Dawn broke over the world of baseball on Thursday, Dec. 13. Far from being a dark day, a horrible day for the game as many pundits are saying, the release of the Mitchell Report on the use of performance enhancing drugs by players is the start of a new and improved era for America's pastime.
With a very minimal exception, there were no great surprises among the players named in the report. That exception is Wally Joyner, the brilliant first baseman who fashioned a squeaky clean image with the Angels and Padres. His exception is minimal because he in 1998 took three pills received from teammate Ken Caminiti while he was battling a number of injuries. He didn't like their effect and never used them again.
There were some surprises among the names left out. All of us baseball fans had some suspects, many of whom were officially unmasked by the former senator. However, because very few people in baseball actually cooperated with the investigation, the lines that were looked into were just two: a Mets clubhouse employee who sold performance enhancing drugs to players, and the BALCO lab in the San Francisco area that sold such items to Barry Bonds and disgraced track star Marion Jones.
Obviously, many other players were using, with the drugs coming in from a myriad of other sources. We probably will never know, only suspect, the ultimate impact steroids and human growth hormone on the game.
Whether the new day dawning on baseball is as long as an Alaska summer or as short as a Russian winter will depend on what lessons are drawn from the report.
Here's my take. Official baseball -- the owners, commissioner's office, team front offices, scouts, coaches, television and pundits -- along with too many fans, fell in love with the home run. Baseball people have always appreciated power bats, but the late 1990s home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa was credited with reviving the game after the 1994 lockout of players. It didn't matter that these behemoths couldn't field their position, take an extra base or hit behind a runner. As long as they could send a pitch into the upper deck, all was forgiven. And as we found out in the Mitchell Report, "all" really meant "all."
Hopefully, we're falling back into an age where all facets of the game are important. Bunting, stealing bases, the hit-and-run.
I love the home run, don't get me wrong. But it's not special anymore. That's what made a shot into the bleachers so exciting. It didn't happen several times in a game. Now teams just play station-to-station and hope for a three-run blast.
With players off the juice, we might get back to the game the way it should be played.
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Gabrielle Union, my new hero.
The star of "The Perfect Holiday" appeared to totally turn the tables on the writer of an interview I saw in my local paper the other day. A writer who, by the appearance of the questions, seemed to be shocked that a black family actually celebrated Christmas.
The writer asked about racial differences in celebrating the holiday. Union said all races celebrate and differences in traditions are among families.
The writer wondered why there were all those "white movies" like "Miracle on 34th Street." Union said maybe we could get Asian or Latino Christmas movies next year and that, in the end, all they did was show how we're not that different.
You go girl!
"'This Christmas' didn't make all that money just by pandering to a black audience," she said about a recent successful film. "People like Christmas. That's all there is to it."
Maybe I read too much into this, but I could picture the frustrated writer jumping out his seat and yelling, "Damn it! You people are supposed to celebrate Kwanzaa!"
Differences between how blacks celebrate Christmas than everyone else. Uh, yeah. Sure. The only real racial difference I can think of is that Latinos like to serve tamales on the Holy day. That's pretty cool, actually. Tamales can be really good if prepared well. Otherwise, blacks celebrate Christmas much like the rest of us. And if anyone still has any energy left after all that shopping, traveling and eating, then some even go out to enjoy Kwanzaa, too.
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Perhaps the reason I got annoyed at Union's interviewer is I had recently heard former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young's comment that Bill Clinton has been with more black women than Barack Obama. Nice, not.
It drew a laugh and Young quickly added he was just kidding, but that's treading on some dangerous territory. I think that most of us here at home really don't want to delve too far into the subject of interracial relationships. It used to be a taboo subject. Now it's commonplace. You see all kinds of combinations of couples these days. It's no longer that controversial. Yet, at the same time, people are tired of those who still try to dredge up the old sore feelings on the topic. Yeah, it was a joke, but no one really wants to go where Young was headed.
