There Are None So Blind…

I came across this in The Sporting News this week. An enterprising fan is selling foam asterisks (a la the #1 finger) as a protest.

The web site describes it thusly:

We make no attempt to single out Barry Bonds. Barry just happens to be carrying the steroid banner presently. McGwire, Sosa, Bud Selig, etc...all of them are guilty of drinking from the steroid trough. We do indeed protest the steroid era... and the efforts of Bud Selig. Like a good parent...we do not accept the "everybody does it" excuse... the integrity of the game is at stake. We know the asterisk will never be applied but at least we fans will have said to the future fans ...we knew what was going on and we did not stand by and ignore it.

Our asterisk is simply an acknowledgment that we the fans were not ignorant to the truth. Future baseball fans will certainly look back on this time... the steroid era... and they will wonder why no one took a stand and called foul. So this year, we stand up for the past, to show the future, that the now matters. And we will make our stand... in the stands... at the ballpark... for all to see. Our little piece of foam does not attempt to change the record book or right a wrong. That would certainly be beyond our ability and would only add to an already convoluted tangle of words and facts. This little foam asterisk simply allows the fans to demonstrate, in a peaceful simple way, that we were not blind. We were not fooled. And we did not stand by and look the other way while the integrity of the game was ground into the dirt.

The Fans

Perhaps the folks running this company “were not fooled.” But making this statement in the name of “The Fans?” Spare me.

Were “The Fans” really cognizant of the steroid use in MLB during the 1990s? If they were, they sure hid it well.

“The Fans” loved the McGwire-Sosa show. Those two “saved baseball,” you know.

“The Fans” expressed outrage at the hapless AP reporter who chanced upon the bottle of andro in McGwire’s locker. Real time reaction by “The Fans” scorned this reporter for “tainting” McGwire’s pursuit of the record. (Oh, irony! Terrible and wonderful to behold…)

“The Fans” showered admitted steroid user Ken Caminiti with adulation for taking an IV of fluid, chowing down a Snickers, and rising up off his sick bed to hit a game-winning home run. What a gamer! What a gladiator!

“The Fans” (and the press) shared a manly laugh with Lenny Dykstra when good ol’ Nails explained away his new muscular physique by quipping, “I took some real good vitamins.” What larks, as Virginia Woolf used to say!

Were these the actions of a group of people who “were not blind,” “were not fooled,” and who “did not stand by and look the other way?”

Holding a foam asterisk in the stand may help some people believe that they’re taking a bold stand against the evils of steroids. But the time to take the stand was 1993, not 2007. All the foam rubber in the world can’t disappear the actions of MLB, the press, and “The Fans” for the last fifteen years.

One more thing: This web site also lists the “sacred numbers of the game we love.” Ironically, two of the numbers listed are 61 and 755. If you take a cursory look back at the game’s history when those two records were set, you’d see that there were quite a few people who weren’t down with the new sacredness they were watching.

Even more hilarious, another “sacred number” is 190. Come on, guys – that should be 191. The record keepers found an error in the official records years ago. Guess they don’t make “sacred numbers” the way they used to…