Why Am I Not Surprised?
By now, everybody and his brother knew that Mark McGwire had used what euphemistically are called "performance-enhancing drugs", at some point in his career. There is just no way that someone, through exercise and nutrition alone, can get to be that strong in such a short time. But, Major League Baseball , ever hungry for revenues, looked the other way because the show that he and Sammy Sosa were putting on was too good to put a stop to.
And then, José Canseco, "crazy Cuban" that he is, blew the whistle on everybody, and the whole pretense went to hell. Of course, he is a Latino and an admitted steroid user, so that made it easy to assassinate his character. But, ever so slowly, time has proven José right. All those who doubted him or damned him for being a snitch, now sing a different tune.
For his part, McGwire has come clean half-heartedly. His was a "low-dosage use", taken only to heal faster from injuries and not to hit those mammoth homers day in and day out. He has also justified refusing to tell the truth, by saying that he wasn't granted immunity at the time. If he wants to make amends, this is certainly not the way to do it.
The road to success is long and hard, and some people are always looking for short cuts and quick fixes. For Mark McGwire, his «15 minutes of fame» were all too brief. His shame will last a lifetime.
And then, José Canseco, "crazy Cuban" that he is, blew the whistle on everybody, and the whole pretense went to hell. Of course, he is a Latino and an admitted steroid user, so that made it easy to assassinate his character. But, ever so slowly, time has proven José right. All those who doubted him or damned him for being a snitch, now sing a different tune.
For his part, McGwire has come clean half-heartedly. His was a "low-dosage use", taken only to heal faster from injuries and not to hit those mammoth homers day in and day out. He has also justified refusing to tell the truth, by saying that he wasn't granted immunity at the time. If he wants to make amends, this is certainly not the way to do it.
The road to success is long and hard, and some people are always looking for short cuts and quick fixes. For Mark McGwire, his «15 minutes of fame» were all too brief. His shame will last a lifetime.
Alberto, congratulations on this your newest blog. It's excellent, as is everything that you do. I discovered it when I noticed that your profile in the "Medinadas" blog was in English, and I said to myself, "Mhm, Alberto must have a new blog, in English." I guess it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
ReplyDeleteThere's a famous home run that Canseco hit in the Toronto stadium (then named the "Skydome"), I think back in 1990, when he was with Oakland. The ball landed in the upper deck in left field, more than 500 feet away from home plate. The remarkable circumstance about that particular homer was that the ball made contact with the thinnest part of the bat, almost where the upper hand is (in Canseco's case, his right hand). So he hit it "with this knuckles" so to speak.
By going back to that videotape, a physicist could make a good estimation of what was the force needed to hit that ball that long with the thinnest part of the bat, taking also into conideration the speed of the pitch and the mass of the ball, wind conditions, etc (no wind in that particular ball park that day. I remember that the roof was closed).
In McGwire's and Canseco's cases, the substances were "distance-enhancement-drugs." Can you imagine the distances of Mickey Mantle's HRs at, say 30 years old, using what Canseco and Mc Gwire took?
By the way, I once saw Manny Ramirez (my first time in Fenway Park, in June of 2001) hit a mammoth homer over the left center field part of the Green Monster. I was seating relatively far from home plate and assumed that Manny had made contact with the bat's so-called "sweet spot". That same evening I saw the videotape on ESPN, and I was stunned by what I saw: It was an inside pitch, and like Canseco, he also hit it with his knuckles.
As far as I know, in both instances, Cansecos's and Ramirez's bat did not break. So the combination of remarkable bat speed and the tightest grip possible on those bats made for the distances of those two particular homers. Was Manny using steroids too? Apparently he was recently, particularly during his incredible run after he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, back in the second half of the 2008 season. MLB suspended him for 50 games in 2009.