Mixed Bag

I love Keith Knight, and I don't care who knows it. This week's laugh.

(Non-sports folk: Skip the next couple of paragraphs, until you see the phrase "my ass.")

Fuck the asterisk. Unless people are willing to go back and add one beside the names of Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa for breaking the single season home run record during the period now known as baseball's Steroid Era. Because Sosa and McGuire? About as guilty as Bonds likely is for taking enhancement drugs. Purists, and especially baseball commish Bud Selig, don't like talking about that. Reason being that the Steroid Era, and the ensuing home run chase, coincided with baseball's resurgence in the general public's imagination. They were still reeling from the bad PR created by the strike earlier in the 90s.

So, Barry Bonds can be the representative scapegoat of that era, he can be the big cheater, and let the public hate and revile him for it; and the less Selig says about it, the likelihood diminishes that people will remember that this was the same commish that turned a blind eye to the excesses of the players under his regime. For the sake of the sport, of course.

Bonds' breaking of the lifetime homerun record last night, and the build up to it, has likely served as an embarrassing reminder of his role (and ostensibly, the fan's role) in the whole steroids fiasco.

And hey, is it true that the sport was once prey to methamphetamines? Oh, and what about the rumors that Babe Ruth was a coke-head?

Purity of the sport, my ass.

Lastly, in the Wake Up category: If you find yourself wondering how the US has kept itself afloat over the last six years, especially considering how much money has been spent in that time, check this out.

Basically, it's a lot like taking out a bunch of payday loans that all come due on the same paycheck, there's nowhere near enough money to go around, and you're trying to tell the creditors to fuck off, while purchasing a laser display to go with your entertainment system. Nice going, Bush!

Now, you'd think the Democrats would use this to their advantage.

Tip o' the keyboard to Matski, again.