Baseball Evolution Guest Contributor - Eric Freeman:McGwire, Damon, and Prior

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Who Am I?
By Eric W. Freeman, Jr., Special to Baseball Evolution
January 20, 2006

Who am I?

I am an 18-year-old 6’3”, 285 pound behemoth of an Aquarius with the appetite of ten men and the strength of 200. I am an active member of the Department of Redundancy Department, and am a barbershop quartet enthusiast. Typing never bothers me, but Stephen A. Smith, Joe Morgan, and the designated hitter rule get on my nerves. In my world, Jimi Hendrix and Peter Gammons are golden gods, but nothing beats walking into Wrigley Field at sunset.

I’m from New Orleans, but have since moved to Baltimore, and I do not care either way about the Orioles. I worship the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox, along with Crash Davis’s speech in Bull Durham about that in which he believes. (Ending sentences with a preposition isn’t a fatal mistake to me, but if I wanted to pursue a career in sports writing, I should start writing correctly.) I never cared too much for George Will, but Bill James is saint-like, and the New Orleans Saints are better off without the likes of Aaron Brooks (gone), Jim Haslett (gone), and Tom Benson (hopefully he’ll get a stroke).

I’m also Asher’s 'little' brother.

But you’re probably wondering, “What in the world does he have to say?” Well, I’m glad you wondered.

Many things in the past have bugged me about baseball, and I’m just here to give my two cents in the form of a grammatically correct rant. And here we go:

The Subject of Mark McGwire

Taking steroids in baseball (and any sport, for that matter) is like playing chess with a blind man. It’s just not fair. There are “legal supplements” that players are allowed to take, like when Mark McGwire legally took Andro to boost his performance. If an athlete drinks some protein shake to boost his performance in a game, it doesn’t bother me. But when this same athlete goes before Congress and won’t elaborate on what he has done or hasn’t done in the past, it’s as if he has something to hide. And he does. No one will really know what McGwire did or didn’t take that resulted in his breaking of the single season home run record. But, from my observations, it seems that he obviously has something to hide. All of that been said, I disagree with Gene Wojciechowski’s article about feigning from allowing McGwire into Cooperstown next year, his first year of eligibility. He says in an ESPN.com article, “I wish McGwire would give me a reason to believe him, or more important, to believe in him. But that's the problem when you refuse to talk about the past. Nobody knows how many of those 583 home runs belonged to you, or to better chemistry.” It’s probably the wrong choice to side with McGwire, knowing that he probably does have something to hide, but our legal system ensures that suspects are innocent until proven guilty. And McGwire has never failed a drug test (not that he played in the league when random steroid testing became the norm), so I really can’t say that he doesn’t belong in Cooperstown because he might have something to hide. I’m also not advocating for his automatic instatement. If the Baseball Writers’ Association of America feels that his image has been tarnished by these accusations and he doesn’t deserve to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, then they shouldn’t vote him in alongside guarantees Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. But if I was on the BBWAA, I would vote for McGwire, granted it wasn’t proven that he used steroids during his career. (I definitely wouldn’t vote for Jose Canseco, who becomes eligible next year as well.) I think he will get consideration for the Hall, and he’ll definitely get votes (Pete Rose got ten write-in votes, and he bet on baseball), but I don’t think he’ll get in to Cooperstown next year. Maybe sometime around 2010 or something, but not first ballot. However, I would vote for him.

Johnny Damon breaks my heart

As if it were bad enough that my beloved Red Sox had enough problems coping with the loss of Theo Epstein, vindictive trade rumors involving Manny Ramirez and David Wells, and the fact that no one remembers their 2005 playoff appearance, it got so much worse on December 21 of last year when Johnny Damon broke my heart. I walked into my job, expecting a Christmas rush, and I got a barrage of complaints from my fellow members of Red Sox Nation when the news appeared that Damon had reached an agreement to join the Evil Empire. The New York Stankees offered him four years to the tune of $52 million, effectively making Damon a traitor. I mean, in the age of free agency, it’s one thing for a player to leave his “hometown” team for money (that’s how Damon left the Athletics for the Red Sox, right?), but it’s another when you leave George Steinbrenner’s archenemy to become his leadoff man. I mourned the loss of one of the two best leadoff hitters in the game (Damon and Ichiro Suzuki), but my mourning soon turned to anger, which led to rage as I threw my remote at the TV (and broke it) when I saw Damon don the pinstripes clean-shaven. It was bad enough that he joined the Axis of Evil, but HE SHAVED!!! Red Sox Nation knew him as Jesus, but now he’s a pawn in the corporate dictatorship led by the closest thing to the Baseball Antichrist. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: He left for the money. The Red Sox were firm with their offer of four years for $40 million, but Damon felt that he was unwanted. When the Stankees raised their offer from $48 million to $52 million, he felt that they wanted him desperately. And they do need him. The Yankees haven’t won a championship since their last real leadoff man, Chuck “The Ball Touched The Base” Knoblauch, left. But now the media has a new angle to view this rivalry of rivalries. Damon has jumped ship, and the Stankees will pay for it.

USC, shm-USC, I love Mark Prior

I’m getting a little tired of all this melodrama involving Miguel “Steroid Dealer” Tejada and Mark “The MLB version of Matt Leinart” Prior. Well, I got tired of it. I still don’t understand the ties that Chicago has with Baltimore. I mean, I know that Asher loves both franchises, but I’m sure he’d agree with me here when I say that he’s sick and tired of the two of them dealing together, when they should strengthen their clubs by taking other teams’ Gold Glove shortstops and Home Run Derby winners. When it was announced that Prior could be traded for Tejada, my first thought was “I’m hungry.” (I said I had the appetite of ten men.) But my second thought, after pondering the situation with Stouffer’s Macaroni & Cheese, was “NOOOO!!!!!” I couldn’t bear the thought of the Orioles doing that to themselves. And don’t get me wrong, Prior is my boy, but if he’s going to be traded, at least trade him to a team with a starting rotation at all (Rodrigo Lopez and Daniel Cabrera just don’t cut it). Miguel Tejada would be a very valuable addition to the Cub defense, and he would bat fifth, right after Derrek “Triple Crown” Lee, assuming they put Aramis “Shades of Santo” Ramirez in the third slot. But I love Prior too much to see him on a team with a mediocre offense, a horrible rotation, and an unpredictable bullpen. Besides, if he leaves Chicago, the Cubs would only have two awesome pitchers in their rotation, and they need that extra arm that can go 7+ innings so we won’t have to deal with our own unpredictable bullpen (no knocks to Ryan Dempster, but COME ON, IT’S RYAN FREAKING DEMPSTER!!!). Prior has said that he’s happy in Chicago, and Tejada doesn’t want to be traded, so I guess this ends the Prior-Tejada trade talk. No more of that silly nonsense.

So, this is just a start to my Baseball Evolution career. I hope you enjoyed what you have just read, and if you didn’t, tough. You can’t trade this writer. Although I do become a Free Agent soon…

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