Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Justice. Sweet, arbitrary justice.

Nils and I have been waiting for this yawner A-Rod story to disappear before cranking it back up here at The Theorem. But, my goodness, people just WON'T stop pontificating about this. I feel compelled to mock *one* story, if only to avoid accumulating too much rust. (Deep breath) Here goes.

Rick Reilly (ugh, am I really going to do this?) wants to take the recent MVP awards and give them to their "rightful" recipients.

It's been tougher than a $4.99 steak. Got chased by Dobermans eight times. Had to hire five different sticky-fingered third-graders. Broke into the wrong house twice. But it's finally done. I've been able to retrieve every single MVP award that was wrongfully won by every single suspected 'roid ranger over the last 20 years.

[Hey, did you know that Reilly reportedly makes $3.4 MILLION per year to write stuff like this?]

[H]ere's yours from 2001, Luis Gonzalez, after you finished behind The Barry Bonds Pharmacy. We won't even mention the home run title you would've won that year.

[Well at least Reilly isn't accusing guys who saw random statistical spikes (in this case, Luis Gonzalez) but have never admitted using PEDs or been linked to usage. Maybe I was wrong about Reilly. He deserves credit for that much.]

You already have two MVPs, Albert [Pujols], and you're about to get three more, since Barry Bonds ripped you off worse than Bernie Madoff to win the award from 2002 to 2004. You hit .335 and averaged 41 bombs those years and yet you finished second behind the clearly creaming Bonds in '02 and '03 and third behind Bonds and Adrian Beltre in '04. We're throwing out Beltre since, while he denies ever using PEDs, he fell off the face of the planet once baseball put in stricter steroid suspensions in 2005. If he wasn't cheating, I'm the Queen Mother.

[Honestly, it's my own fault for even bothering to read a Reilly article. It really is.]

2 comments:

drunyon said...

IIRC, a few years ago, when he was still working for SI, Reilly basically wrote this exact same article about giving away Bonds' MVPs. Back then, he actually wanted to give the '04 MVP to Beltre. Guess Beltre must have blown him off for an interview some time in the past couple of years.

Mickey Cooper said...

Mess with the Queen Mother at your peril.