Give 'em Some Stankeye!

There's bad journalism, and then there's bad journalism. Here's a little letter I sent to Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports in response to this idiotic article, proclaiming that if Ryan Howard bests 61 home runs this season (he needs nine to do it), he'll own the real record, not those steroid-addled bastards Bonds and McGwire.

Your article on Ryan Howard was one of the most moronic pieces of baseball writing I've ever read. How do you know that Howard has never taken performance-enhancers? How do you know? Because he seems like a stand-up guy? Because he's never failed a test? Well guess what, Dan, neither Barry Bonds nor Mark McGwire have ever failed a test, either. Yet you proclaim Howard's record (if he attains it) to be legit because you assume he's clean. Are you there every day in his locker, making sure he's not sticking needles in his ass? No, you're just writing gibberish and submitting it to Yahoo!

Don't get me wrong, I love Howard, and I think he's one of the most exciting players out there. But his 62 home runs won't be the record, in anyone's book, just because you ridiculously think Bonds let us all down by juicing. Bonds and McGwire are still the home run kings, without asterisk, whether you like it or not.

By the way, as for the "1998 McGwire fraud show", where the hell were you back then when all that was going on? If he was such a fraud why weren't you the first person out there, dismissing Big Mac because of his dependence on performance-enhancers? My guess is that you were too starstruck, like everybody else, to care. Now, with 20/20 vision firmly in place and the rest of your fellow hack journalists following suit, you condemn him as a fraud. Give me a break.

Having spent four years in college as a journalism major (and growing to hate the journalistic process ever so much), I hate bad, uninformed, biased writing as much as anybody. I usually leave the criticism of other bad sportswriters to people who can lay it on much better than I can (like the FJM guys...you can never plug that site enough), but sometimes I see or hear something so stupid that I just can't refrain. I know Yahoo! Sports isn't exactly the paragon of baseball prose, but good lord...

I wasn't kidding when I said I loved Ryan Howard. The guy is a freaking beast. But just because there's a general perception that he isn't a user doesn't mean its so. Did he use PEDs at any point in his career? I don't know, and neither do you. The assumption is no, but assumptions just don't mean anything. Just because he appears to be a guy who never juiced doesn't mean he never did. Alex Sanchez sure as hell didn't look like a juicer, but there you go. Do I care if he used PEDs? No. I just want to watch the man play baseball.

I'm sorry to say it, but as much as some people may hate it, Barry Bonds is still the single-season home run record holder, no asterisks needed. Deal with it. No amount of self-righteous screaming or pulpit-bashing will ever take it away. To deny Bonds and McGwire is to just deny history, and that's just not possible.

I very much doubt that letter will get published in Wetzel's mailbag, at least not without some serious editing, and I don't expect a response via email. I don't even know why I felt the need to write that jackass. I've been hearing dumb fans crowing about the whole "legit Ryan Howard record" for a while now, and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe I'm just pissed because the Giants got shut down today by a formerly cornrowed numbnuts who released a shitty cover album.

Jonathan Sanchez goes for the Giants tomorrow in maybe the most anticipated start since Cain made his debut last year.