Check Swings
Raffy and the Bright Sides


Raffy Palmeiro's suspension is the news of the day. It's one of those stories where you read the headline, and as soon as the initial shock wears off you realize you should have seen it coming. Everyone else Jose Canseco fingered in his book is at least suspicious, and Palmeiro's career has outlasted almost all of them. If illegal performance enhancing drugs can help stave off natural decline, it indicates that Palmeiro's long lasting low-peak career may be the unnatural permutation of a low-peak career of regular duration (strictly speculation).

It seems that Palmeiro's defense is an Eddie Murphy-cum-Shaggy style "It Wasn't Me," continuing to deny that he used IPEDs after his positive test and an unprecedented hearing. The likelihood that his legal enhancer was mistaken is pretty remote given the list of illegal substances. If he wasn't on Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids, then it means he was probably on cocaine, which we cannot totally rule out given his late-70s moustache. The most recent reports indicate that Palmeiro tested positive for stanozolol, the same substance the cost Ben Johnson his 100 meter Gold Medal in the 1988 Olympics. I visit GNC now and then, and I don't remember seeing stanozolol tablets between the protein powder and mutlivitamins. But I could be mistaken.

Personally, I do not care if players use steroids, but I think they have to be suspended if they are caught doing something illegal. Sports is the exhibition of athletes persuing physical perfection, and to allow for any kind of enhancement short of certain pills seems somewhat hypocritical. Pitchers have an extremely high rate of gruesome arm injuries, and football players have a demonstrably shorter life expectancy, so steroids are not the only way athletes jeopardize their health. If steroids were legal in professional sports, people would certainly use them and it would make sports more entertaining. As it stands, many athletes don't use steroids because illegality deters them, so users must be suspended.

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Barry Lamar Bonds has hung up his cleats, at least for 2005. The popular opinion is that Bonds' ego is so large that he couldn't stand to retire without setting the new HR mark, but I tend to think that his ego is even bigger than that. He doesn't think of himself in baseball terms, but misjudges his own broader societal relevance. It would not surprise me if Bonds never played again, content to think of himself as a martyr for misunderstood black baseball players. Martrydom can be admirable, but the problem in his case is that nobody else would see him as a martyr, but as a talented but surly man reisgning himself to self-imposed exile.

It's a shame that so many of the great potential ambassadors for the game fail for one reason or another. Obviously, Bonds is not personable enough to represent baseball the way that Shaq represents the NBA. McGwire and Sosa seemed like good candidates until we noticed the andro-sized worm peeking out of their shiny apple. Injuries have tarnished Junior's star, Roger Clemens is a terrible human being, Pedro's a little too eccentric for mass consumption and the I can't imagine the country at large embracing any Yankees at this point.

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MRIs showed that Torii Hunter has a broken ankle but no ligament damage from his losing battle with the Fenway Triangle. It's funny that the best Twins news of the week is that one of our few competent offensive players will be out for a month or more rather than the rest of the sesason. The better news is that a simple broken bone shouldn't sap him of speed long-term as badly as ligament damage, hopefully allowing him to remain effective in CF through the end of his contract. That said, I still think it's likely that he will sit out the rest of the year if the team continues slipping and he experiences even mild setbacks in his rehab.

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Justin Morneau is hitting .313/.389/.813 since July 23rd with 8 of his 10 hits coming as the extra base variety. He's reduced the frequency of the 0-X games and started hitting HRs again. It's a small sample, but he hasn't had such a strong ten-game stretch since April, so let's not throw him to the wolves with the rest of the team.