Sports, Disenchanting
Opening Day is just over a month away. Soon we're going to break out the Giants' schedule and pick some Sunday afternoon for a day trip to the waterfront ballpark, Vaughn and Tara, Marina and me, for garlic fries and all the contemplative yet visceral joys to be offered by the duels between pitcher and batter, the smack of the ball hitting bats, arcs of rawhide-covered spheres driven towards alleys of green.
The other afternoon, I tuned the radio to KNBR, listened to a few innings of a Cactus League exhibition against Seattle. Baseball on the radio is storytelling at a deceptively sublime level. Like any other story, it has heroes, concurrent and competing narratives, defined objectives, clear obstacles, scale and the lingering scent of Ken Burnsian mythology.
The 50s image of America the perfect society of apple pie and opportunity and political idealism is pretty much defunct, though the possibility remains of a more pragmatic idealism being resurrected, despite the lingering odor of Rush Limbaugh and his "I hope President Obama fails." Baseball is one aspect of American life where you can, for a time, lose yourself in a story.
Unless, of course, you remember the villains.
The thing that disappointed me the most about Alex Rodriguez's admission of steroid use is not the steroids themselves. I've learned to expect disappointment when it comes to the stars of the game; plus, as people have pointed out, there were no penalties from Major League Baseball for the substances Rodriguez used at the time. Baseball is a business, and money is at stake, so cheating is to be expected.
I'm more disappointed that Rodriguez, on national TV, slandered the SI reporter, Selena Roberts, who broke the story, implicating her in legal problems, saying she had been thrown out of his apartment building, saying she was in trouble with the Miami police. This was not true.
Rodriguez, in the midst of his embarrassment, and already rich beyond any necessity, was impugning Roberts' integrity, thereby threatening her livelihood.
He is not a good man. He is not a good role model. He talked about being young and stupid when he took steroids; not much seems to have changed for him, especially in light of the fact that he left the first day of spring training in the company of the cousin who was implicated in providing him steroids in the first place. Rodriguez is either dumb or brash or both, or unfortunately perceptive enough to realize that this scandal will not to stick to him in any real punitive way. The Yankees aren't going to write off such a marketable investment.
There has been no public apology from Rodriguez to Roberts, just an off-the-record cell phone call. What, you thought Scott Boras would allow his moneymaker admit publicly to being a spoiled, spiteful jerk, when with time, the public is more likely to celebrate the baseball star than defend the journalist?
One can only hope that karma is real.
II. In further sports cynicism, consider the case of David Beckham. The LA Galaxy gave him a Hollywood studio's worth of money to come over here to play in the US, party with Tom Cruise, sell a bunch of jerseys, and, oh yes, maybe provide some quality and leadership on the soccer pitch.
After two seasons in the MLS, the Galaxy have not made the playoffs, Beckham has not shown any inclination in leadership, and during a loan spell with Milan, has expressed the desire to not return to the States, hoping that the Galaxy would accept the pitifully small offer Milan made to make his services theirs on a permanent basis.
Because, he's Beckham, they're Milan, and we're just the Americans. What does a contract with us matter?
The disclaimers: of course people are entitled to change their minds, to want different experiences, and there is a world of difference in quality between the LA Galaxy and AC Milan. There is a vast disparity in scope and challenge. And honestly, if a player doesn't want to be there, the accepted wisdom is it is better for all parties for him not to be there.
But I'll admit that a part of me, the fan of soccer, was excited and starstruck when Beckham signed, and a part of me now feels a little bit spurned. I feel if Beckham can't abide by his ludicrously awesome contract, he shouldn't have signed it in the first place. I feel he should have spent less time partying with Tom Cruise and Will Smith and less time marketing his image, and more time promoting soccer by taking a leadership role with the Galaxy.
And a part of me hopes that Beckham and England play the US in the World Cup next year. I love England, rooted hard for them in a Welsh pub with my British friends when they competed in the 2002 World Cup, and hold Michael Owen and Alan Shearer to be two of my favorite individual players. But the time will come for the young US team to assert itself and beat England on the grand stage--it's happened once before way back when--and I would enjoy for that to happen with Beckham on the field.
The other afternoon, I tuned the radio to KNBR, listened to a few innings of a Cactus League exhibition against Seattle. Baseball on the radio is storytelling at a deceptively sublime level. Like any other story, it has heroes, concurrent and competing narratives, defined objectives, clear obstacles, scale and the lingering scent of Ken Burnsian mythology.
The 50s image of America the perfect society of apple pie and opportunity and political idealism is pretty much defunct, though the possibility remains of a more pragmatic idealism being resurrected, despite the lingering odor of Rush Limbaugh and his "I hope President Obama fails." Baseball is one aspect of American life where you can, for a time, lose yourself in a story.
Unless, of course, you remember the villains.
The thing that disappointed me the most about Alex Rodriguez's admission of steroid use is not the steroids themselves. I've learned to expect disappointment when it comes to the stars of the game; plus, as people have pointed out, there were no penalties from Major League Baseball for the substances Rodriguez used at the time. Baseball is a business, and money is at stake, so cheating is to be expected.
I'm more disappointed that Rodriguez, on national TV, slandered the SI reporter, Selena Roberts, who broke the story, implicating her in legal problems, saying she had been thrown out of his apartment building, saying she was in trouble with the Miami police. This was not true.
Rodriguez, in the midst of his embarrassment, and already rich beyond any necessity, was impugning Roberts' integrity, thereby threatening her livelihood.
He is not a good man. He is not a good role model. He talked about being young and stupid when he took steroids; not much seems to have changed for him, especially in light of the fact that he left the first day of spring training in the company of the cousin who was implicated in providing him steroids in the first place. Rodriguez is either dumb or brash or both, or unfortunately perceptive enough to realize that this scandal will not to stick to him in any real punitive way. The Yankees aren't going to write off such a marketable investment.
There has been no public apology from Rodriguez to Roberts, just an off-the-record cell phone call. What, you thought Scott Boras would allow his moneymaker admit publicly to being a spoiled, spiteful jerk, when with time, the public is more likely to celebrate the baseball star than defend the journalist?
One can only hope that karma is real.
II. In further sports cynicism, consider the case of David Beckham. The LA Galaxy gave him a Hollywood studio's worth of money to come over here to play in the US, party with Tom Cruise, sell a bunch of jerseys, and, oh yes, maybe provide some quality and leadership on the soccer pitch.
After two seasons in the MLS, the Galaxy have not made the playoffs, Beckham has not shown any inclination in leadership, and during a loan spell with Milan, has expressed the desire to not return to the States, hoping that the Galaxy would accept the pitifully small offer Milan made to make his services theirs on a permanent basis.
Because, he's Beckham, they're Milan, and we're just the Americans. What does a contract with us matter?
The disclaimers: of course people are entitled to change their minds, to want different experiences, and there is a world of difference in quality between the LA Galaxy and AC Milan. There is a vast disparity in scope and challenge. And honestly, if a player doesn't want to be there, the accepted wisdom is it is better for all parties for him not to be there.
But I'll admit that a part of me, the fan of soccer, was excited and starstruck when Beckham signed, and a part of me now feels a little bit spurned. I feel if Beckham can't abide by his ludicrously awesome contract, he shouldn't have signed it in the first place. I feel he should have spent less time partying with Tom Cruise and Will Smith and less time marketing his image, and more time promoting soccer by taking a leadership role with the Galaxy.
And a part of me hopes that Beckham and England play the US in the World Cup next year. I love England, rooted hard for them in a Welsh pub with my British friends when they competed in the 2002 World Cup, and hold Michael Owen and Alan Shearer to be two of my favorite individual players. But the time will come for the young US team to assert itself and beat England on the grand stage--it's happened once before way back when--and I would enjoy for that to happen with Beckham on the field.
Labels: Alex Rodriguez, baseball, celebrity, David Beckham, Selena Roberts, soccer, steroids
posted by Devin at 9:35 PM
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