Performance Enhancing Post

A combination of illness and Christmastime business has conspired to keep me from blogging lately.  As an alternative, I'm going to post the text of a great recent column by sportswriter Rick Reilly on espn.com:

I'm so pumped up for next July in Cooperstown!

I can't wait to see who's going to be in the crowd at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony for new members Tony La Russa, Bobby Cox and Joe Torre.

Maybe Mark McGwire will show up?  It might be as close as he'll ever get.  La Russa managed him for 15 seasons in both Oakland and St. Louis and says he never saw McGwire do a single steroid.  Imagine that.

Maybe Alex Rodriguez will attend?  He probably won't get in, either.  Former New York Yankees skipper Torre says he didn't even notice A-Roid's alleged PED use in the four years he managed him.  A-Roid's got plenty of time to go to Cooperstown.  He's appealing a 211-game suspension for PEDs.  Torre?  No ban for him.  In fact, he's an executive vice president of Major League Baseball now.

Maybe former Atlanta Braves manager Cox will look out in the crowd to see his old star Gary Sheffield. Probably not.  Cox says he never saw all the PEDs Sheffield was taking when he had him right under his nose in the Atlanta clubhouse.

In all, the three managers being inducted oversaw at least 34 players who've been implicated as PED users and never noticed a thing wrong.

You could build a wing with the admitted and suspected drug cheats they won with:  A-Rod, Roger Clemens (Torre), Jason Giambi (Torre and La Russa), McGwire, Jose Canseco (La Russa), Melky Cabrera (Torre and Cox), David Justice (Torre and Cox), Andy Pettite (Torre), Manny Ramirez (Torre with the Dodgers) and Sheffield (Torre and Cox.)

If we get really lucky, maybe disgraced HGH pitcher Darren Holmes will show up. He played under all three of them!

It's just another year in the Hall of Farce, where the codes of conduct shift like beach sand; where the rules for one set of men are ignored for another; where PED poppers can never enter, but the men who turned their backs to the cheating get gleaming, bronze plaques.

Hail The Great Enablers!

La Russa's slipping on the Hall of Fame jersey Monday is the sight that really tested my gag reflex.  He did more for juicers than Jack LaLanne.  He managed McGwire and Canseco -- the Wright Brothers of the Druggie Era -- for 21 combined seasons.  He made millions on their pimpled backs, won his first World Series title on their syringes and built his 33-year managing career on their artificially carved biceps.

Under La Russa, the Oakland clubhouse became a kind of leather-upholstered showroom for creams, rubs and injections that allowed players to work out harder, recover quicker and attack the game like a wolf in a hen house.  It didn't change much in St. Louis, either, where he says he didn't notice what McGwire, Troy Glaus, Fernando Vina and Ryan Franklin were doing.

He spent eight hours a day around these guys, eight months a year, and yet he never saw a thing.  Maybe he dressed in a different clubhouse?

But he goes into the HOF and those players never will.  Maybe he can send them some Instagrams.

Hey, you think any of the three skips will mention how PEDS helped them get to that sunny afternoon in Cooperstown?

Oh, and I can't forget to thank Katalina at Tijuana Pharmacy for all her help. Like my players always said, "We can't get cut without Kat!"

You won't even have to be in Cooperstown to smell the hypocrisy.  Even the faintest scent of a rumor of PED use is enough to sink a player now.

Managers?  Odorless.

Take Houston Astros great Craig Biggio. He had more than enough career to get in, and even though there isn't a stitch of evidence against him, the writers have kept him out because they have a niggling hunch he might've used.

Remember, kids:  If you play the game under even a single cloud of suspicion, you're out.  Manage it under one? Come on in and pull up a plaque!

Can you imagine this in any other sport?  Do you think for a second Johan Bruyneel, the manager of all of Lance Armstrong's cheating, champion Tour de France teams, didn't know what was going on?  You figure Bonnie and Clyde's driver just thought they were always running late?

Next month, the writers are expected to vote down McGwire for the eighth time and Clemens for the second time.  They're right to do it.  Those guys are tainted beyond any reasonable doubt, though Clemens still maintains innocence.  But for the expansion error committee to let these three managers in -- unanimously, no less -- after winning hundreds of games with better chemistry is the gold standard of double standards.

If you believe they didn't know, then you'll fit perfectly in Dupers Town.

Lancing Lance

Like everyone else who cheered for Lance Armstrong, I'm disappointed.  Not that he doped, not even that he lied about it - only naive people would have thought differently.  That was the cycling culture, just like it was the pro baseball culture years ago.  But it is very disappointing to hear about the lengths he went to cover up the lies, the way he tried to destroy people.

However, while everybody is piling on their disgust, I still find myself asking why people want to pile on.  He's going to be ruined financially, and considered a cheat and a coward the rest of his life, but he can still inspire people with this story about beating cancer and rising to the top of his profession.

Consider how society looks at Tiger Woods now.  Nobody lost more than he did with his extra-marital shenanigans.  Lost wealth, lost family, even lost his professional edge, and still has not regained his form as the best golfer in the world.  Plus, and he lied to friends and angered fans in the process.

Yet, there are lots of people cheering for Tiger Woods in golf tournaments.  Just did a new TV commercial that has people talking.  Maybe people just want to like Tiger Woods.  And after a long while, people will start to want to like Lance Armstrong again, especially if he keeps up his anti-cancer work.

Both of those guys lied and hurt people.  They should suffer and be accountable for that.  Ultimately, though, isn't it likely Lance Armstrong will win fans back as Tiger Woods has?

People forgive and forget - especially forget.  We see it time after time after time.  There's no reason to think this won't be another American story of redemption.

It Doesn't Mean Anything

In the past decade or so, we have become an nation of symbols for causes.  These symbols might come in the form of ribbons or wristbands (think LiveStrong, for cancer awareness), or even something as simple as a color (think pink, for breast cancer awareness).

People often show off many different symbols for many different causes, but they all have one thing in common:  They don't often help the cause.

I've always thought the best example of this is people who put magnetic 'I Support Our Troops' ribbons on their vehicles.  This got to be a big deal while Americans were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it was all very nice, but it didn't do a single thing for the soldier or his/her family.  Not one thing.  But hey, that vehicle is supporting the troops, right?

Another more recent example are the various symbols to show support for the families (or is it the victims?) of the Newtown, CT shooting.  Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, but prayers and ribbons aren't going to do anything for either the families or the victims.  If people really want to do something that matters, they need to speak out publicly against a crazy gun culture that allows the sale of semi-automatic weapons.  That will not completely stop these types of killings, but it would at least save some lives, and maybe at least one good thing can come from those deaths.

Full disclosure - I've been a long-time wearer of the yellow LiveStrong wristband, a symbol for cancer awareness, the one that started the entire wristband craze.  While I wear it to remind me of those I know who had/have cancer, I also actually do something about it by donating every year to the American Cancer Society.  I get a kick out of all the people who simply stopped wearing it once it lost it's cache', and again this year once Lance Armstrong fell from grace.  Do they suddenly not care about cancer?  Or maybe they only care when the cause or its leader is popular?

So if you wear red or pink or purple, or a ribbon or a wristband or a magnet, stop for a moment and ask yourself:  Are you truly making things better for those you say you support, or are you really just pretending, as a way to make yourself look better?

It's Not About The Bike

I was thinking the same thing so just click here.