Hey, Who’s a Shitbag?

So Jayson Stark sez we should boo Mr. Manny wherever we go. Regardless of whether we root for him or the team he plays for, we should try to destroy him. Because baseball is ABOUT SOMETHING. Baseball is IMPORTANT. Baseball MATTERS. Not like pro wrestling. That shit is bunk. That shit destroys America. But baseball, fuck yeah right. That counts. That makes us better people. That is the moral good. WWE? Hitler, folks. Hell, Mike “I never did nothin’ wrong no way” Schmidt will tell ya that.

Stark sez: “But we do share Schmidt’s view that there’s something appalling going on here. Does Ramirez deserve a second chance? Absolutely. But does he deserve to be celebrated by anyone who isn’t a tunnel-visioned Dodgers fan? Absolutely not.”

Note “we.” That’s a clever rhetorical move. Who is “we”? Stark wants to make it literal, but his own column belies it: the real “we” excludes EVERYBODY ELSE who watches baseball and doesn’t give a fuck. A sidebar on his own stupid column indicates that more than half of respondents are neutral towards Manny’s return.

Dr. Schmidt, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, sez: “Accountability, morality, substance, trust, honesty and so on, are all on a steady decline in our country.” And thankfully, he provides evidence. Oh, wait, no he doesn’t.

When did we as a nation decide that professional sports should be our moral compass? And when did we decide that PED use was a mortal sin? Seriously, I want to know. That way I can go into the past, before Jayson Stark was around to rap my knuckles with a yardstick, to a time when I could enjoy watching baseball games without turning them into a retread of Paradise Lost. Imagine that.