Mitch Slapped!

Man, I can’t even begin to describe how sick I am of steroid talk. I’d rather change George Mitchell’s bedpan than listen to another minute of this crap, but one little nugget has emerged in the past 24 hours that I need to vent about:

Roger Clemens is not going to Cooperstown.

Buster Olney, who’s one of my favorite writers ever and a Hall of Fame voter, went on the radio this morning and stated his belief that Rocket will get shut out. The old assholes, Olney’s brethren on the Baseball Writers Association of America, will make an example out of Rocket and pass him by.

(Ed. note: I saw it after I wrote this post, but check out Buster's blog from a couple days ago. Reasonable, rational, lucid...pretty much the opposite of every other hack that votes on baseball awards and honors. The way to save baseball would be to replace Bud Selig--a small-minded, reactionary weasel--with Buster Olney.)

I hate Clemens. If he decided to fall down a well tomorrow I’d throw a party. But I’ll be God damned if he’s not the greatest pitcher I’ve ever seen, better than Nolan Ryan. Doc Gooden and Pedro Martinez may have been better for stretches, but Roger Clemens is hands down the greatest pitcher of the last 50 years. And now he will take his seat alongside Shoeless Joe Jackson, Pete Rose, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds—outcasts sitting on a bench outside the gates of baseball’s hallowed Hall.

I’m not crying for Rocket, but this whole thing is a joke. You can’t penalize players who were named in the Mitchell Report, because it’s alarmingly incomplete and unsubstantiated. Sammy Sosa’s name appears nowhere within it. Does that mean he gets in to the Hall now, baseball writers?

Let’s take another example, Clemens’ old Astro teammate Craig Biggio. He was left out of the report as well, and to my knowledge has never been implicated in any steroid controversy. But he’s been a Major League Baseball Player for the last two decades, so let’s just assume he’s been on the juice.

In five years, when both Biggio and Rocket are eligible for induction, Biggio will get in and Rocket--ten times the player--will not. Because no one ratted on Biggio. Nice system.

The easy answer for any of these fucks is don’t do drugs. The odds that someone would say you were cheating if you weren’t is slim. But to think that we’re any closer to solving baseball’s issue with steroids after the Mitchell Report came out, or to placing the Steroid Era in some sort of historical context, that’s preposterous.

I would like to induct any writers who keep Barry or Rocket—the two greatest players of my generation—out of Cooperstown into another Hall. My personal Hall of Fuck You You’re Stupid.