Oh, to be in Tuscon, now that spring is here! Yr. 3
Finally, spring training camps are opening up. Diamondbacks’ pitchers and catchers report officially tomorrow, but you know that at least some of them, and some position players, are already in Tucson.
This dreary drug-addled off-season dominated by bizarre fingerpointing, confessions and excuses about steroids and HGH is coming to an end. Now back to the important stuff: the game itself. The sounds of bats hitting balls, balls hitting leather gloves, and guys sliding into bases. The sun, the grass and the feeling of hope for your favorite player or team that spread to encompass other aspects of your life.
Banish the rest to the back burner (in hell) now.
The Congressional hearings we need concern the impeachment of Cheney and Bush, not the lurid accusations of Clemens and McNamee. Congresscritters, don’t act like you are saving the world by scapegoating Clemens while you sit on your hands as the Constitution is trashed.
The Federal prosecutions we need concern war-profiteering while our troops are appealing to their parents and friends back home for body armor from eBay, not the alleged lies of Barry Bonds. If you are going to use my tax money for a drug trial, prosecute a major heroin importer. Oh wait, you can’t do that because some warlord we’re supporting in Afghanistan needs the proceeds to run his army. You’d be interfering with some aspect of foreign policy if you prosecuted someone making heroin available to our youth.
MLB should get off its high horse about drug use, because the Commissioner and the ownership knew it was going on and implicitly, and in at least one case explicitly, condoned it as long as juiced-up athletes were putting fannies in the ever more expensive seats. George W. Bush, what did you know and when did you know it about drug use on the Texas Rangers on your watch?
(BTW, MLB, why is it that Pete Rose, who always bet his team to win and was never shown to have thrown a game, is still banned from baseball for gambling, while casinos advertise in ballparks?)
Enough already! The game itself, which will survive war, energy crises, and scandal, as long as boys and girls play it, is what we should be thinking of now. It’s spring, even though the calendar says it’s officially 5 weeks away. Let someone else, far away from Tucson, dream of nailing Bonds’ or Clemens’ pelt to a wall. I will, instead, dream of Eric Byrnes nailing a fast ball over a wall, with the bases loaded, on his way to 200 hits, 100 RBI and a world champion’s ring.
ByrnesBlogger1
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Posted by ByrnesBlogger1
Kellia Ramares is a freelance journalist, poet and baseball blogger from Oakland, CA. Kellia writes (and does some audio work) about baseball, especially the Arizona Diamondbacks, on her blog, Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes. (http://byrnesblog.azsportshub.com), under the name ByrnesBlogger1. She expects to expand her sports journalism from baseball fandom to stories on social issues in a sports context in a website she is building in the fourth quarter of 2007 to be an annex to the "Byrnesblog".
Contact: ByrnesBlogger1[at]azsportshub.com
http://byrnesblog.azsportshub.com
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