KRAC Blog

At the start of Colts-Jets I was concerned that I might backslide and find myself pulling for the team that ruined my youth. No worries-- my conversion is complete, and I was pleased to see that the team was assembled by the guy who saved pro football for me came out on top.

That said, I find myself conflicted by the Super Bowl match-up. The Colts play the way the game should be played, but you'd have to have a heart of stone to resist the Saints. We may be drawing to the end of the line for Manning and Company, but it is hard to imagine the stars aligning just this way for New Orleans again. I'm leaning Saints, but it is a close call, and I feel too emotionally disrupted to make a actual prediction.

"When ordering a coffee at Tim Hortons, a successful chain of donut shops, the best way to blend in with the crowd is to request that your beverage be a "double-double," which means the counterperson adds two servings of maple syrup, and two dollops of beef gravy. "Travel Guide To Canada" (Look At This Fucking Idea For A Blog-To-Book Deal)

Confession or no, it doesn't seem to me that McGwire has a HOF resume. The numbers over an 18 season career show him for what he was: a one dimensional slugger with injury problems, something like this guy, or this guy.

I don't think McGwire belongs in the same category as Pete Rose-- Rose actually knowingly broke an existing rule, while McGwire merely cheated. There is a place for the sort of thing that McGwire did in baseball-- Gaylord Perry, to chose one example, cheated. But Gaylord Perry was also a better player over a longer career than McGwire. (Consider Perry for a moment-- he is often reduced to a mere spitball pitcher, but this is a guy who had success spanning a couple of baseball eras-- 1962-1983, in both leagues, for 8 teams. Incredible.) What Rose did undermined the integrity of the sport by compromising transparency. McGwire's offense couldn't have been more public or apparent if he'd worn a uniform patch with a syringe on it. Context also matters here: McGwire may be the public face of the steroid era, but it was the steroid era. The use of performance enhancing drugs was sufficiently ubiquitous that we can look at the stats which were being posted and tell with a fair degree of accuracy pretty much when the period started, and when it ended. (We can do this in other sports too. Swimming and Track & Field come to mind.) If baseball's Hall of Fame is an institution that recognizes who the outstanding players of a particular era were, than acknowledging who the greatest players of the 90's shouldn't be too difficult-- compare oranges to oranges.

The results of this year's Hall of Fame vote will be announced tomorrow. The nominees: Roberto Alomar, Kevin Appier, Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Ellis Burks, Andre Dawson, Andres Galarraga, Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Eric Karros, Ray Lankford, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Tim Raines, Shane Reynolds, David Segui, Lee Smith, Alan Trammell, Robin Ventura, Todd Zeile. I'd have voted for Raines and Blyleven for sure, and probably Black Jack, Parker and Ventura.

UPDATE: I like Andre Dawson fine, but Tim Raines was a better Expo.

If I have the chronology right, the album Keef is referring to here is "It's Only Rock'N'Roll". According to Victor Bockris he was too strung out to play on most of that, and from the evidence of this video he should have opted for the dental plan, but he seems coherent here.