Tue 29 Apr 2008
Apparently there’s another banned substance problem in sports.
Posted by Dan in Texas under FJM ripoff , Humorous , Pete Alfano[2] Comments
With all apologies to Fire Joe Morgan (who does this much better and funnier), I couldn’t, in good conscience let this pass with out it’s due mockery…
Well here we are on a Monday and who else to judge the state of sporting world with anecdotal evidence and poorly thought out pronouncements. I probably could have let this go except for the fact it’s completely arbitrary, lacks any direction and I hate people that refer to themselves as “we.” Enjoy:
I woke up this morning with an inexplicable urge to read a hokey, simplistic contrivance by a small bitter man. Well Pete Aflano of the Fort Worth Star Telegram gives us: The Monday Morning Quarterback. Here we go:
Apparently there’s another banned substance problem in sports.
Whoa, Ok, hang on. There is? That’s a weighty declaration from a man whose last baseball related piece bemoaned about the seasons being too long. I give Pete a lot of grief but has he infiltrated an illegal drug ring not just affecting baseball but sports in general? Wow, I really have to give credit to Pete here; this is a major, major story.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with Josh Howard’s admission on Michael Irvin’s radio show that he likes to chill during the off-season by smoking weed. A whimsical thought here: Given Irvin’s brush with drugs over the years, do you think he and Howard may have a future as the new Cheech and Chong?
What? Get to the “another banned substance problem in sports.”
As fascinating and ill-advised as that revelation is by the Mavericks star forward, you may not have heard about the no-nonsense approach Major League Baseball took last week against bottled water.
Oh.
So it really isn’t another banned substance problem in sports. You lied to me Pete.
Yes, you read that correctly. Water, the stuff that comes out of the tap but we are willing to pay for at the store. The beverage that is generally regarded as the best and purest means of quenching your thirst without adding calories, sugar, salt and some chemical concoction responsible for the rainbow of colors among the sports drinks on supermarket shelves.
I was pretty hazy on what water was, thank you General Jack D. Ripper.
Eight glasses a day is what health experts say should be the minimum amount we consume. It helps cleanse our bodies internally, as well as externally, when we combine it with soap in the shower.
Well last time he told us what a “fitness expert” would have said IF he would have asked one. At least this time, and Pete is implying that he actually did research here. Pete says experts, (being plural so at least more than one) said to him that eight glasses of water per day is what experts recommend we consume. I blast this guy every time he touches on my favorite sport while doing absolutely no research or fact checking. Now Pete implies that he talked to two people during the writing of this story. I have to check, hold on.
Kidney specialists do agree on one thing, however: the 8-by-8 rule is a gross overestimate of any required minimum. To replace daily losses of water, an average-sized adult with healthy kidneys sitting in a temperate climate needs no more than one liter of fluid, according to Jurgen Schnermann, a kidney physiologist at the National Institutes of Heath.
Oh, nope, Pete just pulled the eight glasses thing out of his ass but I like that he cares enough to lie to me. I feel like I’ve made a difference. But more to Pete’s point.
You mean to tell me Baseball has banned water? Players are no longer allowed to drink water, bottled or otherwise, are they mandated to shower with Gatorade? Well I guess that’s still kind of a big story, sorta.
Don’t get me wrong, the Monday Morning Quarterback is not angling for a bottled-water endorsement. If you promise not to tell anyone, we’ll confess to basically disliking water. We’ll tolerate in flavored fitness drinks, but that’s about the extent of it.
You’re really soft selling your argument Pete.
It seems baseball tried to sneak a fastball past us while we were preoccupied with the NBA, the NHL playoffs and the NFL draft. (By the way, we think the Steelers may still be on the clock).
I can’t believe that baseball has banned the consumption of H2O for all players. It’s too bad players don’t have an ultra-powerful union that could campaign for the rights of its members to drink water.
Apparently, Gatorade is the “official sports drink” of MLB. That means baseball players cannot drink bottled water in the dugout even if they remove the brand label from the bottle. They can drink water from a water cooler or fountain but no plastic bottles, even if they are the environmentally friendly kind.
Oh, so they’re not really banning water, just plastic bottles in the dugout. That really isn’t a big story worthy of the outrage that Pete thinks will come from this development.
OK, insert your own punchline.
Hello? Pete? Hello?
Most people we heard jumped on the fact that baseball was quicker to crack down on bottled water than steroids, HGH and amphetamines. The next question may be this: Why is that, exactly?
Most people he’s heard, not his idea, then another question. I think we should look for answers from what an aging iconic pop star from Detroit who speaks with a British accent and that’s really into Kabala sang about 25 years ago.
Well, as Madonna sang in her formative years, “we are living in a material world,” and baseball needs a lot more than the hard-earned money you spend for tickets and concessions to pay multimillion dollar salaries to players and still turn a handsome profit.
Here comes the “baseball making money = evil” half thought out point Pete is famous for on this site.
That’s where the television revenue, merchandising (all those alternative jerseys and hats) and product licensing cone into play. It’s why the NFL requires players to wear designated caps on the sidelines when they remove their helmets. The fear of alienating corporate sponsors because of image reasons is what prompted the NBA to institute a dress code before the 2005-2006 season when the impression was that many players looked like rappers than hoopsters.
First off, Pete’s a racist. Secondly, who gives a damn what baseball players drink in the clubhouse on the bench or at home or what hat they wear? Does it really add or detract from anyone’s enjoyment of any sport?
And it is why MLB wasted no time having signs placed on clubhouse doors that say “No Bottled Water on the Bench.”
Hey, Grand Theft Auto IV comes out tonight at midnight. I took tomorrow off work to play all night. I remember how much I played San Andreas on the PS2. Man, GTA IV is going to be sick.
The Newark Star-Ledger blew the whistle on baseball last week when a reporter noticed a sign at US Cellular Field in Chicago when the Yankees were in town to play the White Sox.
It was Ed Price, not that details are important to any Alfano piece. Also, kind of a dick move naming the paper but not the reporter.
Another digression: Remember when it was simply Comiskey or White Sox Park ? See what we mean?
Well I remember that field used to be called New Comiskey Park . There was another stadium called Comiskey Park . The building known as US Cellular Field has only once been known as New Comiskey Park . I have not ever heard of such place as “ White Sox Park .” Was that a play on words marketing for the parking lot? So no, I don’t see what you mean.
All you need to know about the top priority of professional sports leagues these days is to see how quickly they respond to anyone jeopardizing a marketing agreement. That’s because steroid use, alcohol abuse, felonies and other crimes and misdemeanors have failed to slow the gravy train. Baseball’s steroids era may have given the game a black eye with historians and pundants, but it was also a time of growth and prosperity.
Read that first part again:
“All you need to know about the top priority of professional sports leagues these days is to see how quickly they respond to anyone jeopardizing a marketing agreement.”
That’s all you need to know. I’m not sure why Pete’s so angry at Major League Baseball for making money. Apparently, Pete was of the belief that baseball was not a business. With every MMQB piece, I find him becoming more and more bitter toward capitalism in general. I think Pete is some kind of closet-radical communist with a secret agenda to have the government take over control of baseball and run it as a non-profit organization. We would all get free tickets and tax payer funded merchandise while the players make minimum wage. But what kind of catcher are you going to get for minimum wage. He probably wouldn’t be very good a blocking pitches in the dirt or calling a game, but it would teach those bastard owners to run a successful business.
Baseball should toast its good fortune – with a bottle of Gatorade of course.
I think this was an exercise to make some haughty self righteous point about the benefits of steroids to owners done in such a way that muddles any reasonable concept that may or may not exist. If players were injecting themselves with steroids on the bench, Pete might have a fair point or if Major League Baseball was attempting to stop all players from drinking bottled water 24 hours a day, seven days a week he would have a point. On top of that, he didn’t even think of it. He wrote:
Most people we heard jumped on the fact that baseball was quicker to crack down on bottled water than steroids, HGH and amphetamines.”
I would like to know exactly how much money Pete spends on Major League Baseball in general per year. I bet it’s under twenty bucks. If Pete wrote a story about how little work goes into writing a story it would open a rift in the time space continuum and the universe would end.
