A-ROD, MLB's Newest Scapegoat

Well. Beseball Phenom Alex Rodriguez has just admitted to, and apologized for, using steroids during his stint with the Texas Ranger, from 2001-2003. His primary apology is to the Rangers organization and to the Rangers fans. Hmmmm. So on the strength of this confession, the hysterics about A-ROD's tainted legacy can drop all petense of moderation and kick into full gear.

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.

Here's to the Oxymoron Family Ushering in 2009!!!!!

Thought You Should Know

There's a Notre Dame football player named Golden Tate. No, it's not actually Golden Taint, but the announcers sure like saying it as if it were.

Ancient Fart Joke

Reuters reports that researchers have traced the world's oldest recorded joke--a fart joke--back to 1900 B.C.E. It was a saying among the Sumerians, who resided in what is now southern Iraq.

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

It's been quite some time since I've studied the Akkadian language--the successor to ancient Sumerian, beginning around the second millennium B.C.E.--but I think the joke would have sounded something like this in its original tongue (NB: my translation here attempts to represent the text phonetically for my audience at TRS; obviously, it is not an attempt to reconstruct the text as it would have been read by Sumerians, as their cuneiform writing system is impossible to decipher for those who have not studied the language, and also my keyboard does not have the characters necessary to render the text such):

licunim sutatra mu naka shi ni petikkatra tam triali; tu yu mistress no ppfffttt a dkratanum pruni.

McConaughey on Childbirth

Matthew McConaghey recently shared with OK! Magazine his experience during the birth of his child. It amazes me how similar his experience is to my own. We must have read the same book on becoming a dad (or at the very least, skimmed the chapter on the father's role during labor and delivery). He says...

We found a great rhythm. Contractions started kicking in. I sat there with her, right between her legs. We got tribal on it, we danced to it! I was DJ-ing this Brazilian music.

I have it all chronicled. Becoming a dad is something I've dreamed of doing since I was 10. Becoming a father felt very, very natural. We were jamming! She was sweating. No painkiller, let's go. She just clicked into that gear that only a woman has at a time like this. We'd been up for 40-something hours, and we went from dead tired to a really steadfast, 'Let's handle this… let's stay in the rhythm. Don't let the contraction be more than you.'

Wherein Harrogate Sees Oxymoron's "Nice Find," and Raises Him A Few Chipmunks

Speaking of Nice Finds. Harrogate was touring around some animated film Soundtracks, and realized the sublime, divine, soothing existence of Alvin and the Chipmunks' Cover of "Bad Day."

This aint bad, O Readers. Yea and verily, 'Taint bad at all. It does what a good cover must by definition do: capture the spirit of the song, but make it thine own.