Dear Yankee Fans,
I have had the good fortune to come in contact with a few of you over the last twenty four hours. That is always a distinct pleasure. It is good to see that you are able to find something of interest to deflect your attention from the sorry state of the current edition of your baseball team.
The news that ex-Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez had been suspended from Major League baseball as a result of failing a random drug test seemingly pumped new life into what has become a rather meek and troubled fan base.
Congrats.
There is this gleeful hope among you that this news will serve to undo what is such a painful period in your beloved team’s history.
“See? The Red Sawx cheated too,” you seem to be collectively shouting. “Now the World Series wins are tarnished!!!!”
Actually, very few Yankee fans use the word “tarnished,” because it is multi-syllabic but you get the idea. I do admit that I admire your fighting spirit since you root for the American League version of the Washington Nationals. That said, I am sorry to inform you that neither this new revelation, nor any that will follow will tarnish the World Series Championships won by the Red Sox in this decade.
You see, the sad reality of this baseball generation is that it will be forever tainted by Steroid use. Performance Enhancing Drugs infiltrated the sport to such an extent, that no team should expect to have escaped the stigma of having juicers on their roster and no player should expect to escape suspicion of the authenticity of his statistics. No one who enjoys the game of baseball likes this Steroid-induced cloud under which baseball finds itself but we all must accept that it has.
If and when the smoke clears and we have a more complete understanding as to just how many players used or are still using, it seems pretty certain that every franchise will have been implicated to some degree.
Your problem, dear Yankee fans, is that since 2004, you have become so fixated on the Red Sox that you simply cannot comprehend what is going on in the baseball world. Thus, yesterday’s breaking news allowed you to rejoice in the fact that a former Red Sox player, and not a current or ex-Yankee had been implicated.
Perhaps, it might be useful to re-count the Yankees, past and present, who have been identified as having violated baseball’s policy on the use of PEDs: Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown.
Giambi, Pettite, Rodriguez and Sheffield were all members of that infamous 2004 Yankee team that will be forever remembered as having established a new low for choking in major league sports. They have become the standard against which all post season collapses, in all sports, will forever be measured.
Given the aforementioned widespread use of PED since the mid 1990s, it is patently absurd to attempt to make a case that any of the World Series Championships are now somehow diminshed. Yes, misery does, indeed, love company but you should take no joy in this.
Yesterday’s news painfully reminds all baseball fans that the gaping wound the players, and due to their complicity, the owners and player’s union, have opened in the fabric of the game will not soon heal. It doesn’t, however, change history and no thinking person would attempt to build the case that any one team benefited or was harmed more than any other team.
The World Series Championships of 2004 and 2007 mean as much to Red Sox fans today as they did early Thursday morning. Sadly, Yankee fans, there is no Time Machine in which you can travel back and revise history. It is, what is.
How ironic that history, once your biggest ally (“1918!!”) now haunts you to such a debilitating degree.
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