Roger Clemens is a scapegoat. He’s the man the media used to replace Barry Bonds as the face of steroids after the shock of the former wore off on an apathetic American audience. Where they were once lawyers chasing ambulances, our nation’s lawmakers are now chasing headlines in the form of the media coverage that goes with Congressional hearings about protecting the purity of a game that is America’s national past time. Joined by an all-too-ready-to-hear-himself-speak, Bob Costas, and talking bobble heads on ESPN, Congress is hell bent on restoring an implied integrity to a sport to which they have applied a fictional status of sanctity.

What has been lost in all of the frothing attention of flash bulbs and syrupy gossip of who’s using the needle is that there is no integrity in the game of baseball. There never was. Baseball is just like many other aspects of American sports. It’s always been jaded in reality. What’s at danger isn’t the real integrity or the game, it’s the place in the heads of aging fans that created a utopian place in their hearts and memories for a game that has been as awash in dirt and grime since it’s inception. Baseball has always been a mirror to American life. To assume that steroids somehow tarnish the game is simply laughable. About as laughable as forgetting that many of the game’s legends never played against the best competition in Black and Hispanic players. Their statistics were elevated by the lack of talent in the competition far more than biotechnological help inflates today’s players’ numbers.

 If there is ever an asterisk that should be placed next to a player or a legend undeserving of the Hall of Fame, it should be Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb…any player that didn’t play against a fully integrated league. Yes, that would include Joe DiMaggio’s hit streak, Ted Williams’ .400 average and all of George Herman Ruth’s long list of achievements. These are false records. All of them. No, there was no rule against racism. That sort of cheating isn’t something we like to talk about when we think of the Golden Age of Baseball. However, if Satchel Page and Josh Gibson were allowed to compete in their prime in the Major leagues, the face of MLB legend might not be quite so Mantle or DiMaggio, so Yankee or Caucasian.

How about the greed of the game? Is there any reason why we should have to pay $120 to take our family to see a ball game? Is there any reason why we should have to use our tax money to build cathedrals in which these pseudo-gladiators can perform? Isn’t there a better use of our money? Food for the homeless maybe? Do we have to bend over backwards to keep dollar-slobbering owners happy? It seems the only thing on shakier ground than whether or not a baseball team stays in town is whether or not the suit buttons on the gaping bellies of franchise owners shoot off into space and take out the wide eye of a ten year-old passerby.

The owners aren’t the only ones to blame for the greed of the game. The players are just as bad. Is there any athlete worth 25 million a year? Is there any athlete worth 1 million a year? Men who play a game with no bearing on the progression of the human species should not be rewarded with elevated status or material wealth. These men do not run faster than our sprinters, jump higher than our leapers, or even throw farther than our top field athletes. Many of them are overweight sloths like David Wells, who make millions throwing a ball 90 feet, but may not be able to pass a sixth grade fitness test. Yet, we make them gods and compensate them accordingly. We listen to them whine like striking dock workers about wages and carry on about a lack of respect from the country like Vietnam Vets returning from Saigon in 1968.

The reason why we don’t make these arguments is because baseball isn’t a past time. It’s not really even a game. It’s not an Olympic sport. A test of human might. It’s entertainment. We are willing to pay for these massive stadiums because they are modern day theaters more so than coliseums. We put up with the greed of the owners and pay the ticket prices much like we pay for the ever rising ticket prices of American movies, even though the product is just as diluted. We put up with the whiny players much like we follow the affairs of the coked up starlet du jour in the pages of US Weekly. We create athletic soap operas out of contract negotiations and the battle for the ownership of the talents of a 17 year-old boy groomed since his testicles dropped to toss twine 90 feet and win bragging rights for drunken, obnoxious fans from Boston over drunken, obnoxious fans from New York. Baseball takes us out of the reality of high gas prices, war, failed relationships, failed careers and the everyday stresses that drive us to pursue an escapist lust for a Neverland playtime with real life action figures. Baseball is entertainment, nothing more.

For that reason it sounds absurd to me that we should decry the feats of Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa or A-Rod or any other athlete simply because they enhance the storylines by hitting further and throwing harder and running faster because of steroids. Congress has spent more time looking at the juiced up numbers of baseball players than they did the juiced up numbers of American companies like Enron or WorldCom. Entertainment matters more than reality? You want to spend taxpayer dollars investigating juice? Investigate the exploits of mortgage companies and how they put the credit of American homeowners on steroids to fake out foreigners who were purchasing our debt. Leave baseball alone.

Lastly, shut up about your obnoxious kids. Children today are already on more psychiatric drugs than Britney Spears on a bad day. If people really wanted to protect kids from drugs, they’d stop shoving them down their throats. It trains the mind at an early age to be dependent on foreign substances to solve their problems, real or implied. That, more than anything else, sets them up for a lifetime of drug abuse. Second, simple parenting about the dangers of drugs worked for me and I’m a complete pain in the ass with a reckless disdain for authority. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that snorting, shooting, smoking and drinking shit that makes you behave like a Kennedy is not a good idea. Maybe that’s the starting point in my book. Let’s spend more time cleaning up the problems for average Americans and let’s start with cleaning up a more serious problem in the over medication of our kids before we worry about the gluttonous adults of Major League Baseball.

And leave Roger Clemens alone. Unless, of course, you have more steroids for him so he can come back and pitch another year.