Reese Kaplan -- Sometimes Reality Bites You in the Ass, Mark

Every now and then something happens in real life to make you forget about baseball entirely.  Maybe it's a natural disaster.  Maybe it is some kind of political scandal.  Maybe it's the  way in which a blatant lie is not only revealed but maintained despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Well, this is not a social commentary nor political monologue.  It's a few hundred words about the game we love but then there are times when it's the game itself or actions of its players that fall into the exact same categories.  Such is today's topic and you surely find yourself shaking your head, saying, "Wow!" at the sheer temerity and unconscionable gall at what was uttered.

Recently the now retired Mark McGwire made news headlines not for hitting a prodigious amount of home runs over the wall, not over the migration from Oakland to St. Louis and not over the controversial aspect of his career over the confession of him using Performance Enhancing Drugs to inflate his numbers to a lofty total of 582 home runs.  No, this "He said what?????????????????" moment was his assertion, "I didn’t need to do it and I apologize for it. But there was a lot of fucking hard work that went behind all the shit people want to give me.”

Uh...wait..hmmm...WHAT???????????????????????????

Yes, apparently we give the PED abusers too much grief over what they did and there was really nothing wrong with it.  So what if McGwire cheated with injectable medications?  It's what you're supposed to do to set records, right?

Why are we jonesing over what Sammy Sosa did to his formerly slim and sleek body?  And then there's Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and a whole slew of others.  Yes, we're supposed to appreciate the magnitude of what they accomplished with their bats and arms, never once holding them accountable for the concept that you're supposed to live and play by the rules.  It's all our fault, right?

Wrong!

The road to Cooperstown was earned by players like Tom Seaver, Mike Piazza, Gary Carter, Nolan Ryan and many other deserving and admirable ballplayers.  They put in the time in the weight room, in the batting cage, on the pitching mound, out in the field doing countless amounts of stretching, calisthenics, running and preparatory drills to ensure that they used their natural talents to the maximum ability possible.

But that's not what the people really want, right Mark?  Instead the players should treat baseball as they would the WWE, knowing full well that results are scripted, drugs are used to bulk up artificially, personalities are developed as acting roles and all that matters are the headlines generated, not the sport itself.  Why, if Daniel Vogelbach body slammed Jose Altuve, now that's the kind of spectacle and story that people really want.  Isn't it????

Let's just write off McGwire's ego and ignorance as a sign of a man getting older who feels he isn't getting the perks and accolades legitimate stars receive for the remainder of their out-of-baseball lives.  Well, Mark, you and your syringe stablemates are getting what they chose with their method of removing reality from the game.  You all deserve it.