Rick Reilly: Give Bonds' MVP Awards to Pujols!

Rick Reilly sets out to "right some wrongs, one MVP at a time,":

I have a U-Haul of hardware here for Jose Alberto Pujols Alcántara of the St. Louis Cardinals. You already have two MVPs, Albert, and you're about to get three more, since Barry Bonds ripped you off worse than Bernie Madoff to win the award from 2002 to 2004. You hit .335 and averaged 41 bombs those years and yet you finished second behind the clearly creaming Bonds in '02 and '03 and third behind Bonds and Adrian Beltre in '04. We're throwing out Beltre since, while he denies ever using PEDs, he fell off the face of the planet once baseball put in stricter steroid suspensions in 2005. If he wasn't cheating, I'm the Queen Mother. And this is history we're making here. It gives you five MVPs, and nobody else in baseball history now has more than three. Just don't let us down on this thing, Albert. You know what we're talking about.

It's hard to know where to begin with this.

1) You have to be a total sucker not to suspect Albert Pujols of using performance enhancing drugs.

Albert Pujols' long-time strength and conditioning coach, Chris Mihlfeld, was named in the Jason Grimsley report as having referred Grimsley to a source of "amphetamines, anabolic steroids and human growth hormone." Here's a completely non steroids-related story about how Pujols got started training with Mihlfeld:

"[Pujols] was really kind of a pear-shaped kid, heavy from the waist down, and that scared some scouts off," Meyer remembered. "And, like with a lot of Latin players, there were always the inevitable questions about his age."

There were other concerns about his defensive ability and where Pujols would fit on a Major League team.

Consequently, a frustrated Albert Pujols -- after spending a year at Kansas City's Maple Woods Community College, where he met strength and conditioning guru Chris Mihlfeld and started the process of building an Adonis-like upper body-- waited 13 rounds before getting the call from the Cardinals. [Emphasis mine]

2) If you're not going to suspect Albert Pujols of using performance-enhancing drugs, then maybe you should have more evidence against Adrian Beltre than an isolated fluke year before you write "If he wasn't cheating, I'm the Queen Mother." Had Beltre just not discovered steroids before 2004? If you're going to operate on the assumption that abnormal performance requires cheating, then why would you possibly give Pujols the benefit of the doubt?

Which brings me to

3) "Just don't let us down on this thing"??? WTF? Rick, if he used steroids then it's already happened! It would obviously just be a question of whether it will become public or not. See, Reilly's not a sucker at all. He absolutely suspects Pujols. Other than Barry Bonds, nobody has hit like Pujols, ever. As per point 1, you'd have to be a sucker not to suspect.

The only reason Reilly is pretending to believe that Pujols is "clean" is because after touting him as such, and larding him up with 3 MVP awards he didn't win, if he does turn out to have been dirty it will be that much more of a betrayal for him to write about.

Like an expert pool player, Reilly's setting up his next shot. So when someone comes forward a year or so later with a bunch of needles they claim to have injected into Albert Pujols' ass, he'll be able to put on his biggest hissyfit EVAR.

photo courtesy of Fredbird

This is what I'm talking about

Jayson Stark's latest column is a monument to the inanity of modern sports journalism. I click on a link on ESPN's front page called "C.C.'s First Day," expecting to find, perchance, something about how he has a new training regimen this offseason (which he did) or lost a lot of weight (which he didn't). Maybe a bullpen session that provided some evidence that his massive and arguably overworked body isn't on the verge of finally giving out, just months after signing a nine-figure deal.

But no, Stark isn't interested in the outlook for Sabathia's 2009 season or analysis of whether he (or Roy Halladay) is the really the best pitcher in the division. His readers are instead treated to an entire column about how the A-Rod steroid scandal has made Sabathia's arrival a secondary story. That the only thing reporters are asking the just-arrived Sabathia is how he feels about A-Rod, whom he hasn't actually played with yet, etc. etc.

It would meet the textbook definition of irony if, in the course of bemoaning how big and distracting this A-Rod steroids controversy is, Stark was at the same time making it bigger and more distracting. But Stark doesn't even have the decency to bemoan this state of affairs. He loves the media circus-as-story. He seems to find it more interesting than baseball. I actually did a post flagging this back in 2005, when he was writing about Randy Johnson signing with the Yankees, and making dire warnings that Johnson was "not yet prepared" for the scrutiny he was about to receive.

My theory is that Stark likes the idea that baseball writers are really important people, and believes that where he and his peers happen to focus their attention is a big deal and influences even the players themselves ("How is the fact that we're not writing about you affecting you, C.C.? Do you find it galling?"). I would submit that, while self-importance on the part of sports columnists is always and everywhere annoying, Stark manages to take it one step further by dedicating a whole column to the "issue" of a stupid story preempting an interesting story, without ever bothering to get around to the latter.

Here's how it starts:

He was supposed to be the biggest ring in the 2009 Yankees circus. Well … never mind.

Oh sure, there was a time when the sight of Carsten Charles (CC) Sabathia bursting through the gates of George M. Steinbrenner Field seemed like it might actually be a gigantic event in Yankee Land.

But that was sooooooo last week.

So there was the inimitable CC on Friday, on his very first day of enrollment at Bronx Zoo University, learning an invaluable lesson:

When you're a Yankee, you're never more than a back-page headline away from going from Most Monstrous Story in the Yankees Universe to $161-million subplot in, like, 14 seconds.

Sadly, if you're reading Jayson Stark's column about C.C. Sabathia's first day in Yankee camp, you're always more than 14 seconds away from something interesting about C.C. Sabathia, or the Yankees, or baseball...

Please no more steroids revelations

I am deeply disappointed in Alex Rodriguez, for subjecting baseball fans to another month-long installment of the most stupefyingly boring mega-scandal in sports history. Please make it stop.

ESPN is of course in full self parody mode:

'I Was Stupid'

"In an interview with Peter Gammons, Alex Rodriguez admits to using steroids for three years with the Texas Rangers, saying, 'I needed to perform.'"

"Vote: Forgive Him?"

That's right, ESPN Nation, you get to render your personal judgment on whether to let the healing begin, or whether your feelings are still too raw. The results:

38% say "Yes [Forgive him]"
33% say "No"
29% say "No need to forgive him"

In the words of Caroline Kennedy: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman's magazine or something?

Thoughts on the steroid scandal

1. Roger Clemens is the subject of a federal grand jury for lying to Congress about his steroid use.

2. The Clear was legal and not a steroid, which seems to exonerate Barry Bonds of perjury.

3. Bonds will remain a pariah while Clemens's steroid use and subsequent lying will not significantly damage his legacy.