Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Rick Reilly Makes Me Chuckle

But not in the way he makes clueless baby boomers chuckle. He's written an article about retroactively re-awarding MVP trophies to guys who initially lost out to steroid users, but are ostensibly the "real" and deserving winners for not cheating. Amidst the predictably lame pop culture references and plays on words that usually come with a piece of Laffy Taffy (Oops... is that a pop culture reference on my part? How ironic), we have this gem:

And here'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.

Dude- really? I know, I know. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. But if there is anyone, and I mean anyone, who has yet to be officially connected to steroids but who I am 99.9% certain was a steroid user... it would have to be Gonzalez.

Before his age 30 season: about 3800 plate appearances, 84 home runs. Home run season totals for subsequent years, which just so happen to encompass what most people would consider the height of the steroid era: 23, 26, 31, 57 (in his age 33 season!), 28, 26. Those seasons together encompassed roughly another 3800 PAs. So let's get this straight- ages 22-29: a home run every 45 plate appearances. Agest 30-35, when everyone and their mom was on the juice: a home run every 19 plate appearances. What are the statistical odds of that happening without performance enhancers? What are the odds of a guy, playing right at the (presumed) height of steroid use, coincidentally discovering the power it takes to hit 57 home runs at age 33 when he had previously hit 13 in 500+ PAs during his age 27 season?

As Rick Reilly might say, poor- about as poor as that mother of octuplets is going to be when she has to put those kids through college! Or maybe slim- about as slim as Britney Spears is looking these days! Or maybe terrible- about as terrible as the economy is doing!

Etc., etc.

If you're about to leave a comment pointing out that lots of people used to subscribe to SI just to read Reilly's articles, cram it. He stinks.

14 comments:

Chris W said...
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Chris W said...
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Chris W said...
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Chris W said...
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Tonus said...

Chris W stuttered!

And I was thinking the exact same thing when I read the part about Gonzalez. MLB, MLBPA and the media desperately want us to believe that the steroid problem was limited to just Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi. And Rafael Palmeiro. And Roger Clemens. Oh, and ARod. But just them, no one else!

Luis Gonzalez? A magical season, a great baseball story! Jay Bell? Late bloomer! Etc etc. It's just stupid. These are the guys who are judging the steroid era and condemning the cheats?

Jeff said...

There's no one I'm more confident did steroids that hasn't been outed yet than Luis Gonzalez.

I think you're being too hard on Reilly. Did you catch this line about Adrian Beltre?

"If he wasn't cheating, I'm the Queen Mother."

hiFUCKINGlarious!

Anonymous said...

People subscribed to SI just for Reilly? I mean, just go to a grocery store and spend the 3 minutes reading the column in the magazine aisle.

Larry B said...

People always say some dumb shit like that whenever we shit on Reilly. Of course, it makes sense that people who want to say those kinds of things are the kinds of people who paid $60 a year to read 52 pages of "Ain't sports wonderful?"

Unknown said...

I was thinking the same thing cs. His "article" was like 3 paragraphs in the back of the magazine.

rondoman said...

Rick Reilly was always overrated IMO.

My dad had a subscription to SI years ago and every once in a while his columns were pretty good, but not legendary like some people want you to believe.

He tries WAY too hard to try to be funny and puts in pop culture references to try and show people he is up to date on what is "hip" and "cool" these days.

He seems to genuinely love himself to no end, and anytime I see him on TV, I instantly turn channels cuz I really cannot stand him at this point.

Unknown said...

He shits on Beltre, who I think if he was doing steroids would have had more then one great year, but gives Albert the P a pass. If the Rickster is gonna slap Beltre's bitch up, the least he can do is figure that Alber might not be clean either. That's one monstrous looking dude.

Tonus said...

Yeah, but Pujols said that Jesus took his steroids away. So he's clean.

Unknown said...

hasn't barry bonds admitted to using steroids just not knowingly using them?

Larry B said...

Eddie might be right. Or that might be Gary Sheffield. Or maybe both of them. I need to go back and real Love Me, Hate Me again.