Yesterday when the A-Rod steroid story broke, my immediate response was surprise.  That lasted a second and then it occurred to me.  I am not shocked by any of these stories anymore.  In fact, I don’t know why anyone would be.  I guess I would be shocked if I found out that Jamey Carroll was juicing.  Or maybe, I might be surprised if I found out that Sal Fasano was slamming back doses of HGH.  But the shock of some elite level player having gained an edge chemically is non-existent at this point.  I think it is time to be honest with ourselves.

Now this isn’t to say that it isn’t wrong.  It most certainly is.  But that, in and of itself doesn’t have to drive our reactions.  We have already gone through phases of realizing that the game of baseball doesn’t have a crystal clean background.  How much more realization can we go through than having Rafael Palmeiro’s fake denial?  We already saw a balding, slightly less bigger Mac sitting in front of legislators avoiding questions about the past.  And this was way before his scummy brother decided to shop a tell-all book about how he introduced his brother Mark to the methods of juicing.

Then last year, we acted shocked again when the revelations about Andy Pettite and Roger Clemens came out.  I think this was mostly because Clemens was the highest profile pitcher to engage in a practice that had been thought to be reserved for homerun obsessed power dudes who wanted to grind bats into splinters with their hands. [Read more...]