Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Manny)

Ah, bliss…

After finishing a meaningless errand, I turned on a local rock station, which I seldom do. Pierre Robert, who is a little bit of an old timer, and who also spends time emceeing on our PBS station when they are showing old concerts for fundraising purposes, is on the radio. He has a segment during his radio show where he plays a song on vinyl, sort of a shout out to the old days. Some people say you can hear differences in the music-it’s warmer and richer. Neil Young, for instance. I’m not smart enough to hear the difference, though.

So I step into the car, and he’s finishing the introduction to the vinyl segment, and I hear a very familiar repeating series of piano notes.

It was Billy Joel’s “Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)”-track 4, side 2 of the Turnstiles album. Beautiful. I sang along, of course, and loved every note of it.

***

The news of the week, of course, is the story of Mr. Manuel Ramirez, who received a 50 game suspension for drug violations. From what I have been able to gather, the substance in question was hCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. HCG is pretty interesting, actually-it is the hormone that pregnancy tests detect, and, in both sexes, it serves to “turn on” hormone production by other organs. In the steroid subculture, HCG is used to restore natural testosterone release after a steroid cycle. (When a person uses steroids, their body stops making some natural hormones.)

In baseball, of course, it is a no no. It is possible Manny has a legitimate medical need for that drug, but I would file it under “Not Bloody Likely.”

Now, what does it mean?

It makes the Dodgers’ lives more complicated, of course.

But what does it mean for my team, the Boston Red Sox? Ramirez, of course, played an integral part in Boston’s World Series wins in 2004 and 2007. Does this sadden me, and take a little bit of luster off of these trophies for me? Of course it does.

Does it make me like the Red Sox less? Feel ashamed of being a fan? No.

Steroids are usually described as ruining the integrity of the sport by distorting its statistics-which are more important in baseball than in any other sport. But baseball statistics are just records of what happened-nothing more-and these records-ALL of them-have their own biases and corrections inherent in them-the era in which they played.

I’ve said this before, but this is my blog, and you can’t stop me, so I will say it again.

Every era of baseball has bias in its statistics. 1876 (the year the National League was founded) until 1893, the distance to the mound was 50 feet, not 60 feet 6 inches. 1900-1920 has enormous amounts of corruption, culminating in a thrown World Series, and a ball that was roughly as elastic and springy as a Nerf ball, plus any manner of now illegal deliveries being permitted. From 1920-1947, you have the Ruth-fueled advent of the home run offense, plus not all the best players were in the league, pre-Jackie Robinson. Arguably, integration did not fully take place until the mid 1960s. And so on and so on-new stadiums, divisional play, the invention of the slider and the relief pitcher…etcetera, etcetera.

Steroids are a sad addition-players like Bonds, Rodriguez, Clemens, and Ramirez were great without the assistance of chemicals-to this long story.