Sports Rant

I was talking to Niles (my roomate) about steroids and how I don’t give a you-know-what who used them in the steroid era when Alex Rodriguez’s name came up. I was probably the one who did it and I claimed that I was sure he had used steroids. This was about a month ago, before any of the current stuff about him came out.

Look at the guy. You don’t come up as a skinny shortstop and turn into the Incredible Hulk without steroids. You turn into David Eckstein or Michael Young (good name, btw) and you definitely don’t put up A-Roid numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy. He’s the best baseball player I’m ever going to see play and will probably go down as one of the best of all time if the detractors can get off the three years of doing steroid tip. Like I said, I personally don’t care one bit about whether or not a player used steroids in the “steroid era.” Some of baseball’s heroes have done way worse things. Murder, drugs, alcoholism, you name it, someone’s done it, yet Pete Rose — another one of the game’s greatest players and one of my favorites — will never get into the Hall of Fame because he gambled on the game.

Speaking of Mr. Rose, I randomly met him one day as my dad and I were walking through Caesar’s Palace. It was one of those times that you forget easily but always brings a smile to your face when you are reminded of them. Granted, he basically couldn’t care less about me, but he shook my hand and said something I don’t remember anymore, but it was still Pete Rose.

Back to reality.

This past football season may have been the most miserable in recent memory. My team, the Eagles — and for those of you who care, I grew up liking Randall Cunningham, so despite being from Hawaii where we have no sports teams worth mentioning, I am an Eagles fan. Same goes for the Oakland Athletics since I liked Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire when I was a kid — were favored to win the division and go to the Super Bowl, but obviously couldn’t put it together for basically the entire season. There were the typical flashes of greatness, but on the whole they were inconsistent and, as usual, struggle in big games.

The New York Giants somehow got written off in favor of the clearly inferior Eagles and decided to show up as the season’s Patriots, steamrolling people until they decided to stop playing or got hurt. The Patriots’ season was obviously a dead end when Tom Brady went down in week two, but they still managed to put up an admirable 11 wins on their way to being the first 11-win team to miss the playoffs. Cassel is the real deal, as I said when Brady went down, and he managed to prove it as the season went on. He recently was franchised by the team to the tune of $15 million or something absurd. Who wouldn’t want to be a backup quarterback in the NFL?

There was some stupid water pill scandal in the middle of the year involving Deuce McCallister and the Minnesota Williams’ but that’s another thing I could care less about. I bring this up because they were supposed to get suspended for longer than a game or whatever they got, but a Minnesota judge threw the case out. GO VIKINGS!

I kind of hope my favorite player and still one the best quarterbacks in the league goes to the Vikes next year. They have a lot of pieces in place and are really only missing a qb.

On the subject of scandals and Donny Mac, anyone who made fun of the guy for not knowing about ties in regular season games needs to shut it. The only reason you as a fan would have known that there were ties is because your team was involved in one in relatively recent history, you get a giant nerd boner about rules, or you’re faking it. It’s not really Donovan’s job to know that there are ties involved. He gets paid to throw the ball all over the field and sometimes run around, which we does every year with All-Pro numbers.

So I said that I don’t care about steroids and all that stuff, and I really dont, but I’m glad that Barry Bonds is out of baseball. That guy was quite an asshole and he shouldn’t be surprised that nobody wants to sign him. I think he was an awesome player, but he has no legs anymore and nobody wants to bring in a figure as unliked as he is. The fact that he and his agent want to file some kind of lawsuit against baseball for colluding to keep him unsigned is hilarious. It’s a sign that he’s nowhere near the same player, that’s all.

Speaking of unsigned players, Manny Ramirez really needs to sign something with the Dodgers soon. He’s one of those guys who probably have nothing left after baseball (at least I can’t see him doing anything else), so in true Julio Franco style, he’ll play until he’s 80. At this point it seems like he is looking for a 32-year deal worth $640 million or something based on the offers his crew has rejected. He’s not going to get a long-term deal at age 37 or 38, and he’s not going to get more money than the best player in baseball, so there’s not point in him holding out. I don’t get it, but I’m not Scott Boras.

Getting close to 1,000 words, so I’m going to cut it off here. I’d like to hear anyone’s thoughts on any of this.

Bye!