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Pumping Irony From the hey-did-you-know-the-sun-rises-in-the-east department comes the shocking revelation that Jose Canseco was on steroids during his playing career. And I thought he acquired a neck the size of my thigh via Soloflex, genetics, and checking for cops in his rear view mirror. Other than chugging the “juice” like it was the kind once sold by Anita Bryant, Canseco’s primary distinction in life is continuing the fine tradition of Dave Kingman: 400-plus homers with seven different teams in 2,000 mostly meaningless games, with a chance of getting into the Hall about a hair better than Kashmir’s chance of getting a Club Med. Canseco has announced he is writing a tell-all book about major league baseball. Problem is, he’s already told all, and is now sitting at home staring at 256 blank pages. The only way he’ll ever crack the Amazon.com top one million titles is to sell books by the crate to major leaguers tired of free weights. I never thought it would happen, but I am now old enough to start rambling incoherently about the good old days while drool dribbles down my chin. There’s gotta be a reason yesterday’s clean-up hitter looks like today’s bat boy, and you can spell that reason a-n-d-r-o-s-t-e-n-e-d-i-o-n-e, though personally I needed the Physician’s Desk Reference. So-called experts blame the long ball frenzy of the past decade on the manufacturing of the official baseballs. Yeah, right. Folks, it’s not the game balls that are more tightly wrapped—it’s the infielders. Remember when second basemen were scrappy? Now they look like the muscular anatomy page in my old World Book Encyclopedia with the see-through epidermis layer pulled off. Babe Ruth on steroids would have called two shots a game. Hank Aaron on steroids would have hit number 755 before the Braves moved to Atlanta. Ballplayers today are on the Mark McGwire (rhymes with early retire) plan: eighteen home runs in one month, followed by eleven months of rehab. The modern ballplayer’s idea of playing hurt is DH-ing for five innings the day after his mutual fund takes a nosedive. Did you happen to catch the All-Star game? To be fair, the popping of muscle enhancing substances like they were Pez is not limited to baseball. There is a word for professional football players not on steroids: cut—from the squad, that is. Sure, there’s a steroids testing policy: Take them and you pass. If he played in the NFL today, Refrigerator Perry would be on a weight gaining program. In the old days, the game was won and lost on the line. Today, it’s won and lost on the internet pharmacies. Today’s 400-lb. left offensive tackle can do a 4.4 forty, but only when sneaking a fake urine sample into the lab. The great game of basketball, sorry to say, is not immune. Want to have a bizarre experience? Take a look at footage of the Knicks from the early ‘70s. Bradley, DeBuschere, Frazier, and Lucas bear a strange similarity to the “before” guy in the Charles Atlas ads. But they could do three things today's players can’t: shoot, pass, and pee without screaming. The very ethos of professional team sports has changed. If you’re 38 years old and both your kidneys are still functioning, you obviously never gave it the old team try. If your own wife has never had a restraining order against you, talk in the locker room is you lack heart. The way the new crop sees it, twenty years off your life, impotence, and 10 to 15 years in the big house for strangling a couple of AARP members at a fender bender in Vero Beach, Florida is a small price to pay for an extra 75 points on your slugging average. Some professional athletes are sentenced to counseling, but it’s hard for a single mother of two with a degree in social work to connect with a guy who makes the GNP of Kenya every at bat. The sports world has gone mad, and I blame Ah-nuld and the Pumping Iron generation of the ‘70s for the whole thing. We should have been worried when nobody flinched at a Mr. Universe who looked like a fourth degree burn victim. Sadly, in the new millennium, the fairer sex is getting into the act, big time. Some of us find it hard not to toss our cookies when seeing Lou Ferrigno’s body with Christy Turlington’s head on it. But there is one consolation: These people are unlikely to get together and breed. Why? Their genitalia don’t reach. Click here to rant back. |