Nobody really cares about the Pro Bowl, let’s face it. I bet half of legitimate football fans didn’t even know what time it was on at yesterday – or even cared when it was on. I did watch portions of the game while at work and, unsurprisingly, Larry Fitzgerald won the MVP and a probably some sort of car that comes with that title. And, seriously, the jump-ball, fade route to Fitzgerald should just be banned; there’s absolutely no way to stop it.
But really, the big news of the weekend wasn’t an annual all-star game that nobody watches, it was the latest baseball superstar who has tested positive for using a PED. That’s right, this weekend was all about A-Rod.
Now, as much as it has been plastered over both SI.com and ESPN.com, I’ve been trying to avoid it. Why? Because it’s the same old story now; I just have to read the headline or subhead for whoever’s name, then discount their performances a bit in my mind. Every steroid story of the past few years is basically a rewrite with new details. The union, player, agent, team and league will say the same things they did the last time a big name flunked a piss-test. The player and the agent pass the buck to the union, the union pleads ignorance, the team backs up the player, whatever the story is and the league tries to stay as far away as possible.
Really, I don’t think that the drugs made too much of an impact on Alex Rodriguez’s career. Notice that even this past season, he’s put up huge numbers when there’s been no way to get passed a random drug test. So, I’m not going to discount his accomplishments too much. People always forget that while, yeah, steroids help you hit the ball farther, but they don’t help you hit it properly – or at all. A-Rod was still spraying the ball around the field when he put up those huge numbers, it wasn’t all homers.
But, really, isn’t it great that adding an “I†to his nickname gives Rodriguez the fabulously innovative A-Roid title? I really like it. Almost as much as our paper’s “Dis-Graceland†headline for the Raptors shooting less than 30% in a pathetic loss in Memphis on Saturday.