Life as a Moron must be difficult...

I've been a moron on several occasions throughout the span of my life. Doubtless I will stray into that unique level of incompetence again, and probably within the next hour or so.

I do, however, strenuously avoid being a career moron. A lifer. Gene Wojciechowski apparently doesn't share the same level of concern as I do.

He threw out an article here explaining the finer points of why he would not let either Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa into the Hall of Fame.

Not a new argument, to be sure, and this article breaks absolutely no new ground in the discussions surrounding any of the convicted/suspected steroids users from the last 10 years or so. So, why read it? Because it's great fun to see people hang themselves with their own rope.

This is the part that really got me:

There are hitters in the Hall of Fame who likely used corked bats on occasion to add to their numbers. There are pitchers in the Hall of Fame who almost certainly loaded up the ball once or twice (or more) during their careers. But prescription baseball is a level of cheating so obscene, so arrogant in nature (and yet, conveniently ignored by MLB and the players union during glorious 1998), that it prompted a congressional hearing.

So, Mr. Wojciechowski is perfectly fine knowing there are other players in the Hall who cheated in other ways to unknown effect, yet draws the line at McGwire's and Sosa's potential drug use. Cheating is okay as long as you use guile, but not with drugs.

Excuse me. What the fuck?

This line of reasoning is so asinine I literally shudder to think there may be others who think this way. Truly, cheating is a black and white thing. Cheating bad, not cheating good. I don't care the form, and neither should he. Cheating is morally reprehensible, period, but now the steroid jargon has gotten so out of control that we have people saying that corking a bat to hit better or scuffing up a ball to gain an unfair advantage isn't THAT bad when compared to drug use...drug use that, by the way, wasn't even banned.

I refer to something I wrote in the infancy of this blog right about a year ago -- while steroid use is wrong and should be banned, and punishments for breaking that ban should be harsh, is it really that different than what us working shmucks do every day to get by?

Energy drinks. Coffee. Pain pills. We put things into our bodies everyday that just aren't meant to be there, and four out of five times we're doing it in a work-related capacity. Feel better, more alert, have more energy, all in an effort to perform at a higher capacity than we would have had we not ingested any taurine, caffeine, or B-12.

It seems to all be a matter of degree for Mr. Wojciechowski. Drug use is such a large commitment with such far-reaching effects that it apparently crosses a line with him, while marking a baseball to make it move in ways it wouldn't normally is a small, one-time commitment. Nevermind that anyone using drugs ~still has to work extremely hard to net anything positive from the drug use~, while a guy who scuffs a baseball doesn't have to do a damned thing except find something with a rough surface, hide it in his glove, and rub the baseball for a few seconds.

Sure. That makes sense. Let's be glad Mr. Wojciechowski doesn't have a vote for the Hall, and let's hope he never gets one. Besides, he's too busy being a moron, and that's a difficult thing to maintain on a daily basis.

Happy New Year!

If you think you detect a note of sarcasm in my writing the title of this entry 11 days after the actual event took place, you are wrong. You do not detect a note of sarcasm...

...say, rather, you detect a symphony of sarcasm.

The Forces of Darkness (to be referred to hereafter as, "work") are about to find their efforts to keep me from writing thoroughly thwarted (and yes, thoroughly is a completely useless adjective when used with a word like thwarted, because something cannot be thwarted by degrees -- it either is thwarted, or it isn't. But I don't care, really. I'm finally writing something again. So there. I'm even breaking an unwritten grammar rule by taking entirely too long to close off these parenthesis and get on with the entry. But again, care, me, don't.)

I haven't the slightest clue as to what's going on with the Giants, or sports in general, save that my prediction of a Carolina Panthers/New England Patriots Superbowl matchup is looking pretty good at the moment.

Well, that isn't totally true. I hear the San Diego Padres have signed Shawn Estes (insert laughing synonym here), and that the Giants are interested in Josh Fogg. Usually I'd jump for joy hearing that the Giants are interested in a pitcher like Fogg...at least, I would until I realized that Fogg isn't any good...which, honestly, I did as soon as I read the blurb, thereby curtailing any possibility of the aforementioned jumping for joy. Ahem.

Note to Brian Sabean: Sabes, really, it's okay to let Brad Hennessey and Kevin Correia battle it out for the 5th spot in the rotation. Hennessey has the singular distinctive ability to become a totally non-descript pitcher -- which is what 5th starters usually are. He'll also make league minimum next year, something Fogg won't do to be just as poor/mediocre as Hennessey will be. At least we've seen a number of quality starts out of Hennessey -- bringing in somebody like Fogg would be absolutely superfluous.

Correia has the possibility of developing into...er, something other than a starting pitcher, I think. He never shows the "flash" often enough; that combination of control, velocity, and stuff that people seem to think he's capable of if given a chance to pitch regularly. I doubt it, personally, but I don't think there'd be much harm in letting Correia have the 5th spot if Hennessey can't seem to cut it, because I think there's a good enough chance Kevin could show that "flash" about once every three or four starts, which'd be good enough for a 5th spot in a rotation.

So no, Sabes, while a pitcher named Fogg pitching in a place like San Francisco would reap untold amounts of cool points for the franchise, there isn't any reason to bring the guy in.

Oh, and J.T. Snow signed with the Red Sox. Doesn't that just fit? They got Doug Meintkiewicz (did I just spell that guy's name right on the fly?), who is the poor man's J.T. -- no power, all glove, lefty hitting 1st baseman -- but perhaps felt cheated after he played fairly crappy for them during his short tenure there, only to grab the last out ball from their historic World Series win 2 years ago and fight with them for it. J.T., of course, is the real deal No-Power-All-Glove-Lefty-Hitting-First-Baseman, so I'm sure the Red Sox's NPAGLHFB fetish is satisfied, and of course Snow will give any World Series last out ball back to the team and the city, because that's the kind of guy he is. J.T.'s got more class than a prep school.

Anyways, I should be bulking up the entries now that I actually have two days off in a week, and of course Spring Training is sneaking up on us like a naked ninja wearing socks (which would mean he wasn't really naked, but nevermind).