Howard's End

Just to follow up on Jim's comment about Den Wetzel...

I'm amazed at how quickly he's moved from "Howard must be juicing" to "Howard is peachy-keen." Even professional front-runners like Dr. Phil and Ken Rosenthal will wait a week or two before recanting their previous positions (not that they would actually admit it, of course).

Then again, even changing course like that allows Wetzel to stand on the Soapbox of Righteousness™...especially since Roger Maris' family has decided to climb on with him:

"If he breaks it, it's legit," Roger Maris' son, Rich, told Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday.

Yes, the sudden rise of this 26-year-old causes pause. As I wrote earlier this week, the fact that MLB does not test for human growth hormone or many other favored drugs means declaring any player 100 percent clean is a leap of faith. And after a summer of scandal courtesy of Floyd Landis, Marion Jones and others, it is natural to be skeptical.

But this is what we have. This is the new reality. We can either take each performance on a case-by-case basis or write off the entire operation and no longer believe any accomplishment ever again.

What we have is this: Baseball is testing for some performance-enhancing drugs and Ryan Howard has not failed any tests. Moreover, with his big frame – 6-foot-4, 250 pounds – that doesn't look bloated or strained like the previous three, and his history of being a power hitter back to high school, he at least looks clean.

Maybe he winds up burning us, but at this stage he passes both the drug test and the sniff test.

"In my mind," said Rich Maris, "I feel Ryan Howard's clean. If baseball's doing what they're supposed to be doing and say they're doing – I feel bad for people bashing him.

"Right now people should be looking at baseball saying it's cleaned up. I know if I were a baseball player, there would be no way I'd come close to touching that stuff. Look at Rafael Palmeiro. He had first-ballot Hall of Fame statistics. And then that stuff comes out."

If Rich Maris is for it, then that is good enough for me. This is a painful subject for the Maris family, who were burned by the steroid boys. They rightfully consider their father the single-season record holder and, truth be told, aren't that interested in seeing someone else break it.

Oh, well -- if noted steroids expert Rich Maris is down with it, who are we to judge? Oy...

One last thing -- it's ironic that the Maris family considers the Bonds and McGwire marks illegitimate. If you recall, back in 1961 a lot of people were saying the same thing about Maris' record. There was plenty of gab about how Babe Ruth hit his homers in 154 games, and how unfair it would be for Maris to have eight extra games to set the record, yadda yadda yadda.

Of course, the whole "astericked" record nonsense was just that -- nonsense. Maris' 61 homers was rightly the record, because he was playing under the rules in effect at the time. Like it or not, MLB did not ban steroids in 1998, or 2001. Should McGwire and Bonds get whacked for that?

But if Wetzel and the Marises want to retroactively erase records because of stuff that's currently banned, they should take a look at that 1961 season. There is plenty of evidence those naughty (and currently banned) amphetamines were flying around the Yankees clubhouse that year. And, as Jim pointed out a few months back, there are plenty of other reasons to trash the record book. Why stop at steroids?

Who'd have thought Maris' family would be pimping a new set of "astericked" records? As the Bard so wisely said, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"