The Friday Airing of Grievances

I gotta lotta problems with you people!

The Mitchell Report, which if you follow sports at all, is the only topic of the day and one that I find utterly laughable. 80 some odd names? That's what you're selling me? Sorry, that doesn't fly. This is ALL about Selig's legacy more than it is trying to shine light on what really happened -- and still is happening. Unless I missed a memo there is still no testing for HGH, right?

The only person with any credibility in this is the pariah. Jose Canseco. His take on all of this mirrors my own. It's a joke. A dog and pony show. Selig can now say, "Look, I TRIED." No, you didn't. What will even come of all of this? My guess: not much.

I love baseball. I love the numbers of baseball. The pace of baseball and the strategy of baseball. But baseball hates me. It doesn't respect me and doesn't care about me -- it cares about home runs and strikeouts. It cares about the lowest common denominator, and I'm just plain sick of it. I watched an all time low number of games last year -- about 20 Reds games and a few ESPN games. That was it. And, sadly, I didn't miss it. This is no longer the game of my youth; that game died many years ago. Baseball, realistically, has always been screwed up from a financial perspective; now it's just getting what it deserves.

I often wonder why I care about the doping in baseball but not as much in football. I asked myself that question while watching that ridiculous Mitchell press conference. Let's be honest here. NFL players are using, too. You think it's all weights and nutrition? Look at the weights of the 1978 Steel Curtain defense in Pittsburgh. Hall of Fame Dlinemen. Look at how big they were. Mean Joe Green played defensive tackle at 270 pounds--and he was considered a monster. Jack Lambert, one of the best middle linebackers EVER played at 220.

Know of any other 220 pound middle linebackers today? Yeah...I don't either. Browns OUTSIDE Linebacker D'Qwell Jackson, a tackling machine for the Browns, is considered very small for an NFL linebacker--and he weighs 235.

I think we turn a blind eye to that because of the helmet. We cheer for the uniform in football much more than we so in baseball or basketball. The players don't look human all covered in armor, their faces hidden from view. I think that gives us a different feeling about NFL players -- they can get as big as they want, we just root for the logo.

That's not fair, obviously, but it is what it is.

Baseball is losing fans like me regardless of the attendance figures -- those attendance figures are why they don't care if they lose people like me. There's two guys next to me that will take my seat to see juiced up players play like Mantle with good knees. I guess it's just one more thing for me to be nostalgic about.