I'm just want baseball badly this year, so the time has come to make my usual World Series prediction: Brewers and Tigers go 7 with extra innings in at least 3 games. This is not, yet, my serious prediction. It's just the thing that would actually make me sell my soul (or shell out money) for Series tickets.
Ah, spring, when we dream our biggest dreams of romance and baseball, and the heartbreaking romance which is baseball.
I don't care about "performance enhancing drugs" and who may or may not be accused of using them by people who've been supplying them and been promised immunity for testimony. In fact, I haven't heard any of the baseball fans I know talk about this very much, beyond wishing that everyone who was named without hard evidence in the Mitchell Report could sue for defamation of character and potential restraint of trade. As for people I know who are lapsed fans, they have been turned off for a lot of other reasons: salaries, ticket prices, beer prices, season length, no big league team in Salt Lake, spoiled brat athletes, spoiled brat owners, poor officiating, on field promotion nonsense at minor league games, Bud Selig, The Yankees being in too many/not enough World Series... the list just keeps going. But steroids and HGH are not on the list in my circles.
One of the reasons I'm not in charge (someday I'll make that list and post it) is that I say we cannot judge ball players in the "steroid era" any more harshly than we can judge the hard drinking, cocaine using athletes of the past. The league and the union need to sit down and decide that as of Opening Day 2008 (or whenever) all players will be subject to random testing. First offense is one month without pay or play, second is a season suspension, third strike and you are out (of course).
I'll make my serious Series prediction between June 1 and the All-Star Break, just remember I've gotten at least one team right the last five years.
Well...
10 years ago
