Writing. About sports. Sometimes it is so terrible it can make you cry, cry like a child who has learned his heroes have feet of clay. "Feet" meaning "buttocks" and "of clay" meaning "shot full of Dianabol." Here's Gene Wojciechowski.
If I ever see Jeter's name attached to the hip of performance enhancers, I'm done. I mean it — I'll never watch another big league game again. Because if Captain Pinstripes could do the Vitamin S deed, then anybody can.
Jeter's name is where I draw the line in the PED sand. He is the absolute last guy I'd ever suspect of juicing. It seems so, well, beneath him. He is the one player who I actually think would walk away from the game if he thought he had to cheat to compete.
Yes, Gene Wojciechowski still believes in heroes. Deeply, soggily, and in lush tones of purple. He would give up on baseball—even if "Bud Selig paid me"—if he ever learned that Jeter had relied on performance-enhancing drugs. Or Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, Mariano Rivera, Joe Mauer, Jim Thome, Albert Pujols...
Dammit, there are still great men in this great game. Great men and pure. And none greater and more pure than Derek Jeter, the Captain, a true Yankee.
Yankees fans would go into permanent mourning if Jeter betrayed them. A-Rod's steroids admission they could handle; he was a free-agent import. Jeter, though, was born and raised by the organization. You think Yankees and you think Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris, Berra, Munson, Reggie and Jeter.
Uh, yeah, that's one list. Here's another.
It's been 40 years since Sports Illustrated pointed out that everyone in every sport was getting cranked up and/or pumped up with every sort of drug they could get. It's been 20 years since fans chanted "steroids" at Jose Canseco. It's nine years since steroids turned up in the glove compartment of Manny Alexander's Mercedes. Manny Alexander! Right now, my favorite baseball team still has at least one guy whose neck is bigger around than his skull. So does yours.
So what is the point, exactly, of this little air for violin and waterworks, on the world's biggest sports site? To establish Jeter's innocence, or to establish Gene Wojciechowski's?