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Right or wrong, Piazza among those tainted because they played during steroid era
Those emails and tweets? The ones in which you told me that my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was all that’s wrong with the world? I received them.
They can be summed up thus: Why, oh, why didn’t you vote for Candidate A, who is warm, wholesome, clean as a whistle and a former member of the team I have been rooting for since I was conceived? P.S. You’re a hideous man.
Answer: Because I didn’t think Candidate A was deserving, in the same way you didn’t vote for your local library board member because you were pretty sure he and one of the librarians were doing more than re-stacking books together.
In other words, because we all bring our prejudices, beliefs and judgments into the voting booth.
Ken Griffey Jr., Trevor Hoffman and Alan Trammell got my votes.
Griffey and Mike Piazza were elected to the Hall on Wednesday.
Thank you for all the pleasant missives, Jeff Bagwell fans.
True, Piazza fans, your hero indeed has never been found guilty of taking steroids.
But performance-enhancing drugs were the scourge of baseball for about a 20-year period, and I look through that lens when I’m voting. No apologies. Lots of writers who have ballots have no such lens. They don’t have to apologize either.
Many of you believe that President Obama is evil incarnate, and many others believe Donald Trump is the greatest threat to humanity. Some of that belief is based on your feelings, research and personal histories, and some of it is based on how either man wore his tie that one Tuesday back in March. We call that “democracy.’’
I look at Piazza and, for my own reasons, don’t see a Hall of Famer. Is that uninformed and wrongheaded? Maybe. But the ballot doesn’t check my information or my head. It just wants my check mark.
Why did I vote the way I did? Because I could.
Urlacher has hair, butwhat about his fans who don’t?
Idon’t worry about Brian Urlacher and his transplanted hair. They’ll be fine. do worry about a whole generation of Chicago-area men with shaved heads, barbed-wire tattoos on their arms and No. 54 Bears jerseys. They are lost sheep— once-balding, now-shorn sheep who idolized and emulated their leader and presently find themselves directionless and as bald as a box of crystal balls.
Uncle Fester has become Cousin Itt.
Urlacher was all over the place Tuesday, showing off his new hair to various media outlets. He seemed completely at ease with his decision to take some of the hair from the back of his head and have it planted on top, where it has grown like a Chia Pet. Good for him. Confidence is a wonderful thing.
But what about those men who once looked at a shaved Urlacher and saw a way out for their premature baldness? If you’ve gone to any Bears games since 2000, when the retired linebacker’s career started, you know of whom I speak. These are the guys who cut their hair, buffed their scalps, bought an Urlacher jersey, got the ink job straight out of Cliched Tattoos for $300 and slapped on eye black, if not
literally than at least in spirit with their hero. You can still see them on game days at Soldier Field.
What happens now to these forgotten people, these lost souls, these turtleheaded followers with no one left to follow?
I recommend letting it all hang out, however much that might be, even if it’s only a little bit on the sides. The whole idea of the shaved head, paradoxically, is to pretend you’re not balding. The shaver is saying, “I have chosen to shave my head as a style statement. You have no idea if I’m bald or if I have flowing hair like Troy Polamalu.’’ Actually, yes we do. Urlacher has left you. He led you down one path and left you there. Do not end up like the soldier who comes out of the jungle 50 years after the war is over. It’s time to rise up and embrace who you are. Stop fighting it. Balding is beautiful from what I’m told.
Time for Bears to draft QB in third round or higher
Bears general manager Ryan Pace, emerging from his season-long silence, said Monday he wouldn’t rule out taking a quarterback in the first round of the draft.
That’s probably not going to happen, but it’s an acknowledgment that 32-yearold Jay Cutler isn’t going to play forever, and, more to the point, no one knows how long this decent version of Cutler will last.
It’s true that the talent-poor Bears have bigger needs elsewhere. They could use an inside linebacker, a pass rusher and some defensive backs. But they have to draft a quarterback. The experts tell us this isn’t supposed to be a good year for QBs. No matter. Good personnel departments find players where there aren’t supposed to be any.
It’s time for a serious commitment. It’s time for the Bears to take a quarterback in the third round or higher. While they push for a big turnaround from a 6-10 season, they also need to be thinking longer term. Former Bears general manager Jerry Angelo traded for Cutler in 2009 because the franchise had whiffed so often on the position. That rationalization is why, no matter how up and down Cutler has been as a Bear, the quarterback has had unwavering support from a core of people in Chicago. He’s better than anyone we’ve had, that core sings in unison. It’s why former general manager Phil Emery gave Cutler that crazy contract in 2014.
It’s why there are two former Bears general managers.
This isn’t to say that franchise quarterbacks don’t come from later rounds. It’s to say that going that route hasn’t worked for the Bears.
They need to have a replacement ready for Cutler. Easier said than done, I know. But other teams have done it without using a first-round choice. Brett Favre and Drew Brees were secondround picks. Russell Wilson was a thirdround pick, and Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth-round.
If it can happen once, it can happen again.