches like they couldn’t before. Of course the juicers still have to work hard and practice. ‘Roids don’t hit homers by themselves. But only an inveterate liar like Selig or LaRussa would deny that ‘roids + hard work = a potent combination.
Here’s what we KNOW steroids did for a bunch of journeyman players: Sammy Sosa, a pedestrian, marginal major-leaguer at Texas, took ‘roids and suddenly hit 60+ homers annually; Brady Anderson (allegedly) took ‘roids and hit 50 homers and 110 RBIs in 1996 (and got a multi-million dollar contract out of it, despite never again approaching those numbers when he got smaller). We all know about Jason Giambi, of course, who parlayed ‘roids to one MVP and almost $100 Million, but what about his Yankees’ teammate, Aaron Boone (allegedly) and that 2003 season? What about Aaron’s brother, Bret (also “allegedly”)? What about poor, departed Ken Caminiti?
The issue isn’t, and has NEVER been, whether ‘roids made bad athletes suddenly able to hit major league pitching. It is, and has ALWAYS been, what it can do for marginal, or even good players. Marginal players who were contact hitters started juicing and almost overnight were able to hit balls 100 feet farther than they’d ever managed before. Chicks (and the guys who sign the players’ paychecks) dig the long ball. Guys like McGWIRE, who were already good but not quite supermen, suddenly started hitting opposite-field home runs off the handles of their bats, for Pete’s sake. And Barry Bonds, who already had a probable HOF career even before he’d ever heard of ‘roids (and still won’t admit that he juiced), became simply unbelievable.
So please don’t try to sell me the snake oil that verifiably performance enhancing substances don’t enhance performance.
Speaking of snake oil, how in heaven’s name does Lane Kiffin, of all people, wind up back at USC, this time as head coach? As an offensive play caller when Norm Chow left – and even before Chow left, apparently – he was, well, simply offensive. Perhaps no one could have won at Oakland under the (rusted) iron hand of Al Davis. But Kiffin was abysmal as the head coach there, even by Al Davis’s lackluster standards. And he hardly set the world on fire at Tennessee during his one year there – unless you count his amazing penchant for committing NCAA rules violations and making more verbal gaffes than Joe Biden.
All of which make him the perfect candidate to take over a USC program that NCAA violations problems of its own, and that hasn’t exactly been wowing the college football world with the razzle-dazzle of its offense lately. Way to go.
To be fair and balanced about it, though, who ever in his wildest dreams believed, when his name was announced, that Pete Carroll would achieve what he did at SC? But I’d still like to see what USC football’s police blotter looks like after a year or two of Kiffin. Not pretty, if what happened at Tennessee is any indication.
I was amazed to hear Norm Chow’s name mentioned as possible offensive coordinator, for two reasons. First, Kiffin’s main claim to fame is that he’s part of the Pete Carroll coaching “tree,” and it seems pretty clear that Carroll ran Chow off, perhaps because it galled Carroll that Chow was garnering praise for the offense’s ability to make adjustments, and to turn out Heisman Trophy QBs.
But, second, I had always understood that there was substantial bad blood between Kiffin and Chow, in part because Chow (rightly) felt that Kiffin had been promoted too quickly and beyond his level of competence (I mean, c’mon, letting Kiffin call plays and relegating Chow to quarterbacks coach when you’ve had Chow do the playcalling with such stunning success?), and in part because, some say. Kiffin was a punk.
Didn’t they nearly come to blows at least once? Didn’t Chow pretty much (correctly) call Kiffin and Sarkisian incompetent play-callers in praising De Wayne Walker after UCLA’s 13-9 win that kept the Trojans out of a sure-thing BCS Championship game? Didn’t Kiffin refuse to give Chow any props when UCLA beat Kiffin’s Vols, AT ROCKY TOP, this past season? And they’re now supposed to do a couple of public Hollywood-style air kisses and make like nothing ever happened?
What, exactly, has changed in the interim? It was bad enough when Carroll passively-aggressively insulted Chow by making Kiffin Chow’s equal in the offense – or maybe, as in “Animal Farm,” a bit “more equal.” Now we’re supposed to believe that Chow would be happy to report to Kiffin? Or that Kiffin would actually keep his greasy fingers out of the play-calling cookie jar?
I do think that Chow is kind of wasted at UCLA. In answer to Jon Castro’s question a couple of months ago about how brilliant Chow really was/is, given the sorry evidence of UCLA’s offensive woes this year, I kind of side with The Sportsgod on this one. Look at the material he has to work with. It’s the old chicken salad/chicken s*** conundrum. And I have no evidence whatever to back up this supposition, but I know that the UCLA head coach, whom Mr. Castro has christened “Newweasel,” has a huge ego, and believes himself even more of an offensive genius than Pete Carroll claimed to be. Not that his track record supports that assessment, but I think it’s the one he firmly believes. So who’s to say that The Weasel didn’t try to micromanage the UCLA offense, to its detriment and the detriment of Chow’s reputation?
What we DO know is that when Chow had preeminent talent to work with at USC, he did more with that level of talent than either Kiffin or Steve Sarkisian. I am not alone (in fact, I’m channeling Petros Papadakis) in believing that had Carroll left Chow the Hell alone and made him continue to feel welcome at SC, the Trojans would have won the 2005 Rose Bowl, and would have qualified for at least two more BCS Championship games, probably winning at least one. Of course, if ifs and ands were pots and pans, we’d have no need of tinkers.
Just when the Clippers were showing signs of life, we learn that the jinx is alive and well. Blake Griffin, though no fault of his own, is the new Shaun Livingston. Busted kneecap, out for season, microfracture surgery, will never regain explosiveness. Nice seeing you in Summer League.
It’s a real deflater, because the Clippers really have been playing well lately. Ironically, so has Memphis – the 19-18 Grizzlies, thank you very much — who dealt the Clips a heartbreaking loss on Tuesday. Stands to reason, though, that Zach Randolph, a pain-in-the-ass, selfish underachieving cancerous creep wherever he’s been, would suddenly blossom, sort of, once the Clippers dumped him. He may still be a creep, but he’s now a more-or-less in-shape, 20.5 ppg, 11.5 rpg creep who, as much as anyone, has been responsible for the positive record of a team that managed only 24 wins all of last season. Had to happen. It’s the Clippers after all. If it weren’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all.
The irony, I suppose, is that Griffin checked out as completely healthy when he was drafted. DeJuan Blair, on the other hand, fell to the Spurs because of concerns over lack of ACLs in his knees. Blair now turns out to be the healthy one. He scored 27 points and grabbed 21 boards for the Spurs in their 109-108 OT win over the Thunder on Wednesday.
It’s NFL playoff time, and therefore, as surely as night follows day, time for articles questioning why Peyton Manning keeps coming up small in the postseason. It’s an easy target. After all, Manning had a bit of a reputation as a choke artist even in college. In the pros, he’s been lights-out in the regular season but, despite QBing the winningest team of this millennium, going into Sunday’s game, he’s still under .500 all-time in the playoffs. Plus, although he was on the field throughout the Colts’ triumphant march to their one Super Bowl win, he was more of a passenger than a helmsman during most of it.
Truth to tell, I’ve felt that way about him lots of times. On the other hand, maybe the Colts had regular-season records that were better than they should have been, BECAUSE of Manning, and made people like me overrate their chances in the postseason. Maybe Tony Dungy, who did a lot of great things in football (like bring Tampa Bay back to respectability before being dumped by the Glazers) never was a very good game-planner or in-game coach. And maybe the Colts didn’t have the personnel to compete in the postseason. Like when New England got away with mugging the Colts’ smurf-like wide receivers that one year. I attributed the loss more to the failings of Marvin Harrison (obviously MUCH tougher with a gun in his hand), in particular, than to Manning. But Manning is the guy who gets paid the biggest bucks and gets the most accolades, so, tough. If he pooches again this season – despite the Colts’ well-publicized injury problems on defense and offense – he’ll officially be the A-Rod of football (without the serial adultery thing).
Brett Favre is an obvious lock for the HOF, and has had an outstanding comeback season, only a little tainted by the Vikings’ comparatively weak schedule. And, of course, his Vikes have beaten the Packers twice. For all I know, he’ll win three more games and his second Super Bowl. So it’s obvious that the Packers were wrong to let him go, right?
Not so fast. Aaron Rodgers isn’t Favre yet, and may never be, but he was pretty good himself this year. And Rodgers played behind an offensive line that did its best imitation of a sieve for much of the season. Rodgers is pretty mobile, but because of that line he got sacked more than any coastal English town during the years when the REAL Vikings were laying waste to much of Europe. Just imagine how the now-immobile Favre would have fared behind that line. He might not have lasted the season.
Rodgers played great in that wild-card game OT thriller at Arizona, his only three mistakes being the early interception, the overthrowing of Greg Jennings that would have meant an OT win, and, of course, the fumble that ensued on the next play, that gave the game to the Cards. But it’s not as if Favre never threw interceptions in big games when he was a Packer. Boy, did he ever. Including, naturally, the one he threw, into coverage, in OT in his last game for the Packers, AT LAMBEAU FIELD, that set up the Giants’ winning field goal. Maybe he would have hit Jennings in last Sunday’s game, as the Favre loyalists declaim lustily. But it’s an even-money bet that he’d have thrown a few INTs earlier that would have given the Cards a victory in regulation.
The fact that Favre has been almost MVP-good this year doesn’t mean that he’d have been nearly as good had he stayed active with the Packers. Especially with THIS YEAR’s Packers.
Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.
