Giving Albert ALL of his MVPs
MIDDAY NEWS AND THOUGHTS:
THE STEROID EDITION
ALBERT, COME GET YOUR HARDWARE: Steroid talk is back in full bloom thanks to Alex Rodriguez. And Rick Reilly of ESPN.com says “It’s time to right some wrongs, one MVP at a time.” Reilly takes a stroll back through the Steroid Era, taking hardware away from those on the wrong side of the argument and handing it over to those he feels are the rightful owners. And no one would collect more in Reilly’s World than St. Louis Cardinal Albert Pujols.
Reilly writes, “You already have two MVPs, Albert, and you’re about to get three more, since Barry Bonds ripped you off worse than Bernie Madoff to win the award from 2002 to 2004.”
CARDINAL REDEMPTION? Joe Posnanski has a great piece on SI.com today about how things have been gone down over the years in the Steroid Era, from investigations to commissions, from committees to congressional hearings. And he points out that the day Mark McGwire and numerous other players appeared before Congress in a grilling Q&A session, perhaps McGwire took the best stance of all by just saying nothing.
Posnanski writes: “Nobody in baseball came across well that day. But the general consensus seemed to be that the big loser was a giant red-headed slugger named Mark McGwire. Nine times that day, McGwire said: “I’m not here to talk about the past,” or something very close to it. … Funny thing, though. Here it is, almost four years later, and since that day we’ve had the Rafael Palmeiro drug test, the Barry Bonds soap opera, the generally unhelpful Mitchell Report, the Roger Clemens ultimate fighting competition, witch hunts galore and now the Alex Rodriguez saga. … And looking back you have to wonder if McGwire is the one guy in this whole absurd steroid mess who actually got it, the one guy who has come out of this thing with his dignity reasonably intact.”
I don’t know how much his dignity is intact, but Posnanski does a great job making his case in this compelling piece. Check it out.
THE WATERCOOLER
He was young, he was stupid, he was naive. Those seem to be the prevailing answers A-Rod gave yesterday when asked why he tampered with steroids from 2001-2003. Young? Yes. Naive? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely. And this isn’t just about breaking baseball’s rules, this is about life and death. There were plenty of examples and literature available at that time to make folks aware of the dangers of using steroids. But perhaps the dangers just didn’t outweigh those lucrative contracts.
The whole saga got me to thinking about Ken Caminiti and how in a 2002 interview with Sports Illustrated he became the first former player to admit to using steroids. Two years later, at the age of 41, Caminiti was dead.
These slippery-slope thoughts led me to the question of the day for our panel. Please note in advance that these answers were not meant to imply wrongdoing by anyone and really have nothing to do with steroids. It’s just about players that left us too early. Perhaps you have some to add to the list.
QUESTION: History is littered with athletes dying too young (Remember Lou Gehrig’s speech in Pride of the Yankees?). Of all the athletes that have died too soon, who do you think you most missed having a chance to see play longer — or who you think might have had the greater impact on his sport if he had been around longer?
JOE STRAUSS
During the early and mid 80’s, Ralph Sampson, Michael Jordan and Len Bias were arguably the three most influential players in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Sampson and Jordan’s career are well-chronicled. But few remember that many basketball mavens rated Bias one of the top collegiate forwards ever. His cocaine-related death after the Boston Celtics made him the No. 2 overall pick in the 1986 draft took down the Maryland basketball program and played a significant role in the Celtics going 22 years between their 16th and 17th NBA Championship. There are those who believe had Bias not ingested cocaine two days after being drafted that the Celtics would have challenged the Detroit Pistons’ reign in the late 80’s and the Bulls’ dominance with Jordan in the early 1990’s. Not too long ago Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski rated Jordan and Bias the two best players he’d coached against. Bias was arguably the last great college player before the NCAA adopted the 3-point arc. Bias possessed a great mid-range jumper, a shot now little appreciated in the college game. It’s hard to believe a generation has passed since his death.
JEREMY RUTHERFORD
There’s no way Dale Earnhardt could have made a bigger impact on auto racing. His image was plastered on every piece of merchandise you could imagine and sold in gas stations from coast to coast. I wasn’t a big racing fan growing up, but Earnhardt made me watch. His legacy was cemented before his untimely death, but his glorious career had more to offer.
GERRY FRALEY
NASCAR took two hard body blows in 1993 when Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison, two of its best drivers, died in separate air accidents. Kulwicki, 39, was the defending Cup champion when he was killed in private-airplane crash near Blountsville, Tenn. Kulwicki had a degree in mechanical engineering from Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and he was in the forefront of applying science to racing. Allison, 32, was the polar opposite. A second-generation member of the “Alabama Gang,’’ Allison was the classic hard-charging, push-it-to-the-limit driver. He had 19 wins and 66 top-five finishes in 191 Cup starts. Allison died when the helicopter that he was piloting crashed in the infield at Talladega Superspeedway. A year earlier, Allison’s younger brother Clifford died from injuries received during a wreck while practicing at the Michigan International Speedway.
DERRICK GOOLD
Tempted to say Len Bias becaues of the pyrotechnic talent he had on the basketball court, but I’ll side with Roberto Clemente because of what he would have accomplished off the field, too. Clemente, at 38, had all of the numbers of a Hall of Famer — 3,000 hits, an MVP in ’66 — and there’s no telling how much more time he had in the game. It’s what he meant as an ambassador for the game and as a humanitarian that was snuffed out too young.
BILL COATS
I was a huge Roberto Clemente fan. I marveled at his great defense and big arm, his unorthodox hitting style, and I loved the all-out approach he took to the game. When his plane went down, it was a real jolt. He finished with 3,000 hits, exactly. Who knows how many more he might have produced.
STU DURANDO
When athletes die at an early age, my sadness comes from what I know of them away from their sport. I think about the well being of the family and young children they leave behind. I wonder what will become of the good work they might be doing in the community. I don’t think I’ve ever given consideration to what will be missed in terms of their athletic contributions. So, I can’t answer the question in those terms. I would use the example of Adam Litteken as a death that hits home. Adam was a high school hockey player at Francis Howell Central who died suddenly on the ice in 2007. He and hundreds of other young athletes have died suddenly and in relative obscurity from undetected heart conditions. Each time I read about a similar death I am saddened to think about the lives that have ended before they had a chance to really get started.
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ON THIS DATE
FEB. 18, 1998 — Beloved Chicago Cubs broadcaster (and former Cardinal broadcaster) Harry Caray dies at age 84.
