A Pastime Past my Time: Reliving My Baseball Youth Through a Different Lens

In the last 48 hours, I experienced different sides of a baseball diamond just like I was 12 or 13 years old again.

Sunday brought about a group of 11 "gentlemen" (I use this word loosely) playing 12" softball for a couple hours, while a day later had me, Jen, her friend Megan & her boyfriend Russ partaking in a White Sox/Yankees game.

There were just a few differences in each of these experiences than my teenage days.

In the case of Brian (Age 30) v. softball, the ball won. And I think it beat most of us "old" bastards, based on the lack of skill, speed, power and coordination that many of us displayed. Unlike days past, which featured mammoth blasts and amazing catches, this particular day saw guys eating hamburgers on the field and hot dogging on the base paths. There were very few plays which showed any skill or grace. My only moment in the sun (one which burned both of my arms and neck) was tracking down a ball about 35 yards away from me in full-sprint mode, finishing it off with a Louganis-like dive to make the catch.

However, being the "old man's diamond experience" blog here, this couldn't come without injury. About 10 minutes after we finished playing, I felt a groin injury develop. It didn't last long luckily, but the fact that it even occurred made me realize how different sports experiences would be after the age of 30, especially if I go years without playing these sports. Whether it be some extra stretching, warming up or practice, I will need to treat these activities differently when I play in the near future.


And as far as the ole ball game with the White Sox and Yankees goes, Brian (Age 30) has a much different look towards the game than Brian (Age 13) did. Age 30 lives in a sports fandom culture that is now aware of all the cheating going on in sports. Where as with football where performance-enhancers are largely ignored by the general public, the cheaters in baseball have angered the fans, who supposedly want a clean, honest game. Age 30 Brian is so numb to it all that his favorite experience with the game lies mainly in the endless data mining that he does, as if he was 5 years old again, learning math at a very early age by trying to figure out a player's batting average. Watching the actual product and pretending to get angry at these players has no appeal to Brian Age 30. After all, the memories of the home run chase, as drug-induced as it might have been, produced real excitement and enjoyment in baseball fans everywhere. Hell, many of our favorite musicians would not have written the classics that you still listen to today without their own version of performance-enhancing drugs. Knowing that these guys in the past did PEDs doesn't influence how I felt at those moments of my sports-watching life. I may be in the minority with these feelings, but all these guys getting busted feels good on one hand (because they're weeding out the cheaters) but on another hand feels like a CD that can't get past that skip on Track 9 (worn out and annoying to hear).

I can no longer look at these guys as heroes, and to be honest, they never should have been my heroes. As we grow older, we realize these athletes are humans just like all of us. They cuss, drink, smoke, and have other bad vices (some worse than others) just like all of us. Putting these guys on a pedestal isn't fair to them, and it sure as hell isn't fair to the kids who buy their jerseys expecting these guys to be model citizens. Let's enjoy the game, and instead of expecting a $30M man being your kid's hero, how about you do what you can to make sure your kid looks at YOU that way instead?

So as I sat there, listening to the boos raining down on Alex Rodriguez in his first appearance of 2013, I had a lessened version of the above paragraphs in my head. A-Rod is days away from likely serving a suspensions through the end of the 2014 season (over 200 games), so people had to get their last shots in on him before he disappears onto his own island. I couldn't work up that same anger, as described above. I was observing kids around me and how they were reacting to the chorus of boos. Some emulated the people around them, while others weren't really sure how to react. If the Age 13 version of me lived in the Age 30 world I current inhabit, I would likely be in the latter category.

Think about it from a teenager's point of view: ever since you've been following baseball, all you have ever heard about on Sportscenter has been about guys taking drugs that makes their performance better. You hear all of the adults around you, whether they be on the sports shows you have watched or the adults (like your dad or uncles), who share a mix of anger, disappointment and resentment towards those guys who cheated over the past couple decades. You want to embrace the sport and the athletes who you try to emulate when in the batter's box in Pinto league, but how do you react when coming across this?

Between these two experiences, I realized that I will always love playing it while I can (in this case, it was 12" softball - same difference in this story) and following it. After all, the statistics, which I believe were largely responsible in my math abilities being so strong from an early age, will always be there. Even if the players playing it on the professional levels might not be clean, I will always have a special place in my heart for the game.

Safe the Last, Lance, For Me

Lance Armstrong had an interview with Oprah Winfrey for her show on her network OWN in which the former cyclist is assumed to be admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. I say assumed because the interview has not aired yet (it will air Thursday and Friday nights in a two-part interview).

Armstrong's confessions come at a time where Livestrong needed him to rid the ugly shadow that has been cast upon anything and everything Armstrong has touched, including the charity that he helped start in 1997. For all the great work that Armstrong and his crew did and the hope they brought to people across the globe inflicted with cancer, he risked undermining everything the charity has worked to become had he not offered some kind of confession in the light of mounds of evidence that point towards his guilt.

No Shock

At this point anyone who has followed his story is about as shocked to learn this "truth" as people were on Sunday to hear about Jodie Foster. No one is surprised about this...at least when it comes to the general public who wasn't brainwashed by Armstrong's rise to glory.

To people who had to deal with cancer or know someone close who has dealt with cancer, Armstrong's association with the Livestrong charity is the only thing they care about. The only thing. And that's somewhat understandable.

Don't get me wrong, no one should be against anything that has to do with charity. Anyone donating time and/or money to charity is doing a great deed. That doesn't mean people who are associated with them, particularly high profile people like Lance Armstrong, can be absolved of the label "Complete Asshole" if they engage in the acts of what a "Complete Asshole" represents.

Complete A-Hole

Where does this label come from? For me, it has nothing to do with the cheating. In every sport we watch, many top-level athletes cheat. After a certain age, I've gotten numb to any news that involves an athlete getting caught with some performance-enhancing drug or testing positive with steroids. As fans, we've gotten used to the cheating athletes being outed in Congressional Reports, in some cases still denying it even when the mountain of proof against them would seem like too much for any rational human being to avoid a confession of some sorts.

Armstrong was a cheat, yes. But what has me dislike him to the highest levels of the douchebag scale was the way he threatened anyone and everyone who dared implicate him with the cycling doping scandals.

Here is an excerpt from a story published last week, in which a former cyclist and his wife were threatened for many years by Armstrong and his associates (for full article, click here):

Together with then-fiance Frankie, she (Betsy Andreu) visited Armstrong as he received treatment for testicular cancer in 1996 and was party to a conversation he had with two doctors while she was in the room.

According to Betsy Andreu, Armstrong admitted then that he had been taking EPO, testosterone, growth hormone, cortisone and steroids to improve his cycling.

David Walsh, a journalist, became aware of that incident via an off the record statement from Betsy Andreu in 2003, but Armstrong quickly got word that she had revealed his secret.

He responded by starting an intimidation campaign that lasted years.

When Andreu refused to sign a statement in support of Armstrong and discrediting Walsh, the American began a media smear campaign against Andreu.

Armstrong’s former physical therapist Emma O’Reilly was another who tried to expose the cyclist who labelled her a “prostitute” and an “alcoholic”.

As rumours of drug use continued to swirl around Armstrong in 2008, Betsy Andreu meanwhile was left a sinister voicemail from a friend and former business associate of Armstrong.

“I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head,” it said.

“I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will definitely make an impact on you.”

There are stories like this documented by many of the cyclists who outed Armstrong as a drug-user and were subsequently threatened by him. It was bad enough he cheated and lied. That much is easy enough for sports fans to deal with - we're used to it. In fact, the average person, if they really thought about it, can look back at something or someone in their lives that they've cheated on or lied to/about.

But when it comes to threats, especially to dozens of people and over a prolonged period of time, that's where I draw the line. Instead of recognizing the guy as a humanitarian of epic proportions for his charitable works, I remember him for being a selfish arrogant prick who would do whatever he could and run over anyone he could to succeed, and then threaten anyone who dared question what he was doing.

If we left it at just the cheating, and hell, maybe even a small fib here or there, I don't think I'd have this ill will towards him. But the threats that came from him and his camp just add a notch in his asshole belt. It's a shame that a man, on one hand, helped so many cancer patients with hope and inspiration, while with the other hand was damning and undoing the work of what the first hand accomplished.

If you want to continue to like him for the humanitarian he is, remember this: a true humanitarian would never resort to threatening anyone for any reason.