About players who test positive for PEDs.

It may seem like I just so happened to decide today of all days to look past steroid usage. The day when Manny Ramirez was suspended 50 games for PED usage. Manny Ramirez formally of the Boston Red Sox. The same Boston Red Sox I have followed my whole life.

But surprisingly it wasn’t today.

I still cared when Bonds was clearly juicing. I still cared about the ridiculousness of Roger Clemens. But then something happened. My blood lust waned.

You would think A-rod’s rampant juicing would cause me nothing but pleasure. He’s of the hated Yankees. He’s a cheater etc.

But when all of the revelations about Alex Rodriguez came out I was mostly just…bored.

After all of the Clemens and Bonds allegations everything else just seemed frivolous.

Of course these guys are all on PEDs. Why wouldn’t they be? If you trained your whole life to be as good as you could possibly be at something and got to your peak and saw there were still people better than you, wouldn’t you do whatever it takes to catch up to them or surpass them?

I would.

Especially when it means more money, adoration and little to no chance of my employer or union giving a rat’s ass about it.

I think Alex Rodriguez is just as laughable and ridiculous as the next person. But I do not enjoy watching someone get ripped apart by the same forces that built them up.

Alex Rodriguez became everything every baseball fan in the World wanted. You wanted a superhuman baseball crushing machine. You wanted a monster capable of things that humans aren’t (or presumably aren’t) capable of.

Well, congratulations. You bought into it with everyone else. Sports entertainment fooled you. It fooled everyone. You looked the other way. I looked the other way. We accepted the unbelievable as true and ultimately all feel like idiots and as a result are anxious to crucify the perpetrators.

Look in the fucking mirror.

Anyone can blame Bud Selig or the players or the players union all they want for everything. But we all thought about it and came to the consensus in the mid 90’s that home runs are the most important thing in baseball (strikeouts are cool too if you can throw 102 mph).

Players adjusted accordingly.

Bud Selig ignored it.

Voila, PED era!

I took no particular pleasure in watching Alex Rodriguez’s name crumble. The guy is a clubhouse cancer anyway (juice aside) but I don’t want to be part of a society where we build people up on a pedestal for being the best at what they are and then tear them down when they aren’t doing things the way we want them to.

I also don’t get why this primarily only happens to this degree in baseball (definitely the most boring of all major sports).

Let me be honest for a second:

Clearly NFL players are ALL on roids. NBA players juice (LeBron James is suddenly the most muscular/fastest guy on the court every night?), NHL players blood dope and juice, soccer players blood dope and juice, cyclists blood dope and juice, horses are all injected with god know what, most writers do speed, 50-75% of Hollywood has a drug or alcohol problem, the Oscars are fixed every year, Biggie’s murder was a cover up by gangs and police working in unison, hardly any young people pay for music anymore and if they did The Shins, Arcade Fire, The Postal Service, Brand New and about 1,000 other bands would all have records that would have gone 5-10 times platinum, SNL has been running on fumes for the last 6 seasons…I could go on for weeks.

Everyone overlooks all of this. In spite of all of the blatant evidence to the contrary people just choose not to give a shit.

Well, I sort of knew Manny and or David Ortiz and or Kevin Millar and or BIll Mueller and or Johnny Damon were on PEDs at some point.

Shit isn’t surprising. Everyone. EVERYONE. EVERYONE is probably on them. Maybe not Michael Bourn since that guy can’t ge ton base to begin with…

But this is what happens when you decide to live in an imaginary happy place and ignore all (circumstantial) evidence to the contrary.

I mentioned my LeBron James PEDs theory on another blog in passing a few weeks back and someone said “That’s an awfully big assumption, what’s your proof?” And I said “I don’t need proof. I’m not getting burned again. Everyone is on PEDs until proven otherwise.” 

I know that’s shitty. I’m not trying to sell a book. It’s just how things are.

If you want to blame someone for it, blame yourself for being so naive.

When I was younger I always wanted to get any new record as soon as it came out. I would even buy records that were by bands I’d never heard simply because they had a lot of buzz in various media outlets.

I was, what the industry considers awesome.

15-22 year old kid with disposable income, works shitty part time jobs, spends all money on music, gas, food.

All of my CDs are at my parent’s house still. There are probably about 600+ cds there. Last Christmas I went through them and found about 100 or so to give to goodwill or sel or whatever.

It’s really hard to travel with 600+ CDs. Plus, what’s the point when they’re all on my iPod anyway?

I don’t really buy CDs very frequently anymore. I probably average about 2 a month. Maybe a little less. This is still probably higher, significantly, than the avergae consumer. But there were difinitely a couple years when I averaged 10 to 15 a month. Used. New. Whatever.

Has my passion for music waned? I don’t think so. But I think that I have other things in my life now. And my enthusiasm has been…injured.

I don’t like music media anymore. Music journalism is essentially the lowest form of bad advertising. I can’t recall the last time I read anything even remotely interesting about any band. And that seems hard to believe since bands are so easily accessible for the most part.

If you compare musicians to athletes inasmuch as they are both public figures doing something they (presumably) love for a living to varying degrees of success, it seems bizzare and strange that so much is written about athletes with their participation and so little is written about musicians with the rare exception of whatever happens to be “hot” that season.

Example, how many articles did Spin magazine write about the White Stripes and Strokes from 2002-2005? I would estimate 34,000.

And with mainstream media everythign is this way.

But somethign shitty and disgusting has happened to indie media int he last 4 years or so. It doesn’t really exist anymore.

Remember when Pitchforkmedia.com was sort of independent and sort of had news and sort of how interesting things to say about music? At least a little bit anyway…

Well, not anymore. Their “news” items consist of band’s tour dates, musician’s twitter updates and whatever minuate happens to be going on with their “it” band that month (this usually interestingly coincides with whomever happens to be playign at their Summer festival…)

This isn’t really meant to be an indictment of Pitchfork though. Because anyone who likes independent music already knows their deal.

It has just gotten to the point that I feel as if all media outlets are essentially just saying the same exact things about the same exact limited set of bands.

Some deservedly so. Others…ehh.

Obviously music is all a matter of taste and opinion. And that’s fine. I just wish there was more room for both.

And so these days I rarely buy new records when they are new unless they are by bands that I’m familiar with and enjoy. Example, I bought the new Maria Taylor record “Ladyluck” because I love Maria Taylor.

The record isn’t great. But it’s good.

But I’m now missing out on finding new bands I guess.

I did finally listen to “Anti-Anti” by Snowden a few weeks back. And that is a great record. I really enjoy it. And the timeframe I am enjoying it during doesn’t actually mean anything.

I had the same experiece with “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” by Spoon this winter. I listed to it once when it came out int he Summer of 2007 and it didn’t stick to me then for whatever reason.

But January of 2009, I thought it was fantastic.

This is probably all completely beside the point.

But the long and short of it is the music media has destroyed my desire to buy new records. Everything is a hype machine and very little of it lives up to the hype (TV On The Radio, Vampire Weekend, Tapes and Tapes, Animal Collective…etc.)

And writing record reviews seems like the worst job imaginable at this point. How many different ways are there to say something is good or bad and how can you describe the way something sounds without contact lyrical quotation or an orgy of adjectives that are all essentially meaningless until you hear what is being written about?

I’d rather sell frozen lemonade out of a truck for the rest of my life.

But what I would like to see is more interviews with musician’s about their craft, what they actually do while touring/recording. Their experiences. How they experience music and how they came to create what they’re promoting. How they feel about their music. How they feel about their choice of profession. How they feel about their contemporaries and how they feel about the old mythological “scene” that probably never existed anyway.

The most comical thing about the athletes to musicians comparison is that for most musicians, access is available. There just aren’t many media outlets taking advantage of it or using it for anything insightful.

This is a long rant…

The last month has been a little crazy.

The Celtics beat the Bulls on Saturday night. I had a $100 ticket in the last row of my section. I went alone again. I swore after last year’s playoffs that I wouldn’t go to playoff games alone anymore. But it was essentially one of the greatest series in NBA history and even though nothing was really at stake, I just generally had the feeling that this was the defining moment for the Celtics in 2008-09.

And now they are on to play the Magic.

It seems comical that they went from playing a team that has been criminally underrated all season to playing a team that has been ridiculously overrated all season.

The Magic have some good players, sure, but they don’t really seem nearly as scary as the Gordon, Salmons, Rose, Hinrich, Noah, Miller, Thomas Bulls. I really don’t even want to think about how lopsided the series could have been if the Bulls were playing with Luol Deng.

But I’m glad I went to the game.

There isn’t much I can say now that hasn’t already been said better by someone else somewhere else.

Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich are in for giant paydays this off season.

It’s sort of a shame that this Bulls team is going to sort of get blown up. 

If Mike D’Antoni was their coach, I’m pretty sure they beat the Celtics in 5.

• Rays will take the AL Wild Card. They will win 96 games.

• Their starting rotation will be the best in baseball in 2009.

• James Shields will be in the running for a Cy Young with a 21-6 record and 217 strikeouts and a 2.82 ERA.

• Evan Longoria will hit 36 home runs and have a .382 OBP. He’ll generally be the man crush of the league.

• Pat Burrell will do less than expected. He’ll be a constant power threat and have 24 home runs but he’ll only bat .241.

• Dan Wheeler, Grant Balfour and Troy Percival will make up the best 3 pitcher bullpen tandem in baseball.

• The Rays will start the season with good attendance numbers but by late June people in Tampa Bay will already forget about them until the Playoffs.

• Jason Bartlett will continue to be Jason Bartlett.

• Dioner Navarro will try his best to emulate A.J. Pierszynski by pissing off opposing players.

• Matt Joyce and his million dollar smile will bat .284 this year and continue to grow.

• The Pirates will finish with 67 wins.

• Nate McLouth will not be on the team by the end of the season.

• Nate McLouth will take his blonde locks somewhere else and finish with 29 home runs, 102 RBI .278 batting average.

• Paul Maholm and Ian Snell will both do their best to avoid being in the worst rotation in baseball. As long as they have better ERAs than the Tigers and Rangers, they’ll be happy.

• Brandon Moss will flourish in Pittsburgh with regular at bats. He will be traded by 2011.

• Matt Capps will be a consistent closer in spite of the lack of save opportunities.

• Ryan Doumit will be great and generally remind Pirates fans of classic Jason Kendall int he sense that they’ll have a great catcher and nothing else.

• Adam LaRoche will grow and maintain some of the worst facial hair in baseball.

• 9 .9 out of 10 Pirates will agree they’d rather be on a different team.

• Last place in the NL Central.

• Fresh off the 2008 World Series victory, the Phillies will enter the 2009 season with new found confidence. They may have the deepest lineup in the National League and if their pitchers can hold it together (looking at you everyone except Cole Fuckin’ Hamels) they will finish 1st in the NL East.

• In the playoffs they will be too laid back and lose in the NLDS.

• Raul Ibanez will hit 19 home runs and have 94 RBI.

• Jimmy Rollins will steal 57 bases and hit 12 triples.

• Matt Stairs will start 13 games in left field. Fans attending those games will say “Matt Stairs is on the Phillies?/Matt Stairs still plays baseball?”

• Brad Lidge will save 41 games.

• Chad Drubin will start a chain of sandwich stores called “Durbin’s Deli” that will have a speciality sandwich featuring; roast beef, corned beef, pastrami, swiss, pickels,  onions, barbecue potato chips, lettuce and mustard. The sandwich store will be successful but not because it has his name on it.

• Pedro Feliz will get drunk and photos of him drunkenly swaying the night away will surface.

• Phillies fans will boo the team all the time as if the 2008 World Series never happened.

• When Brandon Phillips is the most recognizable player on your team, you’re probably a shitty team. Honestly the only reason most people know who him is probably because they play Fantasy Baseball and he quietly does many things very, very well. These trends will continue in 2009 and Brandon Phillips will hit .272 with 23 home runs, 86 RBI, 32 SB. He will also finish the season somewhere else.

• Jay Bruce will emerge as a reasonable slugger. He’ll bat .284 with 32 home runs and 107 RBI. Reds management will probably trade him too. They can’t have good players hanging around…

• Sensing that the season has no point outside of personal statistics, Willy Taveras will attempt to steal 200 bases. Unfortunately because he is so terrible at hitting, he won’t be on base  more than 100 times this season.

• Alex Gonzalez will play great defense.

• The Reds surprisingly good  paper rotation of Aaron Harang, Edinson Volquez, Bronson Arroyo, Johnny Cueto and Micah Owings will perform well all season. Unfortunately the extreme lack of offensive output will give all starters many, many losses.

• Joey Votto will get on base a lot.

• David Weathers will sit in the bullpen and think about life.

• The Reds will finish 4th in the NL Central. About 9 games under 500.

• Grady Sizemore will continue to be awesome and continue to inspire other teams to get excited to make him contract offers.

• Cliff Lee will win 15 games. Which is way above average. But because he won the Cy Young last year sports writers will pretend he was a one year fluke and write him off completely. This will destroy his confidence and he’ll never win 20 games again. But not because he isn’t capable.

• Kerry Wood will be a great closer…for the 32 appearances he has before he’s out for the season.

• Mark DeRosa will decide he’s tired of playing every position and needs a bigger challenge and leave the Indians in July for “retirement” so he can try out for the Cleveland Browns. DeRosa will easily make the Browns and catch 63 passes as their second WR in place of a then incarcerated Donte Stallworth.

• Fans of other teams all over America will refer to Asdrubal Cabrera as “Ass Dribble” and laugh to themselves because they’re really really clever.

• Jhonny Peralta will finally just cave and change his name to “Johnny” to stop publications everywhere from seeing “Jhonny” in print and correcting it automatically because who the fuck is named “Jhonny”?

• Ryan Garko will get some playing time and hit 14 home runs. He will stroke out 110 times in 234 at bats and have a .229 batting average.

• Carl Pavano, anxious to prove himself, will get off to a great start with the Indians, recapture the love of Alyssa Milano and then break both his legs in a jet ski accident during All Star week.

• The Indians will come in last in the AL Central. That’s right. Behind the Royals.

• Fausto Carmona will be 9-14 and generally look average at best.

• Rich Harden will win 20 games and have over 200 strikeouts.

• Aramis Ramirez will continue to be eerily consistent and finish the season with 29 home runs 109 RBI and a .286 batting average.

• Carlos Zambrano will get into a fight with someone.

• The Cubs will lose in the NLCS.

• Kevin Gregg will have a shaky first few outings as closer and the Chicago media will have a field day about how much better Carlos Marmol would be as the closer.

• Aaron Heilman will blow a game against the Mets at Citi-Field and get a standing ovation as he walks off the mound.

• Derek Lee’s slow descent will continue.

• Geovany Soto will continue to be one of the best catchers in baseball which will in turn prompt a Page 2 column on ESPN about if this is the new golden age of MLB catchers. The conclusion of the article will leave the decision up to the reader.

• The Royals will trade at least one of their starting pitchers to the Cubs for nickels on the dollar at the trade deadline.

• Bill Murray will drunkenly slide into second base during a game but because he’s Bill Murray, Major League Baseball will pretend it was a staged joke. He’ll console himself by sleeping with 22 year old scenester girls he meets at Pitchfork’s Summer Festival of Pretentiousness.

• Bartolo Colon is the number 4 in the White Sox rotation. His record over the last 3 seasons is  11-15 and is ERA over that span was 5.13. The last time he was good was when the Angels were still the Anaheim Angels. Still, Colon will go 11-17 as a starter this season.

• Jermaine Dye will hit 47 home runs.

• Carlos Quentin will hit 43 home runs and constantly be in consideration for MVP.

• Jim Thome will attempt to hit 59 home runs to get to 600 for his career. Unfortunately he will fall 33 short.

• The White Sox will generally overpower most teams and with a solid bullpen and steady closer, manage to easily win the AL Central.

• At some point this season A.J. Pierzynski will take exception to something someone on some team does to him.

• Chris Getz will campaign hard for rookie of the year honors by sending out informational pamphlets to voters with his statistics, cookies his mother baked and the closing line “just remember, what Chris wants, Chris Getz!”.

• Alexei Ramirez will continue to defy natural rhyme schemes and remain relatively un-sexy.

• Ozzie Guillen will punch Jay Mariotti in the face. Hopefully.

• The White Sox will win the ALCS, narrowly defeating the Oakland A’s.