This just in...Baseball is Broken

First appeared on August 16th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

Baseball is broken. In fact Baseball is beyond broken, it’s flat-lining. Lying on the table, a team of despondent doctors surround Baseball, heads shaking at the impotent shell of a once proud national pastime, hobbled by scandal and decaying from extensive overuse of chemical enhancers. Things have gotten so bad that somewhere Babe Ruth has turned over in his grave, not before ordering a double and lighting a cigar of course.

All apologies to Apple Pie, but Baseball has gone so rogue America should file a restraining order as soon as possible to prevent the words “Baseball” and “America” from ever appearing in the same phrase again.

The American public is so over Baseball they’re feverishly awaiting the start of football, this despite a colorful offseason for the NFL which saw countless arrests and other off field issues. Maybe Charles Barkley was right when he said athletes are not “role models”.

So what does Baseball do to fix itself besides get tougher on PED’s and pray for a steroid scandal to hit professional football? Bringing Sosa and McGwire back seems illogical at this point. And this is way beyond increasing the quality of ball game give-aways and tackling concession stand prices. The Cubs could put a replay board the size of Mt. Rushmore in right field and it still wouldn’t heal the scar steroids has left on baseball. This is an issue that, like Babe Ruth and October, threatens to become part of the fabric of the game.

PSA’s and rookie orientation programs won’t scare this elephant from the room either. It appears far too large, too entrenched. You can forget about trotting Pete Rose out too. Nobody can argue his story is tragic and should serve to prevent players from making poor choices, but for players struggling just to break through the stakes are way too high to worry about somebody who hasn’t laced a pair of spikes up in thirty years.

Forget about “This Time it Counts” or replay in baseball, steroids appear destined to become Bud Selig’s legacy. If Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez have done anything other than thumb their nose at baseball while shattering the dream of thousands of Little Leaguers everywhere simultaneously, they’ve stranded the Commish at a crossroad as well. If Selig doesn’t do something decisive, something powerful, something Roger Goodell-like soon then steroids stand to bury him too.

Selig’s opportunity has been lost in the buzz surrounding A-Rod’s return and the ridiculous payday Braun will still enjoy despite running the hand that feeds him through a meat grinder. At this point it would appear the only logical move for Selig is to get tough with the Players Association and lobby for a lifetime ban for steroid offenders. The future of the game hangs in the balance.

And if you’re the MLBPA, now’s not the time to come to the rescue of guys like Braun and Rodriguez. Doing so only threatens your legitimacy and risks fracturing your clientele. If Baseball has any chance of getting off the table now all parties involved need to come together and foster real solutions.

A lifetime ban seems the only logical plan of action. When they’re serious, the powers that be will consider a punishment of this magnitude for first time offenders, but until then, this dance we’ve all come to know so well will continue. In the meantime, say a little prayer for Baseball because things don’t look good.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

Sure Signs the World is Ending

First appeared on February 29th, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

“It’s the end of the world as we know it” or so Michael Stipe of R.E.M. fame once so fortuitously crooned and while, for R.E.M. at least, it appears to literally be the end after announcing their retirement, the rest of us remain skeptical when it comes to the end of days. But even if the best you can say is that you have a second cousin who is 1/25th Mayan, the dire 2012 prediction of their calendar does have some concerned.

Count John C. Calleman among the “concerned”. He’s a world renowned expert on the Mayan Calendar who has been quoted widely on the subject. It’s hard to argue his work isn’t very important and deserving of a wider audience, especially for me considering I didn’t know anything about him until I googled “experts on the mayan calendar”.

Calleman’s website says the debate over the calendar’s prophecy is “pivotal for the future of humanity” which I found both enlightening and scarier than barefoot skiing across a lake of fire. It all called for a closer look at the world and I was shocked to discover that the end may in fact be near.

One sign we’re doomed is the fact a controversy stirring inappropriate gesture made during Madonna’s Super Bowl half time show didn’t come from her. Surely, if Madonna is as omniscient as we believe, she’d have revealed the end of man by riding a white horse across the stage shortly after M.I.A. decided to give the half of the world that owns a television set a shot of her middle finger in HD.

The Republican Party certainly realizes 2012 won’t end well. Halfway to a Presidential Election and they can’t find a nominee capable of spending his way to the front of the field? Of course when frogs start raining from the sky, the millionaire who opined for the death of Detroit will be the first in line for a government sponsored umbrella while the one who thinks all the cool kids are still wearing sweater vests will just smile and say “see, I tried to tell you so.”

Apparently the sports world isn’t apocalypse-proof either. Major League Baseball has to be concerned when they can’t suspend one of their biggest players for violating their biggest rule. When an arbitrator overruled Ryan Braun’s suspension for PED’s the decision rumbled across the sports world like the massive earthquakes that are soon to split the Earth open and swallow us all whole.

Perhaps they (Calleman, the Mayans and R.E.M.) are all right. After all, how else can you explain two coaches (Tubby Smith and Bruce Weber) clinging to jobs despite producing 3 straight 20 win seasons in the past? And these don’t include a 37 win season in Weber’s case. Perhaps, at least when it comes to Minneapolis and Champaign-Urbana, we’re too late and the super volcanoes have erupted, spewing so much toxic ash that these people can’t see they already have good basketball coaches.

The evidence for concern is all around us. A soon to be three-time loser steps into the spotlight and saves the season of one of the NBA’s most storied franchises. Young adults rioting in the streets while others pay upwards of $1,000 on EBAY-and for what? The chance to prance around the basement of their parent’s homes in their Nike Foamposite Galaxys?

Perhaps the surest sign the end of the world is nearing came in February when the job Indianapolis did hosting the Super Bowl actually drew compliments from people visiting from both Boston and New York. Now that’s clearly the sign that something strange is happening.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams