Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

 

Lord knows, as a New York Yankees fan I should be ecstatic this week … but I’m not. I wouldn’t say I’m depressed, just sort of disillusioned.

See – part of the allure of baseball, at least for me, is spring training and mulling over the question of whether or not your team has what it takes to win a World Series championship. Is there some hot new rookie who is going to make an impact? Did they sign a key free agent to shore up the team?

There is a difference between wondering if your team is going to win a pennant (and possibly a World Series title) and knowing it and right now, in the wake of the signing of Alex Rodriguez, I know the New York Yankees will win the American League pennant and, more than likely, the 2004 World Series.

And that’s why I’m sort of disillusioned.

There doesn’t seem to be any magic to baseball anymore … not when there is an owner who can spend as much money as he likes to get the absolute best players in the game (there are eight players in major league baseball with total contracts worth more than $100 million and the Yankees have four of them).

Oh, there was magic in 1978 – tons of it. From Ron Guidry striking out 18 batters in a single game and Bucky Dent homering into the screen at Fenway Park to the win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, there was a lot of magic in baseball.

But now the New York Yankees have successfully rendered the regular season meaningless. Who cares what happens in April or May or June or even July? The season doesn’t really start until the playoffs in October. With guys like Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui and Bernie Williams in the lineup and a payroll that will be over $190 million on Opening Day, the Yankees seem like a virtual lock for the pennant.

Is that fun? Well, I’m sure it is for some people, just not me. It’s like the Yankees don’t even have to try to be good anymore. If there is a hole on the team, the owner will just open his checkbook and bring someone in who can help.

Listen, I don’t know if I could ever go over to ‘the other side’ and, say, become a Boston Red Sox fan (although I could easily justify it, since my mother was a Red Sox fan and my brother still is), but every year the Sox fans head into the season with a lot of excitement because they hope their team has what it takes to win a pennant and a World Series.

There is no hope in New York.

There is just certainty.

And that’s no fun at all.

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Will it be any surprise to anyone if we find out, for sure, that Barry Bonds has been on steroids for several years now?

Just take a look at his baseball card from when he was with the Pittsburgh Pirates and one from last year with the San Francisco Giants. You can’t tell me all of that extra mass was from weight training.

I understand what the health risks are from steroids and that it makes players bigger and stronger, but no one has been able to convince me yet that steroids can make Bonds hit a baseball any easier than he was able to before.

Hank Aaron hit 756 home runs in his career and weighed, on average, less than 180 pounds. I bet Bonds would have been able to whack his 73 homers even if all he was taking was orange juice.