Neil Hayes, Here’s Your Sign

The latest participant in the sportswriter hand-wringing is the Sun Times’ Neil Hayes. In a column in today’s online issue, he expounds on the A-Rod revelations with all the craft, style, and logic one should expect from a sportswriter. Which is none. To wit: As much as we may want baseball’s steroid scandals to end they never will. The story never will die, not with Barry Bonds’ perjury trail soon getting underway, Roger Clemens facing possible indictment in a similar case and claims by Mark McGwire’s brother that the former Cardinals slugger used steroids as well. Not when a Sports Illustrated report claiming Alex Rodriguez tested positive in 2003 is dominating the news. Yes, it’s always fun when someone responsible for reporting the news, tells us an issue is interesting because it’s dominating the news, the very same news that they are reporting. “Look! Isn’t what we’re talking about interesting? Why is it interesting? It’s interesting because we’re talking about it, because it’s so interesting.” This kind of vacuous circularity is exactly why newspapers are dying. If only this were the worst part of this column. But the inanity continues: The bombshell about Rodriguez should give us new-found respect for Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and Hank Aaron, who set records that stand like monuments. Yes, we should definitely admire a drunken whoremonger, a brooding flash-in-the-pan, and someone who likely ingested his own PEDs (amphetamines) in his pursuit of the HR record. They’re so much better than Bonds and McGwire. Ye gods. They are the true home run kings. Nobody has surpassed their records remains untainted by the steroid scandal. Nobody has read this article remains untainted by it’s idiocy. Seriously, a paid newspaperman wrote that fucking sentence. And a paid editor let it slide by without wondering why it seems as if it were written by the Geico cavemen. That includes Sammy “No Hablo Ingles” Sosa, the former Cubs slugger who somehow manages to avoid the type of steroid-related entanglements that have snared others. Considering the previous sentence, Neil, perhaps you’re slightly less than qualified to pronounce on Sammy’s grasp of the English language. And there’s an easy way to avoid steroid entaglements: don’t take steroids. Or you can take the necessary steps to ensure you don’t get caught. Sammy did one of the two. So, it’s not some nebulous “somehow;” it’s a simple exercise in deductive logic. But there I go again expecting to to be logical, which, apparently, is a bridge too far: No matter how much commissioner Bud Selig wants the curtain to drop on the steroid era, as much as we may want to focus on the Cubs and White Sox as spring training opens in Arizona, news of positive urine tests, bloody syringes and artificially bloated home run totals just keep on coming. Expect more books will be written. Let’s ignore the obvious sentence fragment and the fractured syntax for now; as complicit as the MLBPA seems to be in the latest fiasco, I’d say Selig, union-busting twat that he is, wants this news to keep coming. It’s fuel for the December 2010 fire. Secondly, if you “want to focus on the Cubs and White Sox as spring training opens,” then do that. After all, as we found out in your opening YOU WRITE THE NEWS. So, if you want to talk about the Cubs and the White Sox, why did you write a column about A-Rod? Subpoenas will be handed out. Grand juries will convene. Sticking our fingers in our ears and humming “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is the only way to escape the yammering. Again, Neil, a good way for us to escape would have been for you to write a column on the Cubs and the White Sox. But I digress. Jose Canseco’s lawyers told the New York Post to expect future revelations about Rodriguez and others. “According to Jose, there’s a lot more that’ll be forthcoming,” Greg Emerson, Canseco’s attorney, told the paper. Okay, Canseco has been right about Palmerio, Clemens, and A-Rod, but in a column where you seem intent on impugning the integrity of baseball players like Sosa and A-Rod, you fail to mention that Jose Canseco, recent participant in a celebrity boxing match versus Danny Bonaduce, might have a vested interest in keeping his name in the news. Players used steroids because there was no rules preventing it, and we live in a world where people want anything and everything they can get. It’s that’s simple. Congratulations, Neil, my students now have a perfect example of what a non sequitur is. Which is all not to mention that you have the syntax of a five year old. Was it worth it? That’s what I would ask Bonds, McGwire, Clemens and Rodriguez. Don’t think they didn’t benefit from using steroids. They did. They raked in major awards, signed multi-million dollar contracts and tipped their hats during endless encores. You could even argue that in McGwire’s and Sosa’s case, they helped save the game after a damaging labor stoppage. I’m pretty sure they would tell you, as the relax in their 11,000 sq. ft. mansions, that hell yes, it was worth it. And how nice of you to mention the millions that a few players raked in while not mentioning the billions that the owners raked in. I’m still failing to connect that last sentence to the previous two. Maybe someone can help me out. Seems to me Neil’s missing a premise or twelve. Instead of sealing their place in history it remains very much in doubt. The same could be said for their hall of fame prospects. The legacies of Ruth, Maris and Aaron, on the other hand, have never seemed more secure. Both these things may be true, but one, they aren’t mutually exclusive things, and, two, I fail to see how these follow as logical conclusions from the rambling mess you foisted on your editor as legitimate journalism.