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Sunday, March 22, 2015

Mike Lupica: So Self Righteous He Needs Therapy

     Mike just can't let it go. I mean, nobody cares, Mike. You ask how anyone is supposed to ever believe A-Rod again, but what you don't get is this is baseball not a Salem Witch trial; you don't have to believe anything. If your a Yankees fan like me, you have bigger worries than rehashing what happened years ago.

    Lupica lumps Alex Rodriguez in with Lance Armstrong, probably to obscure the racism in the vehemence with which self righteous blowhards like Lupica hate A-Rod. These guys are just  obsessed with him, and you can't tell me his being a Latino doesn't make this vehemence a little more hot. He says the Yankees are 'stuck' with A-Rod, but the truth is the Yanks need power from somewhere and if he can hit 20 hrs this year the Yanks can sure use it and that it would be mud in the eye of the Mike Lupicas and Bill Maddens of the world who set themselves up as baseball's conscience, all the better.

   Mike, you are becoming worse than shrill here. It must be frustrating that most fans don't agree with you and cheer A-Rod when he comes up to bat and root for him to throw mud in your eye.

   "The dream spring for Alex Rodriguez, one that now includes two home runs for the Yankees around signing autographs and shaking hands and kissing babies, continues. Now his former drug mule, “Cousin” Yuri Sucart, pleads guilty of conspiracy to distribute human growth hormone in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida. It means Sucart doesn’t go to trial and Rodriguez doesn’t have to answer questions, under oath and in open court, about Anthony Bosch or Biogenesis or anything. Another home run for A-Rod!"

    "When asked about Sucart and his plea deal the other day, all Rodriguez had to say to reporters in Lakeland, Fla. was, “Guys, there are so many good things to talk about. That isn’t one of them.”

     http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/lupica-a-rod-lance-armstrong-lord-lies-article-1.2158350

     He's right this isn't a good thing to talk about, but Mike Lupica is determined to keep talking about it, even though everyone else is sick of it. 

     "Bosch is doing time. Sucart, just another fall guy in Biogenesis, could do eight months of time. Rodriguez? He can’t run very well on a baseball field any longer and is a shell of the player he once was, with or without baseball drugs. But he continues to get by with smiles and vague apologies and this weird “Pride of the Yankees” narrative that he has somehow been able to construct for himself, though not without help."

     Yeah, Mike, who died and made you God, huh? Why does the world have to comport with your sense of Justice, huh? I don't know how harsh you want A-Rod's penalty to be: maybe you want to bring back Medieval things like the Catholic Church used to have: how many stairs does A-Rod have to walk up on his knees until Father Lupica decides we can let this go and worry about baseball again, not his feverish world of black and white morality?

      "Bosch is doing time. Sucart, just another fall guy in Biogenesis, could do eight months of time. Rodriguez? He can’t run very well on a baseball field any longer and is a shell of the player he once was, with or without baseball drugs. But he continues to get by with smiles and vague apologies and this weird “Pride of the Yankees” narrative that he has somehow been able to construct for himself, though not without help."

      What a shock: Lupica is also obsessed with Hillary Clinton's emails, while saying nothing of Jeb Bush's emails-Jeb did the same thing in using a private email but of course there's some world of difference between the two. 

      I have always liked Lupica. But I don't know, lately, he's been getting on my nerves. First he just defends the police right or wrong in some blanket way where any criticism of them supposedly leads to violence and now this constant posture as a moral scold is just getting old. 

      Mike this is baseball, not the Moral Majority. That's the next door down the hall. 

     I get so tired of his Old Testament morality that I want to reply with a New Testament piece of morality: Hey, Mike Lupica-he who is without sin, cast the first stone.  Lupica goes on:

     "That’s not our problem, by the way. That’s not some failure of ours. The idea that it is just one last lie associated with Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez."

      It isn't, but what he can't face, is that most of us fans don't care about this anymore. I for one, speaking as a fan, am tired of steroids being looked at as the crime of the century. We hear from moral philistines like Mike Lupica and Bill Madden that anyone associated with steroids in any way-like if they ever one time took a single vitamin that can be considered 'steroids' everything they've ever accomplished should be stricken from the record. 

    Yet, phonies like Mike never wonder if all the records of the old timers they claim are sacrosanct don't also deserve an asterisk as they were done in the Segregation Era-which is morally much  more culpable than the Steroid Era, as much as these phonies would never want to admit that. 

    P.S. I see that Lupica hates A-Rod but is just so impressed by Chris Borland. He walked away from football: what a hero! 

   "Nobody is saying that there is going to be a mass exodus of healthy young football players because Chris Borland walks away from the 49ers at the age of 24."

  "Nobody is saying that Borland has done great and lasting damage to the NFL because he feared great and lasting damage to his own brain if he had continued his career."

   "But you better pay attention to the young man, who did something both brave and eloquent."

   "This isn’t about the “anti-football” crowd, as ESPN’s Danny Kanell suggested the other day.
This isn’t about zealots, or hysterics."

    It's not about hysterics or zealots? Because lately when you talk about A-Rod, that's exactly what Lupica is becoming: a hysterical zealot. 

    And you don't think that the anti-football crowd, which is very much alive and well, is not hoping that this will in fact do lasting harm to football, or at least be the seed of such harm? Courage is now defined as walking away and refusing to play? Everyday, manhood seems more and more to be a thing of the past. Whatever happened to Damn the Torpedoes? Now we're supposed to honor those who aren't willing to risk anything for something greater than their own immediate physical well-being and security? I'm sure soccer mom's across the country are all cooing. 

    Look, it's Borland's choice and he has a right to that, but Lupica can crown him if he wants to, I have no especial admiration for what Borland did. He made the prudent choice, but those who have always done great things were never prudent above and beyond all else. 

   Have no doubt, that the anti-football crowd is very much alive and well. 

   https://read.amazon.com/?asin=B00IW4DOWM

   P.S.S. I guess, I have a perverse sense of ethics compared with the Mike Lupicas and Bill Maddens of the world. To me, I see A-Rod as heroic and Chris Borland as a bore. Boreland's in keeping with an age that places security-especially physical security-above all else. 

   The idea that you could risk your own physical security for an ideal or even a paycheck is becoming unthinkable. This young man-Borland- who is all about safety first will no doubt make some woman a very happy woman. Maybe between the two she'll find that she'll end up being the daredevil of the couple. 

    Let's face it: if you dwell on the risks above all, why would anyone play football at all? Usually people play because they're more afraid of something else than a literal, physical injury. The goal of the anti-football crowd is probably that this feeling die out, that people learn to always value their own security above all else. 

    A-Rod, at least, always believed in something. He wanted to be larger than life. He was often criticized for that. But in a sense, that's a noble desire I think-a desire like this is so strong it out weighs the demand for total security. Even the issue of steroids-at least it's better than recreational drugs. I still wonder if we shouldn't at some point develop a more  rational attitude about steroids. 

    What's wrong with enhancing a great player's performance? Now the question of the risks are real, but even then, that A-Rod or other players were willing to take those risks I see as somehow admirable. They so much want to be great! I don't think the desire to be great needs to be expunged. 

    P.S.S.S, Look, if you've my blog for any length of time-and if you have, let me first of all say thank you very much!-then you know I like to take positions that go against the grain. I don't always know exactly what I'm driving for but I know what I'm driving against. I'm not sure what the real attitude on steroids should be, but this sort of 'Puritanical' position of the last 10 years is off base. I don't think the matter is as black and white as Lupica and friends make it. Say what you will-today's baseball is much less fun to watch than 10 years ago, and the league is suffering. 

    Just look at last year's team run totals. Not a single team had as much as 800 runs. We've entered a second deadball era:

    http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting

    The pundit moralists like Lupica are just too facile. Here's hoping that they all go to therapy soon. All this foaming at the mouth over A-Rod is quite unbecoming. 

     

     

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