Witness Rangers owner Tom Hicks, who for one is shocked...shocked! that such a thing was visited upon his pristine organization and that he himself was thus dealt so duplicitously:
I feel personally betrayed. I feel deceived by Alex," Hicks said in a conference call, according to The Associated Press. "He assured me that he had far too much respect for his own body to ever do that to himself. ... I certainly don't believe that if he's now admitting that he started using when he came to the Texas Rangers, why should I believe that it didn't start before he came to the Texas Rangers?"
Ummmm. Okay Tom. Whatevs. Screech all the self-righteous screeching that ye will, and A-ROD can join the ranks of Bonds, Clemens, McGuire, Palmeiro, etc. as big name scapegoats. But as Harrogate has been saying for years, such protests from an MLB owner reek of ridiculousness.
Soon. Oh soon. It will become manifestly clear to far more people than Harrogate and a few others, that Jose Canseco has been the sanest high-profile voice by far on this issue. When Canseco's book first came out, the MLB powers were able to write him off as a disgruntled juicer. Well, he may be disgruntled and he may have been a juicer, but he has still nailed Baseball's proverbial ass to the wall:
In his 2008 book, "Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball," Jose Canseco claimed he introduced Rodriguez to a steroids dealer. Canseco, who has admitted using steroids, subsequently said he had no knowledge of any drug use by Rodriguez.
"They are looking in the wrong places," Canseco said in a text message to The Associated Press. "This is a 25-year cover-up. The true criminals are Gene Orza, [union head] Donald Fehr and [commissioner] Bud [Selig]. Investigate them, and you will have all the answers."
When the money was good and the media was ignorant, the Baseball powers, still reeling from the 1994 Strike, had no problem with a practice that led to gaudy statistics and packed stadiums. So please, Readers, don't listen to any of them now when they wax concerned about the "integrity" of the game, or about the dangers of steroid use, or about "the children" who worship these players. Don't believe them, for verily and forsooth, they are the pigs at the trough who only squealed after getting real, real fat.
Harrogate is saddened by the fact that, as an institution, Baseball, a sport which Harrogate grew up loving and which he still on some level deeply loves, has been completely corrupted over the last 15 years. It is time to recognize this, rather than railing against individual ballplayers.
