POWER MOVE
’Roid era doesn’t come between Pudge and Hall
PERHAPS baseball’s Hall of Fame can place a plaque somewhere in a dark corner or down a hall to a broom closet — or next to Bud Selig’s plaque — in recognition of the Unknown Players, those lost within the steroid era because they played clean.
There had to be some, no? Call it Suckers’ Alley. Maybe the MLBPA could help finance it, given its riches and ex-boss Donald Fehr’s willingness to sacrifice his clean union players — to limit, if not end, their earnings and careers.
After all, it stands to reason that for every guy who juiced his way to fame and fortune on Selig and Fehr’s watch, those who didn’t capitulate to PEDs were sold down the Snake River.
So here’s the deal: You can keep fighting the good fight and keep losing every one. Or you can surrender to the badly diminished standards by indulging it all with a crooked smile, an empty head and an ESPN phone app.
Or, sickened by the worsening stench, you can get out, stay out.
It’s not as if we don’t have options; it’s just that none, unlike Roger Goodell’s put-up or get-out “good investment” PSLs, seem any more appealing than “The Best of Moose Johnston, Vol. 3.”
In freshly elected Hall of Famer Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, we have a player who broke in as a smallish, skinny catcher who didn’t hit many home runs, then suddenly became a muscles-swollen slugger who hit lots of home runs, then, after money-first Selig pretended to be the last to know, became a musclesdeflated catcher who didn’t hit a lot of home runs.
In 1999, when Mark McGwire hit 65 and Sammy Sosa 63 — both Exhibits A in the stink line and the latter another former light-middleweight turned anvil — Rodriguez’s 35 homers placed him among the 45 who hit 34 or more.
This past season, just 17 players hit 34 or more, Mark Trumbo’s 47 being the most. Trumbo’s last came on Sept. 30. In 1999, McGwire hit his 47th on Aug. 14.
So sports’ most sanctified of shrines, which just honored I-see-nothing Selig with E-ZPass entry, continues to compromise its standards.
But newly lowered standards favor those who accept or excuse compromised integrity.
Four minutes into Sunday’s Packers-Cowboys, Dallas defensive end Benson Mayowa tackled running back Aaron Ripkowski for no gain. Ripkowski was on his way down when linebacker Anthony Hitchens fell on him.
Regardless, Hitchens rose to perform a lookwhat-I-did prance, 20 yards into Green Bay territory. Hooray for me! And FOX’s camera dutifully followed him. Like ESPN’s “news hounds,” he wanted credit for someone else’s work — what the military calls “stolen honor” — and FOX obliged.
Meantime, Aaron Rodgers was at the line of scrimmage going nohuddle, quick-snap. Dallas, insouciant except for Hitchens, was flagged for too many men on the field.
Hitchens wasn’t fingered as the culprit, but with all his self-love, he risked being called offside — in a playoff game — in order to excessively pat himself on the back for a play he didn’t make!
Then again, once upon a time, games — especially the biggest ones — stood littleto-zero chance of being determined by immodest, mindlessly macho, me-first behavior. Well, of course not!
Now? Well, two players who have been among the most rewarded — endorsements, included — for their selfish, penalized, attention-demanding on and off-field misconduct — playoffs included — are Antonio Brown and Odell Beckham Jr. Such actors and their acts have been shoved at us, as if we much favor them to those who would stand out as both good players and well-comported men. But I don’t recall being asked, you? Twerker Brown’s covert recording and distribution of a locker-room speech in which Steelers’ coach Mike Tomlin is heard mouthing classless trash about the Patriots might make Tomlin regret being a “players’ coach” — now pandering code for indulging players’ antisocial, even criminal behavior.
One would think that Tomlin had learned from the 2009 Super Bowl, when receiver Santonio Holmes went on an post-play medance deep into Cardinals’ territory after a catch-and-run, forcing Pittsburgh to use its last timeout, down three, 49 seconds left.
The Steelers scored to win, but if Holmes had any idea of the circumstances — any awareness beyond self-smitten awareness — he didn’t care.
Tomlin’s teams remain inclined toward self-inflicted doom. Last January, the Steelers won a playoff game, 18-16, only because the Bengals insisted on being flagged for the last three of eight unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. The Steelers otherwise were penalized 10 times for 142 yards!
But that is another diminished, if not lost, standard. The Alabama-Clemson national title game Jan. 9 was determined to a great but unquantifiable degree by an unsportsmanlike conduct call against ’Bama with 5:28 left. Yet, our diminished standards allowed that to go under-reported or unreported, no big deal.
So you can keep fighting and losing the good fight, surrender to it all with a vacant and blissful smile, or, knowing you tried hard but can’t further compromise your standards or suffer the stench, you can get out, stay out.