Rube Waddell Weighs In On The Steroid Issue

It's been ninet-- hey, do you got any Gin? How 'bout some scotch? Just pour it into this cup here. Lookit it, how shiny she is. Where's your glass? What? Nah, c'mon - you gotta have a pull or three. There ya go. Atta boy.

Now where were - that's right, the steroids. Well I'll be greener than grass in a churchyard, I can't see how these boys put that shit in their bodies. Ain't got no respect for themselves. I remember I was facing Cap Anson, that pretty boy sonuvabitch, and he was crowdin' that plate somethin' fierce, so I's puts one right up in his nostrils, and he yells at me, he yells 'Rube, you no-good head-huntin' drunk, you so much as graze the wool on my ass and I'll come out there and beat you like the rotten sour dog that you are.' I got 'im, though. That big curve ball. He weren't a could touch that thing.

Like I said, it's been ninety-seven years or so since I was on that mound. Feeling that ball in my hand. Just ... winding up like a cat lookin' to pounce, the fans' eyes on ya, through ya, and eight other men on yer side, and it's just a wave of everything all through ya, in through the mouth, and down and rumblin' in yer stomach and just kickin' to shit all that you got to be a man, just twirlin' ya's up like a barber pole, just turnin' and turnin' and turnin'...

What? Aww hell, I ain't cryin'. Got some dirt in my eye. You gonna fill this up or am I gonna hafta find Billy Martin and squeeze it outta him? There it is.

Then ... sure, these boys. How much do they make now? Really? That much, huh? For one year? Well I'll be damned. And they still gotta go and ruin it. Got all the damn money in the world, you could just buy a damn island in the South Specific and just go there, frolic with the monkeys, couldn't ya? How many coconuts does a couple million smackaroos buy? Well why dontcha? It buys a whole damn lot of 'em, that's for sure.

Me, I made $800 in ought-two. I never even saw most of it. They had to give half of it to my wife, and I got dollar bills here and there. Hell, they bought me pocket chains and moonshine. I didn't mind too much one way or the other.

Let's bring out the big boys. Got any Jack Daniel's? Any Old Crow? Hell, you could serve me some paint thinner and turpentine and I'd be grateful like a whore in prison. What's that? Ice? Son, the nice part of me wants to pat ya on the head, but the ballplayer in me wants to stomp yer testes with my spikes. Don't need no ice here, myboy. Make it neat.

Speakin' of, do these boys put 'ice' in these steroids? Thin 'em out some? They don't, huh. Well, fuck 'em anyway. Fuck 'em right in the ass where they's stickin' those pills.

I believe it was 1907 when I w-- now just what in tarnation is that Gawd-awful racket? What? That's what a fire truck sounds like nowadays? Son of a bitch - I see it! Glossy and red! Fire truck! Fire truck! FIRE TRUCK FIRE TRUCK FIRE TRUCK!

[runs out door]

Outside the Aviary: Your Cheatin' Heart

Every week, I enter (and lose) a gambling pool at my office on pro football. Every week, I highlight the Patriots to win on the NY Post Gambling lines, and they win. Every week, I see a little asterisk beside the Patriots name indicating a "caught cheating" at the bottom of the page. This snarky reminder is an absolutely typical New York City dick move.

Not that I am complaining about it-- I mean their paper, their choice. But let's be honest, guys. Let's call on the dogs for everything. Here's the proposal: each time you print something about the Yankee teams of 1996-2001, place a star beside that too.

I was watching a Yankee classic the other day: Andy Pettite* vs. Kevin Brown* and that's when the Mitchell Report results hit home. Those two teams were tainted because the pitching-- which John Sterling and Michael (fucking) Kaye said was the anchor of a Yankee team that hit like shit through that entire 1998 playoff run--is the reason the playoffs are so vibrant and alive. Every pitch was important, every breath was held on the delivery. It's like that every year.

Calling Clemens* or Pettite* or even F.P. Santangelo* a cheater or a liar is pointless. So, then, is calling this Patriots team the same thing-- and in such a ridiculous manner as the Post does. If we're gonna call great championship teams out for doing whatever they can to win, let's do that-- let's do exactly that-- and get it right this time. From 1996-2001, those Yankee teams* were among the best in history and the bane of my existence. Everyone on their roster, from Chuck Knoblauch* to the younger versions of Mike Lowell and Joe Borowski have to suffer for this in a way. As do we all.


*-caught cheating

Embracing the Unembraceable

In the tenth inning of a 3-3 game last night at Shea Stadium, Barry Bonds pinch-hit with one out. After an at-bat that has resembled literally thousands over the last decade or so, he trotted off to first, the glib recipient of yet another ho-hum, five-pitch, intentional unintentional walk.

Two batters later, with two outs, Kevin Frandsen roped a liner down the right field line. Bonds jogged, thinking it was foul. As it hit the chalk just beyond where the grass meets the warning track dirt and made a hard right into the stands, Bonds was lazily looking over his right shoulder. With the third base coach hopefully screaming obscenities at him, Bonds turned it up and strolled into third.

Then he smiled.

And that's when it hit me: I love Barry Bonds.

I love the way he wears more gear than the troops in Iraq, even though there are very few pitchers in the National League with enough short-and-curlies on their coin purse to actually plunk him.

I love the way he seems to have a forcefield around him at all times, with a look that suggests he wouldn't piss on his own kids if they were on fire; or, better yet, he would - if they paid him.

I love the way he possesses such a vitriolic hate for the media. Have you seen these clowns? Why the fuck should he talk to them? Have they hit 73 homers in a season? Can they take the one good pitch - think about that; ONE GOOD FUCKING PITCH - they've seen in about three days and move their muscles in such a way that the round, cylindrical object they're holding makes solid, square contact with a round, spherical object that's coming toward them at 94 miles an hour and breaking about six-to-eight inches from roughly fifty-nine feet away? You're goddamn right they can't.

Speaking of the media, I love the way he makes those bland, expressionless quotes and statements (like when he said it doesn't bother him that Hank Aaron won't show up for #756) with that benevolent, detached million-air - even though inside it's got to be like six Bartolo Colons and eight Sidney Ponsons fighting for the last ham sandwich of the clubhouse spread.

I love that he may have taken more performance-enhancers than the Rolling Stones touring the Playboy Mansion - or he may not have. And I love that he hit oodles and oodles of gravity-bending blasts off of pitchers who, most likely, were on something, too.

Most of all, though, I love Barry Bonds because he makes it so easy for me to hate him.

In the movie "Unbreakable," Samuel L. Jackson's character, Mr. Glass, explains about how the villain's head is always larger; Bonds has his ever-burgeoning cranium. Mr. Glass's mother tells how there are brute, thuggish villains who use their strength and might and wily, evil villains who use their brains; you can argue Bonds's case for both sides of that coin.

Mr. Glass lives in an isolated world, surrounded by drawings and fake people, and travels in a car padded with leather; Bonds is famously isolated, surrounded by yes-men, and relaxes in his infamous leather recliner in front of his locker in the clubhouse. Mr. Glass blows up planes and trains and burns down hotels to find the one person who completes him - the person who is his direct opposite; Bonds, on the other hand, blows up everything around him in the hopes of finding someone like himself - a comrade to defend him.

Without having someone to cheer against, you would never know who to cheer for.

So for tonight, Mr. Bonds, you get exactly what you got in the tenth inning - a free pass.