DREW SHARP: Steroids era is permanent
September 17, 2006
Everyone's rooting hard for Ryan Howard, the Philadelphia Phillies' slugger. In his first full season, Howard is on pace to finish with 63 home runs.
And there's a movement afoot from the sports moralists to anoint Howard as the true and "clean" successor to Roger Maris' once single-season standard of 61. Forget Mark McGwire's 70 and Barry Bonds' 73.
It's a slap at the steroids era and an opportunity for baseball purists to inflict their brand of punishment for perceived previous wrongs.
But it still won't change history.
Major League Baseball can't ignore the artificial records produced from the steroids era because it would open a door of circumspection to other "tainted" periods of baseball.
If you're saying that Bonds' and McGwire's feats shouldn't count then you also must remove the accomplishments of those who thrived when some of the best baseball talent in the world was shunned due to the color of their skin through the first half of the 20th century.
You can't count Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak as the benchmark of consistency because he wasn't facing the best pitching available at that time. And the same would hold true for -- perish the thought -- Babe Ruth's 714 career home runs.
Fans and media want retribution for what they interpret as players attaining an immoral competitive advantage from chemical enhancement, but they must realize that seeking justice for past wrongs couldn't stop with steroids.
DON'T BLAME US: The public moans about the media preoccupation on sports' bad boys like T.O. and HGH and the rest of the alphabet mob. But the public gets its negative saturation of news because that's what it desires.
Roger Federer is a more dominant champion than Tiger Woods.
Who? He's the best tennis player in the world. He has won five of the last six and nine of the last 14 Grand Slam events. He's boring. He's a gentleman. He's law-abiding. And because of those deviant traits, there's no place for that in the popular sports conscience.
The media get blamed for this and it's a crock. There was plenty of coverage surrounding Federer's dominance at the U.S. Open, but few paid attention. There were plenty of comparisons, measuring Federer's brilliance against the other royalty of their respective sports. But it doesn't register with the masses because, deep down, the public loves staying mad at the millionaire athlete.
JUST WINGIN' IT: Want more evidence that nobody's seriously paying attention to the NHL? Sportsbook.com ranked the Red Wings as the favorite to win the Stanley Cup at 6-1 odds, just ahead of Ottawa at 7-1.
It's more a statement of name recognition than an honest appraisal of a team in transition.
