Rick Reilly of ESPN has hit a new low, which is actually saying something when you consider how he embarrassed himself on national television during Josh Hamilton’s home run barrage in last year’s Home Run Derby (remember: “This is a bad day to be an atheist!”). In his latest “Life of Reilly” column for ESPN (the) Magazine, Reilly jumps on the moralizing bandwagon to redistribute the MVP awards that were handed out to suspected or admitted steroid users over the years. I apologize for giving Reilly’s column the full FJM treatment, but it’s a particularly bad piece of baseball writing. Reilly’s column text is in bold.

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 past 20 years. You can see them all shining on the table next to me. Got the stains off them and everything. Now I’m ready to give them to their rightful owners.

I’m tempted to comment on Reilly’s hackneyed Creative Writing 101 lead, but it’s not worth it. I will point out, though, how lucky we all are that Reilly knows exactly which players took steroids and which didn’t, so that he can properly redistribute these MVP awards.

And why not? If Bud Selig can talk about giving Barry Bonds’ phony-as-tofurkey home run record back to Hank Aaron, why can’t we right all the wrongs of the Syringe Binge?

Is Reilly looking to do some term-coining in this column? “‘Roid Ranger” and “Syringe Binge?” Really? Also, is tofurkey really phony? I thought it was actually made of tofu.

Let’s start by bringing former Red Sox Mike Greenwell up to the podium. Greenie lost the 1988 AL MVP to Jose Canseco, who admitted in his book, “Juiced,” that he cheated worse than Rosie Ruiz that year to win it. Canseco even told Howard Stern that Greenwell, now a high school coach in Fort Myers, Fla., “should stop by the house” to pick up the award. No need, Mike! Here it is. Should look sweet on the mantel.

Now this is just lazy. I know Reilly is trying to be cute here with the Rosie Ruiz reference, but it doesn’t make any sense. Ruiz famously cheated in the Boston Marathon in 1980 by entering the race in the last mile and not running the first 25 or so miles (similar to what got caused Geoffrey the butler deported from to flee the U.K. in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air). In 1988, Canseco took steroids, played 158 games, hit 42 home runs, stole 40 bases, and had an OPS+ of 170. So how did Canseco cheat worse than Ruiz? Canseco cheated by taking steroids, but at least he played the games and actually hit the home runs. Ruiz didn’t run 95 percent of the race. The only way that Canseco’s cheating could be comparable to Ruiz’s is if he didn’t play most of the season, somehow hacked into the MLB and Elias Sports Bureau computers like Ferris Bueller adjusting his attendance record, and entered in 40 home runs into the record books that he never hit. Then, he played the last ten games of the season and hit the final two home runs. I know Reilly’s trying to be funny, but at least try to make sense.

By the way, “Greenie” seems like an unfortunate nickname to use in an article about performance-enhancing drugs.

“Man,” Greenwell said when I called him. “I guess I’ll just say it’s been a long time coming. I even remember telling Jose once, ‘Man, I’d love to have your power.’ And he said, ‘Come to Miami and I’ll hook you up!’ But I never did.”

And why not?

“My wife and I were trying to have a baby and she basically said if I went on steroids, she’d kill me.” Now he’s got two boys. Healthy ones.

Is it me, or is the “healthy ones” sentence really weird? Is he implying that the children of steroid users are unhealthy?

(Don’t feel bad for Canseco. We’re replacing the award he never deserved with one he did: the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Jose, can you see how much we believe you now?)

Someone better tell Steve Coll. His book, Ghost Wars, which detailed the CIA’s involvement in covert wars in Afghanistan that gave rise to Al Qaeda, actually won that award. You’re right, Rick: Juiced was definitely a more important piece of writing than Ghost Wars.

Step up here, Mike Piazza. The late Ken Caminiti of the San Diego Padres stole your 1996 NL MVP, then admitted he was into more juice than Jack LaLanne. Yes, it’s 13 years late, but the nameplate is new! 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.

Reilly is really pushing it with the cheeky comparisons. Tougher than a $4.99 steak; phonier than tofurkey; juicier than Jack LaLanne. I feel like I’m reading Dennis Miller’s Rants.

Now, for the man of the night. I have a U-Haul of hardware here for Jose Alberto Pujols Alcántara of the St. Louis Cardinals. You already have two MVPs, Albert, 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. And this is history we’re making here. It gives you five MVPs, and nobody else in baseball history now has more than three. Just don’t let us down on this thing, Albert. You know what we’re talking about.

Worse than Bernie Madoff? Really? Pujols missing out on MVP awards is worse than a scumbag bilking $50B from charities and people’s life savings? I care about baseball – probably too much – but this is over the top. 

My favorite part of this paragraph, and what truly reveals Reilly to be a grade-A bonehead, is his argument that Pujols should get all three of Barry Bonds’s recent MVP awards, even though Pujols finished second to Bonds only twice. And Reilly accomplishes this by disqualifying Adrian Beltre’s second place finish in 2004 because “he fell off the face of the planet once baseball put in stricter steroid suspensions in 2005.” Yet, earlier in the column, Reilly awards Bonds’s 2001 MVP award to Luis Gonzalez. In 2001, Gonzalez, at age 33, hit 57 home runs and slugged .688. In 2002, Gonzalez his 28 home runs and slugged .496. In fact, he never hit more than 31 home runs or slugged better than .549 in any other season of his long career and, over the past few seasons, he’s hit more like Luis A. Gonzalez. Beltre’s 2004 season was incredibly anomalous as well, when he hit 48 home runs and slugged .629. His career highs otherwise are 26 home runs and a .482 slugging percentage. But at least Beltre was 25 years old in 2004, so there is a slight chance that his performance was legitimate, as opposed to Gonzalez who mysteriously turned into an unbelievable power hitter for one season at age 33.

Listen, Reilly: you can’t assume Beltre was on steroids, but give Gonzalez a free pass – it’s sloppy and makes you look foolish. If you believe that Gonzalez’s 2001 performance was all natural, then I guess that makes you the Queen Mum (isn’t she dead, by the way?).

Speaking of letting people down, Alex Rodriguez admitted last week he cheated like a Three-Card Monte dealer from 2001 to 2003 as a Texas Ranger. He was the AL MVP in ’03, stealing it from then-Toronto Blue Jay Carlos Delgado, who finished second. Just to recap: He cheated. He admitted it. He won the MVP. And yet the people who gave Rodriguez the award- the Baseball Writers’ Association of America-decided last week that he could keep it. “It’s [A-Rod's] award to do what he wants with,” BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O’Connell told a reporter. “Listen, the wool was pulled over all our eyes. We had an election and those were the guys that won. The awards are theirs.”

Just to recap, Rick, you muddled the timeline. It actually went like this: He cheated. He won the MVP. He admitted it. This is important. In your version, the MVP was awarded after he admitted cheating, which would make taking back the award not as problematic as a retroactive stripping of the award five years later.

Thank God O’Connell isn’t a judge. Yes, you admit you robbed the bank, but what the hell, why don’t you go ahead and keep the cash? Buy yourself something nice.

This is getting embarrassing. It’s like Reilly never mastered analogies. Did they not have the SAT when he was in high school? When someone robs a bank, they intentionally place the teller or bank president or whoever under duress, most likely with a threat of violence, which then induces the individual to turn over the money. In the case of the 2003 MVP award, A-Rod cheated and was awarded the MVP by the baseball writers. I have not heard any allegations that A-Rod threatened the baseball writers with violence, which caused them to award him the MVP. The writers were free to award it to anyone of their choosing and they chose A-Rod. 

Thank God Reilly isn’t a judge. In his courtroom, you can be convicted of robbery if a bank teller gives you extra money just because he/she wants to.

“The awards are theirs”? What is the BBWAA motto: Tread on Us? Shame on O’Connell and every writer who agrees with him. These people let this whole Rage Age go down right in front of their notepads-left it up to Canseco to break the story-and now they’re rewarding them? Coddlers.

Way to throw your colleagues under the bus.

So step right up, Moises Alou, here’s your MVP for 1998, when you finished behind Sammy Sosa and the Dubious Dinger, Mark McGwire. Here’s yours for 2000, Frank Thomas. You were fleeced out of it by admitted ‘roider Jason Giambi.

There you go, gentlemen. Please accept our belated congratulations. And don’t make us regret this later on.

Remember, we know sticky-fingered third-graders.

I love how Reilly rips baseball writers for failing to blow the whistle on steroids, yet he’s so naive that he thinks that there are players from that era that are above suspicion. Reilly’s plan for redistribution of the MVP awards doesn’t work because he’s missing the point. The lesson of the so-called “Steroid Era” and the recent A-Rod outing is that we do not and cannot know who took steroids and who didn’t. If Reilly really feels that justice needs to be done with regard to MVP awards that were awarded to admitted or suspected steroid users, he should argue that no one should get the MVP awards for those years. It’s like he’s being willfully ignorant. If you’re not suspicious of every player of that era, then you’re not paying attention.

Tags: a-rod, Adrian Beltre, Albert Pujols, Bernie Madoff, CIA involvement in covert wars in Afghanistan, Dennis Miller, ESPN, Ferris Bueller, FJM, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, goofball baseball writers, Jack LaLanne, Jose Canseco, Luis A. Gonzalez, Luis Gonzalez, Mike Greenwell, Mike Greenwell's healthy boys, MVP award, Nerd Baseball writer on soapbox, Queen Mum, Rick Reilly, Rosie Ruiz, SAT, steroids, Steve Coll, tofurkey

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.